Re-elect Sister Smudge for Secretary-Treasurer

"cut taxes on the middle class" is practically a shibboleth across a wide swathe of American politics and has been since well before the podcasts tbh

Booker hasn't shown much interest in soaking the rich, either, so I'm not sure this can be attributed to that.

The Means-Testing Industrial Complex The vendors getting rich from putting administrative burdens on the poor

I think govts should be thinking about contracting from a sovereignty perspective, not just efficiency.
This matters in three ways. First, the Abundance-adjacent debate on state capacity need to consider how contractors undermine the ability to do stuff.
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-means-...

The obvious example here is Elon Musk. Musk is an explicitly white nationalist political force now, aligned with Republicans, but implementing his politics by supporting the far right in at least 18 countries around the world. Within the US, he was Trump’s largest donor during the 2024 campaign, and used his position in government to dismantle parts of government that progressives have championed, often in legally questionable ways. The U.S. government has developed a multi-layered dependence on Musk’s companies, particularly in aerospace, national security, and digital infrastructure. If it wants to send astronauts to space, or bring them home, it increasingly must turn to Musk. The DOD depends upon Musk for both Starlink for internet service, and for military-use satellites. Grok has been embedded into government, including the Pentagon. Most recently, HHS is sending users to Grok as part of its Make America Healthy Again campaign.

A third sovereignty concern: your contractor is your ideological enemy, deeply embedded in government, with more resources than many nation states, and willing to use his power to undermine your policy goals. I don't think Dems have thought through if and how they would dislodge such contractors.

The Columnist's We: a pronoun that at first glance looks like an attempt at contrition, but on closer inspection is trying to shift the blame to everyone else.

can everyone on here stop the conspiratorial chat about developers and fire

obviously glasgow's had dodgy fires in abandoned buildings but this is not that! it was a busy, occupied building in the city centre

you're just taking attention from the real scourge which was likely unsafe vapes

a minor relief here, at least

Glasgow Central is the busiest station in Scotland, and 3rd outside of London.
Luckily no casualties reported yet, but leaving aside my personal interest in the Grade A listed buildings at risk- this is going to hit commuters and Scotland particularly very hard.

I am also shocked by the lack of coverage of this fire. It’s so far only affecting the Union Street buildings, but one of those has partially collapsed, from what I can tell backwards into the station. And it’s not yet contained. This is major and more than halfway down BBC’s homepage.

Central station is such a lynchpin of the West Scotland economy and social scene that we will feel it if it's out of commission for a few months.

Genuinely sick seeing all these photos and the smoke from Partick. Central Station is such a fundamental part of Glasgow's heritage.

absolutely grim

the id, ego and superego of the British press, though I guess here it's all id

Yep Hadley Freeman reprinted this lie in her Guardian column, and refused to apologise for it.

The Graun printed the most graceless retraction possible, never retweeted it or apologised z

are these amenable liberal ideals in the room with us just now

Oh I agree there were reasons for the break, just a big sceptical of some of the mythmaking around it.

It is funny that when the New Zealanders were talking about changes to their MMP system, their electoral commission brought up Scottish Labour's disastrous 2011 campaign, where their aversion to dual candidacy led to most of the senior MSPs getting the hoof because they only stood for constituencies

I've definitely seen much better candidate balancing elsewhere, that's for sure.

fair, though Scottish Labour's anti-coalition stance is as much about jockeying for position in other levels of government as anything else.

if anything one of the ongoing issues of MMP has been the small but persistent assumption from some corners that the regional vote is a "second vote" rather than a concurrent election run in a different but linked system, which takes a little more time (but again, not desperately so) to pick up on

I don't really rate STV for national elections but again it's one of those things where it's portrayed as something entirely beyond the ken of voters used to FPTP at UK elections. It's just ranking people! It's honestly pretty intuitive!

tbf I think the Scottish parties have gotten a good handle on STV for much the same reason (it would be malpractice not to), though probably not to quite the same degree.

reminded that the common story told by the Economist et al is that Thatcherism was needed to restore economic dynamism to the UK, which is quite difficult to see in that chart, isn't it

INSULINDIAN PHASMID - I exist.

YOU - I exist too.

I really do think this is one of those things where a lot of commentators assume voters to be less capable and adaptable than they actually would be in practice.

one of the other aggravating things is so much of this conversation keeps being had as if there *aren't* alternatives already implemented in the UK. It kind of gets hinted at and talked around but in a "that's except for viewers in Scotland, Wales and NI" kind of way if at all.

SP26: Scotland’s right-wingers shouldn’t be dismissed or exaggerated Scotland was for a long time assumed to be resolutely opposed to the right. Whilst Reform's rise overturns those prior claims, some are overcorrecting their narratives, glossing over a lingering divergence.

SP26: Scotland’s right-wingers shouldn’t be dismissed or exaggerated

Scotland was for a long time assumed to be resolutely opposed to the right. Whilst Reform's rise overturns those prior claims, some are overcorrecting their narratives, glossing over a lingering divergence.

!

She is otherwise an absolute sweetheart but is an inveterate grubbler who does not accept the concept of designated mealtimes and will make it your problem

Pleading probably has no effect though:

"you know it is not time"
"MROW"
"why are you doing this"
"MROW"
"please, some peace"
"MROW"