I'm strongly in favour, and I'm not even young!

The role of the patriarch may have been recast with Nigel Farage as the fresh new face of irresponsible masculinism, but mummy is always mummy.

It's also *unbelievably* gendered. The Tories are the authoritative patriarch, his foibles indulged, his weaknesses catered to. Only when he fucks shit up so badly nobody can ignore it anymore does the British public turn to mummy Labour, & immediately starts blaming her for the mess.

FWIW I don't think it's about billionaires or any other secret cabal, it's just a deeply ingrained cultural ethic of British politics that all Labour governments are illegitimate & temporary. At a time when incumbency is poison everywhere, - even in Hungary! - that instinct is turbocharged.

I mean.

I don't know who this focus is supposed to be not-coming from. Last night I sent an open letter to Danny Kruger MP on behalf of myself & the other candidates in my ward, about their candidate who's posted some disgusting anti-muslim views. There's a story in the i today about another Swindon one.

Oh my golly gosh, who ever made you think that was a good idea

"Keir Starmer may well become a casebook study in prime ministerial resilience. Not so much standing the heat of the kitchen as surviving in a veritable furnace." - PrfChrisPainter/X

Interesting that Starmer is undeniably excellent in the international arena - where the UK media lose the power to dictate the narrative.

Ah, OK, so it's not *any* conflict, just the ones that support your argument.

1929 Hebron massacre - Wikipedia

OK, I've picked this one, where 67 Jews were murdered by Arabs, & 9 Arabs were killed by the British. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_He...

Definitely. I can sort of gesture at it by imperfect example: in the US or France, FND is culturally distinctive - it's a way of performing identity. In Israel, going to your parents for FND may be widespread, but it doesn't perform Jewishness any more than eating Sunday lunch performs Englishness.

"part of taking [antisemitismp seriously is recognising it needs to be dealt with compassion and care"

He said it. He actually said the words. Nobody made him. 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

D'you know, that schmuck notwithstanding, I don't know that I fully recognise what you're saying here. It feels to me very much as if Israeli life is that - Israeli. It's qualitatively different from Jewish life in ways I can't quite put into words but can instinctively feel, like a flavour.

I have a rebuttal for him, because I'm Israeli, & I know enough not to treat Palestinians like furniture that is merely "treated" a certain way, rather than as agents engaged in an active dialectic with Israelis where they also get to influence public opinion & are not merely passive victims of it.

Yesssss

Happy birthday! I hope the cat sits on your and nobody else's lap ❤️

If we apply a grad tax to cohorts whose tuition was paid for by the local authority, then the money should go back to that local authority (or the one that covers the same area), not to general taxation.

Which was also coded antisemitism.

Right, but you'd think it was from the time of the doctors' plot or something, not twenty years after the holocaust?

Yes, but in 1963!

1963, that was written in. Five years before the pogroms in Poland that saw almost the last Jews still alive in the country expelled.

Every one of these accusations turns into a prophecy.

“The idea of Judaism is the idea of world fascism. The Old Testament was fascist, so were Moses, King Solomon and virtually all other Jewish leaders from the very beginning. The Jews had always being chauvinist aggressor and mass murderers, Hitler [has] been [a] mere puppet in their hands.”

Judaism Without Embellishment - Wikipedia

I've been listening to Stanley C. Payne's 'History of Fascism' (because I'm fun like that) & came across a piece of hitherto unfamiliar to me antisemitic propaganda from the Soviet Union. It's quite the marmalade dropper.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism...

OK.

That's what happens in a system where the upper legislative chamber offers automatic seats to representatives of the established state religion.

I can't think of an example of a real terrorist who didn't take credit for his actions in court. If you're ideological, that's the whole point of it.

Looks like I was more right than I realised - he didn't even know what he was being told to attack

I'm very dubious about bans in general - British people are obsessed with banning shit, it's never not the first policy proposal people reach for. But banning phones in schools isn't the same as "banning" inconsiderate parking: it's enforceable, it has a clear pedagogic aim, & it's non-punitive.