This document is the product of a broken administration, motivated by cynicism, immune to human decency, with a weak-to-non-existent understanding of the policy area they wish to legislate in.

the one good thing about this guy winning his seat at the last election will be him losing his seat at the next one

Mr Bush once again hits the nail on the head. I always expected the Starmer government to be disappointing — its ambitions were so low, available personnel so mediocre — but not that it would put quite so much effort into making itself despicable. Seems quite happy with being beneath contempt.

Good of Ben to see the irony in this for us all. Which Danish policy has the greater public benefit, I wonder?

The main issue I see with Labour is careerism. It's so glaringly exposed in McSweeney's inept machinations and Starmer's appeasement. It got them up the greasy pole and now there they are, in full view, with their thumbs up their arses. No vision. No moral purpose. No passion. And it shows.

We've gone from "Vote Labour to keep Farage out" to "Vote Labour to get a Farage copy".

Rachel Reeves’ mad income tax plan would have exploded a torpedo under the government, and for all his apparent joylessness Keir Starmer seems fundamentally unserious. It’s hard not to conclude that this government is hopeless ✍️ Desmond Clifford

To state the eye-bleedingly obvious, Labour's line shouldn't be "We are going to be bastards, because otherwise worse bastards will come after us' it should be 'There are bastards going after vulnerable people, so we're throwing the whole weight of HMG into preventing the bastards from winning'.

Undercover priest lays the foundation for later papal proclamations.

This is very good -- fits with Chris Dillow's blog about why, almost wherever we look in the British political world, all we find is ****. chrisdillow.substack.com/p/on-incompe...

Absolutely. Similar bit of non-obvious wisdom from somebody else (sorry, forget who — @gilesyb.bsky.social?) last week, that the problem of Starmer etc. campaigning as “boring but competent” is what do they do when it becomes clear as day that they’re not even competent?

Quite.

Not me, Ben. Even before all of this rubbish over the past year and a half, their only selling point was that they were not the Tories. Not enough then, barely an argument at all by now.

The level of cowardice and incompetence of this government is astonishing. Five years of total legislative and executive power burned up in little over a year

In some ways it's quite reassuring that 'Number 10 staff' (who could it be we ask?) are treating the PM with the same contempt they treat their voter base and the electorate more generally.

Good summary. Perhaps we just have to be patient and wait a while longer for the Real Keir to stand up? Pensioners are, after all, not famously fast learners. He’s only had a few years to learn how to be an effective political leader, after all.

i fully agree with this theory and in my actual field, british architectural history, The Problem is that Salisbury Cathedral is built on top of a lake and no i am not exaggerating

IIRC this is the occasion when an RAF air raid took place during one meeting and they had to descend into the Chancellery cellars. When one German official said “England is finished” Molotov snapped back “if this is so, then why are we sitting here and whose bombs are falling above us?”

👇 To extend the metaphor, it’s a serious problem that the state continues to rely on economic methods that can’t see systems and can’t conceive of ‘positive sum games’ built via cooperation and collective-problem solving: a machine economics for a social world. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

An excellent, impartial analysis of Trump's incendiary January 6th 2021 speech. From the....BBC. www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-u...

The BBC is right to be self-critical and right to apologise to President Trump. But time for a reality check - there is more fake news on Trump's Truth and Social feed in a day than there is on BBC total output in a decade.

Read this & wonder at the BBC being done for misrepresentation of its message: apnews.com/article/elec...

I’m fed up of Labour ministers (& MPs) like this. So cheap.

Good. But the level of non-RT membership participation is turning pathetic. The NT remains vulnerable to astroturfing. The problem is its constitution — giving a vote to “members” most of whom are just customers looking for a discount on their outings. Means an organized minority remains a threat

Modern cities need more herons like this.

Re the death of Dick Cheney, it is worth reflecting on the inflection point in this chart when considering his legacy.

The view from our balcony tonight, before it went completely dark.

A great thread on the difference between history (wie es eigentlich gewesen) & stories. Maybe “Philomena” wasn’t altogether true either?

Thanks, Ed. This time it really was a Royal knockout.

It's that moment again for National Trust members to vote to keep the entryists out. Quick and easy to vote and please do so by 31st of October Quick Vote link keeps the AstroTurfers out. Then share. Thank you. secure.cesvotes.com/V3-3-0/nt25/...

Not the Most Moral Prison Service in the World. Perhaps “fighters” is not the best translation from the Hebrew?

I for one think the Epstein Ballroom will be magnificent. I love the decor theme of “what if Uday Hussein ran a Ramada Inn.” And giving it a theme song everyone will associate with it is a stroke of brilliance! “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” is very catchy.

The very definition of an optimist.

It’s a beautiful morning, for a change. I prefer this to grey.

A bleak dystopia where Sharia law predominates, while economic and cultural divisions mean that the different communities live parallel, segregated lives. Oh, wait, that’s Dubai …

This might interest somebody -- @johnspringford.bsky.social are you the guy who's recently(ish) had a heat pump fitted? Well, we haven't, but we do have 4 Kw of solar panels. So I've checked the "energy balance" of our house this year. What you see is our gas & grid elec consumption minus PV output

News that matters, not that anything will be done about it.

Even if this image is AI, I DO NOT CARE. It deserves to be true. Ludicrous, vain old ****.

Absolutely. Hence my impatience with any “brave little Israel” or Everything is Self-Defence narrative, which ran out of road half a century ago.

A reminder that the Telegraph was once a serious newspaper with proper reporters. How did this ever get through their editorial scrutiny?

Public Service Announcement: time to save the NT from astroturfing reactionary nutters, AGAIN.

Exactly. Politics in the US is no longer a debate about which policies to adopt within a liberal framework of accepted rules. It's now a blood sport and one side playing it like it's still cricket won't work

Private Eye

Here's one factor English commentators will miss: on the left is a map of Welsh speakers, on the right is voting intention