The Joy of Six 1459"For all their youthful modishness, this group is actually more conservative than their older counterparts. Many TheoBros, for example, don't think women belong in the pulpit or the voting booth - and even want to repeal the 19th Amendment. For some, prison reform would involve replacing incarceration with public flogging. Unlike more mainstream Christian nationalists ... many TheoBros believe that the Constitution is dead and that we should be governed by the Ten Commandments." To understand JD Vance, you need to meet the TheoBros, says Kiera Butler. Martin Barrow finds that Labour's reforms of the care system are an admission ... (more) |
There are more important things than football so Boycott America and the World CupDonald Trump has gone too far. Keir Starmer needs to find a spine to oppose him in the piracy which he launched in Venezuela. Starmer will not find that spine, so it is left to liberal parties and individuals to take action. One of the most egregious examples of brown nosing that I have seen for years is the presentation of a first Peace Prize to Donald Trump. Stoking the ego of a bully might be a way to quick gratification for the person doing it but in the long run appeasing a bully encourages even more bullying behaviour. After ... (more) |
Lib Dems review of the year 2025: Davey vs The ManLet me cast your mind back to 1974: Paul McCartney's Wings is blasting out of AM radios, children play in the street, Terylene clothing is common and it's socially acceptable to smoke on petrol station forecourts. This is before my living memory and I don't think I'd have enjoyed playing British Bulldog, however I bring you back to this year as modern Liberalism has accidentally been rewound back to this post-War zenith. Politics text books talk of this era where Liberals stood up for the 'little guy', at the time this was someone not part of the business-owning class, but ... (more) |
The Importance of 'Red Sea Jigsaw Puzzle' (Part 2)Source: Horn of Africa Simple Map Part 1 was published yesterday. DJIBOUTI This small but strategic former French colony sits at the Red Sea gateway to the Suez Canal, overlooking the narrow Straights of Mandeb. It is famously home to a port serving Ethiopia and hosting the huge multi-agency Camp Lemonnier base for the US and in part the UK, with 4000 staff. However over the last 15 years Chinese companies have dominated and they also have a large Red Sea military base there, a short drive from Lemonnier, allegedly staffing up to 10,000 personnel. Proposals for a bridge between ... (more) |
Latest PollBase is out, with all the British voting intention polls since the 1930sWith the end of another, rather interesting, quarter, another update to PollBase, my database of British voting intention opinion polls since the 1930s is now up. It includes the first PM approval ratings from 1938 and first national voting intention scores from 1939. Download the new version here. As well as another three months of data, changes this time include: Additional information about MRP polls for 2015, 2017 and 2019 Parliaments. (As I note, one fieldwork date in Wikipedia is definitely wrong as it suggest an MRP was conducted three days after Tim Shipman had tweeted about its results.) Thank ... (more) |
Observations of an Expat: What's NextThe rules-based world order has been the cornerstone of international diplomacy since the end of World War Two. It is surviving by the friction of inertia alone, and many argue that we have already slipped into the abyss of the unknown. The ancien régime depended heavily on American support and direction. Donald Trump has indicated that providing that support is no longer in America's interests. According to Stephen Miller, Deputy Chief of Staff in the White House and a Key Trump adviser, what counts now is not law, but raw power. As he told CNN: "We live in a world... ... (more) |
From ruins to a cultural centreSwansea's Dylan Thomas Centre started life in 1829 as the town's new guildhall. It was built to replace the previous building that was situated next to Swansea Castle and which dated back to the late 16th century. As the centre's website relates, the Old Guildhall (as it was known) looked quite different to today: Built by Thomas Bowen, between 1825-1829, from designs by architect John Collingwood, the building originally had sweeping grand staircases either side of the main entrance and the building housed court rooms and smaller offices. Beautiful as the structure was, the doubling in size of the borough ... (more) |