@sundersays.bsky.social
Director of @britishfuture.bsky.social Author How to be a Patriot https://harpercollins.co.uk/products/how-to-be-a-patriot-why-love-of-country-can-end-our-very-british-culture-war-sunder-katwala?variant=40518936559694 Evertonian
Immigration behind lack of funding (40%), staff shortages (38%) and government policy (35%) as main causes of current pressures on the health service in May 2023. Cons (22%) more likely than Labour voters (5%) to cite immigration as a major cause of NHS pressure
www.health.org.uk/reports-and-...
I was also at the Norwich game, where Everton won the league, though it was hard to see the other end, where Pat Van Den Hauwe scored after 45 seconds
Everton's 1986/87 run-in
Everton's last league title-winning season involved a crucial win at Highbury with ten games to go in March 1987: I was there as a 13 year old!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjsQ...
Arsenal v Everton billed as a top eight clash
If European nations help Trump resolve the Strait of Hormuz situation, they should begin by offering strategic advice to help the US draft a plan.
The most important help the US needs is grown up supervision, not military assets.
If the delinquents are willing to listen, then perhaps we can talk.
Hard decisions for European leaders on the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump's juvenile military galavantry is 100% responsible for this situation. He should take responsibility for resolving it.
But hard reality - a prolonged US failure to do so will cause a global economic meltdown. Everyone will suffer.
Important news for EU citizens with settled status in the U.K. who naturalise - Home Office says you CAN use your other passport. Made change to gov.uk two weeks after telling everyone British dual nationals could not
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
There may be about a one in six chance of England winning in France tonight
www.independent.co.uk/sport/rugby/...
Ireland can celebrate the Triple Crown.
But they don't know if they might be Six Nations champions too without cheering on the English in Paris tonight (?!)
I've ran into more than a few immigrants who don't understand the NHS is free even after paying this big fee.
As a result they don't go to the doctor even if they could do with going.
We’ve paid it three times. Thousands of pounds a go. All while’s both also working and paying tax like everything else. The true impact of immigration on the NHS is that it’s keeping it alive.
This is Emperor's New Clothes stuff
- For everyone in his political tribe/coalition, the key may be fear of his influence in primaries. But it is going to tank politically now if they can't contain the real damage
- Other institutions including media have few excuses for lowering all standards
In principle good to increase awareness of the NHS surcharge
Govt doesn't try much
- public may say: why isn't it better then?
- Home Sec wants to say her changes will reduce a £ drain (much exaggerated)
Though overall govt push to reduce immig numbers more has net costs (fiscal + NHS £)
We do seem to hold Zack Polanski and Kemi Badenoch to much higher standards of scrutiny of their public statements than the US Congress or a good chunk of the media seem to attempt for this President
The baffling thing about this age is how this utter chump gets routinely held to much lower standards than anybody else anywhere just by normalising being an utter chump & everyone just accepting that's how it is and who he is
Trump says he has "destroyed 100% of Iran's military capability but its easy for them to send a drone, drop a mine or deliver a close range missile somewhere"
Here is my best Habermas story.
I am grad student waiting in LONG line for Habermas talk. There is a tall man waiting in front of me. Line moves so we are eventually visible to organizers, a woman looks over & makes horrified face. Runs out: "Prof Habermas! You don't have to wait in line!"
I think that is good for getting policy right. But it is very difficult to get significant public communication gains from better data, because few people will hear it. Five out of six people don't know there has been a fall in immigration from peak levels, though net migration is down 70-80%
NHS surcharge is probably the paradigm of a popular policy in principle. But ...
[Apart from the 1.5 million people who pay it & some others involved in recruitment of people. The double taxation point is not well known, and it has premises about net contribution aren't well known or intuitive]
A towering figure who leaves a long and lasting mark on our understanding of political thought.
(Though a German colleague once confided that he actually read him in English because the translator had been forced to unpack some of the densest German prose in history).
Habermas was one of the giants of modern thought, proponent of the ‘Public Sphere’ concept that underpinned my book on the history of celebrity culture
For example, Joachim Fest (1926-2006) who published the Ernst Nolte revisionist piece, was the son of a teacher dismissed for anti-Nazi views who was kept out of the Hitler youth. Today's < 75 year olds were born after 1949 into the Federal Republic or the GDR
www.theguardian.com/news/2006/se...
Habermas, born in 1929, was three and a half when Hitler took power, and fourteen to sixteen in 1943-45 as a teenage member of the Hitler Youth.His death at 96 does symbolise a generational shift from personal memory in 1980s vs 2020s debates on history+ identity
www.theguardian.com/books/2017/f...
Habermas role as a public intellectual included opening the "historians debate" (1986) critiquing some forms of recent German historiography
"The only patriotism that will not estrange us from the West is a constitutional patriotism"
His 1986 piece
germanhistory-intersections.org/en/knowledge...
"Scotland without a triple crown since 1990, without a championship since 1999, today is a day when they could lift a trophy or two that are not one-off encounters"
"For Ireland, triple crowns and championships have become commonplace - and could win both, but need English help for the latter"
A very/unusually big Ireland v Scotland match
Jurgen Habermas, philosopher and German, European public intellectual has died, aged 96 (Spiegel)
www.spiegel.de/kultur/philo...
Cohesion plan & whether defining anti-Muslim hostility helps, at 14 minutes
Our latest #WeekInWestminster
🌍 Iran conflict Admiral Lord West & Tobias_Ellwood
🧑⚖️Jury trials @verabaird.bsky.social & @cassiarowland.bsky.social
🕌 Social cohesion @sundersays.bsky.social & Kishwer Falkner
🌹Labour strategy Paul Ovenden @pronouncedalva.bsky.social
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...