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Last Notes

2026-05-13 09:10:08 UTC

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Labour are currently standing in the way of progressive politics.
@npub12pw…zvxn

2026-03-27 14:19:24 UTC

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...than the rest of the dominantly centrist PLP that didn't like 'Red Ed' Miliband when he was leader because he was 'too left wing'!
If Labour want to win back their supporters on the left then they are going to have to adopt more left-wing policies, and a token social democrat in a party of economic liberals is not going to convince anyone, much less those who switched to the Greens after Polanski adopted the Corbyn-style policy platform that Labour sees as a 'catastrophe'.

2026-03-27 14:12:51 UTC

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Gaby Hinslif seems to be spinning more centrist optimism here while still refusing to accept Labour's, and particularly Labour's centrist faction's part in its own downfall.
She's desperately claiming that Corbyn's leadership was a 'catastrophe' (with more supporters and votes than centrist Labour could ever hope for), while pretending that Miliband's popularity amongst ex-Labour voters on the left is because he's an intellectual rather than because he's more left-wing...

2026-03-27 13:38:42 UTC

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I'm not sure anyone thought that an aerial war alone would force regime change, but it's notable that while the US is sending ground troops to the Middle East, Israel is reporting that the IDF is stretched beyond capacity.
If the US commits to an long and ugly ground war in Iran while Israel concentrates on using its army to grow its own borders in Lebanon then people in the USA are going to get very vocal very quickly.

2026-03-20 12:48:17 UTC

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....some might consider that to be check mate, but the USA has literal nuclear options to reset the board.

2026-03-20 12:46:29 UTC

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That's a neat summary, and with respect to your OP, the US remains entirely dependent on fossil fuels because it's position in the world is entirely dependent on the PetroDollar, which in a world where energy is no longer limited to or most efficiently-derived from fossil fuels could mean that the US remains geopolitically dependent on last century energy.

2026-03-20 11:29:08 UTC

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....and in Trump's words, the 'need' to grow their geopolitical and economic empire to compete with China and the BRICS.
Whether it's too little too late remains to be seen, but Europe (if not necessarily the UK) may be well placed to play the role of Kingmaker.

2026-03-20 11:27:19 UTC

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I don't think this is limited to energy, because China seems to have positioned itself as the natural successor to the USA by taking the lead in manufacturing, engineering, supply chains and by extension the global reserve currency. Up until relatively recently it seemed that their ascendancy would be a matter of natural succession.
The US pivot to gaining greater control over global trade, land, resources and supply routes seems to be a belated recognition of this....

2026-03-18 08:52:56 UTC

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Anything that challenges the economic orthodoxy of the last forty years is an affront to both of their careers because they've both been complicit.
@npub12pw…zvxn

2026-03-17 13:37:13 UTC

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Yes, and Marxism was both preceded and influenced by the Chartist movement, which itself has parallels with the Levellers.
It's arguable that given the hugely negative and defensive rhetoric that surrounds Marxism, socialism and communism, a modernised Chartist movement could be seen as a less-contentious political model for reform.
@npub16ns…5aea @npub120h…s6zt

2026-03-17 11:02:41 UTC

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I think that better regulation might have prevented the situation reaching the current point, but govt has been playing catchup for a long time, and rather than addressing emerging concerns they've become mired in trying to regulate things that have already evolved into something else.
Localising power and decision-making would break the lobbyists' strangle hold on central govt and allow for new structures of control to develop.
@npub16ns…5aea @npub12pw…zvxn

2026-03-17 10:41:07 UTC

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The entire world would be a better place if the good people of the US replaced their corporately-owned parties and politicians with something that wasn't entirely owned by billionaires.

2026-03-17 10:34:30 UTC

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Agree completely. Change cannot come from the top down when the top has been captured by lobbyists and foreign investment.
@npub120h…s6zt @npub12pw…zvxn

2026-03-17 10:00:20 UTC

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With hindsight it seems that privatisation, deregulation and political capture were essential for preparing and maintaining a green field in which developing technology could be deployed without scrutiny.

2026-03-16 08:27:15 UTC

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This is a world war with potentially disastrous consequences for everyone involved.
The UK and Europe should steer well clear.
https://united24media.com/latest-news/iran-officially-confirms-military-support-from-russia-and-china-in-war-against-the-us-16882

2026-03-11 10:10:25 UTC

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Hard to disagree given the current fetish for religious crusades, but without wanting to be contrary I'd suggest that it's at least as important for political leaders to imagine the future, especially given climate projections.
We seems to be caught in a millennia-old doom loop of imperialism, wars, famine and exploitation and all history can teach us is what to expect from the next stage without any indication of the velocity required to exit the loop.

2026-03-10 13:27:37 UTC

RE: https://kolektiva.social/@LeftistLawyer/116202888309076038
How much do you trust your own, democratically-elected govt?
2026 edition.
#note1lca…f8j5

2026-03-09 09:37:03 UTC

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The West as a whole is long-overdue a public debate on the incestuous relationship between politics and finance and the degree to which our democratic choices can be compromised by embedded financial systems.
Other ways of working are clearly possible, if not necessarily easy to navigate, but too many politicians have spent too long accepting the TINA mantra and claiming to be grownups for supporting a broken status quo.

2026-03-05 18:24:39 UTC

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....the concern here is that the authoritarian right that wants to re-establish the cruel hierarchies of previous ages and crush any opposition now has every tool they could wish for at their disposal to do just that.
A European-centred counter movement would have to tear down those technological defences aswell as the hierarchies that built them.

2026-03-05 18:20:31 UTC

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Ha! I suppose so, although any 21st century social democracy would be unlike anything we've had before because of the p2p nature of the modern world.
The technological advancements of the last 20 years are no longer just being used to improve people's lives, because we've entered a 'papers please' era of digital surveillance, manipulation and exclusion that any Euro-social democracy would need to destroy and rebuild.

2026-03-05 18:11:23 UTC

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Yes.
With respect to our conversation elsewhere on Western hierarchies, this may even amount to compromising on some form of modern European communism to counter the threat of fascism and topple the hierarchies that have started to reimpose themselves since fall of the USSR.

2026-03-05 18:02:18 UTC

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If this is, or even could be the case then there's also no guarantee that a re-popularised left wing can make a substantive difference within the boundaries of the existing system, because any change will be countered by an authoritarian response to kill any dissent before it threatens the re-established status quo....as we've seen recently in the USA.
@npub1prm…a9wj

2026-03-05 17:55:53 UTC

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Agree completely, although I'm also slightly perturbed by the implications of that conclusion.
Westerners generally want to believe that Western democracy is a basically decent system because for the lifetimes of most living people it has been. The world since the 1980s however has seen the West steadily descend to the same levels of privilege, inequality, exploitation and imperialism that defined the West in previous eras with no guarantee that the trend won't continue
@npub1prm…a9wj

2026-03-05 17:14:46 UTC

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.....or maybe just fail quicker?

2026-03-05 17:13:34 UTC

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I've pondered elsewhere on here whether Europe is currently cast in the role of geopolitical kingmaker.
If European leaders...or actually European citizens, switch their allegiance away from US/Israel and refuse to honour US-inspired trading sanctions then the US will fail.

2026-03-05 11:24:38 UTC

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I suppose it's arguable in that sense that the Normans established a hierarchical gangster state in 1066, and the Americans established a successor in the US in the 18th century. If corruption is allowed to continue over the course of centuries then it becomes Established tradition by default.
The only time that western democracy has worked for all westerners was during the post-ww2 period when communism presented an existential threat to the established hierarchy.
@npub12pw…zvxn

2026-03-05 10:00:13 UTC

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I suspect that there's a lot more public climate concern than Western political leaders and media typically present, and if global geopolitics develops into a polar choice between clean energy and fossil fuels then the US could very easily be caught on the wrong side of history.
Some might say that it would be an apt end of a US empire waging war on the back of 3000 year old man-made 'prophesies'.

2026-03-05 09:41:08 UTC

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...
The final irony may yet turn out to be that the US becomes dependent on what it knows (monopolising oil and gas to support the PetroDollar) at the same time as China flips to renewables and nuclear power and no longer needs them.

2026-03-05 09:37:42 UTC

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Some of the rhetoric from the US suggests a grudging acceptance that they've already lost their economic and technical hegemony to China on too many fronts to seriously compete *unless* they use force to quickly co-opt equivalent resources and supply chains to match what China's built over the past couple of decades.
That Trump is threatening long-term allies and talking about how the US 'needs' to own Greenland, Canada, Cuba, Venezuela, .... all makes sense in this respect.
...

2026-03-02 18:38:17 UTC

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I think Gaby might be being a tad hopeful there.

2026-03-02 15:27:56 UTC

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The US backed far right seems to run on a platform that combines Judeo-Christo-fascism and spitting anti-socialism
People in the UK meanwhile are for the most part religiously ambivalent and were never subject to the anti-socialist propaganda that's routinely imposed on the average American.
Throw in the sickly, hyper-Americanised flagshagging and 'pay-triotism' and the average British RefUK voter is about as British as Texas.
@npub1ryu…myy0

2026-02-26 18:13:31 UTC

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https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/116/138/283/459/370/349/original/8846682d236a1c4b.png

2026-02-26 17:57:05 UTC

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A post-American internet built on FOSS and secure open standards is a wonderful end state, but it's surprising that countries haven't (yet) worked on limiting their exposure to predatory US tech by adopting existing and scalable solutions from China.
There's a sanctions problem obviously, and I'm sure that the predatory issues can be applied to Chinese tech too, but as a shorter-term mitigation to US tech monopoly it's still an option.

2026-02-26 16:29:40 UTC

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Not sure it's a proper term really, but I've been repeatedly struck by the excessive amounts of micro-accounting and reporting activity that goes on inside most organisations in the name of improvement and efficiency.

2026-02-26 10:09:01 UTC

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Hyper-accountancy is a diagnostic feature of a profit-led, over-financialised economy?

2026-02-26 09:02:45 UTC

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The NHS might be an exceptional example, but the modern business approach to Taylor-style productivity improvement seems to involve as much, if not more resource being directed at the collection and measurement of productivity data as the resource dedicated to productive work.
https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/return-taylorism

2026-02-25 08:40:23 UTC

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Maybe any person who steps into a public space wearing Meta's surveillance glasses should be immediately arrested for stalking?
Citizen arrests would be acceptable.

2026-02-23 15:00:07 UTC

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Sensible centrists are still convinced that everyone will return to Labour on the GE to 'keep RefUK out' (the Macron triangulation).

2026-02-23 08:50:37 UTC

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US corporate social media is a tool for data collection, propaganda and regime change, and the response of the American govt to China-owned TikTok ought to be taken as a warning to European govts.

2026-02-20 10:57:07 UTC

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Gender equality is one thing but class equality is another thing altogether.
Antonia Romeo comes from the exact same privately educated in exclusive schools and Oxbridge route as all the boys in the club.

2026-02-20 08:51:29 UTC

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This could be anecdotal, but outside of the traditional middle-class professions (doctor, lawyer, banker etc) there seems to have been a decline in the value of Chartered and professional membership institutions in favour of commercial certification schemes that require regular, paid-for re-certification.

2026-02-17 17:47:35 UTC

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Seems plausible. There also seems to be an increase in the number of over 50s and 60s taking on the minimum wage starter jobs to tide them over until their pensions kick in.
@npub12pw…zvxn

2026-02-17 09:57:06 UTC

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I greatly appreciate the puzzling opportunity.
Certainly no pedantry intended (:
@npub154p…gwly @npub1tyj…nlxm

2026-02-17 09:52:46 UTC

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Cryptic posting for crossword enthusiasts 😃
@npub1tyj…nlxm @npub12pw…zvxn

2026-02-17 09:41:41 UTC

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reliance?
Better than Wordle 🙃
@npub12pw…zvxn

2026-02-17 09:31:10 UTC

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Agree, but suspect the architects of this would view it from another angle: Why provoke a national riot by privatising the NHS when the NHS can be hollowed out to become a vehicle for managing contracts with private healthcare companies?
Politicians can even promise more money to be invested in healthcare without upsetting the free market status quo.
@npub12pw…zvxn

2026-02-13 18:14:11 UTC

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It might be reasonable for now, but the UK surely has far greater potential capacity for wind generation than France?

2026-02-11 09:52:18 UTC

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The govt has become the political wing of the financial services sector.

2026-02-10 09:38:53 UTC

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Foreign influence and regime change are uncomfortable topics in the UK...unless we're talking about Russia, in which case it's perfectly acceptable.
To what extent should people like Farage and Tice be considered foreign agents? Tommy Robinson with his curiously American evangelical Judeo-Christianity is another obvious import.

2026-02-10 09:28:51 UTC

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There's a powerful political lobby that wants the UK to become more like the US, and all the indications are that it's not home-grown.

2026-02-06 16:00:43 UTC

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This exactly. Data and information are the means of production and control for the twenty first century, and over the last fifty years the traditional frameworks for information management and dissemination have been systematically torn down, renamed and rebuilt inside a handful of corporately-owned walled gardens.
The consolation for those of us who have been thanklessly pointing this out for decades is that people no longer think we're insane.

2026-01-30 18:09:34 UTC

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Deity level unlocked 🙃

2026-01-30 16:18:44 UTC

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Suspect that Starmer isn't suffering from a hostile media so much as he's missing the left-wing support that he wanted rid of. The best that Labour-friendly journalists can come up with is variations on 'Starmer's not so bad really'.

2026-01-30 12:06:33 UTC

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There seems to be a number of Starmer apologists writing articles currently, no doubt to assuage the grief of sensible centrists who have seen their dream ripped to shreds by the realisation that handing everything over to private corporations run by billionaires wasn't such a good idea afterall.
The contentious claim in this article is that people were content to leave it to the professional politicians and their focus groups, when in reality we were made politically homeless.

2026-01-29 15:29:58 UTC

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This was inevitable given the West's four decade subservience to free market capitalist ideology.
It's notable that the Austrian cheerleaders who spent thirty years saying that this could never happen with 'pure' free markets have now spent the last ten years coming to terms with the fact that their entrepreneurial Gods of the 20th century have turned into the tyrannical feudal Lords of the 21st.

2026-01-28 11:11:56 UTC

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That's a good point, altho I suppose perverse incentives exist anyway, with the main difference being that people who are unlikely to live much beyond 65 currently never receive their SP at all.
The most annoying aspect of this is that we could and arguably should all be working far less hours and years than we do, and in the 60s and 70s people were led to believe that automation and technological advances would create a leisure society. Neoliberalism ended the dream.
@npub12pw…zvxn

2026-01-28 09:56:34 UTC

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Variable retirement age would be the obvious answer, but like so many other things it would be open to political influence and additional health and social care costs.
The NHS already promotes health checks for the over-fifties, so allowing medical professionals to prescribe earlier retirement dates would be an extension of the existing medical leave regime for workers.

2026-01-27 09:39:05 UTC

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Labour have a proprietorial attitude towards left-wing voters, and even though Labour don't have particularly left-wing policies and have stated openly that they don't want the 'fleas' in their midst, they're too arrogant to stand aside for the greater good.

2026-01-26 10:57:44 UTC

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Getting rid of Ofwat, even with the excuse of rationalising regulatory bodies is still capitulation to the industry's demands for lighter regulation to encourage foreign investment.
When will the govt accept that appeasement will not fix a fundamentally broken system?

2026-01-22 09:11:26 UTC

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Capitalists go on (and on and on) about their rewards being justified by their financial risk, but there is no risk associated with operating essential national infrastructure because the govt will always bail them out while customers have no choice.
Keeping these firms in private hands is a victory for ideology over common sense.

2026-01-21 11:38:00 UTC

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This might sound a trifle cynical, but I'm not convinced that most politicians want to do the bidding of the electorate so much as broker compromise that the electorate will tolerate.
Too often we've seen unpopular policies enacted that the political opposition has criticised but not actually reversed when they have the opportunity.
@npub12pw…zvxn

2026-01-20 11:55:44 UTC

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Many, many people in the tech sector have been talking about the potential problems of US-dependency for years (and told to be quiet), but while Europe has been slow to build its own platforms to reduce the dependency, there is a ready-made alternative to US Big Tech in China....which Europe has heavily sanctioned and won't deal with for concerns about national security.
Is it time for a rethink?

2026-01-19 09:35:01 UTC

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It could easily happen here under a RefUK government because RefUK and the other far-right parties in Europe are part of the same US MAGA franchise.
The frustrating part is that it could still be stopped, but only if centrists and liberals accept that unless they adopt left-wing economic reforms and controls on foreign social media and political investment, a MAGA-style govt in the UK is inevitable.

2026-01-16 13:34:33 UTC

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There'll be more before the next election no doubt, but they all seem to exhibit the same sort of.....sliminess that sets them apart from the effete grubbiness that people usually associate with Tory MPs.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2026/01/tracked-the-tories-defecting-to-reform
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/115/905/007/629/512/146/original/6d42c5f10b3f958b.png

2026-01-02 19:03:01 UTC

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Why burst their respective bubbles after this much time has passed?
@npub1ryu…myy0

2026-01-02 15:59:24 UTC

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I've just posted something vaguely related to @npub12pw…zvxn. There is genuine and long worn antagonism against London for both good and not-so-good reasons, and much of it is founded on a cultural dislike for London, Parliament, the King, bankers and being on the receiving end of laws from London.
The fact that antagonism exists and has deep roots makes it easy to sow division, and we should be watchful of foreign interventions along with the rest of Europe.
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/pinch-point/2025/12/17/aje-onl-pp-the-great-replacement-v2-161225

2026-01-02 15:41:36 UTC

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I know for a fact that there are many British people who genuinely hate London with a passion, just as there are many people in London who consider anyone from outside the city to be a foreigner....and there are some valid and long-standing reasons for both of those views.
Personally I consider both London and the rest of the southeast to be part of Western France 😉
@npub12pw…zvxn
https://nationalpost.com/news/fox-news-issues-rare-on-air-apology-one-week-after-guest-claims-u-k-city-birmingham-totally-muslim

2026-01-02 15:30:56 UTC

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..natural transport hub, while infrastructure intended for elsewhere in the country miraculously gets built in London, such as the millennium dome, Wembley reboot, any airport expansion, ...).
Also worth remembering that in the 70s London was declining while cities like Manchester and Birmingham were catching up in terms of both share of national income and population, which makes London's revival something of a product of Thatcher's financialisation of the economy
@npub12pw…zvxn

2026-01-02 15:22:12 UTC

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I don't think any of it is racism, unless you're classing Londoners as a race in their own right, and the far right media have been falsely claiming Islamic enclaves and no-go areas in places like Birmingham for a decade or more.
Most of the intra-England antagonism against London is usually concerned with London-centric decision making and investment, so (for example) our entire national transport system is London-centric, even tho London is far from a....
@npub12pw…zvxn

2025-12-31 11:59:22 UTC

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Whatever happened to people going into politics to change things?
@npub14h3…kaez

2025-12-31 11:57:57 UTC

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Agreed, although it's kinda sad that useful work in the widest sense no longer seems to extend very much beyond roles that are economically productive. Archaeology being a classic case in point.

2025-12-31 10:50:57 UTC

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That's certainly true in the main, and I'd say that we can keep our fingers crossed that archaeologists will be similarly herded into decent-paying jobs.....but that would miss the point about trained archaeologists being denied the opportunity to earn their living from archaeology!

2025-12-31 10:34:59 UTC

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Such a waste of talent and ambition.
"What degree did you get?" or "What did you originally want to do?" are great questions to ask older IT workers too.

2025-12-31 09:52:07 UTC

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Any serious attempt at economic reform may well require a reverse-Thatcher 'Big Bang' approach, because forty years of economic liberalism, like forty years of social democracy before it, can't be easily unwound piecemeal.
Maybe it's time for conversations about odious debt, devolution and land reform?
@npub14h3…kaez

2025-12-31 09:21:17 UTC

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Labour centrists have an arsenal of patronising phrases to throw at any political party that threatens to expose their impotent liberalism, and no doubt we'll hear 'student', 'protest', 'purist', 'delusional' and 'utopian' in due course.
The sad reality is that Labour are currently little more than a UK franchise of the US Democrats and have little or nothing to offer an electorate wanting wholesale economic reform.

2025-12-30 10:33:31 UTC

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London has its own devolved govt and receives more in central funding than anywhere else in England.
I know people in the SE would claim that London is the economic powerhouse of the UK, but that is only the case because govt policy in the 80s closed down industry in the cities of the midlands and north and financialised the economy with London at its centre.
Relative to other English cities, London was declining in the 70s.

2025-12-24 15:21:56 UTC

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I've periodically wondered whether capitalism isn't just a proxy for traditional feudal hierarchy.
The old aristocracy obviously had a huge leg up in capitalist terms by virtue of their inherited wealth, and while they've had to make room for wealthy commoners, it's still a pretty exclusive club with strong leanings towards breeding, blood and inheritance.
@npub1sr9…j2a4

2025-12-24 13:54:52 UTC

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Yes, altho they would claim that what we have isn't 'true' capitalism and 'proper' free markets have never been tried. True Austrian economists are typically opponents of central banking and bailouts and accept that a free market needs unions and collective bargaining.
Interesting also that Pinochet's neoliberal revolution tore up Allende's early, socialist version of the internet...in 1973!
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/project-cybersyn-chiles-radical-experiment-in-cybernetic-socialism/
@npub12pw…zvxn @npub1sr9…j2a4

2025-12-24 13:47:47 UTC

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Not sure that the 'classical liberal' claims of capitalism aren't just an ideological stop on the road to authoritarianism and eugenics.
@npub1sr9…j2a4

2025-12-23 11:50:55 UTC

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The govt's tolerance for looking silly seems to have no limits, but at this point it's surely in the national interest to reveal the hidden evidence that justified the proscription of PA.

2025-12-23 11:42:57 UTC

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The 1997-2025 bit?
@npub1ryu…myy0 @npub1pmr…qyus

2025-12-23 10:11:40 UTC

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Agreed, altho FPTP is weird and doesn't play well in multi-party elections with heavily split votes.
Labour might end up being caught between a rock and a hard place, with the rock being a potential wipeout of centrist parties under FPTP, and the hard place being a huge swing to the Greens if Labour try to protect themselves by switching to PR.
@npub1pmr…qyus

2025-12-23 09:35:13 UTC

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The Greens have an FPTP issue to overcome, but if they can stretch their polling lead to look more viable countrywide then it's quite possible that Labour voters will switch.
@npub1pmr…qyus

2025-12-23 09:22:47 UTC

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Suspect that Labour are still convinced that the disaffected left can be convinced to vote Labour to 'Keep Reform out'.
@npub12pw…zvxn

2025-12-23 09:02:06 UTC

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Not sure Starmer would risk the UK's relationship with the US for closer ties with Europe currently. The rise of far-right nationalism in combination with the increase in anti-US sentiment and the EU drive to extricate Europe from US tech/military dependency is a toxic combination.

2025-12-22 17:42:00 UTC

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Thanks, I appreciate that.
Trade unions did serve to mitigate the effects of capital constraints, but the technology sector has been very slow to unionise, while the gig economy, the normalisation of contract work and anti-union legislation has left unions without the means or membership to remain effective.
@npub1s8n…lng5 @npub18qt…dzzy

2025-12-22 16:06:12 UTC

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I didn't mean to suggest that modern workers are literal slaves so much as we exist on the exact same continuum as slavery and indentured labour.
Capitalists need labour and they try to employ people as cheaply and with as many costs externalised as possible.
The high cost of rent and debt and the cost of living are not the concern of the employer and in many cases it presents a huge advantage since people *have* to meet a minimum economic bar to survive.
@npub1s8n…lng5 @npub18qt…dzzy

2025-12-22 15:07:55 UTC

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Yes, of course. Slavery is illegal while indentured labour is legal, but indentured labour quickly replaced slavery on plantations, navigation and construction, and today's more elegant equivalent replaces whips and chains with debt and rent to coerce the modern worker into a self-organising work gang.
Slaver ownership also imposed an obligation on the slave masters if they wanted a ROI, while today's masters can simply hire and fire their wage slaves.
@npub18qt…dzzy @npub12pw…zvxn

2025-12-22 09:48:29 UTC

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Agree completely. I guess the other question is whether her ascendency to power was predicated on the fact that after thirty years of social democracy and increasing economic mobility and equality the old capitalist class had reached a point where their very existence depended on halting and unwinding the post-war economic consensus.
That capital class had never been so (relatively) poor as they were in the 1970s and another decade might have seen their end.
@npub12pw…zvxn @npub14x9…j2qz

2025-12-22 09:19:17 UTC

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It's arguable that the information age has resulted in the wholesale destruction of intellectual property as we used to understand it.
The first iteration saw commerce humbled by electronic piracy, and the latest sees commerce effectively stealing intellectual property and hoarding it within proprietary operating systems, applications and paywalls. My best guess is that the next stage will be a battle between the free internet and corporate walled-gardens.
@npub1tns…snct @npub14x9…j2qz

2025-12-22 09:08:28 UTC

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Agreed, and I certailny didn't mean to imply that the Austrian free market is anything more than an economist's pipedream.
@npub1tns…snct @npub14x9…j2qz

2025-12-22 08:54:41 UTC

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Still not sure that there's a huge difference between regime change and invasion, beyond physical invasion costing significantly more and imposing more of an obligation.
It's a bit like the difference between slavery (banned) and informally indentured labour (what we have).
@npub18qt…dzzy @npub12pw…zvxn

2025-12-22 08:40:07 UTC

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Thatcher's election in 1979 looks more like a heist with every year that passes.
@npub12pw…zvxn @npub14x9…j2qz

2025-12-22 08:38:14 UTC

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Oxymoron is spot on.
I hate to agree with the Austrians on this or anything, but free markets *could* theoretically exist with that existence being dependent on all financial actors having the same freedoms and ability to influence the market.....although in practice this is so phenomenally unlikely without hefty regulation that they'd no longer be technically free.
@npub12pw…zvxn @npub14x9…j2qz

2025-12-19 11:50:41 UTC

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Absolutely. Free markets must be free for everyone and not just the financiers.
I'd hate to suggest that Austrian economists have been played for useful idiots over the last few decades, but if the cap fits.....
@npub14x9…j2qz

2025-12-19 10:59:06 UTC

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True, and was it Hayek (or Mises?) who wrote that if trade unions didn't already exist then it would be necessary to create them for a free market to function?
@npub14x9…j2qz

2025-12-19 10:54:17 UTC

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Oof, yes! India was a real outlier in imperialist terms.
Oddly enough the last Chinese empire was collapsed by China because they couldn't afford the upkeep of their outposts. Something most imperialist countries learn eventually, although I suppose economic imperialism presents an entirely new dimension.
@npub1s8n…lng5 @npub12pw…zvxn

2025-12-19 10:43:28 UTC

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Yep, the British learned this in Egypt, which was controlled by Britain while being ostensibly independent.
It's a lot easier and cheaper to hold a gun to the heads of a few prominent people and install a puppet leader, and there's the added benefit of not being blamed for any subsequent famines or civil wars.
@npub1s8n…lng5 @npub12pw…zvxn

2025-12-19 10:38:59 UTC

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Not sure that there's any real difference between physically invading and forced a regime change, stealing the nation's resources and appointing a puppet leader, and if anything the former is more honest and leaves the invader with more responsibilities.
Who has China invaded?
@npub18qt…dzzy @npub12pw…zvxn

2025-12-19 10:14:53 UTC

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It's interesting that the rationale for this latest incarnation of US resource capture wars is not being dressed up in excuses as it usually is.
Trump actually believes that Venezuelan oil belongs to the USA and they're just taking it back!