LonWon

‘The 0.001%’: a quick visual breakdown of the world’s wealthiest people About 56,000 people control three times as much wealth as half of humanity. Here’s one way to illustrate that

Ways to visualise this grotesque inequality
www.theguardian.com/news/2025/de...

Not nationally, sure, but if they stand in the same seats as when they were Tories, there will be not just a small amount of name recognition in those constituencies, but also a record the defectors will have to defend.

Still, 2029 is an eternity in politics.

By "Old Labour", do you mean pre-Blair?

I've seen defiant Facebook comments in response to posts about the current flu wave that seem to be in denial about the germ theory of disease.

Maybe bots, but are we losing our collective understanding of hygiene, sanitation, vaccines, & antibiotics because of political contrarianism?

Partisan politics contributes to corruption by creating a system where loyalty to a political party is prioritized over the public interest, leading to a variety of detrimental behaviors. This can manifest in numerous ways, from financial misconduct to policy manipulation and erosion of public trust. Key Ways Partisanship Fuels Corruption: Abuse of Power for Private/Party Gain: Political corruption is fundamentally defined as the "abuse of entrusted power for private gain". In a highly partisan environment, the "private gain" can be interpreted as the gain for the political party, its members, or key donors, rather than the public as a whole. Voter Bias and Impunity: Extreme partisanship can create a "perceptual screen" where voters interpret information about corruption through a party lens. Voters are less likely to perceive the actions of their own co-partisans as corrupt and may be reluctant to punish them electorally, even when presented with clear evidence of misdeeds. This lack of accountability can enable corrupt behavior to persist.

Councils across the country are suffering the effects of Tory austerity, continuing under Labour.

So this is a Labour MP loudly trumpeting that the Labour government is giving help for the homeless to the city council controlled by Labour but not to the county council that Labour doesn't control.

Lib-Dem/Green-led Devon County Council is cutting its homelessness budget from £1.4m last year, to £500,000 next year. This was a Tory decision in the last administration, carried on by this new administration. It claims this followed a public consultation - I’m not sure the people of #Exeter want to see a reduction in support for people most in need. I’m calling on Devon County Council to reverse this decision. Meanwhile, the government has increased Exeter City Council’s funding for this winter through the Rough Sleeping Prevention & Recovery Grant, and I’ve been discussing the new homelessness strategy with Ministers, which is being published imminently. We can end the scourge of homelessness and support people with complex needs into rebuilding their lives. But we must work together to achieve that.

All credit to @steveracemp.bsky.social for standing up for Exeter's homeless. We're experiencing one of the largest rises in deaths in the country (21 last year).

But this aggressive party political framing is misjudged.

Celebrities write to Prime Minister to mark Human Rights Day Well-known figures including Stephen Fry and Joanna Lumley marked Human Rights Day by urging the Government not to water down vital protections.

Letter from Julian Barnes, Stephen Fry, Joanna Lumley, Harriet Walter and others
www.freedomfromtorture.org/news-and-sto...

Thursday briefing: Will Labour’s human rights overhaul curb or fuel the far right? In today’s newsletter: As the UK joins a group of European governments pushing for stricter asylum rules, critics warn of the risks of weakening safeguards

Yesterday the UK proudly stood alongside hard-right governments to call for human rights to be constrained.

This surely was why people voted Labour to get rid of the Tories (alongside punishing the old, disabled, neurodivergent, doctors, & trans people).
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Just 0.001% hold three times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds Data from World Inequality Report also showed top 10% of income-earners earn more than the other 90%

60,000 people – 0.001% of the world’s population – control three times as much wealth as the entire bottom half of humanity.

And they're getting richer faster.
www.theguardian.com/inequality/2...

Exeter councillor defects from Conservatives to Reform Alison Sheridan says she wants decisive action on several issues including illegal immigration.

This Exeter councillor stood shoulder-to-shoulder with far right thugs intimidating women and children refugees.

The fact that she was never disciplined by Exeter Conservatives for this shows how close contemporary Conservatives are to Reform and the far right.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

British columnists on Labour antisemitism: Who could even imagine having such horrifically hateful views in the 21st century?!

British columnists on Reform antisemitism: Come on, we all graffitied swastikas on our Jewish classmates' lockers at school, didn't we?

Mandatory specific impact test - Statutory Equalities Duties Complete Statutory Equalities Duties The Home Office assess that there may be some indirect impacts as a result of the changes including raising the skills threshold and salary requirements. These are more likely to affect younger people who are likely to be earlier in their career and therefore less likely to have reached the higher salary of more experienced colleagues. It may also affect those where there is still evidence of lower pay including women and those with disabilities. However, the Home Office consider that these changes are justified for legitimate policy aims of lowering net migration and reducing reliance on overseas workers. In relation to social care, the Home Office assess that there may be some indirect impact of closing the route on those from countries which make up the majority of care workers including Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Ghana, India and Pakistan. This may indirectly affect characteristics including ethnicity, religion, race. The department also know that the sector is more commonly occupied by women so likely to have a greater impact on women than men from those countries. The Home Office also recognise that this may have an impact on user of care services who are likely to be older people and those with disabilities. The Home Office believes that despite these points the changes are justified for a number of policy reasons including reducing net migration and ending reliance on overseas recruitment.

There are some spectacularly misguided "assumptions" in the Home Office's impact assessment on its changes to immigration rules. More than that though, it confirms not only will these changes cost the country billions, they are also discriminatory. 1/
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6937e6...

Trump definitely admires it.

Is he so weak that he can't stand up to it?

Or is he hoping that enabling Putin will allow the US to annex Greenland and elsewhere?

Great to see Exeter's MP @steveracemp.bsky.social is newly aware of child poverty as high as 30% in some neighbourhoods.

2 million children lack a warm home or adequate food.

MPs like Steve Race voted to keep the two-child benefit cap in place for 18 months.
www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=...

Will Starmer risk the Atlantic alliance?

Will you?
bsky.app/profile/lonw...

What's going to happen?
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They want us to believe that the people in politics are 'all as bad as each other', because they want us to disengage with politics.

"Europe a 'decaying group of nations led by 'weak' people, Trump says. "US president blames leaders for being ppllitically correct' and says migrationis 'unchecked, unvetted' in interview with Politico"

I think it's clear now that President Trump intends to "bring peace" by surrendering to Putin's aggression.

This ends the war in Ukraine for now, but emboldens Putin for continued empire expansion.

Will European leaders now risk defending Ukraine and so break with the US?

How did we reclaim the language of the far right? This year, those who put together the Guardian’s Christmas campaign had a clever idea about how to market it. What if they re-purposed slogans regularly used by the far right, and subverted them so that they had a more hopeful message? So it will run with messages like “Our country is full – of people who can heal division” and “Bring back good old-fashioned British values – like empathy and compassion.”

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Charity appeal by @theguardian.com guardian.ctdonate.org

Picture of Laura Kuenssberg and the headline "Young people are getting a 'raw deal, and that's good news for the Greens and Reform"

What an odd framing for a BBC News headline.

Opposition parties are gleeful at bad news for young people?

@jomichell.bsky.social I feel a bit like @rory-stewart.bsky.social on @therestpolitics.bsky.social:

"The most important subject in our democracy is so technical that politicians are struggling to explain it properly" and that leaves us open to populist blather.

Would definitely be keen on economics academia playing a more active role in helping to educate those of us who struggle to look beyond the plausible-sounding politician sound-bites.

Myth-busting, elucidation of alternatives, areas of genuine doubt... that kind of thing.

Is MMT as dangerous as its opponents claim? “Modern monetary theory (MMT) is dangerous nonsense.” That line, or something very close to it, is now appearing with weary regularity from left-wing economists and commentators James Meadway, Grace B...

I don't think the onus is on @graceblakeley.substack.com at all.

@richardjmurphy.bsky.social started this by making a series of unsourced claims about her views of MMT. Despite her denial of these views, he's doubled down with half a dozen hostile blogposts
www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/11...

Good advice.

For me, his inability to engage in thoughtful discussion without fury and insults is a red flag, but it would be good to read an accessible critique at some point, and a discussion of whether any of his policy suggestions have value.

A key question for those of us (like Polanski) who aren't economists is whether there are viable alternatives to the spending constraints of the last 15 years.

Prof Murphy appears to offer one. But he declaims critics as liars & fools; they say MMT is a cult.

What to do?
bsky.app/profile/lonw...

As far as I’m concerned, MMT is an entirely internally-consistent theory - and one which largely describes the operation of fiscal and monetary policy correctly. My issue is that proponents of MMT have an utterly incoherent view of state power under capitalism.

I don't believe she called MMT either.

She's questioning what vision those who condemn her for rejecting it (which she doesn't) have for taking advantage of MMT.

Yes and sometimes I forget that, because I came across good policy ideas in Richard Murphy's blog and they get filed in my brain next to "MMT".

So I think you're right, and Grace Blakeley is making this case well.

Winning the next election crucially depends not on purity of thought, energising the base, or word-based triangulation; but on bringing as many people from the left and centre as possible on board a shared policy platform.