Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Duque de Bragança]

I would rate them barely over the French Greens, themselves very divided between a very far-left streak and more moderate variants up to the centre-right, though not necessarily inside the same party.

As for Nimbyism, German Greens are pretty good at it see Stuttgart XXI. Meanhwile Die Grünen are very mainstream indeed so I guess this is somewhat of a dream for UK subjects. 

Their anti-nuclear stance gave way, thanks to Herr Gazprom Schröder and Death Losange Lady of course, to Russian Gaz and coal dependency. Also, with Schröder, they did not object much to Hartz IV, for their very-leftist wing, bourgeois salon leftism I guess, that's not exactly consistent.

Environmentalism as a political movement had a lot of roots in the Blut and Boden ideal, claimed by Nazis. This little-known fact, outside of Germany perhaps, led them to more often than not overcompensate with a far left slant which makes it comical in a way.

German Greens are not too big on new high-speed lines in Germany, but the specifities of Germany make it not so practical compare to France. England with its small and concentrated population would be the best candidate but I am sure our British posters know it already and are quite disappointed at the lack of strategic planning and Nimbyism.

[Sheilbh]

Environmentalism as a political movement had a lot of roots in the Blut and Boden ideal, claimed by Nazis. This little-known fact, outside of Germany perhaps, led them to more often than not overcompensate with a far left slant which makes it comical in a way.

While not quite Nazi - the Greens in the UK were originally, if you trace it back, set up largely by Tory councillors (as a bit of a vanguard movement). They were very influenced by a popular piece in the UK at the time in The Ecologist (and endorsed by various members of the great and good) that basically called for us to move back to tribal, small-scale, de-industrialised living - for a long time the main motivator for that movement was a fear of "overpopulation".

That was written by Teddy Goldsmith who won many awards for his very strong campaigning for the rights of indigenous peoples and on conservation issues. But he was also very controversial and basically on the far-right by his later life - his solution to Rwanda or Northern Ireland for example was to forcibly separate Hutus and Tutsis or Unionists and Nationalists. He basically took the de-industrialised, tribal, small scale model to its ultimate end.

But he was also very close to his brother Sir James Goldsmith who set up and funded the Referendum Party in 1997 which didn't do well but was probably the best a single issue Eurosceptic party had done up to that point. And his son is now a minister in the current government Zac (Lord) Goldsmith - again very involved in environmental politics but from a rather different direction than where the Greens are now.

The Greens took a left turn away from "conservationism" and into Green politics as we understand them in the late 70s/early 80s. But they have a "living manifesto" so unless previous pledges at previous conferences are explicitly repealed they keep going which means there are some absolutely batshit ones on their about population control to this day. I have a friend who is very involved in Green politics (and has drafted motions for conference) who says that it's an absolutely liability if they ever come close to doing well in an election because at the minute the media don't pay attention. I think they've got rid of the abolish the armed forces policy but there's plenty of other crazy stuff in there

German Greens are not too big on new high-speed lines in Germany, but the specifities of Germany make it not so practical compare to France. England with its small and concentrated population would be the best candidate but I am sure our British posters know it already and are quite disappointed at the lack of strategic planning and Nimbyism.

The population density of England is about double Germany's - it's about the same as the Netherlands. Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland are all significantly lower.

[Duque de Bragança]

The population density of England is about double Germany's - it's about the same as the Netherlands. Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland are all significantly lower.

So it would be ideal for England as I said, except HS 2 was truncated recently by you know whom. 
The planned further extensions are now unlikely.

[Sheilbh]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/mar/21/average-house-price-in-great-britain-exceeds-350000-for-first-time
Over 10% increase in the last year - so another year where the average property earns significantly more than the average worker

[Josquius]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/mar/21/average-house-price-in-great-britain-exceeds-350000-for-first-time
Over 10% increase in the last year - so another year where the average property earns significantly more than the average worker

A meaningless number on a national level but locally things are looking bad, prices really going up dramatically.
We are in a broken situation where most are earning the same as always whilst a minority in the area have had high paying London jobs opened up to them.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Sheffield City Council has a problem in one of its graveyards :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-60838880

Have to say I would be delighted if I encountered something like that while visiting a cemetery. Though it does braek all the rules....let it stand and chaos could ensue 

[Sheilbh]

I think that's magnificent

Also no-one wants to vandalise/remove a grave once it's up. I've always thought more people should just wildly lie on their gravestones. Why not just claim any honorific or joining in on some big event that you've ever thought about - "Sheilbh, discoverer of Belgium" etc

[Josquius]

Bury me with a collection of Meiji era Japanese coins, a vinyl record that contains nothing but tribal chanting of the worst sort imaginable, and an inscription about how I was beloved of the moon people during my travels there in the 1200s.
Just to fuck with future archaeologists.

[Maladict]

Also no-one wants to vandalise/remove a grave once it's up.

You'd be surprised.

[Sheilbh]

Interesting conversation between Tony Blair and Michael Sheen who has regularly portrayed Blair
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/a-dream-of-britain/2022/03/tony-blair-michael-sheen-interview

Particularly struck by Blair's description of how the British people see the Tories v Labour:

MS I'm concerned that unions and collective action are now seen as regressive, and people I know don't have any protections – people who come from the area I come from [Port Talbot in Wales] and who I meet every day. Part of the attraction for a lot of people of Jeremy Corbyn – even though his leadership was seen as "going back to the Seventies" – is that people need protection at work, when they're on a zero-hours contract or working in an Amazon warehouse.

TB You're absolutely right, that is the need. There are a lot of people who are exploited in the workplace today. You need trade unions that are forward-looking, that understand what the realities of the world are, how you best get that protection. They probably aren't trying to play around with the politics inside the Labour Party, to be quite frank, but addressing the workplace issues that people have in a very practical way.

People used to think I was always rebuffing the trade unions. I used to try to explain that, if you want to represent the modern workforce, you've got to go to where they are and how they think, and be directed towards genuine workplace representation – not try to pull them into what they think ends up as a sort of quasi-political organisation.

We introduced the minimum wage. We introduced the right to be a member of a trade union. We got rid of a whole raft of Tory things that were anti-union. But what we didn't do was everything the trade union movement was asking, which literally was to go back to the framework of the 1970s.

The psychology of the country towards the Tories and Labour is different. Towards the Tories, it's: "I don't particularly like them, I think they do look after the most wealthy in society. On the other hand, I know that all they're interested in is power, and therefore, probably, they'll try to work out what I want and try and give it to me."

With Labour, it's completely different. It's only Labour that worries about whether it's principled: the country thinks the party is principled. What the country worries about is: "Labour definitely believes these principles, and Labour's got a huge commitment to social justice, but what's that going to cost, exactly? Can you actually run the thing or will these principles be so important that you'll take us in all sorts of strange directions?"

Can't really disagree with any of that

I've mentioned before but I think Blair's analysis of where we are right now is quite convincing. We're facing three revolutions: Brexit, climate and technology - and no-one in politics really having an analysis of what that means or any idea of a strategy/plan to address them because they are going to transform our society, lives and society. And you need to do that thinking before you can identify policies because otherwise it's just a grab-bag with no coherence

I'm not sure I'd agree with Blair's solutions - not least because his ideological view is basically to always embrace and accelerate whatever forces are driving change and that any attempt to shape or resist those changes is doomed to failure. I tend to think there's more space to shape/divert things.

[garbon]

How wonderful that the giant light up dome for near Olympic Park has received approval.

[The Brain]

How wonderful that the giant light up dome for near Olympic Park has received approval.

What's the deal with all the weird projects?

[Josquius]

The problem with labour and social justice is the term itself is so smeared and so many bad actors spreading shit about online so that people think labour is the one obsessed with trans people and other minor points.
That they want social justice for the disadvantaged in general, which primarily means poor white people, is just totally forgotten.

Unions are a bit of a relic of a past time and they need to change to better reflect the modern workforce, they are definitely a useful thing to have around, but I struggle to think of a good way to do that. Are there any "general union of any and every office job hopper" unions out there?

[Sheilbh]

How wonderful that the giant light up dome for near Olympic Park has received approval.

I quite like it

Isn't it going to be built for the Abba concerts?

The problem with labour and social justice is the term itself is so smeared and so many bad actors spreading shot about online so that people think labour is the one obsessed with trans people and other minor points.
That they want social justice for the disadvantaged in general, which primarily means poor quote people, is just totally forgotten.

Yeah I don't think Blair means social justice in "social justice warrior" - I think he means social justice in the more general sense. So maybe a more accurate way is that Labour always does better in the polling on things like "understands people like me", "would make society fairer" etc.

Blair's, as you would expect, a little bit centrist on trans issues. In that interview it's interesting that he links gay rights under New Labour with law and order:

Remember the Tories in the 1980s and early 1990s were thunderously anti-gay rights. But I was very confident we could hold that ground, provided that on issues like law and order we were strong. Because in the end, my instinct is that most British people actually think: "Live and let live and it's up to you how you live your life, that's your decision." Whereas on law and order, they think: "No, I want a government that's going to look after my security, that I really care about."

It's interesting because Starmer's big slogan/organising themes are "Security, Prosperity, Respect". Blair's view has always been that the key to Labour winning elections (and it's a low bar) is that it is trusted on national security and law and order - if it fails on either of those, then they'll lose. But also Lord Kinnock has been pushing security as an organising theme for Labour - Labour should pitch itself as the "security party" which covers personal security, employment, education, enterprise, national security. He thinks it's a really solid base to built out your policy agenda. So given that from two former leaders it is interesting that it's one of Starmer's three big points (similarly, New Labour had the "respect agenda").

Unions are a bit of a relic of a past time and they need to change to better reflect the modern workforce, they are definitely a useful thing to have around, but I struggle to think of a good way to do that. Are there any "general union of any and every office job hopper" unions out there?

I totally - I'm a huge fan and believer in unions. But I think they do need to adapt and try to reflect the actual workforces that exist - that includes gig workers, office job hoppers as you say etc. There is really interesting work being done by the various UVW unions who are trying to unionise gig workers and outsourced staff/agency workers like the cleaning and security staff of every office block in London (interestingly a lot of their work is in Spanish because there's a huge Latin American community working in those jobs) - they've also set up a union for legal workers because again there's a fair bit of using agencies (especially for paralegals). They've also got a branch that is trying to organise sex workers. They're really interesting and pretty militant, they do take industrial action, they do a lot of direct action and have a decent success rate. And I think they're really interesting because they are looking at the bits of the British economy - like agency and gig work - that have just been ignored by traditional unions (and frankly were probably perceived as little better than scabs rather than workers who are also being taken advantage of).

But I think Blair's criticism of the older, establishment unions is fair that a lot of them - and Unite under McCluskey is the big example of this - are more interested in playing politics in the Labour Party than actually acting as a union. I think it was really striking that in the election for a new General Secretary of Unite the Corbynite/McCluskeyite candidate and the centre left candidate were both beaten by Sharon Graham who is on the left but her entire pitch was that she wasn't interested in Labour Party politics - she wanted to focus on industrial action and industrial politics.

[garbon]

How wonderful that the giant light up dome for near Olympic Park has received approval.

What's the deal with all the weird projects?

I don't know. I also read that not too far away in Greenwich that council is considering an acquisition of one of Damien Hirst's immense sculptures he created to show at Venice Biennale a few years back. While the sculpture is interesting to look at, I'm not sure of the relevance of demon with bowl for its potential site.