#the divide caused by brexit was huge

[wild-at-mind]

I know it’s all funneee shitposting and whatnot but I really don’t get why so many Americans love those posts about splitting up the UK.

[newstfionline]

Headlines: Tuesday, September 29, 2020

Radioactive lunar soil (AP) New measurements from a Chinese-German team analyzing data from the Chang’e 4 lander on the far side of the moon finds that the lunar surface is radioactive as all heck, with astronauts getting 200 to 1,000 times more radiation on the moon than experienced on Earth, or about five to 10 times the amount absorbed by passengers on a trans-Atlantic flight. This is not a problem for a quick visit, but if the objective is to land astronauts and have them settle in for a bit, they could sustain sufficient damage to cause health problems down the line.

Coronavirus pandemic on the brink of a grim new milestone: 1 million dead (Washington Post) The covid-19 death toll is on the brink of hitting 1 million. That’s as many as live in San Jose, Calif.; Volgograd, Russia; or Qom, Iran. It is a disease that peppers grieving families with indignities—no funerals, hurried burials, barely a chance to mourn. It is a pandemic that has divided countries from within, yet unites the world in common anguish and loss. In the United States, a son in Sacramento can only listen to a description of his mother’s burial in New Jersey via his daughter, the only relative permitted to attend. The dead are poor—in an Indian village, a man’s family borrows a wooden cart that a neighbor used to sell fish and carries his body to his funeral pyre. And the dead are workers—in Brazil, a man who works in a meatpacking plant does everything he can think of to protect himself, yet he brings the bug home and now his wife is dead. Across the oceans and into the biggest cities and the tiniest villages, the coronavirus has torn apart families, left children hungry, evaporated jobs and wrecked economies.

As Covid-19 Closes Schools, the World’s Children Go to Work (NYT) Every morning in front of the Devaraj Urs public housing apartment blocks on the outskirts of the city of Tumakuru, India, a swarm of children pours into the street. They are not going to school. Instead of backpacks or books, each child carries a filthy plastic sack. These children, from 6 to 14 years old, have been sent by their parents to rummage through garbage dumps littered with broken glass and concrete shards in search of recyclable plastic. In many parts of the developing world, school closures put children on the streets. Families are desperate for money. Children are an easy source of cheap labor. While the United States and other developed countries debate the effectiveness of online schooling, hundreds of millions of children in poorer countries lack computers or the internet and have no schooling at all. United Nations officials estimate that at least 24 million children will drop out and that millions could be sucked into work.

Trump’s tax revelation could tarnish image that fueled rise (AP) The bombshell revelations that President Donald Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes the year he ran for office and paid no income taxes at all in many others threaten to undercut a pillar of his appeal among blue-collar voters and provide a new opening for his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, on the eve of the first presidential debate. Trump has worked for decades to build an image of himself as a hugely successful businessman—even choosing “mogul” as his Secret Service code name. But The New York Times on Sunday revealed that he paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016, the year he won the presidency, and in 2017, his first year in office. He paid no income taxes whatsoever in 10 of the previous 15 years, largely because he reported losing more money than he made, according to the Times, which obtained years’ worth of tax return data that the president had long fought to keep private. At this point in the race, with voting already underway in many states and so few voters still undecided, it is unclear whether any new discoveries about Trump would make any difference. Trump’s support over the years has remained remarkably consistent, polls over the course of his presidency have found.

Ransomware Attacks Take On New Urgency Ahead of Vote (NYT) A Texas company that sells software that cities and states use to display results on election night was hit by ransomware last week, the latest of nearly a thousand such attacks over the past year against small towns, big cities and the contractors who run their voting systems. But the attack on Tyler Technologies, which continued on Friday night with efforts by outsiders to log into its clients’ systems around the country, was particularly rattling less than 40 days before the election. While Tyler does not actually tally votes, it is used by election officials to aggregate and report them in at least 20 places around the country—making it exactly the kind of soft target that the Department of Homeland Security, the F.B.I. and United States Cyber Command worry could be struck by anyone trying to sow chaos and uncertainty on election night.

Massacre in Mexican bar leaves 11 people dead (Reuters) A massacre in a bar left 11 people dead on Sunday, Mexican authorities said, as the country grapples with a record homicide rate despite the government’s pledge to stop gang violence. The attorney general’s office of the central Mexican state of Guanajuato said the bodies of seven men and four women were found in the bar in the early hours of Sunday morning in the city of Jaral del Progreso. Guanajuato, a major carmaking hub, has become a recurring scene of criminal violence in Mexico, ravaged by a turf war between the local Santa Rosa de Lima gang and the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

Backers turn on Britain’s PM (AFP) Boris Johnson, called dejected and dogmatic even by his partisans, is enduring a torrid time in his tumultuous premiership, and worse may lie ahead. The coronavirus pandemic is testing all world leaders. But Britain has suffered more than any other country in Europe, and now the prime minister faces a revolt by Conservative colleagues who accuse him of governing by diktat. If the Covid-19 crisis has dictated the need for emergency policies on the hoof, the government has had plenty of time to prepare for life outside the European Union. But there too, an air of mutiny hangs over parliament after Johnson picked a Brexit fight with Brussels that puts Britain on the wrong side of international law. “Conservative MPs didn’t elect Boris Johnson as their leader because they thought he’d make a great prime minister,” Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, told AFP. “They elected him as their leader because they were desperate to win an election,” he said. “There’s probably always a hope that someone will grow into the job. There’s some alarm that hasn’t happened.”

Britain is part of 'arc of instability' around the EU, chairman says (Reuters) Brexit Britain is part of an “arc of instability” that has emerged around the European Union, the bloc’s chairman said on Monday, ranking London’s decision to leave the EU along with threats from Turkey, Russia, Libya and Syria. “An arc of instability has developed all around us,” European Council President Charles Michel, who chairs EU summits, said in an online address for the Bruegel think-tank. “The truth is, the British face a dilemma. What model of society do they want??” Britain left the EU, the world’s largest trading bloc, on Jan. 31 after 47 years of partnership to the huge regret of EU leaders who now insist that London accept the economic consequences of looser ties. The process of negotiating a new trade relationship and finding Britain’s new place in the world is proving complicated and has revealed divisions within political parties, society and the government itself.

India’s confirmed coronavirus tally reaches 6 million cases (AP) India’s confirmed coronavirus tally reached 6 million cases on Monday, keeping the country second to the United States in number of reported cases since the pandemic began. New infections in India are currently being reported faster than anywhere else in the world. The world’s second-most populous country is expected to become the pandemic’s worst-hit country in coming weeks, surpassing the U.S., where more than 7.1 million infections have been reported. Yet even as infections mount, India has the highest number of recovered patients in the world. More than 5 million people have recovered from COVID-19 in India and the country’s recovery rate stands at 82%, according to the Health Ministry.

Fighting Flares Between Azerbaijan and Armenia (NYT) Fighting that was reported to be fierce broke out on Sunday between Azerbaijan and Armenia and quickly escalated, with the two sides claiming action with artillery, helicopter and tanks along a disputed border. The military action centered on the breakaway province of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian separatist enclave in Azerbaijan. Ethnic tensions and historical grievances in the mountainous area north of Turkey and Iran have made kindling for conflict for decades. The fighting on Sunday, however, was reportedly more severe than the typical periodic border skirmishes, and both governments used military language describing the events as war. By early afternoon, Azerbaijan said its forces had advanced to capture seven villages and had surrounded an unspecified number of Armenian troops it was threatening to kill if they did not surrender. Armenia claimed it was holding fast and had destroyed Azerbaijani tanks and helicopters. Nikol Pashinyan, the Armenian prime minister, declared a state of emergency and mobilized the country’s male population. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country has long been at odds with Armenia, strongly backed Azerbaijan. Russia, on the other hand, is a long-standing ally of Armenia, and it has supplied the country with enormous supplies of arms since the end of its war with Azerbaijan in 1994.

Rabbis ponder COVID-19 queries of ultra-Orthodox Jewish life (AP) Must an observant Jew who has lost his sense of taste and smell because of COVID-19 recite blessings for food and drink? Can one bend the metal nosepiece of a surgical face mask on the Sabbath? May one participate in communal prayers held in a courtyard from a nearby balcony? Months into the coronavirus pandemic, ultra-Orthodox rabbis in Israel are addressing questions like these as their legions of followers seek advice on how to maintain proper Jewish observance under the restrictions of the outbreak. Social distancing and nationwide lockdowns have become a reality around the globe in 2020, but for religious Jews they can further complicate rites and customs that form the fabric of daily life in Orthodox communities. Many of these customs are performed in groups and public gatherings, making it especially challenging for the religious public to maintain its lifestyle. One religious publisher in Jerusalem released a book in July with over 600 pages of guidance from 46 prominent rabbis. Topics range from socially distanced circumcisions (allowed) to Passover Seders over Zoom (forbidden) to praying with a quorum from a balcony (it’s complicated).

[arcticdementor]

Well, welcome as Agent Corbyn’s successful destruction of Labour has been, the Tory victory belies some huge structural demographic problems facing the centre-Right. The Conservative Party is still effective at winning elections, against a hopelessly divided opposition, but conservatism as a movement is facing a very difficult future, a result of demography, cultural trends and its disappearance from many national institutions and sectors.

…

By the time of the 2017 election it became clear that conservatism was completely repulsive to a majority not just of the very young but people well into their 30s and even 40s. And this was a new development; even in 1979 and 1983 the Tories came first among 18-24-year-olds, and traditionally a form of social conservatism had started to kick in around the age of 30. That wasn’t happening anymore.

…

Indeed, despite long-held assumptions that people will always grow into conservatism, surveys in the US at least showed that those from Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980) were actually moving to the Left as they got older, and in the US the proportion identifying as liberal had increased from 29 per cent in the mid-1990s to almost half today. The same thing was happening with the cohort after us, the Millennials, who were not showing any signs of becoming more Right-wing as they aged.

By any conceivable measure what is regarded as mainstream, normal opinion had shifted rapidly in the preceding decades, but the rate of change now also seemed to be speeding up, almost as if we were heading for some sort of progressive singularity with the “Great Awokening” and the rapid shift to the Left among the American upper-class.

…

Despite all the liberal lamentation about Brexit and Trump — and the live-action nervous breakdowns of so many members of the commentariat — these events are most likely mere blips in the onward march of progressivism; the former supported by the old and the latter by the prematurely dying in America’s depressed, opiate-riddled heartlands.

There are today very few important areas of British or American society in which progressives do not have dominance. The influential film industry of southern California is overwhelmingly liberal, as is the even more powerful tech industry of northern California. Technology giants like Google or Facebook overtly side with progressive causes in funding and policy, and within these companies Left-wing identity politics is so embedded that according to one employee at Google ‘the presence of Caucasians and males was mocked with “boos” during company-wide weekly meetings, one of many examples where ‘white males’ were subject to abuse.

…

It’s all very well Right-wingers complaining about the “liberal elite” while citing semi-exotic vegetarian foodstuffs eaten in upmarket postcodes, but it doesn’t really matter if this much-caricatured group are “out of touch”. History shows that elite opinions tend to become adopted by society as a whole because people imitate the belief systems of those higher up the social ladder. If left-liberalism has become dominant among the elite, then like many historical faiths its popularity among a high-status minority will lead to universal adoption in just a couple of generations.

Historically the religions and belief systems that flourish and predominate are those that carry the most prestige, and which bring with them more social benefits than costs to followers. What matters is how much ideologies are associated with high-ranking and successful people, and how much social proof their believers have. When that happens, they will inevitably become dominant.

A crucial indication of the way things are developing is the extent to which younger women have become far more Left-wing than men, with a pro-conservative bias among females born before 1955 turning into a heavily Left-liberal one among younger cohorts.

Faiths that attract large numbers of women tend to predominate, the most obvious being Christianity, where females heavily outnumbered males in the early centuries. Men tended to become “secondary converts” to Christianity, adopting the belief system of women — a pattern noted throughout the ages.

…

Whole fields, among them teaching, academia, medicine, journalism and science, have gone from being politically mixed a generation ago to overwhelmingly Left-liberal today. Indeed, there is growing evidence in many areas that dissenting thinkers increasingly keep their opinions to themselves.

…

Pretty much the last refuge of conservatism is the Army, and even Sandhurst has equality and diversity classes while the armed forces’ social media accounts tweet out prog mantras just as their 17th century forebears would have quoted scripture, as if the raison d’etre of the Army was to promote inclusivity and LGBT rights rather than literally killing foreigners.

…

What better way to signal high status in the current year than banning conservatives from being able to speak?

As Left-liberalism has become the prestige faith with a moral monopoly, dominant in academia and the most elite professions, so conservatism has retreated into comforting stupidity. It has become characterised by shock jocks and outrage-merchants, as well as an aversion to commonly-accepted science, the most prominent examples being scepticism over climate change. In America it has become the preserve of “the Stupid Party”, as Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal referred to the Republicans, echoing John Stuart Mill’s jibe about the Tories. Perhaps no one better epitomises this better than Donald Trump, a man with the seemingly unique gift of having no redeeming features whatsoever.

…

Since the 1960s the west has gone through the biggest cultural shift in half a millennium, an epochal change similar in some ways to the Christian takeover of pagan Rome and the 16th century Protestant Reformation. Both of these events led to revolutions in public ideas about morality and eventually to culture conflicts – and conservatives, like the polytheists and Catholics before them, are today on the losing side.

…

But the Left is winning and we’re losing. As the dashing, gentlemanly and high-status liberal Barack Obama said of al-Qaida, another group of guys not entirely comfortable with the modern world, we’re Small Men on the Wrong Side of History.

[btsybrkr]

2020 Vision: What To Expect From The Next Decade (By Someone Who Has No Idea, Obviously.)

Happy New Year, all!! I had planned to do a little run-down last week of everything that happened in the 2010s, but instead succumbed to the existential struggle that comes with the week that follows Christmas Day, in which your time becomes largely swallowed up by asking yourself ‘what day is it?’ and ‘at what point am I supposed to stop living on a diet of alcohol and Quality Street?’. It’s festive purgatory, and you’re literally powerless to do anything other than sleep, eat, and moan that the shops are still playing Christmas music. That’s my excuse, anyway.

So, instead, I thought we’d say a collective “cinnabit, lad” to 2019 and a collective “what is UP, dude?” to the Roaring 20s 2.0, the only sequel that humanity has waited a whole 100 years for. Apart from Avatar 2, which I imagine will come out at some point in the 3020s.  What do we know so far about what the 2020s have in store for us? Obviously, not a lot, but as someone who successfully predicted the outcome of the last election, and the UK’s last four Eurovision losses - two things which I’m sure absolutely nobody ever saw coming - I thought I’d give out my own valuable speculation. Here’s what the 2020s might look like, according to me.

Politics

Let’s get it out of the way - we’re in a terrible state. At this point, every important issue is so divisive, that the nation is divided over everything, including whether we’re actually divided or not. Do I think we’ll become any less divided in the coming years, in a United Kingdom where the conversation is so often dominated by things we can absolutely never seem to agree on? Yes. We will have no choice. Why? 

All-out war.

Yes, I said it. In 2021, there will be all-out war. With America, probably. I don’t know why. Maybe Trump will get into an argument with Boris Johnson over who can manage to effortlessly look the most like a Viz caricature of themselves - they both already do somehow, I’m just saying they might disagree on which one of them is the best at it. Could be that, or possibly a more serious cause, to do with nuclear weapons or something, but I’d rather not think about that, because it’s not as funny as the Viz thing. And it’s more likely. So, we’ll pretend for now that we’re on the verge of the first pantomime, slapstick war the world has ever seen.

Anyway, while Trump and Johnson are beefing up a storm - picture Punch and Judy, except the puppets are in suits and have thinning, bright yellow hair - previously all-encompassing issues like Brexit will fall by the wayside, until Boris Johnson eventually decides to hand his notice in to focus on more important things, like beating Trump with a wooden spoon and chasing after the dog that stole all his sausages. After this, we’ll all come together to realise that if actual elected officials can’t do the job, then maybe we, the people, deserve our chance to test our political metal. Obviously, we can’t let just anybody have a go, but at the end of the year, Cosmopolitan magazine puts the traditional democratic process at number one on its ‘Leave It In 2021’ list, so we have absolutely no choice but to come up with something else, which brings me to...

Television And Film

2022 will start with a bang, with the debut of Simon Cowell’s new talent show format, So You Think You Can Be The Prime Minister?, hosted of course by Ant and Dec, with the aftershow on ITV2 being hosted by Jeremy Paxman. Contestants will line up in huge crowds to give judges Russell Brand, Susanna Reid, and, of course, Jesus S. Cowell himself (forgot to mention, Simon Cowell has been elected as the new Christ in this completely non-hypothetical universe, alright?) their opinions on hot political topics such as Brexit, the NHS, and, of course, whether a Jaffa Cake can really be classed as a biscuit or not. Each episode, contestants will take part in a live debate, themed around a different issue with every passing week. The two least popular contestants after the weekly phone vote will go head-to-head giving their own rendition of Running The World by Jarvis Cocker, with the worst performer being eliminated. I know a sing-off isn’t exactly relevant in a politics programme, but it’s Saturday night primetime so it’s still got to be at least somewhat entertaining, yeah?

Love Island will be back, of course - and not just with a Summer and Winter edition, but with an additional Spring and Autumn one for the 2024 schedule! This will be a win-win situation for the series producers, and for its viewers, as by 2027, ITV will run out of attractive under-35s to appear on the show, and members of the public will begin getting called up to appear - like with jury duty, except that ITV pay for you to have extensive cosmetic surgery first, so that you’re aesthetically pleasing enough for people to want to tune in, and so that you can maintain a successful career selling Bootea on Instagram afterwards. 

Films will also go through a renaissance in the 2020s, as the Hollywood big boys come to a conclusion that everything has just become a little too… blockbuster. To remedy this, they make the joint decision that, 100 years on, we should take ourselves back to the silent film era, which will surely create hundreds of jobs for mute people, therefore solving Hollywood’s problems with a lack of diversity in film. It’ll also give well-known TikTok creators a chance to make the leap into mainstream entertainment, as they’ll have spent so long lip-synching over the years that they’ll now be more qualified to star in these new golden age pictures than actual trained actors. Obviously, that sounds absolutely beyond comprehension, but look at Count Orlok in 1922’s Nosferatu. See his slender limbs, blank stare, gothic dress sense - in a way, he’s the original e-boy, and there’s plenty of them out there on TikTok now that could play the titular vampire just as well in a 100th anniversary remake, just with less neck-biting and more lip-biting. Trust me, it’ll be a hit.

Technology

Throughout the 2010s, there’s been a lot of talk about everyone spending too much time on their bloody phones, so, in 2024, Apple will try to combat this issue when they unveil perhaps their most innovative product to date - the iPhone XZ+, a phone which exists solely in the mind of its users. Not in a Black Mirror, chip-inside-your-brain sort of way, either. It is literally imaginary. It’s a phone that, instead of being a phone, is actually just the concept of a phone. Yes, for the small cost of £1,500 and six units of your own soul, you, too, can block the rest of the world out. How amazing is that? No more wasting hours of your day keeping in touch with friends and family. No more accessing a wealth of information, wherever you are, with a quick Google. No more blocking out the sound of cackling pre-teens on the bus by putting in your earphones and listening to music. These things are bad and must be stopped, before we become an entire species of communicating, bopping, learning zombies.

I think those must be bad things anyway, since you can rarely go a few seconds scrolling through social media without stumbling across a ‘woke’ meme about how the use of smartphones is destroying us, one notification at a time - memes which I’m absolutely sure were created and posted from a book or a potato or something. Otherwise they’d just be hypocritical, wouldn’t they?

Anyway, the iPhone XZ+. It’s the only thing you need inside your head this decade. Apart from a very real ever-growing sense of fear and doom, which you can get for free.

Sport

The next decade will see the Olympics and Paralympics take place in 2020, 2024 and 2028, as well as the Winter equivalents to both in 2022 and 2026. You’d think we’d be all Olympic-ed out with that, but in the absence of anything else that gets people feeling remotely patriotic in a purely nice way, the world will decide to come together to throw scaled-down, low-budget Olympic games in all the off-years this decade. 

Summer 2021 will see the start of the first ever Not-The-Actual-Olympics. Marked by a glamourous opening ceremony in a field in Loughborough, the opening will feature a series of performances from stars such as H from Steps, and will be attended by some people who aren’t the royal family, but really do look like them. Taking place over the 10-week long games will be thumb wars, arm wrestling, staring contests, and an exciting event in which competitors try to eat the most HobNobs they possibly can without the help of a glass of water to combat the extreme dry-mouth they end up with. It might sound underwhelming now, but if there turns out to be any truth in the other predictions I’ve made here, it might be just what you need to restore your faith in the everyday.

Happy New Year, Everyone

In all seriousness - not that the rest of this isn’t serious, because it is, and is definitely all going to happen - whatever the coming years bring, it’s important to remember that we have to take the good with the bad, to look after ourselves and each other, and to enjoy each day as much as we possibly can, even during the bits of life that leave us feeling a little less Gangnam Style than we did way back in 2012. Thanks, everyone, for reading my blog. I’ll be back again in a week or so to talk absolute arse about something else. Until then, I hope you all had a great 2019, and have an even better start to 2020. Cheers!

[outlanderalien]

Who can stop Boris Johnson?

Boris Johnson is planning to spend millions on a No-Deal preparation campaign, aimed at informing Brits on how to prepare for No-Deal over the course of the next 3 months.

Meanwhile, his opponents are also planning a campaign. After Boris became PM, several Torys resigned because they were fundamentally opposed to No-Deal, including high profile cabinet ministers.

These rebel Torys have been in talks with Labour MPs and LibDem MPs about creating a cross-party alliance to stop a No-Deal Brexit. This includes starting a massive national campaign, expected to be called "No to No-Deal".

And it is rumoured that Rory Stewart will be leading the charge.

Rory Stewart was one of the Tory leadership candidates who had mass appeal and gained huge momentum during his leadership bid. He didn’t make it to the final 2 however, because MPs worried he wouldn’t appeal to The Brexit Party voters.

But i personally believe he might be Boris’ biggest threat.

So, who is Rory Stewart?

A privileged Etonian, yes. But that does not define him the same way it defines the likes of Boris Johnson.

Let’s start from the beginning of his career:

Prior to becoming a politician, Rory was a Civil Servant who served as a foreign Diplomat. In 2001, when he was 29, Rory took 2 years off to begin a 6000 mile trek from Turkey to Bangladesh.

In particular, his 600 mile walk across Afghanistan took place during a very tense and delicate time. 9/11 had just happened and the Taliban were around. As he traveled he spoke to various people in small villages or towns to greater understand the culture and people. 

In 2003 after the invasion of Iraq, he returned to Civil Service and governed 2 provinces in Iraq, which involved holding elections, resolving tribal disputes, and implementing development projects.

Rory published his book “The Places In Between” which was about his walk in Afghanistan. He then began to campaign strongly for the US government to stop military intervention in Afghanistan. 

His book became a best-seller and in 2006-8 he moved to Afghanistan to set up a charity called Turquoise Mountain. In 2009 he got a job teaching at Harvard, which he later left in 2010 to become a UK politician.

Rory’s experience in diplomatic work: Resolving tribal disputes, easing tensions, reaching out and understanding different cultures and belief systems, and finding the best compromise, means that Rory might be exactly the Prime Minister the UK needs.

As a politician, he has taken his diplomatic philosophy of walking, talking, listening and understanding to the British people. His leadership bid was characterised by his #RoryWalks twitter tag, where he would walk up and down the country and speak to anyone who had an opinion on Brexit or other government policy. 

He was, after all, a former diplomat and it shows. He wanted to best understand public opinion and concerns to inform his position and his approach to best benefit the British public, and he came up with a fascinating and diplomatic solution to Brexit.

No-Deal for obvious reasons is vastly damaging. 

But a 2nd referendum is also damaging unfortunately. Public discourse is so divided and aggressive currently, that holding a second referendum would deepen divides and cause Brexiteers to double-down and even triple-down on their position. It won’t take long for calls for a 3rd referendum to surface and riots to begin.

The least damaging of the options is the current Withdrawal Agreement, which is considered too soft a divorce for hard-line Brexiters, but also not a close enough agreement for Remainers. It was rejected on the basis that it was a compromise deal that tried to appease both sides.

But Rory had an interesting idea:

He suggested a Citizens Assembly, in which hundreds of randomly selected people from all across the UK, from every town, city and village would be brought to meet and discuss Brexit regularly until they come to a consensus. That consensus will then be presented to the government and they can use that as a public mandate to inform their decision.

The problem with Brexit isn’t that the government is divided, it’s that the people are divided. As long as no one is willing to compromise, as long as no one is willing to have an open discussion, then we face chaos no matter what choice we make.

With a citizens assembly, it means the public will feel listened to. It means they will have an active role to play. It will also mean having open discussions and debates on Brexit, which will facilitate an appetite for compromise and understanding. It’s the most diplomatic approach. It would heal divides within the country and facilitate open discussions that involve everyone until a consensus is reached and the country can be more united behind a common goal. This will stop the Parliament deadlock and will allow for Brexit to continue in whatever way the majority of the country decided, unimpeded by protest, chaos or riots.

Now, learning that Rory could possibly be the face of a “No to No-Deal” campaign, he really could be the biggest threat Boris will face. He is essentially the Anti-Boris. He may be the key to dethroning him before he inflicts No-Deal onto the country, and he’d have powerful public backing as well.

As usual, only time will tell. 

[thesustainableswap]

Running for Love*

*Choose Love / Help Refugees, to be precise. Since the 2016 Brexit referendum in the UK I have been unhappy with the way my country has been treating immigrants and those coming to build a better life. Racism and hate crimes are increasing and it seems decency and care for our neighbors has fallen to intolerance and hatred. I left the UK in 2019 with my partner to move to France and since then have been educating myself on the climate emergency, the issues with fast fashion and single use items, the unjust way workers are treated under capitalism and the refugee crisis. I am very upset by how closed the world is today, especially when cities like London use the slogan ‘London Is Open.’ We build walls and separate ourselves with borders. We need to come together and help those in need, who are fleeing dangerous situations.

So how are our governments helping, if at all? What can we do to help? These are the main questions I’ve been asking myself and, mostly, I’ve felt pretty useless because I am one person and the scale of the crisis is so huge. Let’s start with our governments first. These are the people we’ve elected to look out for us and our views and have the power to directly impact the refugee crisis.

When it comes to how countries are helping, the answer depends on the country. In the UK, 2018 saw 126,720 Syrian refugees arrive. In that same year there were 45,244 pending asylum cases. For scale, Refugee Action provides the total numbers on Syrian refugees and which countries are helping the most: ‘[There are] 6.7 million Syrian refugees worldwide. Around 4.6 million of these refugees are currently being hosted by just two countries – Turkey and Lebanon.’ So other countries could be doing a lot more to support these individuals. Those numbers are just focusing on Syria, the amount of refugees worldwide is even greater.

‘In 2018 over 70 million people around the world fled crises caused by conflict and persecution. Over half of them were children. The refugee crisis continues to grow everyday. Innocent men, women and children are losing hope, and with their despair comes the inevitable decision; to stay at home and risk their lives or flee in the hope of finding safety elsewhere.’ - The Worldwide Tribe

70 million people sounds like a lot, but if you divide that number between the 28 EU countries (I’m including the UK because at the time of writing this they have not yet officially left the EU) that’s 250,000 people per country. This would help take the pressure off of countries like Turkey and Lebanon. It would also help EU countries like Germany and France who currently have the highest number of asylum applications. So, with the UK already accepting 126,720 in 2018, and processing 45,244 asylum applications, they would have only needed to accept 78,036 more people to help their ‘fair share’ so to speak though it should be basic human decency to help those who have become displaced due to wars and conflict directly caused by the western world.

Unfortunately, the Conservative government have just voted on a Brexit clause which states that they do not need to provide help to unaccompanied refugee children who have family in the UK. As well as this, when an asylum seeker is granted refugee status, they have 28 days to leave refugee housing and find their own accommodation. Most fail and end up homeless. So even after fleeing their country, paying thousands to smugglers, crossing the Sahara desert, going without food and water, being crammed into a boat to cross oceans... even after all of that, the support is not always there. They are treated as invisible people, with no home, no nationality, possibly no family, and left to fend for themselves in a new country.

There are people out there who believe refugees are coming from countries like Syria and Afghanistan to either 1) steal our jobs and take benefits or 2) infiltrate our cities and kill people under the name of Isis or the Taliban. If you believe this, then you are reading the wrong blog my friend. When people are fleeing their country and living through the horrors they have to face daily in order to find safe passage, they are desperate. You would not make a journey like this unless you were desperate. The Worldwide Tribe runs a podcast where they interview refugees and ask them to tell their story. It’s an eye opener to the severity of the situation and sometimes hard to listen to, but the understanding it gives of what people are willing to sacrifice for safety is immense. I am so thankful this organisation exists to hear these individuals.

I am not doing enough. I feel guilty often and want to do more to help those in need. There are a lot of things we can do to help which can include finding and supporting organisations like Choose Love, Worldwide Tribe and Refugee Action by donating money or volunteering. I’m in a position where I can’t just up and go to Calais for two weeks but that doesn’t mean I do nothing. I can learn, educate myself and others, talk to friends and family, write to politicians and, the thing I’m doing right now, raise money!

On March 1st I am running 21.6 Kilometers to raise money for Choose Love / Help Refugees. The charity was borne from the hashtag #helprefugees, which they used online in 2015 to raise £56,000 for people in need. From Help Refugees came Choose Love, a store where you can physically buy items for those arriving to Calais and other refugee camps. Want to provide someone with an education? You can buy them that. Or a hot meal. Or sea rescue. Or medical care. For around £650, you can buy a whole store. I’m aiming to raise £500 (and I’m not just waiting for others to donate, I’m going to be donating as well because asking for others to pay is not good enough, I need to contribute my share.) If you would like to help me get to my target, you can find my page here.

If you’ve read this far, thank you. If you donate, thank you. If you can’t donate, but can share, thank you. Every little helps and refugees around the world need our help. We are all human. This could have been any of us.

Until next time,

The Sustainable Swap.

[autokratorissa]

What’s your stance on Britain’s current politics? The Tory leadership race, the Brexit issue?

That’s obviously a question with an enormous scope, so bear in mind that this is a huge oversimplification which leaves out numerous important and note-worthy things.

Johnson is, at this point, definitely going to become prime minister. Hunt could probably have won it if he actually fought the campaign, was aggressive, and continually attacked Johnson’s character and record, God knows he wouldn’t be lacking ammunition, but if he did he would have caused a lot more damage to the Party itself (the public wouldn’t look kindly on an extended and vitriolic spat at the centre of government; civility must be seen to be the name of the day), and Hunt is not the kind of person to do that, especially not in the political climate we have now.

Johnson’s leadership will be disastrous, for everyone—even the rich in the long run (“Fuck business,” etc.). He’s completely unprincipled and solely interested in his own personal power; he’ll do anything to be king for a day, nevermind that he will have such laughably insignificant power due to leading a minority government facing existential threats from both the inside and outside and with both houses of Parliament more assertive and confident than they’ve been this century—perhaps since the Callaghan days, even—that his tenure as prime minister will amount to nothing but that of being a caretaker presiding over a crisis he cannot affect.

The leadership contest is a bad tragic comedy played atop a rotting stage that’s going to collapse at any moment. The actors are not what people should be concentrating on; they’re immaterial. Focus on the foundations beneath.

Britain’s heyday came and went a long time ago. Even the afterglow is almost gone now. The sun is setting on the British Empire, and this is causing utter panic amongst the British bourgeoisie; the UK cannot stand alone as an independent imperialist power, and must, due to its age and atrophying economy, seek the support of an imperialist bloc to prop it up. While the Cold War was ongoing, the common cause of the European and American capitalists—the destruction of socialism in the USSR—allowed them to exist under a very uneasy truce and cooperation, Britain included. But the post-war world is dead, and very soon the EU and north America will openly split and devolve into direct great power competition over trade, control of whole regions in the periphery, and perhaps most dangerously, the ongoing US occupation of Europe (the US stations 1.2 million combat troops on European soil, not counting support personnel, which as it stands the host countries have very little power to protest). Those amongst the British bourgeoisie who can see this know that the UK has to pick one; Europe or America, but as a class, they are completely split as to which it should be. In its confusion and desperation, Britain has become paralysed, and as long as we remain so the damage will only grow and intensify. Whichever way we end up jumping though, things will get worse. I’d recommend the fifth part of Prolekult’s History is Marching if you want to hear more about this crisis facing Britain.

The simple problem is that Brexit has no resolution. None whatsoever. Remain is a bourgeois position; Leave is also a bourgeois position. That both sides of the Brexit divide represent bourgeois interests is crucial in understanding the issue: unable the come to a majority conclusion among themselves, the bourgeoisie thrust the question upon the whole populace. It has here too failed to reach any resolution. British imperialism is paralysed. There is no ‘solution’ to the current deadlock; the UK can only grow weaker. The utter crisis of global imperialism necessitates it. The working class has nothing to gain whatsoever by either possible outcome. Our demands cannot be pro- or anti-EU, only anti-bourgeois, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist. Brexit is a smokescreen, the longer the time spent on which, the more it will distract and weaken the labour movement as a whole.

[tazusher-blog]

To Hashtag or not to Hashtag?

                                            Is it Progression?

For 10 years now, the hashtag has been a symbol of both unity and division: with hashtags such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter making breakthroughs for equality, #JeSuisCharlie and #machesterattack igniting emotional responses to terrorist attacks, and #brexit causing a huge political divide in Britain. Whoever you are, however many followers you have, with the use of a hashtag, you can both start and contribute to conversations. 

The influential and popular hashtag was first championed by social media platform Twitter in 2009 when it established a filter system allowing users to search for tweets on the basis of hashtags. Consequently, the internet saw the rise of the hashtag as a method of categorising data on the basis of interests, topics, and opinions; also known as ‘Collective Intelligence’.

So, why has the hashtag gained so much prominence in the study of digital literacies?

Amongst the many symbols found on our keyboard, the hashtag is unique owing to its ability to convert the data of the online world into information which is relevant to each of us. Examples of which can be seen on the social media applications Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr where users’ extensive classification of the platforms’ data using hashtags, has developed a system shaped by the interests and opinions of real people. A system also referred to as a folksonomy.

However, whilst the authenticity of this system seems ideal for such digital communities which are largely user-led, there has been much controversy as to whether the hashtag is the best means of communication; and whether the restrictions (constraints) of using this symbol, outweigh its benefits (affordances). Notably, writer Cory Doctorow (2001) argues that collective tagging has three constraints; all of which I explore below:

1) People are untruthful when tagging

2) People are careless when tagging

3) People tag incompetently

Hashtagging to form identities

One of the most harmless forms of hashtagging is that used in personal posts. For example, I use hashtags in my own Twitter and Instagram posts to add information to my posts which go beyond what the Tweet and Image captions state. For example, in a recent photo that I shared of my friends and I at our annual christmas get together, I hashtagged #christmas, #mygirls and #biglove; all of which were personal comments which, had I elaborated on these comments, would have resulted in a quite soppy and amusing post! These hashtags therefore enabled me to establish an identity which demonstrated my care for my friends as well as my enjoyment of the festive season.

Alternatively, hashtags can also be misleading when used in this way, especially when they are used sarcastically. For example, someone might use the hashtags #lovinglife #travels #paradise at the end of a sarcastic post displaying their congested commute to work on a Monday morning. These hashtags, although used to create an identity which evokes humour, are misleading and demonstrate Doctorow’s 1st constraint. This would be particularly evident if another user used the same hashtags to search for utopian holiday destinations: the result would certainly not satisfy.

Hashtagging to debate

Nowadays, the most widely used form of hash tagging is that to contribute and ignite debate. For example, if I wanted to access updates on the latest progression of the Brexit campaign, I could search #brexit on Twitter, and immediately find updates on the campaign, as well as members of the public’s opinions. Similarly, if I wanted to narrow down my search results to receive posts related to the Leave argument only, I could search both #brexit and #leave to find tweets using both. Using multiple hashtags on Twitter can have a huge advantage for those wanting to voice their opinion. Additionally, it is also important for users to know which hashtags are trending in order to reach a wider audience. For example, the below tag cloud display the most used Brexit-related hashtags on Twitter, many of which are used collectively to extend their reach.

On the other hand, the use of hashtags to spark debate can occasionally be harmful to others and result in harassment and offence. Notably, #stopislam has been used by many extremists as an attack against the entire Muslim community. Such uses as these are a constraint of the digital tool which demonstrates the users’ carelessness and irrationality.

Hashtagging for engagement

Another common use of the hashtag is to boost engagement with digital content: commonly used in the business industry. Hashtagging is a great way for businesses to capture the interests of their target audiences, as well as reaching out to individuals who might be less likely to see their advert in a magazine or on TV. However, once again, this type of hash tagging takes skill and knowledge to receive a successful result; a skill which has become a focal point of market research.

Whilst there are some constraints of hashtagging, it is very clear that the affordances have provided users of the internet with abilities which are a progression from what we could previously do. However, next time you hashtag: THINK. Is it relevant? Is it true? Is it harmless? If so, post ahead! 

Referenced sources: 

Cover Image: Retrieved from: https://www.lyfemarketing.com/blog/social-media-hashtags/

Doctorow, C (2001). Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia. Retrieved from: https://people.well.com/user/doctorow/metacrap.htm#2 on January 22, 2019. 

[sparky373]

My Brexit Post

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/241584 Over 5 million signatures. Hopefully you've signed it already. If you haven't, hopefully this post will help persuade you.

I've debated with people and shared a lot of posts about brexit but I figured I should actually explain my views.

I believe very strongly that we are better off in the EU than not. I honestly think the best course of action would be to ask the EU for an extension of a long enough time to carry out a Peoples Vote that would hopefully come out with remain as the dominant choice.

The position we are in now is precarious to say the least. We are on the cliff edge of dropping out of the EU without a deal. Some may say that's not a bad thing. I disagree. So let’s go through this point by point:

Trade Pretty much any expert who's looked at it says leaving the EU already has and will cause economic damage. Leaving without a deal would be far worse. Just by leaving we are weakening our position in the world. We will no longer be part of a 600 million strong trading block.

For those who don't understand why this is bad think about Unions. Before they existed labour conditions and pay were much worse than now. Unions prove that banding together in collective bargaining is much more effective that trying to strike deals on your own. The EU together is able to strike much more beneficial deals than individual countries on their own. Following that logic any deal we strike post brexit will not be as good as we had in the EU. Going into negotiations with larger economies like China and the US we will be at a BIG disadvantage and will get far less favourable terms than we currently enjoy.

May's current deal has us leaving the customs union and the single market. Currently we enjoy frictionless, tariff free trade with EU countries. And an exit that takes us out of those adds expensive barriers to trading with our largest import/export partner. Fees that businesses themselves will have to pay. (Hence why a lot of small & Medium businesses are worried about this)

Movement Given there are millions of british people living abroad in the EU. Free movement is something that has benefited UK citizens. Post brexit their future is uncertain.

Ever wanted to retire to Spain or France? We leave the EU and it gets much harder. Seen a job in the EU or been offered one? Prepare to have to go through visa processes that we don't have to at the minute. Want to visit non-EU countries? All our travel agreements are as an EU country so those will have to be redone.

But it works both ways. The UK relies on EU citizens coming over here to work. The NHS? All those jobs you don't want to do or think beneath you? Seasonal workers? propped up by EU citizens. It will be harder and there will be less incentive for them to come over post brexit even ignoring the seemingly rising xenophobia.

Laws People say we don't have control of our laws. We do for the vast majority of things. Parliament forcing amendments through so May had to get approval for the deal rather than negotiating in secret and forcing through something no one agreed with? Our government did that with their sovereignty. Some stuff does come from the EU. For example the EU working hours directive that stops companies making us work over 48 hours a week without our explicit consent. Tell me with a straight face a tory government would have implemented that without being forced to. And even the stuff that comes from the EU we have a say in. We are an EU member. That means we get a seat at the table and we get to vote on and if necessary veto EU legislation Those MEPs we send over. That’s their job. If they’re not doing it (*cough* Farage) it's not the EUs responsibility. It's ours. we vote those people out and replace them with people who will do their job just like with the UK parliament.

Leaving the EU means we'd still have to follow their regulations when trading with them. If we leave but stay in the single market or customs union we still have to follow their regulations. There's just one difference: We'd no longer have a say in making those laws!

What’s the phrase? Oh yh: You've got to be in it to win it.

When Washington D.C. is asking for statehood and complaining about taxation without representation, why are we actively trying to put ourselves in that position?

People seem convinced we'll leave and be able to strike the best possible deal with the EU. The best possible deal? We've already got it. Norway model? Switzerland? Turkey? Canada? WTO? All worse than what we currently enjoy.

Am I saying the EU is this perfect utopia? No Do I think the best option is to stay in the EU, have a say, and change it for the better from within? Hell yes.

More and more people are realising that leaving is not the right thing to do. So why are we still on a course to crash out with no deal?

The referendum There are many reasons Leave took the referendum: Some people have legitimate concerns, some people are racist, others voted not for brexit but as a protest, others because of all the fearmongering and lies. The argument that the country voted for our current situation is patently false. The referendum asked leave or remain (a stupidly simple question for such a complex issue)

It did not ask do you want to leave without a deal? It did not ask do you want to leave regardless of what the deal is?

Some people have legitimate concerns about the EU, fair enough but is it not better to stay and try to fix those issues than leave and cause uncertainty and major economic harm.

Some people, by their own admission on camera, voted leave not because they wanted to leave the EU, but as a protest against the government. They did not vote for Mays deal. They did not vote for no deal.

Some people voted leave because they believed the lies peddled by the leave campaign and the media. Many, when the falsehoods were exposed, said they would have voted differently. They do not want Mays deal. They do not want no deal.

David Cameron did not promise the referendum because he wanted people to have a choice about EU membership. He promised it because he feared losing seats to UKIP. The Tories played party politics with huge generational changes, thinking Leave wouldn’t possibly win, and they lost.

The media splashed the lies all over their pages not because they thought them true but because the wanted to sell papers and rich people didn’t want to be subject to upcoming EU legislation attacking tax havens.

All the big names and CEOs that told you Leaving was the best choice? The vast majority of them are moving overseas to avoid the harm. Funny that.

Let’s take a look at the lies: £350 million a week for the nhs? Lie we can put the money we currently pay into the EU to our own people? So far what’s being promised is less than now. e.g. stronger towns fund. Lie No one’s talking about leaving the single market or the customs union? Lie Brexit will be a breeze with no downsides? Lie We'll be better off on our own? So far it looks to be a lie Britain will still be open for business? Even before we leave we are already losing jobs as companies and organisations move to other EU countries so they can maintain access to that market rather than stay here.

The leave campaigns were fined for their lies A court declared that if the referendum hadn't been advisory it would have been struck down because of the lies So why are we still ploughing ahead?

Demographics If you look at the distribution of votes in the referendum it was overwhelmingly the case that older voters voted to leave while younger people voted to remain. The people that would have to live the longest with the result wanted to stay. While the people who wouldn't have to deal with it for long wanted to leave. If you look at eligible voters a fair amount of the older people have died since the referendum, meanwhile there are a lot of people who were too young to vote then that are now eligible. These are people who are having brexit thrust upon them without having had a say. The demographics have shifted; The vast majority of polls now show that remain would win if the people were asked again. You can understand why younger people think the older generation fucked us over.

ReMOANers There's a common brexiteer argument that remainers are to blame for the current situation. 'They didn’t accept the result and get behind it', 'They're sabotaging brexit'

To them I say: Shut Up

In any other situation if you see someone putting themselves on a course that will harm people you try to stop it. Even if they don't see it as harm. It would be antithetical of me to just let someone walk off a cliff, and people would judge me if I did. So why is this any different?

Ireland The Good Friday Agreement is the treaty that has kept peace in Ireland and stopped 'The Troubles'. The UK government is legally required to uphold it. No-one wants to see it fail. But that's what brexit will cause. Part of the agreement states that there must be regulatory alignment and no hard border. It is literally impossible to leave the EU fully and honour that.

Leave the EU completely, including the customs union and single market? Hard border, regulatory differences. Agreement broken

Have a border in the Irish sea? Divides Great Britain and Northern Ireland potentially causing a breakup of the UK which no one wants and causes a whole heap of issues (after all Scotland voted remain in their independence referendum after being promised by David Cameron that we'd stay in the EU)

Stay in the single market and Customs Unions? People will complain we didn’t leave fully, we still have to follow laws & regs but have no say in them

Stay in the EU? Agreement intact, best possible deal.

There's a reason why Ireland and the backstop have been and continue to be such a difficult topic. Because it is next to impossible to reconcile leaving the EU and keeping the Good Friday Agreement intact.

Membership fees People cite the fees we pay, as reason for leaving. They think we pay in more than they pay back. And yet those same people don’t say the same about spotify, netflix, internet, TV,... Because people recognise that there are more benefits to a membership than how much investment you get. The access to trade partners, the say in law-making. The economic and political benefits we get from being in the EU are massive and if anything are more than worth the fees we pay.

Theresa May Right now Theresa May is being a gigantic hypocrite. The (non-binding advisory) referendum? once in a lifetime, the people have spoken, brexit is the will of the people and must be carried out no matter what

Her defeated deal? Brought back to parliament as many times as she can get away with until MPs vote her way. Holding the country hostage against the cliff edge of no deal. Spewing hate that is getting MPs who don't agree with her assaulted in the streets

It is not undemocratic to ask people if they've changed their mind, especially when circumstances have changed. If anything it is supremely democratic.

The people voted to leave? They voted based on lies. They did not vote for Mays deal, they did not vote for no deal so how is it wrong to go back to the country and ask if they're ok with what has been negotiated or if they want to do something else?

In fact given people had so many different views of what brexit would be, none of the options for leaving commanded a majority.

The people want you to get on with brexit? Data says they don't.

If nothing else revoking Article 50 gives us time to work things out without the cloud of uncertainty and damage hanging over us. In a situation such as this is it not better to stay in a position of safety and keep the status quo, rather than jumping off a cliff and hoping there's a land of mattresses at the bottom?

Brexit was never going to be a good thing, the people telling you it would be lied to you. It's not a bad thing to admit you were wrong or that you fell for their fantasy. What is bad is refusing to admit when you're wrong to the detriment of yourself and everyone else .

The deal that we have at the moment ceases to exist if we leave. If we get out and then decide we made a mistake and want back in, then that deal no longer exists. We go back in as a normal member. No rebate, no opt-outs, none of the extras that we have now.

Hopefully these arguments will have helped you realise that we're better off in the EU and we should revoke Article 50

If not, then I don't know what to say and I doubt anything will change your mind.

Sometimes when something goes wrong in a plane, a fighter pilot refuses to eject thinking they can fix the issue. Right until they hit the ground. Don't be that pilot.

For those of you that have, I'll link to the petition again. Given Theresa May's stubborn refusal to even entertain the idea of a People's Vote, this may be our only chance at saving the country we all love.

For those who don't want to leave but don't think signing will do anything, even if it doesn't work at least you can look yourself in the eye and say you didn't stand idly by while the country went to shit.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/241584

[bbclesmis]

How Les Misérables made its Durham-born director a happy man

Tom Shankland talks about the hit BBC series which left viewers confused at first about its lack of songs 

The arrival on our screens of the BBC adaptation of Les Misérables couldn’t have been better timed.

The themes of the novel, written by French author Victor Hugo and published in 1862, include social justice, human rights, poverty, and reveal a society divided between the haves and have-nots, with rebellion in the air.

More than 150 years later, these themes don’t echo down the years but clang loud and long as the director of the six-episode series, Tom Shankland from Durham, knows only too well.

“It’s a fantastic and urgent story, a disenfranchised under class and a society that is struggling to find its identity,” he said. “People who feel excluded or put down by the political class and take action into their own hands.

“It features beautifully drawn and observed characters who are swept along through the tumultuous times.”

In France you have the gilets jaunes protests. In the UK we have Brexit.

“We’re very much trying to tell a story, one which we feel has some connection with the modern experiences,” said Tom. To add to the theme he revealed he had received the script, penned by award-winning writer Andrew Davies, between the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump in the US.

Les Misérables comes with a bit of baggage - or ‘preconceptions’ as Tom puts it. Namely songs, thanks to the multi-Oscar winning 2012 film and of course the stage musical it is based on which is still running in London, 33 years since it premiered there; it is on tour this year and coming to Newcastle Theatre Royal in August.

But Tom insisted: “I must be one of the few people in the world not to have seen the musical, so I didn’t have any preconceptions about it.”

However, a healthy proportion of the BBC audience has seen its musical version and the lack of songs sparked a bit of a social media spat after episode one.

“What was surprising was that some people thought the musical was the original format of the story and weren’t aware that the novel had been around for over 150 years,” said Tom.

The book, nearly 1,500 pages long, begins in France in 1815 after the Battle of Waterloo when Napoleon goes into exile, and ends in 1832 and the Paris Uprising caused by harvest failures, food shortages, and increases in the cost of living.

At the centre of it all is the ex-convict Jean Valjean and his struggle to lead a normal life after serving a prison sentence for stealing bread to feed his sister’s children, and his attempts at redemption; he is played by Dominic West in the new adaptation.

Other characters include Valjean’s pursuer, police chief Javert (David Oyelowo), Fantine (Lily Collins) who dies destitute and whose daughter Cosette, Valjean adopts, as well as myriad others whose stories are intertwined with his.

There is also an amazing performance by Olivia Colman, recently nominated for an Oscar, as the hugely unpleasant Madame Thénardier, wife of an equally despicable innkeeper who make up one of the most malign couples you’ll ever come across, prepared to sell their children as well as anybody else’s to make money.

Tom said: “Olivia is a phenomenal actress and wonderful person. The character she plays is such a departure from those she has played before and how she is in real life, yet she does it so well.”

Before being rescued by Valjean, Cosette had been handed over by a desperate Fantine to Madame Thénardier and her husband, the bogus ‘hero of Waterloo’, to look after in order to find work, for which she has to pay a dreadful price.

Madame Thénardier is swift to hit and abuse the young Cosette, and her other children when fortunes go against the family. Tom revealed Olivia would almost be crying after these scenes, worrying about how the youngsters would be reacting to them.

“The children absolutely loved it and enjoyed being fussed over by her,” laughed Tom.

The subject matter is grim, not least the suffering of Fantine, who sells her teeth and hair in order to find the money to send to Madame Thénardier who had claimed her daughter was ill and needed medication, while the depiction of the filth and squalor of Paris makes you want to have a bath after watching each episode.

“It goes to some very dark places,” said Tom. “Victor Hugo’s novel is fascinated by the highest and lowest of humanity, and that carries over into his settings. The lowest settings are the sewers or the aftermath of the battle of Waterloo... no matter how low you go, you always find a sense of beauty.”

As for the tone, rather than just an historical drama, Tom and writer Andrew Davies agreed in places that it almost had the feel of a cowboy western.

“The vengeful guy with a secret, the prostitutes who have fallen through the cracks, a bit like the mythology of the western,” said Tom.

The series is the latest success for Tom. In 2014 he directed series one of the acclaimed ‘Missing’, a complex crime thriller centred on the apparent abduction of five-year-old Oliver Hughes while on holiday with his parents Tony (James Nesbitt) and Emily (Frances O’Connor) in France.

Tom, 50, who is a former pupil of St Margaret’s Primary School and what was then Framwellgate Moor Comprehensive School in Durham, first established his name with a short film for Channel 4 called Bait in 1999.

Filmed in Durham bus station, it’s about a son waiting for his out-of-work dad to return from a job interview who had given him some bait to look after, which the lad gives to a tramp. In this context ‘Bait’ is northern slang for food.

Interestingly, in Les Misérables, the working-class characters like West’s Valjean who come from the country, generally speak with a Northern accent rather than a fake French accent, while those from Paris - the capital of France of course - sound a bit cockney.

“I never wanted this to be an ‘Allo ‘Allo version. I wanted it to be a version of Les Misérables which felt familiar to us although the art department went to great lengths to make the visual world look very, very French, to look like Paris and Montreuil where it is set at that time.”

“The novel is . . . about a very divided society in France, so as we were making this for an English-language audience I think you’re missing a trick if you don’t speak to that audience in a language they understand.

“There are class divisions which we perceive on the basis of accents, so the simplest rule that we found was really to nod towards those rules that we have in our own divided society.”

* The final episode of Les Misérables is on BBC 1 at 9pm this coming Sunday, February 3. (x)

[labourpress]

Jeremy Corbyn speech at the CBI Annual Conference

***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***

Jeremy Corbyn MP, Leader of the Labour Party, speaking at the CBI Annual Conference today, said:

It’s a pleasure to be with you here for the second year running.

And a good deal has changed since I came to your conference last year.

We’ve had a surprise General Election and to many people here, perhaps an even more surprising result. A result that returned a weak and divided Conservative Government and a Labour opposition stronger and more united than before.

We have also seen the terms of economic debate shift dramatically.

I put it to you last year that for too many people the economic system simply isn’t working.

A system that has delivered rising inequality and falling living standards for the majority, when six million of those in work are earning less than the living wage.

It’s a system in which large numbers of people have lost confidence.

And it’s not hard to see why. The richest 10 per cent now own 900 times the wealth of the poorest 10 per cent and in recent years half of the increase in personal wealth has gone to the top 10 per cent.

I put it to you this year that a crucial reason for the surprising election result; the biggest turnaround in polls during an election campaign in British history, is that Labour went to the country with a vision that offered hope and change.

Our manifesto, For the Many Not the Few, set out a fully costed programme to build an economy which gives everyone the chance of a secure and fulfilling life. 

Since the General Election in June the political establishment has finally begun to catch up.

Calls to end austerity now come from all sides in parliament.

Senior cabinet members are taking their lead from Labour and pushing for more radical solutions to the housing and student debt crises.

Sajid Javid advocates £50 billion of borrowing for investment in housing.

Jeremy Hunt has broken ranks and called for an end to the public sector pay cap.

Few would have predicted this a year ago. And of course we’ve yet to see if they’ve convinced the Chancellor.

It is a measure of the essential pragmatism of business people that so many have changed their outlook too.

Business people across the country have expressed to me a growing awareness - and acceptance - that things need to change.

The London Chamber of Commerce recently called for councils to be allowed to borrow freely to build housing.

We all know an economic model that allows a few to grow very rich while the majority face falling incomes and rising indebtedness; that leaves too many people in unfulfilling and insecure work; that is overly reliant on one sector in one region of our country, is neither stable nor sustainable.

And in this Living Wage Week, of all weeks, we have to be clear that Britain needs a pay rise.

When too much of household income is going to pay debts or rent, that’s less money for consumers to spend on productive businesses. That’s why Labour backs a Real Living Wage and sensible controls on rents and debts.

Because it isn’t good for business either.

We understand that Labour has changed and you have changed.

But there is one thing that hasn’t changed.

A year ago, we were just five months on from the referendum vote to leave the European Union. The Government’s sluggish response to which had already created unprecedented uncertainty for business.

A year on, Article 50 has been triggered, Brexit negotiations are underway but businesses feel no closer to having the clarity about the direction of travel they desperately need.

Indeed, watching chaos and confusion grow at the heart of Government and Brexit negotiations stuck in stalemate, many of you probably feel that the situation is more uncertain and precarious than ever.

Time is running out. We know, as you do, that firms are deciding now whether to continue to invest in the UK, and that guarantees in key areas are needed now to stop firms from cutting the UK out of their business models.

A few weeks ago, you joined forces with Britain’s other major business organisations, the Engineering Employers Federation, the Chamber of Commerce, the Institute of Directors and the Federation of Small Business, to ask the Government to heed the needs of business as they negotiate our exit from the European Union.

We agree. We need a Brexit that puts jobs and living standards first and it is Labour that has common ground with you on putting the needs of the economy front and centre stage.

We have common ground on the need for transitional arrangements to be agreed immediately so that businesses know they won’t face a cliff-edge Brexit when the two year negotiating period is up.

Because let me be clear: to delay a transition deal until a final deal is agreed as the Prime Minister says she wants to do, is simply not good enough.

The prospect of sudden changes in the legal and regulatory environment in which people do business is affecting your decisions right now.

And we have common ground on the threat of “no deal” which, contrary to the claims of the Secretary of State for International Trade, is potentially a nightmare scenario. One that involves tariffs on our food imports and our manufacturing exports, queues at our ports and a hard border in Northern Ireland with all the dangers that could bring.

The fact that some in the cabinet want “no deal” to re-launch Britain as a race-to-the-bottom deregulated tax haven on the shores of Europe only adds to the risks.

And we agree on the need to signal that the UK remains open to the rest of the world that Europe is not the “enemy” but our partner in a strong cooperative relationship for the future.

And that EU citizens living in the UK are our friends and fellow workers, which is why the Government should immediately and unilaterally guarantee them full rights to remain here; in fact they should have done so months ago. And indeed Labour called for that in July of last year.

Like you, we have always said that we respect the result of the referendum. Like you, we have always said that the economy, jobs and living standards should come first in the negotiations, which means it is crucial that the final deal maintains the benefits of the common market and the customs union.

I promise you today between now and March 2019, we will use every opportunity we can find to put pressure on the Government to do the same.

But, as Carolyn has so rightly pointed out, we mustn’t use up all our energies on the Brexit negotiations – there is vital action to be taken at home too.

What will be determined in the next two years is not just our relationship with the EU, but the kind of economy – and country – we want to live in.

A bad Brexit deal risks exacerbating existing weaknesses in our economy - low investment, low productivity, low pay.

We will be letting the country down if we don’t seize on this period of change to tackle those weaknesses at their root causes by working together to give shape to a new economic model that will create a fairer, richer Britain for all.

I believe we share a great deal of common ground over how this should be done.   

Again, I echo Carolyn; if we are to raise wages and living standards we must solve our productivity crisis.

And it is a crisis.

It continues to take a worker in Britain five days to produce what a worker in France or Germany produces in four.

If the OBR decides that our recent dismal productivity performance is not an aberration but the new normal, and revises down their projections when they report to Parliament later this month it will take a huge toll on our public finances - as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out.

It couldn’t be clearer: our productivity crisis is making our country poorer.

The answer to our productivity crisis lies in investment, in infrastructure, in new technologies and in people.

Business investment is being held back by creaking infrastructure and a shortage of skilled workers. So Government must act first.

Yet under the Conservatives, crucial infrastructure investment has been delayed - from rail electrification to the Swansea Tidal Lagoon; the adult skills budget has been slashed. They even went into the election promising to cut per pupil schools funding in real terms.

The Chancellor should use his Autumn Budget to change direction, and invest for long-term growth.

That is what Labour has already pledged to do.

With a National Transformation Fund to upgrade our country’s infrastructure and reverse years of under-investment in the regions; investing in transport, energy and digital infrastructure right across the country.

We will establish a National Investment Bank with a network of regional development banks that will provide patient finance for firms wanting to adopt and implement existing innovations and to develop new ones. We are a very creative country.

And we’ll build a National Education Service to ensure that, when businesses create skilled jobs, there are people able to fill them. And when businesses adopt new technologies, there are employees who know how to use them.

These policies will help create the conditions businesses need to invest… but they will only deliver the improvements our economy needs if they are backed up by a bold industrial strategy.

Again, this Government is failing to act. We have heard a lot of warm words on industrial strategy, but we are still waiting to hear how they will take it forward.

Labour’s industrial strategy, built on national missions – for energy transition and to increase R&D spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2030 - will lay down the challenges to business, and provide the foundations on which they can be met.

We will invest £1.3bn on R&D in our first two years in Government, to galvanise private investment, set up two new catapult centres for retail and metals, centres of collaboration and innovation, to drive productivity improvement and harness the £200bn spent by the public sector each year to boost local economies and supply chains, to bring prosperity to every region of the country.

This is how we deliver properly funded public services in the long run, and ensure everyone earns enough to live on.

If we get this right, it is not just our economy that will be stronger, but our political institutions and our social bonds as well.

We will, as you know, raise some taxes to pay for it, to ensure that our spending plans fit within the constraints of our fiscal credibility rule.

But when we do, we will be clear and open about our tax plans, as we were during the general election campaign. We won’t do it by stealth.

And we will seek to improve the functioning of business taxation wherever possible by uprating business rates in line with CPI instead of RPI, moving to annual revaluations, and exempting new plant and machinery and by looking at staggering tax incentives for investment and innovation.

We will do this because a fair and functional taxation system is the only way to deliver the investment in infrastructure and skills that are so desperately needed across the country.

I’m sure everyone here will agree, providing good infrastructure and education is what responsible governments do.

And it’s not just government that has a duty to be responsible, business does too. From ensuring their suppliers, often small businesses, are paid promptly, to ensuring they pay their taxes in full too.

The shocking revelations from the Paradise Papers today, yet again of widespread tax avoidance and evasion on an industrial scale must lead to decisive action and real change.

It is by no means all big businesses but these actions by a few undermine trust in all businesses.

And businesses are the victim too, not just reputationally but financially.

Those businesses that play by the rules and pay the taxes they owe are being undercut by those who don’t.

The vital revenues government needs to fund an industrial strategy, good infrastructure and the world class education system we aspire to; these things can only be delivered by fair taxation.

So while we mustn’t tarnish all businesses by the actions of the few, we also have a duty to come down hard on those who are avoiding the responsibilities and give HM Revenue & Customs the resources it needs.

As our Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has set out this morning, we need a full public inquiry into tax avoidance and evasion, on and offshore,  a register of companies and trusts, and who benefits from them,  and a new tax enforcement unit in HMRC and an end to public contracts for companies abusing the system.

And we will look at using a withholding tax where individuals or companies are involved in abusing the system and end public contracts for companies engaged in abusive tax avoidance.

Please understand the public anger and consternation at the scale of tax avoidance revealed yet again today. We are talking about tens of billions that are effectively being leached from our vital public services by a super-rich elite that holds the taxation system and the rest of us in contempt. We must take action now to put an end to this socially damaging and extortionately costly scandal.

And there’s another area where we have we all have a duty to act - and act now.

Faced with the ongoing revelations about sexual harassment we should make this a turning point and a moment of real change. We must no longer allow anyone to be abused in the workplace.

Such abuse, sexism and misogyny is, sadly, very far from being confined to Hollywood and the corridors of power, but is also widespread in our schools and universities, in our businesses and workplaces, in our newspapers and on our TV screens. It is all around us.

That must change and business has an essential role to play. All of you need to look hard at yourselves, as we in the Labour Party are doing ourselves, to see how your processes and procedures can be improved. How it can be made easier for women to speak out and for victims to get the support they have a right to expect.

Businesses can have a vital partner in rooting out injustice in the workplace - trade unions. They are crucial to taking on and rooting out sexual harassment and discrimination. And I would encourage each and every business serious about improving your workplace culture and tackling sexual discrimination at work to engage with trade unions.

Governments also have other responsibilities – enforcing a fair and transparent regulatory framework so that, for example, businesses aren’t destroyed by the likes of RBS abusing their power, providing for the health of our citizens and, yes, in some cases, running essential public utilities.

Because every one of you in this room who knows what goes into seeing an idea brought to market or what it takes to survive the cut and thrust of consumer choice month to month, knows that privatised monopoly utilities are not real markets. Where’s the pressure for efficiency and innovation if consumers cannot go elsewhere when they are dissatisfied?

I know some of you disagree and think that bringing some parts of the economy into public ownership won’t be good for the reputation of business, but it’s not good for the image of business when water companies pay out billions in dividend and interest payments through opaque financial arrangements, while households see their bills go up to pay for it.

It’s not good for business people if their employees have to spend huge amounts of time and money getting to and from work each day on expensive and unreliable services.

It is not good for manufacturers to have among the most expensive energy in Europe, or see energy transition held back because the necessary investments to transform our energy grid are not being made.

And, just as it wouldn’t be good for business to be locked into inefficient funding arrangements that don’t provide finance on the best terms available, or inflexible contracts that don’t adapt to your needs, nor is it good for the public.

That’s why we will end the Private Finance Initiative – because PFI contracts have over-charged the public to the tune of billions.

You wouldn’t put up with it and neither will we.

But we won’t let ending PFI hold up vital infrastructure investment. We’ll end it to make sure that investment happens in a way that gives best value for money for the public, and in a way that better meets user needs.

This isn’t about being anti-business, anti-enterprise, or about closing ourselves off to the rest of the world.

It is about deciding to attract business from across the world by creating world-class infrastructure that is efficiently funded, cheap and reliable energy, safe and efficient water and transport systems and a skilled and educated population.

Not by allowing a select few to make monopoly profits from our essential utilities. 

This isn’t a throwback to a bygone era; it’s entirely in step with what is happening in the rest of the world. Some of the world’s biggest economies – Germany, France, even the United States are deciding that key sectors such as energy and water are better off in public ownership. It’s time for Britain to catch up.

Building an economy for the many will mean making some big changes.

But it will also mean an economy that is stronger, fairer and more stable and business people know more than anyone how important that is.

Common ground on Brexit, common ground on investment, training and industrial strategy and a government that embraces its responsibilities and carries them out for the common good.

That’s what Labour offers you. That’s what Labour offers Britain.

Thank you.

Ends

[ericfruits]

The West’s biggest economic policy mistake

The horrible housing blunder The West’s biggest economic policy mistake

Its obsession with home ownership undermines growth, fairness and public faith in capitalism

Jan 16th 2020

ECONOMIES CAN suffer both sudden crashes and chronic diseases. Housing markets in the rich world have caused both types of problem. A trillion dollars of dud mortgages blew up the financial system in 2007-08. But just as pernicious is the creeping dysfunction that housing has created over decades: vibrant cities without space to grow; ageing homeowners sitting in half-empty homes who are keen to protect their view; and a generation of young people who cannot easily afford to rent or buy and think capitalism has let them down. As our special report this week explains, much of the blame lies with warped housing policies that date back to the second world war and which are intertwined with an infatuation with home ownership. They have caused one of the rich world’s most serious and longest-running economic failures. A fresh architecture is urgently needed.

At the root of that failure is a lack of building, especially near the thriving cities in which jobs are plentiful. From Sydney to Sydenham, fiddly regulations protect an elite of existing homeowners and prevent developers from building the skyscrapers and flats that the modern economy demands. The resulting high rents and house prices make it hard for workers to move to where the most productive jobs are, and have slowed growth. Overall housing costs in America absorb 11% of GDP, up from 8% in the 1970s. If just three big cities—New York, San Francisco and San Jose—relaxed planning rules, America’s GDP could be 4% higher. That is an enormous prize.

As well as being merely inefficient, housing markets are deeply unfair. Over a period of decades, falling interest rates have compounded inadequate supply and led to a surge in prices. In America the frenzy is concentrated in thriving cities; in other rich countries average national prices have soared, especially in English-speaking countries where punting on property is a national sport. The financial crisis did not kill off the trend. In Britain inflation-adjusted house prices are roughly equal to their pre-crisis peak, while real wages are no higher. In Australia, despite recent falls, prices remain 20% higher than in 2008. In Canada they are up by half.

The soaring cost of housing has created gaping inequalities and inflamed both generational and geographical divides. In 1990 a generation of baby-boomers, with a median age of 35, owned a third of America’s real estate by value. In 2019 a similarly sized cohort of millennials, aged 31, owned just 4%. Young people’s view that housing is out of reach—unless you have rich parents—helps explain their drift towards “millennial socialism”. And homeowners of all ages who are trapped in declining places resent the windfall housing gains enjoyed in and around successful cities. In Britain areas with stagnant housing markets were more likely to vote for Brexit in 2016, even after accounting for differences in income and demography.

You might think fear and envy about housing is part of the human condition. In fact, the property pathology has its roots in a shift in public policy in the 1950s towards promoting home ownership. Since then governments have used subsidies, tax breaks and sales of public housing to encourage owner-occupation over renting. Politicians on the right have seen home ownership as a way to win votes by encouraging responsible citizenship. Those on the left see housing as a conduit for redistribution and for nudging poorer households to build wealth.

These arguments are overstated. It is hard to show whether property ownership makes better citizens. If you ignore leverage, it is usually better to own shares than to own homes. And the cult of owner-occupation has huge costs. Those who own homes often become NIMBYs who resist development in an effort to protect their investments. Data-crunching by The Economist suggests that the number of new houses constructed per person in the rich world has fallen by half since the 1960s. Because supply is constrained and the system is skewed towards ownership, most people feel they risk being left behind if they rent. As a result politicians focus on subsidising marginal buyers, as Britain has done in recent years. That channels cash to the middle classes and further boosts prices. And it fuels the build-up of mortgage debt that makes crises more likely.

It does not have to be this way. Not everywhere is afflicted with every part of the housing curse. Tokyo has no property shortage; between 2013 and 2017 it put up 728,000 dwellings—more than England did—without destroying quality of life. The number of rough sleepers has dropped by 80% in the past 20 years. Switzerland gives local governments fiscal incentives to allow housing development—one reason why there is almost twice as much home-building per person as in America. New Zealand recoups some of homeowners’ windfall gains through land and property taxes based on valuations that are frequently updated.

Most important, in a few places the rate of home ownership is low and no one bats an eyelid. It is just 50% in Germany, which has a rental sector that encourages long-term tenancies and provides clear and enforceable rights for renters. With ample supply and few tax breaks or subsidies for owner-occupiers, home ownership is far less alluring and the political clout of NIMBYs is muted. Despite strong recent growth in some cities, Germany’s real house prices are, on average, no higher than they were in 1980.

A home run

Is it possible to escape the home-ownership fetish? Few governments today can ignore the anger over housing shortages and intergenerational unfairness. Some have responded with bad ideas like rent controls or even more mortgage subsidies. Yet there has been some progress. America has capped its tax break for mortgage-interest payments. Britain has banned murky upfront fees from rental contracts and curbed risky mortgage lending. A fledgling YIMBY—“yes in my backyard”—movement has sprung up in many successful cities to promote construction. Those, like this newspaper, who want popular support for free markets to endure should hope that such movements succeed. Far from shoring up capitalism, housing policies have made the system unsafe, inefficient and unfair. Time to tear down this rotten edifice and build a new housing market that works. ■

This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline "The West’s biggest economic policy mistake"

https://ift.tt/2QZKFkK

[xtruss]

U.K. Elections:

15 Pakistan-born (5 Women, 9 Men) Candidates Emerge Successful

LONDON: At least 15 Pakistan-born candidates have clinched victory in recently held election in United Kingdom.

According to details, Conservative Party’s Sajid Javid has returned as the MP for Bromsgrove and increased his already majority by 6,533 votes.

Labour Party’s Naz Shah has claimed victory for the consecutive third time from Bradford West while Khalid Mahmood has also retained his seat as Birmingham MP.

Meanwhile, the Labour Party’s Yasmin Qureshi has managed to hold on to Bolton South East.

Whereas Conservative candidate Rehman Chishti and Labour’s Imran Hussain have also won elections in their respective constituencies.

Labour Party candidates Zara Sultana and Tahir Ali have bagged votes in Coventry South and Birmingham Hall Green respectively.

Moreover, success was also faced by Saqib Bhatti in Meridian.

LONDON: At least 15 Pakistan-born Candidates have clinched victory in recently held election in United Kingdom. According to details, Conservative Party’s Sajid Javid has returned as the MP for Bromsgrove and increased his already majority by 6,533 votes. Labour Party’s Naz Shah has claimed victory for consecutive third time from Bradford West while Khalid Mahmood has also retained his seat as Birmingham MP. Meanwhile, Labour Party’s Yasmin Qureshi has managed to hold on to Bolton South East whereas Conservative candidate Rehman Chishti and Labour’s Imran Hussain have also won elections in their respective constituencies. Labour Party candidates Zara Sultana and Tahir Ali have bagged votes in Coventry South and Birmingham Hall Green respectively. Moreover, success was also faced by Saqib Bhatti in Meridian.

US President Donald Trump on Friday congratulated UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on his election victory, saying their two countries were now free to strike a “massive” new trade deal. “Congratulations to Boris Johnson on his great WIN!”, Trump tweeted. “Britain and the United States will now be free to strike a massive new Trade Deal after BREXIT. This deal has the potential to be far bigger and more lucrative than any deal that could be made with the E.U. Celebrate Boris!” After suffering two defeats in his bid to become Britain’s prime minister, opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has said he will not lead the party at the next election. Here are candidates currently tipped to replace him. Prime Minister Boris Johnson won a resounding election victory on Friday that will allow him to end three years of political paralysis and take Britain out of the European Union within weeks. The Brexit divorce represents Britain’s biggest political and economic gamble since World War Two, cutting the world’s fifth largest economy adrift from the vast trading bloc and testing the integrity of the United Kingdom. For Johnson, who had faced gridlock in parliament and focused his campaign on a vow to “Get Brexit Done”, victory was a vindication.

“The people of this country have given us tonight a huge great stonking mandate,” he told activists at Conservative Party headquarters, according to a recording published by Buzzfeed. “They’ve given us this mandate of course because they want us to do one thing, which you all know, they want us to get Brexit done.” Nearly half a century after Britain joined the EU, Johnson faces the challenge of striking new international trade deals, preserving London’s position as a top global financial capital and keeping the United Kingdom together. That last goal was looking more challenging as the election results rolled in, with Scotland voting for a nationalist party that wants an independence referendum, and Irish nationalists performing strongly in Northern Ireland. In a political earthquake in England, the Conservatives won large numbers of seats in the opposition Labour Party’s so-called Red Wall, traditional working class heartlands once hostile to Johnson’s party. Brexit, which has shattered old party loyalties and divided Britain along new fault lines, was the cause of the shift. In the Red Wall, a majority of voters favored leaving the European Union and rejected Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s ambiguous stance on the issue. In a symbol of the change, the Conservatives took Sedgefield, once held by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Labour’s most successful leader. U.S. President Donald Trump was quick to congratulate Johnson. “Britain and the United States will now be free to strike a massive new Trade Deal after BREXIT. This deal has the potential to be far bigger and more lucrative than any deal that could be made with the E.U.,” Trump wrote on Twitter “Celebrate Boris!” LABOUR FLOP Educated at the country’s most elite school and known for his bombastic rhetoric, the 55-year-old Johnson should now be able to lead Britain out of the EU by Jan. 31, the current deadline, but will face the complex task of negotiating his country’s future relationship with the bloc.

A divisive figure seen by many opponents as a populist charlatan who played fast and loose with the facts and made unrealistic promises, Johnson may struggle to reunite a divided nation. But his party’s landslide win marks the ultimate failure of opponents of Brexit, who tried to thwart the 2016 referendum vote through complex legislative maneuvers and could not convert huge anti-Brexit street protests into a coherent political strategy. With results in from almost all 650 parliamentary seats, the Conservatives had won 364, their biggest election win since Margaret Thatcher’s 1987 triumph. Labour, led since 2015 by the veteran socialist Corbyn, had won just 203 seats, the party’s worst result since 1935. Corbyn’s offer of a radical agenda of failed to win over voters, while his equivocal position on Brexit left many angry and confused, especially in Red Wall areas where large majorities had voted for Brexit in 2016. Corbyn said he would quit as Labour leader after a period of reflection. Sterling soared, on course for one of its biggest one-day gains in the past two decades. The pound hit a 19-month high versus the dollar and its strongest levels against the euro since shortly after the 2016 Brexit referendum. After Jan. 31, Britain will enter a transition period during which it will negotiate a new relationship with the EU. This can run until the end of December 2022 under current rules, but the Conservatives have pledged not to extend the transition beyond the end of 2020. SCOTLAND REJECTS BREXIT AND JOHNSON A big majority may allow Johnson to extend the trade talks beyond 2020 because he could overrule the Brexit hardline European Research Group (ERG) faction in the party. “The bigger the Tory majority of course the less influence over this the ERG and Eurosceptics will have,” said Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, whose anti-EU campaigning played a major part in persuading former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron to call the 2016 referendum. “It will be called Brexit but it won’t really be,” Farage said. Johnson was helped by Farage’s party, which stood down hundreds of candidates to prevent the pro-Brexit vote from being split. The Brexit Party poached a significant number of voters from Labour. Labour now faces a civil war between the socialists who control it and moderates who will demand power. “This is obviously a very disappointing night for the Labour Party,” Corbyn said after being re-elected in his own north London electoral seat. He said he would not lead the party in any future elections. Weary Labour candidates said his leadership had played a major role in the defeat. “He should have gone many, many, many months ago,” said labor’s Ruth Smeeth, who lost her seat in Stoke-on-Trent. The strongly anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats won only 11 seats, a crushing result. Party leader Jo Swinson lost her seat to the Scottish National Party (SNP) and resigned. The SNP, which opposes Brexit, won 48 of Scotland’s 59 seats in the national parliament. It will now demand a second independence vote, after loosing a referendum in 2014. Scotland’s first minister, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, said Johnson had no mandate to take Scotland out of the EU. “Boris Johnson may have a mandate to take England out of the European Union, he emphatically does not have a mandate to take Scotland out of the European Union,” Sturgeon said.

[planningmanchester]

The Top Order: Giving Power to the North

Maddox Planning Director Stephen Morgan-Hyland reflects on media across the North joining journalistic forces in a continued efforts towards greater devolution of powers to the North. He looks at why this is critical to future UK economic prosperity, and the role that the development industry must be allowed to play. 

The Cricket World Cup showcase is in full swing, offering up a regulation catch of a sporting analogy. When the trophy is held aloft on 14 July, will that be by a side that has failed to maximise the potential of its top order? Absolutely, it will not. The tournament will be won by a team heralded for its strength in depth. A team in which all ability is allowed to flourish, to the maximum of its potential garnering individuality and innovation. Long gone are days when a leggy fielder might hide in the deep, a steady batsman might shore up one end or a regulation medium pace bowler might simply send down a tidy spell. Tournament cricket is a different game now, with every facet of individual and team performance critical to success on a world stage. Success on a global economic stage has similarly changed with the times. 

We are in an age of unprecedented global economic competitiveness. Add into that mix the new economic beginnings of FutureUK, irrespective of how BREXIT ultimately pans out, and the need to utilise every ounce of our strength in depth is palpable. This is uncharted economic territory for the UK. If FutureUK turns up to the economic world cup without a fully energised top order, then it will not be UK hands on the trophy of future global prosperity.

The 2017 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report 'Understanding the Socio-Economic Divide in Europe' is stark in its identification that the '...highest levels of inequality in Europe are reached in the United Kingdom and the Baltic States’.

Amy Walker writing in The Guardian (22 May 2019) summarises nicely latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures on regional economic inequality ‘Big regional inequalities in disposable household income still exist, with Londoners more than £8,000 a year better off than the UK average...The top 10 local areas with the most leftover cash after tax and benefits in 2017 were all in London and the south-east, with the top six all in the capital. Areas in the north of England and the Midlands made up the bottom 10'.

The ONS figures paint a picture of a country divided geographically by extreme inequality. The OECD data ranks this inequality as amongst the worst in Europe.  QED.

Such inequality fundamentally demonstrates that that we are denying our citizens the ability to make the most of their potential. How ridiculous is that? In doing so, we are dangerously hampering our global competitive edge. What is more, the UK2070 Commission is stark in its statement that ‘The regional inequalities which blight economic performance & life-chances in the UK may become significantly worse unless drastic action is taken’. The latest report ‘Fairer and Stronger: Rebalancing the UK Economy’ says a lot of good things; it however needs for a follow through of action and for this not to be political spin. For action, read drastic action. 

The media of the North is right to raise the ante now, with a new Prime Minister on the horizon. For three years the UK has focussed on looking outwards (although many would argue inwards) at its future relationship with Europe, and what this means for its global economic positioning. This necessary preoccupation is at the expense of proper consideration of domestic economic affairs and the every increasing geographical equality gap. Few in Westminster, in recent times, have genuinely grappled with the need for economic rebalancing. George Osborne did. The North needs another laudatory heavyweight to fight its cause. Future political heavyweights needs the North, in more senses than one. With a Conservative Party leadership contest in play and a potential general election padded up and waiting in the pavilion, Tory hopefuls and incumbent party leaders would do well to engage in more than rhetoric over The North. Energising the North is a prerequisite to economic prosperity and personal success. 

Infrastructure and development has a huge role to play. The case for a transport infrastructure revolution is well rehearsed (and needed), as is the straightforward requirement to build tens of thousands of news homes per year. A 2017 Homes for the North report assessed a need for 500,000 new homes over 10 years. It is about much more than that though. In common with the well established principle that fundamental to economic prosperity starts are grass roots small businesses, development prosperity is about providing space for business and industry small and large. The North needs a pro-active, flexible, responsive and accommodating approach to planning for and supporting new development; an approach that allows every opportunity for economic intervention and prosperity to be harnessed. This is not at the expense of, or showing any disregard for, the natural or historic environment. It is simply a realisation that the North is thinking big and has to be allowed to go big. There should be no unnecessary restrictions on what it might achieve. 

Lord Kerslake is pitch perfect in stating straightforwardly that “There is no logical reason why people in one part of the UK are bound to perform more poorly than others. There is tremendous untapped potential in the UK's regions-we need to put the structures and resources in place to release it."

I could not agree more. Give the Top Order of the North the powers that will allow it to flourish and perform to its economic maximum, and the economic world cup will be a happy hunting ground for FutureUK. 

At Maddox Planning we are growing our team in the North and will play our part in delivering the homes, spaces and infrastructure necessary to maximise the success of the North and the prosperity of FutureUK. 

If Maddox can assist with your development aspirations, speak to Stephen at Maddox Planning Manchester (0845 121 1706) or e-mail stephen@maddoxassociates.co.uk

[berniesrevolution]

In 2016, pundits speculated endlessly on that mysterious place called Trump Country. To many in the Beltway, much of America was a foreign country, to be analyzed statistically rather than in person. Chris Arnade, on the other hand, was determined to escape his coastal bubble. Arnade got into his old van, and has spent the last several years traveling hundreds of thousands of miles, interviewing people all over the country, discovering their joys, sorrows, discontents, and aspirations. In the process he has produced a set of photographs and stories, depicting the everyday Americans who are left out of the media’s understandings of the country, and who feel left out of the 21st century economy. Arnade spoke to Current Affairs editor Nathan J. Robinson about what he has learned in his travels.

NR: You’ve traveled over 100,000 miles across America talking to people from all stripes of life. What are some of the misconceptions that people have about the country they live in? What are some things people think they know about America that are totally wrong?

CA: Everyone knows we’re a divided country, but I don’t think people understand exactly how deep that division is, and what the true nature of it is. I was a banker for 20 years. I lived in Brooklyn Heights, I sent my kids to private school. I was paid well; I had a Ph.D. in physics. I was kind of the New York neoliberal elite who valued science, valued rationality. And that elite built a world over the last 30 years that is massively unequal. I think everybody knows statistically that we have massive wealth inequality and continued racial inequality. But we kind of pat ourselves on the back and say we’re an egalitarian society in other ways. We’ve given equal legal status to gender, sexuality, and race. And so we kind of think we’ve addressed many of the issues. But when you go out in the country, you realize that we’re massively unequal, and we’re unequal beyond economics. We’re unequal in terms of the way we live, how we choose to live, unequal in our valuation framework, what we view as moral, what we view as right and wrong, what we view as the goals. And beyond the obvious racial differences, which are huge—I spent, as much time in poor minority neighborhoods as I did in poor white working class neighborhoods—the most salient division I see beyond race is education.

NR: Yes, you’ve described this framework for thinking about educational inequality, what you call the “front row kids” versus the “back row kids.” The kids who did well in school and advanced to the top of the economic ranks, and the kids who were sort of left behind, and the differences that creates in their worldview. Could you talk a little bit about that framework and what that division in worldview really is?

CA: Right, the front row kids and the back row kids. Now within that there are some divisions and complexities obviously. But the most salient thing about it is that it’s not about political party. It’s non-partisan. “Front row kids” means both Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. The front row is anybody who comes from an elite school, Princeton, Harvard, the Ivies or has a postgraduate degree, Ph.D. They’re mobile, global, and well-educated. Their primary social network is via college and career. That’s how they define themselves, through their job. And within that world intellect is primary. They view the world through a framework of numbers and rational arguments. Faith is irrational, and they see themselves as beyond gender. You can describe this using other frameworks, like “the Acela corridor” types.

On the Democratic side, you can think of the Matt Yglesias types in the media, these kinds of global technocrats, policy wonks. Their framework is: “Give me a problem and I’ll devise a maximally optimal solution using my data.” Most importantly, though, they view their lives as having been better than their parents, and they think their children’s lives will be better than their own. And for them, that’s still true.

The front row kids have won. They’re in charge of things. They are the donor class in politics, they’re the analysts and specialists who scream every time someone has a policy difference they disagree with. “You can’t do X, you’re going to cause a global world war.” Or “You can’t get rid of NAFTA,” “you can’t do Brexit.”

NR: What about the “back row kids,” then? What is that segment of society, and what is the difference in its worldview?

CA: It encompasses a lot of types of people, but it’s defined by its difference with the front row. It’s not just the “white working class,” it includes minorities, black kids who are stuck in east Buffalo or central Cleveland or Bronx in New York. Mostly they don’t have an education beyond high school degree and if they do it’s kind of cobbled together through trade schools and community colleges and smaller state schools. Their primary social network is via institutions beyond work such as family. And their community is defined geographically, meaning they generally don’t leave where they grew up. They might leave for 5-6 years to go to the military, take jobs that bring them to Alaska for a few years, but they’ll come back.

And they have different kinds of worldviews and values. They find meaning and morality through faith, which is also a form of community. And if you read the work of [Harvard sociologist] Michèle Lamont, she writes about the ethos of the decency of hard work. It’s the idea that you don’t necessarily use your brain to advance, you use your strength and you use your commitment. You’re going to play by the rules, you’re going to break a few rocks, you’re going to work hard. It’s also, and here’s where I’ll sweep a lot under the rug, a kind of traditional view of race and gender.

This group of people views their life as worse than their parents, and they think their children’s lives will be worse than theirs. And that’s rational, from their perspective. After all, they’ve lost. Their kind of worldview has been devalued, because it’s the front row kids that have been in charge: the globalized, rational meritocracy versus the more traditional concepts of morality.

NR: You mention rationality. One of the things that seems to puzzle elites as they try to understand these other parts of society is that they feel the grievances there are genuinely irrational. From their perspective, free trade has been good for everybody, it’s made everybody better off than the alternative. And so they don’t understand these kinds of populist backlashes in the form of the support for Trump (or Bernie Sanders), because they feel like the rage and the desire to destroy the elite is a failure to recognize their own self-interest. After all, why would you vote for someone whose economic policies are irrational, or who, like Trump, might destroy the universe? It just doesn’t make sense. They don’t know why people hate experts, since experts have expertise, and expertise is good!

CA: Well, let me approach it this way. I think that when you talk about any group’s failings as being atavistic, because of laziness, because of weakness, because of some other failing, you’re doing it wrong as a progressive. So when we progressives look at poor minorities and, from a sociological perspective, the frustrations and deviances that are there, and when conservatives say “Hey, there’s more crime in black neighborhoods because they’re more violent” or “There’s higher unemployment because they’re lazier,” we liberals rightly push back. We say “Whoah, let’s look at the structural issues here. Let’s look at the structural racism that denies them access to jobs. Let’s look at the structural inequalities in the educational system which provide a harder route for them to leave.”

And I’d say you have to do that for all groups, instead of dismissing them as irrational. And that includes the white working class. You have to look at the context of what they’re facing. So from their perspective, knocking over the system probably makes sense because their worldview is being devalued. It’s being devalued monthly, has been devalued for 25 years.

Now, some of that devaluation I agree with; I believe the idea that you should get supremacy from being white and male should be devalued. But regardless of what you disagree with, that devaluation is happening. And they’re also being devalued economically. And then, even further, their whole worldview, their sense of place and meaning, is being eroded.

So let’s talk about NAFTA, you alluded to NAFTA and free trade. Mathematically it works, because the winners win more than the losers lose. So on a net basis, you say: “Hey look! The data says everybody wins.” There are three fundamental problems with that. One is that winners never share with the losers, that just doesn’t happen. Secondly, what you’re measuring is a very narrow framework of what’s valuable; you’re making the assumption that everybody wants more stuff, having more stuff is what meaning’s about. But the back row finds meaning through their connections, their community, through their structure. When they lose, they’ve lost everything. When the factories go, the town and community fall apart. Their churches hollow out. Their families start facing problems with drugs. So when your sense of meaning and place and valuation comes from your community, and your community gets eroded, that’s it. Game over.

NR: And this something quite real, it’s not an illusion, it’s not just on paper. You’ve traveled all over, and there really are communities like that, that have just been hollowed out. And you’ve extensively covered the drug epidemic.

CA: I didn’t get into this because I wanted to write about politics. I got into this because I was writing about drugs. And I always kind of glibly say that wherever I went to find drugs, I found hope leaving. And where I found hope leaving I saw Trump entering, if it was a white community. Drugs don’t just go into a place because people are lazy; drugs go into a place because drugs work and help. They’re a get-meaning-quick scheme. So is fascism, so is populism. Both these things give a sense of meaning. People use drugs because they think their life is stuck. It’s a form of suicide, and for them, it’s a way of finding some relief from something that seems like it’s not working. That they’re humiliated and devalued, and they want to find a way to fight back against that. And drugs are just one way to do that, with another way being fascism and populism.

NR: So the rise of Trump is definitely some kind of response to despair and hopelessness, then.

CA: Oh, hell yeah. But I would go even further. First, just because I say I’m not surprised this happened, doesn’t mean I’m justifying it. But what I’m saying is: if you want to put a recipe together to create populist fascist white identity politics, we’ve done it over the past 20-30 years. We’ve created a system that’s immensely unequal, created a ruling class, which is educated and uses their education to elevate themselves and demean anybody else. And we’ve rendered it not simply economic, but cultural as well. These divisions are massive. You can blindfold me and put me in any town in the United States and I can tell you within five minutes if it has a college in it or not.

There are these marches across the country that are taking place against Trump. And they’re great. I approve. I don’t like Trump. But there’s a meme that’s going around now that says: “Look it’s all across America. It’s even happening in Texas! And Arkansas! But it’s happening on a goddamn college campus in Texas and Arkansas. I spent a week and a half in two towns, Kalamazoo and Battle Creek, Michigan, separated by 35 miles. One has a college, one doesn’t. Which one do you think voted for Trump? First time they ever voted for a Republican.

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