George Carty

(From https://jon-chadwick.com/2025/08/07/corbyn-musk/) Housing might be more affordable in areas where Reform are threatening, but that doesn’t mean change people’s feelings. A mass of new housing was announced in Sunderland, and all of the replies on FB were angry people complaining that there were no houses for local people and all of the new housing will go to foreigners, asylum seekers and incomers

I mentioned on @jonchadwick.bsky.social's blog that housing shouldn't be a contributing factor in the Reform threat to Labour (because Reform doesn't have much support where housing costs are highest) and he responded as follows:

The gambling industry is a licence to print money. Tax it properly – and turbocharge the fight against child poverty | Gordon Brown New thinking is urgent now. I have not seen such deep poverty since I grew up in a mining and textiles town blighted by unemployment, says former prime minister Gordon Brown

Right behind Gordon on this - gambling is a vice with no up-side

Just make sure the revenue does not leak away beyond the reach of the UK taxman

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

You've mentioned "remember where you came from!" sentiment in traditional working-class areas: I think what this _really_ means in practice is "don't wash your hands of your family!", which is what people who move to London and other big cities are seen as doing.

Why did you use the American spelling rather than "aeroplane"?

How much do you think (as I asked on your blog post) that anti-immigrant hatred in left-behind areas is about geographically-immobile natives being jealous of geographically-mobile immigrants?

A possibly ill-judged speech that offended people of colour (and which thus may make Labour vulnerable to a Corbynite challenge) isn't the same thing though as actual racist _policies_.

Anti-Zionism in practice means calling for close to half of the world's Jewish population (that part which lives in Israel) to be driven from their homes, so I can see why many people would regard it as intrinsically antisemitic.

“Island of Strangers”? Labour, Reform and the Real Immigration Debate - Industrial Estate of Mind Keir Starmer's immigration policy isn't about appeasing Reform; it's a bigger plan to reshape Britain’s low-wage, low-productivity economy.

"Island of Strangers" wasn't an attack on immigration: it was a reference to "Bowling Alone", warning how people are becoming isolated from their communities and thus easy prey for far-right propaganda on social media.

How do you define "pushing back"?

Do you mean simply calling it out in the media (which faces the problem of course that most of the media isn't on their side), or do you mean actually having Lucy Jane White arrested, or even having GB News itself shut down?

Burn baby burn! 🔥🔥🔥

State of HATE 2025: The Opportunist Extremist: The Strange Radicalisation of Matthew Goodwin Once a respected academic studying the far right, Matthew Goodwin has become one of its most influential figures. Now a GB News pundit and Reform UK fanboy, he’s traded scholarship for reactionary gri...

@hopenothate.org.uk has an interesting article on Goodwin.

S. Yorks, Brexit and USA-philia I’ve been thinking back to growing up in South Yorkshire, trying to understand some of the cultural roots of Brexit and it strikes me that…

AIUI in the UK there are some anti-immigration people who aren't racist but just want the UK's population to be a good deal smaller -- perhaps because they're looking longingly at the UK's settler-colonial offspring:

Once they stop the small boats they will demand an end to all immigration

Once they have an end to all immigration they will demand repatriation of minorities, regardless of where they were born or originated

This is ethnic cleansing. And the violent riots are the first steps

Sorry, I meant to ask whether it had made it easier to "other" _London_ in the eyes of parochial Britons.

I thought it was Qingdao that Japan gained then, while they got Kwantung in 1905 after the Russo-Japanese War?

And the blame for Hiroshima and Nagasaki must ultimately reside with the megalomaniacs in the Kwantung Army who started the war in the first place.

Article 1, Section 9 & 10 have been removed from the official Govt website on the US Constitution. Among numerous points:
•Section 9 forbids suspending The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus
•Section 10 forbids ex post facto laws

This better be a joke. Ignoring these is full blow dictatorship

Is freedom of religion now no longer a British value?

It's not that they're unaware so much as that they have very little fiscal headroom to play with since Liz Truss's mini-budget fiasco spooked the international investors.

The idea that Islamphobia does not exist "as a concept" is a wholly idiotic statement. For GB News to broadcast what is in effect a call for a muslim Edict of Expulsion - without any pushback or context - would seem to break the rules. But @ofcom.bsky.social can only act if it receives complaints.

AIUI NHS funding carried on increasing even under the Tories, just not by enough to cope with the surging demand imposed by the ageing population.

Do you think the extremely high cost of housing in London (which likely has its origins way back in the Attlee government) has made it easier to "other" in the eyes of parochial Britons?

I'd have normally used "provincial" but I guess "parochial" may be even better.

Wasn't another factor in the Wirtschaftswunder that the large number of kids that Hitler had encouraged German women to have were now coming of age?

Does Hebrew have a separate word for the West Bank settlements illegal even under Israeli law, usually described in English as "outposts"?

Non-white Hong Kongers fleeing CCP oppression weren't dehumanised either, only Africans and Middle Easterners that could be portrayed as responsible for their own plight through "breeding like rabbits".

Does "parochial" here mean "not living in a big city"?

Aren't the NHS and (via social care costs) local authorities on their knees more because of our ageing population than because of anything else?

I wonder if some of this anti-London and anti-Sadiq Khan propaganda was meant not for Britons but for New Yorkers, to try to discredit Zohran Mamdani, the Muslim candidate for mayor there?

Could "hitnakhalut" be translated into English as "colony" (more in the Imperial Roman sense than the 19th-century sense)?