Praisegod Barebones’ Hallowe’en Name.

Yvette Cooper making a late bid in the ´person I am least proud to have shared an education with’ stakes.

Or perhaps by the very nature of pretence.

Thwarted by an unfamiliar conceptual obstacle. Damn.

Maybe I should pretend to be French.

Somewhat daunted by the prospect of giving my first ever conference keynote at ISOS today.

Arrived in Dublin for ISOS. Time for coffee and breakfast...

For 'since' read 'if', maybe.

Just bought it before hopping on a 'plane...

So on the one hand this seems a bit like the meeting where a bunch of women make a point and it gets ignored and then a man says it and the other men all think he's a genius...

...otoh given that men are like this and the point is presumably to get men to take the advice maybe it's needed.

@marbleicehook.bsky.social

All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to say ‘hey, evil seems pretty popular with some parts of the electorate, let’s try a few evil policies and see how they go over with the voters’

No, I agree with you about Starmer's leadership campaign (and there is a significant contrast there with Blair, I think)

But Id be interested in any examples from the GE campaign.

I'm not denying that there are some Machiavellian schemers out there but it's quite striking that with both Blair and Starmer, the best way to predict what they would do in government was to ask 'what is it they have said they would do?'

I'm not being a smart-arse. If you think 'gosh this is anomalous' you'll probably think the next Labour leader will be a bit better or - at most - ask what can be done to prevent such anomalies in future.

If you think 'ok I was wrong about this party' you might try something else.

Im baffled by people whose response to the Starmer government is 'this isnt really a Labour government' and not 'I was badly mistaken about what a Labour government with a massive majority would look like.'

Have you considered the possibility that the policies pursued by a party with a massive majority might reflect the actual values of that party?

Have you considered the 'Many Interpretations' interpretation?

There’s a play by Max Frisch (I think) which at a key moment contains the lines ‘Gelbe Schuhe! Ihr habt alle gelbe Schuhe’.

He was very weary; the day had been long, and full of dragons.

You’d think infallibility counted for *something*

While none of this helps, I suspect that the roots of English (and I think it is specifically English rather than British) discomfort with foreign languages run very deep.

Forward!

2 Chainz sampled Tom Lehrer's The Old Dope Peddler 60 years after it had been recorded. Lehrer's response to the license request: "As sole copyright owner of 'The Old Dope Peddler', I grant you motherfuckers permission to do this. Please give my regards to Mr. Chainz, or may I call him 2?"

RIP TOM

Is Date of Birth *not* a required field? (This would be unusual in the UK, I think.)

Honestly, very few people care about 'net migration'. The thing that these Reform and Conservative voters care about is something which - with good reason - you cant directly ask about in an opinion poll (and couldnt report on even if you did.)

Wondering about the entry for Kantian Dessert in the #RoutledgePhilosophyCookbook

Nice idea, but I can't see any of the current front bench undertaking a fast, however appropriate that might be in the circumstances.

I think its reasonable to assume that when a government with the kind of majority that Labour has does something, its because he wants to.

Yes, you could maybe say that. Of some sort.

That could also work, though I took the more strenuous route myself…

Now wondering whether an upcoming trip to Dublin will be enough to make me read ULYSSES.