Robert Saunders

Conservatives in the 20th century often insisted that they were not "political" at all - that "politics" was something that socialists and liberals did, while Toryism was simply an apolitical "commonsense". I wonder if there's a touch of that going on here.

It's unfathomable.

I wonder if something has been cut after "It is hard to imagine that taking place in Britain"? Perhaps he intended to suggest some more British form of "vigour". But as it stands, the article calls for the vigour of the US and gives terrorising parents as an example. It's a deplorable passage.

"Second, we need to enforce the policy with a vigour that has reduced flows at America’s southern borders by 90 per cent, and in Denmark by 95 per cent. Crucial to the Trump programme is an aggressive policy of removals, including snatching suspected illegals off the street. One friend tells me Latino parents are now so afraid to be seen out and about that the other parents have a rota to walk the Latino children to and from school. It is hard to imagine that taking place in Britain."

Just a jaw-dropping paragraph in Trevor Phillips's column for The Times.

This is a policy that, by his own account, has left parents of a particular race too frightened to walk their children to school.

And that's the example he chooses of the "vigour" we "need".
www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

When did you grow the beard?

mr. potato head is packing you an extra pair of shoes and your angry eyes just in case ALT: mr. potato head is packing you an extra pair of shoes and your angry eyes just in case

The problem before Brexit wasn't too much "sensible face politics"; it was politicians putting in their angry eyes and endorsing populist policies in which they did not believe.

Oddly, they then found it hard to persuade people to vote against them.

It's not that long ago that the Liberal Democrats staged a walk out of Parliament, in protest at the lack of an in/out referendum on EU membership.

Our politics would be a lot healthier if more politicians actually made the case to the public for the things they believed in.

mr. potato head is packing you an extra pair of shoes and your angry eyes just in case ALT: mr. potato head is packing you an extra pair of shoes and your angry eyes just in case

The problem before Brexit wasn't too much "sensible face politics"; it was politicians putting in their angry eyes and endorsing populist policies in which they did not believe.

Oddly, they then found it hard to persuade people to vote against them.

He doesn't seem to be commenting on Polanski's popularity: he's challenging the workability of his proposed policy. In an age that's dominated by the question "how does this poll?", I'm quite reassured that some still ask "how will this work?" (We can then debate whether or not he's right).

The fact that in both 2019 and 2024, the winning party did so with a set of manifesto promises that could not be kept and dissolved upon contact with actual office is something that as an industry we should be much more bothered by than we are.

the entirety of human history has actually been manipulation by cats to get them to every corner of earth.

Gabrielle Giffords • @GabbyGiffords • 3h X My husband @CaptMarkKelly is a 25-year Navy combat pilot veteran. He served our country with strength, courage, and integrity, dedicating his career to protecting us and upholding our constitution. Today, the President of the United States called him a traitor and demanded he be Show more Captain Mark Kelly @CaptMarkK...• 3h I've had a missile blow up next to my airplane, been shot at dozens of times by anti-aircraft fire, and launched into orbit — all for my country. I never thought l'd see a President call for my execution.... • 3.7K {7 2.3K 8.9K thl 461K 企 Janette Fenway @LeesLemmas • 43m @elonmusk Why is my feed suddenly flooded with lefty lawmakers spouting nonsense? 276 • 69 贝 Elon Musk * X @elonmusk X.com Because we are failing very badly with the recommendations algorithm. Doing my best to address this. 3:49 PM • 11/20/25 • 6.3K Views

An X user asks Elon Musk why they’re seeing tweets from left-wing lawmakers.

Musk: “Because we are failing very badly with the recommendations algorithm. Doing my best to address this.”

The plan says that "A dialogue will be held between Russia and NATO, mediated by the United States." This implies that both Russia and the Trump administration don't see the US as part of NATO in any real sense. That should deeply alarm every other NATO state.

I don't think that is the lesson of the 2016 referendum. The lesson there is that if you never make the argument for something, but just constantly give ground, and then run a fear-based campaign that says "we'd love to do this too, but your pet will die", you're likely to lose.

Michael Gove on claims of a bad culture in No. 10 during the pandemic:

"The business of govt can't be carried on in the manner of a Jane Austen novel".

As so often, this assumes that the macho, hyper-aggressive style of Cummings & co produces better decisions. All the evidence suggests the reverse

A theme of the Hallett report is that decisionmakers routinely underestimated the ability of the public to deal with complexity & accept hard trade-offs.

It's a problem that continues to plague our politics. One lesson of the pandemic is surely that we can have more honest conversations with voters

Universities are bound by quite a tight legal framework on who they can and can't exclude. "Tommy Robinson" has a record of unlawful speech, which is one of the grounds on which a speaker can be denied Universities cannot bar a speaker on the grounds of lawful speech or opinions.

This could be a nice end-of-term treat for your students.

It was a big audience - the Sheldonian was almost full - but it was heavily male. (In the sections opposite & below me I counted around 80% men, of all ages). The reaction was hard to gauge, but there was little sign of rapture. I suspect a lot, like me, had come out of curiosity rather than support

As far as I can see, no public explanation has been given for the shift - and that form of words comes up a lot. To me, that suggests a reason that someone wants kept private. I wonder if the Scruton family were uneasy about some of those invited, but that's just me speculating.

He wouldn't necessarily see them as acolytes. It's a very Silicon Valley model: there's a board that appoints a CEO from its number. For Yarvin, one of the follies of democracy is that it lets the shareholders pick the CEO in a one-person-one-vote election.

You (the booker) can choose - but the right to hire a venue would usually come with the right to advertise on its listing. I think it's good that the right not to advertise is rarely exercised.

Yarvin has a slightly odd conception of "monarchy", which is basically a kind of CEO model involving a board. So MBS can be made to fit that model.

It would be a strange if you could hire an events space but not appear on that venue's events-listing. Indeed, it might be more concerning if a venue could be hired for "secret" events.

I wonder if this is an example of where Labour's increasingly middle-class, professional base (esp in London) *is* a problem. I do not own a £1.5 million home (I don't own a home at all) but I know a lot of people who do. So this makes it *seem* "normal", in a way that appears mad outside that world

Intrigued, and mildly alarmed, to be invited to a "skip-level meeting".

Isn't a "skip" what you use when you're tearing down a building, and need somewhere to throw all the old furnishings you're ripping out???

There are some great photos from the 1975 referendum campaign of Barbara Castle in her 60-year old "suffragette blouse", which she found in her mother's wardrobe.

"I love it", she wrote, "all mutton chop sleeves & meticulous beading". "If only someone were threatening to force feed me for my views"

"Nigel Farage has been paid over £330,000 by GB News in the last year alone.

Farage is deep in the pockets of a company that aims to replace the BBC".

Punchy video from @eddavey.libdems.org.uk.

"Jenkins was a highly effective minister, despite a remarkably relaxed working day. He rarely arrived at the office before 10 o’clock in the morning and insisted on an hour and half for lunch each day. He would return to the office nourished and lubricated shortly before three, then refused to take work home (though he sometimes did half an hour in the car). As he freely acknowledged, he could hardly claim to be ‘excessively overworked’ (p. 250). Barbara Castle confessed to her diary in 1968 that ‘The way that man refuses to sacrifice his social life to his political duties never fails to astonish’. Jenkins was contemptuous of such attacks, believing that a minister should focus on ‘the main areas of policy’ and resist the temptation to micromanage. Castle, he wrote, ‘made exhaustion into a political virility symbol, and was foolishly critical of those who did not believe that decisions were best taken in a state of prostration’ (pp. 326–7)."

That's a great point about the skillset of being an effective minister, which is not the same as being a policy wonk.

(Though Castle was baffled by another effective minister, Roy Jenkins, & how he was able to take long lunches in the middle of the day. He was equally bemused at her work ethic).

Amazing archival footage here of drivers staggering out of the pub, slurring their words, while insisting they're fit to drive.

Yet most also express an instinctive deference to "the law of the land". Rather different to those Tories telling people to smash ULEZ cameras...
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