Stephen Bush

Yeah, I think one problem is the UK policy brain on this is 'the UK or the US', I mean the American government spends an insane amount of money on healthcare even before private healthcare comes in, if we spent that amount on the NHS every patient could have their own golden jacuzzi.

A key part of understanding the people in this thread going 'no, Being Black as real as being male' is that they haven't had jobs for some time.

If you guys want to argue that 'what a woman is' should be as malleable and broad as 'what races mean' then okay, fine, but congratulations, you are now radical Butlerites, just as a matter of established law and the custom in the UK and everywhere, for centuries.

I'm not 'the ultimate arbiter'. The plain fact that 'what a black person is' is different in different countries and at different times in the same country (the meaning has changed multiple times in the UK in the last century) is not something that I invented for the lols.

Indeed, it's like, look, if you want to make this comparison, I have bad news for you, because if you want to say to your mixed-race colleagues 'actually you're black' your feet are not gonna touch the ground pal.

Yeah, I think there are several things going on here. In addition to your list, they clearly just regard 'black people' as rhetorical props. The idea that they might actually offend and hurt someone by saying 'your race is as real and as central to who you are as your maleness' is beyond them.

You weren't wrong!

It reduces the difficulty of getting revenue in - one reason why NHS funding is more stop start than healthcare funding in other majoritarian democracies is that funding for healthcare in Canada or France is not as dependent on the finance ministry of the day.

What racial group do you think it would be 'sane' to refer to me as part of?

No, it is not 'counting angels on the head of a pin'. You chose to make an ignorant comment about race and have followed it up by making and endorsing a number of racist remarks.

You say 'black people clearly exist'. Is Midi Achmat black? What 'race' is Gerald Morkel? What about Walter White? Within living memory the definition of 'black' in the UK has sharply narrowed, and not because of, or by 'progressives'. It would be a good idea if you both thought before writing.

Okay, thanks @nondairycanary.bsky.social for liking this and demonstrating that you do in fact think that race is as real as sex after wriggling around the point last night. You're both cranks. What 'race' do you think Jude Bellingham is? Is he the same race as Jess Carter or Cole Palmer?

It was really stunning the sheer number of posts and articles from Americans going 'arf arf it would backfire by adding a bunch of Democratic voters' about the whole annexing Canada.

I think the hard answer is "all of the above". Some always wanted this, some are very malleable, some are tribal and partisan above all else, a bunch are opportunists.

Congratulations! A lot of great Ethiopian restaurants, but I feel that's true of every global city now.

Yeah, I think @tpgroberts.bsky.social is right that Labour MPs have become more hesitant, but it isn't that loads are still using Twitter for broadcast, it is that they are directly exposed to angry people from Facebook.

Ageing Britain drifts into fantasy politics Both government and opposition run into difficulty even when policy answers are simple

Some fantastic charts courtesy of @georginaq.bsky.social and I'm so glad I've brought back the 'Monday's newsletter includes a description of my reading the FT Weekend and what I liked most in it' because it's so nice to get little snippets of the readers' lives and weekends.

Yeah, not to be all 'me me me' but it is not a coincidence in any way that the first named members of Goodwin's new elite were me and Afua Hirsch, who in every actual way are just...the old elite? We don't think the same things as each other on almost every issue, etc.

My favourite are the “I will disagree with factual descriptions of what the spending plans actually say because that sounds bad”, who will visibly declare that actually those real terms spending cuts are good when they happen.

Like tears in rain.

Ditto the resignations from Corbyn’s frontbench were all “we haven’t read the rulebook, we don’t have an exit lever, nonetheless: here we go lads!!!!”

The successful attempt to remove Johnson and the unsuccessful one to remove Corbyn both also showed that MPs seem to be *more* susceptible to panics: no plan to stop Truss, but the party’s anti-Trussites essentially all went “well, we’re all going now I guess!!”

I’ve used this example before, but it is striking that the Tories who have travelled furthest were the ones who described the mere act of regulating Uber enough to reliably know who the driver as socialist overreach. Now they believe every Deliveroo driver is a threat.

And of course we can see on here both the “If Starmer declared oxygen good I would drop over dead” types and the “I have tied myself in knots defending a government that U-Turns and has no purpose” crowd.

Yeah - I think this is true for all parties. The more benign version of this in 2010 to 2015 was, e.g. Labour MPs sharing obviously daft but harmless tweets by Eoin Clarke, or believing that the “hashtag we back Ed” stuff mattered.

Chocolate cartels: the rise of cocoa smuggling Surging global prices have fuelled an illicit bean trade ‘like cocaine in Colombia’

Chocolate cartels: the rise of cocoa smuggling—The illicit trade is blowing a hole in the budgets of the world’s two largest cocoa producers, Ivory Coast and Ghana, and deepening a price crisis that has rocked the chocolate sector. www.ft.com/content/e0b7... Susannah Savage @financialtimes.com

So my assumption is they are doing that 'too much phone' thing where they haven't really understood what is about one country and what is about another.

We had a deeply stupid and overly expensive solution to the energy shock caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine that has limited our flexibility, etc. None of this is quite 'things are worse now for households' but true that the UK is more *fragile*.

Yeah, I mean it is just true that during the teeth of the global financial crisis, child poverty continued to fall because of the automatic stabilisers of tax credits, something large numbers of people have decided we are too good for either cos 'won't raise taxes' or 'it subsidises businesses'.

(Wait, I realise my assumption is they are a Brit who is now in the US, rather than the horrifying 'they are still here with me' possibility.)