[Tubby Isaacs]

One way to show HS2 in a good light would be to explain how the money it's costing isn't disappearing into some black hole. It's paying wages for everything from casual staff interviewing walkers on public footpaths a few years ago to blokes what drive big diggers for the next decade. That money gets recycled into the economy and wherever anyone employed on the project is working there will be spending on hotels, meals and all the rest. I don't doubt there will be some cronyism but a lot of the cost will be providing investment.

Yep, and we should get much better at building this stuff. Apparently the building happening is being done perfectly competently and to the (inflation adjusted) reset budget from a few years ago. Mark Harper confirmed this in the Summer.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

John Crace on form on the Tory conference:

There’s Suella Braverman. Mouthing off to anyone who will listen about how she loves refugees so much it’s time to abandon the UN convention and let them drown. No spiteful nonsense is too rabid for her to sweet-talk the right wing of the party.

Priti Patel has her own designs. She hasn’t forgiven Suella for taking her old job and she happily trash talks the home secretary as an attention seeker. Then there’s Liz Truss. Due to make an intervention on Monday. The more unhelpful the better. You’d have thought she might have enough self-worth to stay away. To gather what dignity she can. But no. Just too stupid to realise the damage she’s done.

We did then get Grant Shapps and James Cleverly. The idea of an internet chancer with multiple identities making it to defence secretary is a category error. Two fingers to the country. And Jimmy Dimly – aka Airmiles James – really just wanted to talk about the 60 countries he has visited while travelling first class. Simple pleasures. Oh! And we have a wonderful trade deal with Micronesia. It made you wonder why they bothered.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... are_btn_tw

[Boiler]

Marina Hyde on Laurence Fox.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... urence-fox

Reminder-wise, Laurence is the scion of the Fox acting dynasty whose CV long outperformed his talent, with his biggest role being Kevin Whately’s sidekick, Sergeant Hathaway, in Lewis. Whately had, of course, previously played John Thaw’s sidekick in Inspector Morse. But Hathaway never got his own standalone ITV Sunday night drama – not through lack of trying, I’m told – and Laurence moved on to fill a clearly yawning attention void by appearing on Question Time to accuse a mixed-race audience member of racism against him, or something.

Can I shock you? He was not happy. For lo, the next day Laurence’s house was raided by five or six police – which will certainly make some Londoners wonder whether the best way to get the Met to make a house call when you’ve had a burglary is to be a twat on a podcast.

After being released on bail, Laurence emerged brandishing a copy of Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. Just incredible perspective. I don’t know how he follows that. Maybe quoting Hannah Arendt at a nightclub doorman who won’t let him in.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Simon Jenkins phoning it in. Comments BTL are not impressed.

Robert Colville is from the Centre for Policy Studies, but right about more things than Jenkins.

Of course allowing more homes to be built doesn't have to mean "capitulating to developers" at all.

[Boiler]

Marina Hyde on the subject of GB News:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... angopoulos

On the one hand, what could be more establishment than GB News, a London-based media outlet owned by an investment firm and a multimillionaire Oxford-educated hedge fund guy who apparently wants to buy the Daily Telegraph? This is a channel employing not only the recently knighted Jacob Rees-Mogg, but also a deputy chairman of the governing Conservative party, on whose weekly show he can be found interviewing his own MPs and ministers. Anyone to whom that feels anti-establishment has led a somewhat sheltered life. On the other hand … GB News also showcases the likes of Neil Oliver, a guy who once wandered amiably enough around the coast of the UK for BBC documentaries, and now shares antisemitic/new world order/paedo conspiracy theories and likens Bill Gates to Nazi experimenters, as well as calling openly for “revolution”.

[The Weeping Angel]

Aditya Chakraborty

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... mer-labour

The organisers of last weekend’s rally for Palestine estimate that about 350,000 people trudged through the pelting rain in central London. That is nearly four Wembley stadiums. In any gatherings of that size, there will inevitably be some ugliness. Stupid slogans, cruel sentiments and every so often, some fools doing a street corner re-enactment of Four Lions. But it is wrong to take that as representative of any such mass movement, just as one guy with a flare up his arse isn’t an ambassador for all football fans.

If we want to gauge public mood, we could look at the polling that shows three out of four Britons want an “immediate ceasefire” – an overwhelming majority that neither of the two main parties cares to represent. Nor are any of Westminster’s supposed Serious People talking about how to rebuild homes, schools, hospitals that have been razed to the ground or where a million displaced Palestinians are meant to go.

But why think about such hard questions when you can posture? This brings us naturally enough to Keir Starmer. The former human rights lawyer began by pledging his support for Israel, even as it broke international human rights law. As his own party began to protest, Starmer’s team dismissed it as grumbling from a few Muslim malcontents and continuity Corbynistas. Posters went up in Luton and Birmingham, naming Labour councillors who had acquiesced in their leader’s views and advising local people not to vote for them any more.

Yes Aditya he was reiterating what he'd said. He also called for water and electricty to be turned on and humanatarian aid to be delivered. I also think that a group that is banned in a number of Middle Eastern countries calling for Jihad is more than a few idiots calling for idiots, also here were some of the signs being displayed

[The Weeping Angel]

Compare and contrast with this article written by Jonathan Freedland, which manages to be far more thoughtful and nuanced that Chakraborty's

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ict-horror

This is not a football match. Though the way some spectators behave, watching from afar, you could be forgiven for making that mistake. At Wednesday’s game against Atletico Madrid, Celtic supporters defied a Uefa ban on political symbols by flying the Palestinian flag, expressing a long-established solidarity that has become part of the club’s identity. So strong is the allegiance to their chosen side – their team – that at a home game on the afternoon of 7 October, hours after the men of Hamas had begun their massacre of civilians in southern Israel, and while the torture and murder of families in their homes was still under way, a group of Celtic fans unfurled a banner. It read: “Victory to the resistance!!”

The club is trying to manage the situation, but it won’t be easy. Not least because this is a phenomenon that goes far beyond Celtic Park. Many millions around the world watch the Israel-Palestine conflict in the same way: as a binary contest in which you can root for only one team, and where any losses suffered by your opponent – your enemy – feel like a win.

You see it in those who tear down posters on London bus shelters depicting the faces of the more than 200 Israelis currently held hostage by Hamas in Gaza – including toddlers and babies. You see it too in those who close their eyes to the consequences of Israel’s siege of Gaza, to the impact of denied or restricted supplies of water, food, medicine and fuel on ordinary Gazans – including toddlers and babies. For these hardcore supporters of each side, to allow even a twinge of human sympathy for the other is to let the team down.

It would be comforting to shrug off this binary thinking as nothing more than the moral failing of the distant spectator – but it’s having a concrete effect, on the conflict itself and on those hurt by it.

For this tendency, this need, to see one side as all good and the other as all evil is hardly confined to the football terraces and the streets. This has been a season of open letters, from students, academics, actors and others – and the one-eyed nature of many of these texts has been striking. Even those written very soon after the mass slaughter of 7 October only rarely bring themselves to mention those killings specifically or even to name Hamas. The condemnation of Israel’s actual and anticipated response is detailed and plentiful, but the pain suffered by Israeli civilians is usually nodded to only under a blanket formulation covering all sides. There are long lists of demands on Israel, but no call for Hamas to release its captives, not even children or elderly people.

[Youngian]

Adrian’s having a winter break and spotted a big boat. https://www.theguardian.com/news/commen ... superyacht

One of two columns in the same week, Chiles is on fire

I was struggling with an underperforming poinsettia. Then I discovered how to make it shine.
Every year these houseplants delight us with their fiery foliage – and every year they sadden us when they lose it. Binning them is not the solution. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... e-it-shine

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Sweet shuddering Jeebus...

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Worrying news from John Crace, I'm sure we all wish him well.

[Abernathy]

Lordy. Get well quick, Mr. Crace.

[kreuzberger]

There's a lot of it about. Nitin Sawnhey announced the same on Xitter last week and has had stents shoved in. It scared the bejeebus out of him too, quite understandably.

[Tubby Isaacs]

This chap has a book out. Maybe it'll explain how changing the tenure of homes creates more places to live. Private rental is actually grimly "efficient" at fitting lots of people into not much space because it costs so much. If you change those to owner occupier or social rental, you'll most likely have far more unoccupied spare rooms.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Thread on this nonsense. The idea that there aren't all that many "households" is a particular favourite. Years ago, a regular houseshare in London had one person in each room and a communal lounge. Now I'm sure the lounge is occupied and some of the larger rooms have couples in. But yeah, same number of households, no problem.

And of course empty houses in ex-mining villages in the Rhondda are not much use if you need somewhere to live in Manchester. Even allowing for the fact that South Walians drive further to work (for a half decent paying job) than anyone else I've ever met. North Walians probably drive even further, mind.

[Youngian]

Tulsa, Oklahoma had a depopulation problem so came up with the idea of paying home workers to move there. It was a modest success and enough for other cities to copy them leading to a slowdown in Tulsa’s influx. What appears to be merging is that the trend toward homeworking isn’t as prevalent as the hype suggests.

Hi, remote workers!
Looking for a new start?
We offer a $10,000 grant to help you make Tulsa your new headquarters and your new home. https://www.tulsaremote.com/

[Tubby Isaacs]

Simon Jenkins again.

Putin is a dictator and a tyrant, but other forces also sustain him – and the west needs to understand them

To vote for Putin, you did not need to support his regime or his war with Ukraine. You might well be content with the one thing he promises: security and a patriotic response to western abuse. Nato’s escalation of its logistical aid to Ukraine into an all-out economic war on the Russian people enabled Putin to construct an anti-west coalition. It now extends from China and India to embrace a stage army of authoritarians across the globe. This economic war has clearly been counter-productive.

Of course, neither Russia nor China care about Ukraine, and are looking at getting what they can out of the conflict. But that's some way from "constructing an anti-West Coalition", let alone doing it because they're upset by sanctions on Russia.

The Guardian wasn't exactly well-disposed to Corbyn back in the day. I recall the art critic and the fashion critic having a pop. You think they'd be happy now, but there's an increasingly Wolfie Smith feel about them. This is the top Guardian Pick.

A large part of the reason for the decline in support for so-called Western Democracy is because it is a sham. Not as much as a sham as Rusiia's but still a sham. We are allowed to vote for different cheeks of the same arse, but the second an actual alternative is offered the whole of the Establishment comes out in force against it.

Again, not as bad as they do in Russia, but that's merely a matter of degree not of substance. Why should anyone expect people to be in favour of Western Democracy when it is so demonstrably fake?

"Not as bad as Russia" is one way of putting it.

Not the biggest fan of FPTP, but I've already got 4 options listed for my constituency- Green, Lib Dem, Con, Reform, and there'll be a Labour candidate chosen in due course. Might be a local independent or two (there are a lot of these on the council) as well. Seems like a reasonable ideological choice. Nothing on the ballot about only being allowed to vote for 2 of the "cheeks". Perhaps Mr Wolfie could explain. I suspect what he means is "people I don't like win elections".

[Youngian]

If Simon Jenkins believes India is an axis of evil with China he hasn’t been paying much attention.
Your homework this evening Simon is to write 500 words on the Quad
https://www.mofa.go.jp/fp/nsp/page1e_000396.html

[Andy McDandy]

I suspect what he means is "people I don't like win elections".

Nail, head, nutshell, etc.

See also the Corbynite definition of democratic, which either means approved by a small bunch of people at a very local level, or by a crowd of people in agreement at a conference and whatever the case, if you disagree you're undemocratic so fuck off and join the Tories you Nazi.

[Abernathy]

From The Guardian today :

Labour has 99% chance of forming next government, says elections expert Prof John Curtice
A lot of political commentary in the media is framed by the notion that there is still some doubt about the outcome of the next general election. In part that is just sensible caution, because nothing in life is certain, and unexpected things happen; in part that is because parts of the print media are very rightwing, and find it hard to conceive that Labour can or should form a government; and in part that is because journalism is about narrative, and it spoils the story if you reveal the ending in advance.

But it is probably time to give up pretending that the Conservatives might win. There are few people in the world of political commentary more cautious than Prof Sir John Curtice, the psephologist and lead election analyst for the BBC, and even he has decided it’s all over for the Tories.

Curtice told Sam Blewett from Politico that there is now a “99% chance of Labour forming the next administration”. He said the chances of a Tory revival were small and that, even in the event of a hung parliament, Keir Starmer was better placed to become PM than Rishi Sunak. “The Labour party will be in a much stronger position to negotiate a minority government than the Conservatives because, apart from possibly the DUP, the Conservatives have no friends in the House of Commons,” Curtice said

[Tubby Isaacs]

Simon Jenkins is a member of The Garrick. It doesn't go down well below the line.