Links - 10th August 2024 (2 - Harris-Walz)

@amuse on X - "JD Vance was right; Kamala Harris had no intention of talking to the media who had been patiently waiting on the tarmac. Instead, her campaign brought in the Girl Scouts to serve as human shields, diverting attention away from her avoidance of the press. h/t @bennyjohnson"

Meme - "IF THE ECONOMY WAS DOING GREAT, YOU WOULDN’T HAVE TO TELL PEOPLE EVERY DAY. WE WOULD KNOW."

L J on X - "Vice President Presidential candidate Kamala Harris could pick a pink flying elephant as her vice president, and I will support whomever because I understood the assignment."
So many left wingers are saying they "understood the assignment". It's very telling - they just vote for who they're told to vote for

End Wokeness on X - "2 weeks since Kamala was selected: 0 interviews 0 press conferences 0 unscripted media events The basement strategy is in full swing."

Michael Shellenberger on X - "The US Democratic presidential campaign of @KamalaHarris  will host a racially segregated struggle session tonight at 8 pm ET for white men to falsely confess to the sins of other people.  “We need to be honest with ourselves and each other about the role we’ve played in our nation’s history — good and bad," said White Dudes For Harris in @nypost  today.  I am responsible for my actions, not all men of my race. The alternative idea — that all white men alive today are responsible for the bad (or good) deeds of white men throughout history — is totally irrational and racist.  Notably, no such statement accompanied the @KamalaHarris  Zoom calls for other races and sexes.   But like the "White Women for Harris" and the "Black Women for Harris," White Dudes For Harris is racist and sexist and anathema to the unifying "I Have A Dream" vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.   All sentient people, liberal or conservative, should denounce these awful, unAmerican @KamalaHarris  Zoom calls.  It appears that Transportation Secretary @PeteButtigieg  will join this attack on white men as a class of individuals on the basis of their race and sex. This is degrading and dangerous. Vice President @KamalaHarris  must denounce this effort and demand the creator of it, @JotakaEaddy , cancel all race- and sex-based events, including this one.  If the call goes forward, I will be on it tonight, request an opportunity to speak, and record it.   This is irrational, racist, and toxic. It will go down as a catastrophic error by the @KamalaHarris  campaign.
How did @KamalaHarris  become the Democratic presidential candidate?  Consider the person who is now organizing the race- and sex-segregated Zoom fundraising calls, @JotakaEaddy    Eaddy is not just some random person. Eaddy is a top Democratic Party strategist and PR person. She:
a) ran the 2020 effort that got Kamala her job as VP by writing and publicizing the open letter demanding that @JoeBiden pick a black woman;
b) ran the 2024 effort to demand that Biden anoint @KamalaHarris his successor and avoid a competition between candidates.
In both cases, the strategy pursued by @JotakaEaddy was simple: accuse anyone who opposed her of racism and sexism."

Berel Solomon on X - "The same people that are screaming at us to “vote for Kamala because she’s a woman” can’t define what a woman is."

Richard Hanania on X - "It’s taken me a week to fully comprehend the genius of “White Women for Kamala” and “White Dudes for Harris.”  One thing right-wingers love is to complain that you can only have affinity groups for blacks and other minorities. Whites sometimes feel like they’re being held to double standards and treated unfairly.  Along comes the Kamala campaign and says it’s ok to be white. That is, as long as you’re a good person, which means supporting reproductive freedom, not being “weird,” and voting Democrat. We’re all in this together.  It seems “woke” on the surface, but it’s actually a sign that liberals are moving away from woke. In 2020, something like this wouldn’t have even been possible. Talk of “whites” in left-coded spaces only occurred in the context of flogging them for their sins. In 2024, you can be a white dude for Kamala and it’s totally cool. The symbol for “White Dudes for Harris” is a trucker hat, showing self-deprecating humor and membership in a movement that is not at all weird or neurotic about race.  White people receive the message that Democrats do not consider you the problem. You’re welcome into the coalition. There’s even a Zoom call you can join, and don’t worry, it won’t be just Robin DiAngelo telling you how much you suck. Kamala has made clear that she’s *only* considering white men for VP, and there couldn’t be a clearer signal that we’re past peak woke.  DEI therefore doesn’t always mean anti-white! Now you White Dudes get your own DEI pick, like everyone else.  Republicans have been caught flat-footed. Conservatives want to portray these events as a kind of 2020 DEI struggle session, and they can find clips backing up that view, but people who have attended say that there was actually very little of that.  What else can conservatives say in response? I’ve seen a little bit of “why can’t we have a whites for Trump thing?” Well, who’s stopping you? It’s a free country. Organize “whites for Trump” and see what happens. Democrats have given you permission. Zoom can’t accuse you of violating the terms of service if you schedule the exact same event just with the parties switched.  There will be no “Whites for Trump” event because the campaign would never allow it, understanding it would be a PR nightmare. “Whites for Trump” would draw sewer dwellers, instead of the nice, seemingly normal people that came out for Harris. The Vance pick has only reinforced this message, with the signal that the Trump campaign is standing with the most dysfunctional and least sympathetic whites. Most whites do not feel like they have much in common with overweight Appalachians blaming China for taking their jobs when they’re too lazy and dysfunctional to just move to a region with more opportunity, which every generation of Americans has managed to do since the founding. Vance’s comments that we’ll pay any price as long as one American gets to make toasters communicates how the GOP ticket is running to represent the truly hopeless.  All of this contributes to the overall message that Democrats are not the anti-white party. They’re the party of the civilized half of the white race, the ones who believe in science and reject conspiracy theories. The whites who aspire to do something other than make a toaster, complain about immigrants, and investigate the miscarriages of strangers.  We can now all see the hopelessness and stupidity of white nationalism, which wants to argue that the 220 million American whites who are at each other’s throats over social issues and values should unite under one umbrella because they share the same interests. The only way white identitarianism would have had any hope is if liberalism stayed in summer of Floyd mode indefinitely, where you push anti-white rhetoric so blatantly and aggressively that it causes a natural reaction.  Whites for Kamala completely defuses any hope of building a broad white identitarian coalition. It exposes white nationalism, whether explicit or the implicit kind taking over the right, as at bottom a movement for *maladjusted whites* most of their betters want nothing to do with.   The thing about Republicans ruining Thanksgiving dinner hits home, because most whites who have achieved some level of success in life, or at least aspire to do so, have aggressively stupid catturd-type relatives they want to avoid. They define themselves in opposition to such people.  This is how the left wins."

Kamala Harris Distances Herself From Kamala Harris | Babylon Bee - "Following Kamala Harris's statement, news outlets were quick to condemn anyone who has ever referred to Kamala Harris as Kamala Harris. "As usual, the Republicans are engaging in a misinformation campaign to tarnish the image of the Vice President," Joe Scarborough said. "We all know Kamala Harris has never been Kamala Harris. Will their lies never cease!?"  Wikipedia updated its entry on Kamala Harris to wipe any previous mention of the presidential candidate's name and Politifact rated the statement "Kamala Harris is Kamala Harris" as a ‘Pants On Fire' lie.  At publishing time, Kamala Harris also denied ever having been Joe Biden's Vice President or the Attorney General of California, points quickly corroborated by the mainstream media."

Meme - Kamala Harris: "I'm Indian"
Soyjak: "WAOW!"
Trump: "She's Indian"
Soyjak: *Upset*

Meme - Black Lives Matter: "We need to have another prima..."
WHITE WOMEN FOR KAMALA: "Shhhhhh!" *covering mouth of black woman*

Meme - Melissa Chen @MsMelChen: "Very interesting that TikTok is aggressively laundering and rehabilitating Kamala Harris’s image.   Remember that anything that trends on that platform is essentially “allowed” to trend. Nothing really is organic.   If TikTok can transform Kamala’s image from cringe to cool in 24 hours (basically, the impossible), just think what else it could manufacture and conjure up?"
""She's gone from cringe to cool in 24 hours": Van Jones stunned at Kamala Harris TikTok phenomenon. "This is not a campaign, this a movement," CNN's Von Jones said Monday"

Meme *18 accounts posting variations on ""DEI hire" is the current n-word substitute. You're gonna see it a lot in the coming months. Be sure to call it out"
NPCs: "DEI Hire is the new N-Word. Call it out."
The programming gets updated very obviously

Meme - "KAMALAMORPHS
From curry to collard greens"

Meme - Kamala Harris: "Hello, fellow working class people"
"Today Is the day I hope you will donate"
"Tiffany HardWear. Bold Graduated Link Necklace in Yellow Gold. $62,000"

Meme - "Does anyone remember that time two undercover journalists exposed that Planned Parenthood was selling aborted baby body parts and the California Attorney General prosecuted the journalists while protecting Planned Parenthood? That Attorney General was Kamala Harris."

The Power of Oddball Charm - The Atlantic
The media are really trying hard

aka on X - "Hey guys our country is bankrupt, the markets are crashing, you can't buy groceries and you'll never own a home but Kamala Harris is a woman and black"

Real Developments, CFA on X - "Your 401k is getting unburdened from what has been."

Meme - Kamala Harris as Arthur Fleck from Joker: "Please forgive my laughter. It's a defense mechanism for questions I can't answer"

Meme - "Nervous laughter is a coping mechanism for stress or tension, often stemming from the fear of being perceived as a phony and worrying that others may see through the facade."

Meme - "BIDEN-HARRIS ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Allowed 15M unvetted illegals into the country
Historic inflation crisis
Record high gas prices in all 50 states
Record high consumer debt
Released terrorists into the country
Ukraine-Russia War
Israel-Hamas War
Disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan
Violent crime skyrocketing
Tried to jail political rival in name of democracy
Lied to the American public about Joe's decline
Declared war on American energy
Record low test scores for K-12 students
Most unpopular president and VP in history"

Meme - "Don't forget she looked you in the face and said he was focused, strong and capable. Then they dumped him."

Derrick Evans on X - "The economy is so bad right now that even Joe Biden’s job is being outsourced to an Indian."

Meme - "Democracy Is On The Ballot
Trump: 17,015,756 Primary Votes
Kamala Harris: 0 Primary Votes 1 Back Room Deal"

i/o on X - "In 2023, Kamala Harris' running mate Tim Walz supported and the Minnesota legislature passed the following legislation:
— All limits on abortion at any stage of pregnancy were repealed, as were laws requiring doctors to treat infants born alive after an abortion. References to "women" in the new laws were replaced with "pregnant people".
— Minnesota declared itself a “refuge” for transgender surgeries and therapies for minors. Gender surgery will now to be publicly funded.
— Public and charter schools are mandated to teach “ethnic studies,” and school boards are instructed to adopt "antiracist" curricula and teach “the history of the genocide of Indigenous Peoples."
— Drivers’ licenses and state-funded health care are now available for illegal immigrants.
— Private religious colleges are forbidden to “require a faith statement” from enrolling students.
— Convicted felons now have the right to vote before completing parole or probation."

i/o on X - "Who got the COVID drugs from Minnesota's health department under Tim Walz? A racist points system made the decisions, giving healthy non-whites more points than whites with medical conditions like hypertension."

i/o on X - "“They make an interesting tag team because Tim Walz allowed rioters to burn down Minneapolis in the summer of 2020, and the few that got caught, Kamala Harris helped bail them out of jail.” — JD Vance today Finally, a good soundbite from the Trump-Vance campaign."

Roger Severino on X - "Trump was 💯% correct. Post-birth abortion is real and Harris-Walz support it. At least 5 babies were born alive after botched abortions and left to die under Walz’s watch. Two of these struggling babies were given “comfort care” instead of medical care allegedly in violation of state law.   How did Walz respond? By repealing the very law exposing and outlawing this horror and replacing it with abortion-on-demand on the front end, and infanticide on the back end.   Here are the bone-chilling receipts. 👇"

Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇦🇹🇼 on X - "Tim Walz has a decades long history working with anti-CCP dissidents in China, Hong Kong, Tibet, East Turkistan. He chose to get married on the 5th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre so that he could always remember the day. I’m happy. This guy opposes the CCP."
MAGA War Room on X - "Tim Walz: "I've lived in China and as I've said I've been there about 30 times...I don't fall into the category that China necessarily needs to be an adversarial relationship, I totally disagree.""

Steve Krakauer on X - "What a moment on CNN: Abby Phillip wonders if picking Josh Shapiro would "antagonize those voters" who voted "uncommitted" in Minnesota over the Gaza war. Jake Tapper tries to cut in and say that Shapiro's policy on Israel is the same as Walz, but "he is Jewish." Audie Cornish says Shapiro is "the face of the crackdown of campus protests" and that he labeled them "antisemitic."  Tapper says "the ones that were antisemitic he criticized as being antisemitic."  Cornish says it still might be a "slap in the face" to the "activist wing of the party.""

Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸 on X - "“Because let’s be clear: This is life-affirming and life-saving healthcare.   “When our children tell us who they are, it is our job as grown-ups to listen and to believe them. That’s what it means to be a good parent.”  Hmm, sounds like a cult member, not a parent.  That’s Tim Walz’s Lieutenant Governor, Peggy Flanahan.   She’s wearing the ‘Protect 🔪 Trans 🌹 Kids’ shirt.  She’s also pushing the insane lie that kids are going to kill themselves if we don’t harm them for life with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries.  A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for child abuse."

DC_Draino on X - "What the hell Minnesota First Lady says she left the windows open during the 2020 BLM riots to smell the burning tires and soak in the moment Her daughter was also caught leaking National Guard plans to rioters so they could avoid arrest This family is sick"
Stephen L. Miller on X - ""I wanted to smell people's small businesses burning to the ground." is going to be a fun one."

@amuse on X - "In my experience if you want to understand someone talk to the men he served with in the military. The men who served with Tim Walz describe his service as Traitorous, fraudulent, and shameful. Read their open letter from 2019 (before he was running as Kamala Harris's vice president):
The Truth About Tim Walz. Tim Walz has embellished and selectively omitted facts and circumstances of his military career for years."

Greg Price on X - "In 2005, Tim Walz abruptly quit the Army National Guard to run for Congress right before his unit was deployed to Iraq. The Guardsman who took his place told @AlphaNewsMN in 2022 that Walz said he would be going on the deployment before leaving them. "He abandoned us.""

The Calvin Coolidge Project on X - "🚨Just in: A Video from 2009 shows a veteran confronting Tim Walz’s staff over claims that he served in Afghanistan. The veteran said Walz could go to jail for violating the Stolen Valor Act of 2006 for claiming to have served in Afghanistan when he didn’t"
Stephen L. Miller on X - "Journalists did an all hands on deck rush to defend this, including people like Jake Tapper and ABC News, apparently thinking there wasn't more video out there. There is."

Meme - Melissa Chen @MsMelChen: "Not to be outdone by White Dudes for Harris…   Here is the AANHPI Men for Kamala Zoom call extravaganza!  If you are wondering what this alphabet soup is, it’s basically “Asian.” No, not in the British sense.   It started out to mean all generic “Ching Chong” kind of Asians (like me) and Indians from the subcontinent, but then grew to include Pacific Islanders (AAPI).   Then the Native Hawaiians got their recognition (why it’s separate from PI, I have no clue) to give you AANHPI. I’m sure it won’t end here.  If you say it fast enough, it’s pronounced “unhappy”"

Joey Mannarino on X - "Here’s the only nine seconds needed to completely tank Tim Walz in any swing state. He’s an admitted socialist. His words."
Xi Van Fleet on X - "The Chinese people were led to believe that socialism was just neighborliness. By the time they found out the truth, it was too late."

Ian Miles Cheong on X - "Tim Walz signed a bill that gives drivers licenses to illegal aliens. They now have a valid form of ID to vote. All they need to do is to answer if they’re over 18 and if they’re American. Obviously everyone tells the truth and no one would lie. Cool!"

Media: Lizzo Is 'Healthy,' Vance Is 'Weird,' But Walz Is 'Folksy' - "When people in the national media use phrases like “the all-American definition of a man from middle America” and “folksy, personal, informal vibe,” you can be sure you’re about to come face to face with a chilling figure, primitive in appearance and devoid of human empathy. That is Walz, a vehemently left-wing governor who says extraterrestrial things like, “I will not patronize you as a white man without living those lived experiences of how very difficult that is.”  Walz is not the “all-American definition” of anything. He’s a primordial creature adapted to live among the rest of modern Democrat Party leadership — the militant transgenders, the antisocial Black Lives Matter hustlers, and the white liberals who made it their life’s mission to strangle the American middle class. He has literally encouraged foreigners attempting to get into the U.S. to break the law and jump the border. He ensured that illegal aliens in his own state can get driving licenses. In a room crammed full of transgender activists last year, Walz signed an order heralding his state as a “trans refuge,” affirming legal protections for doctors who pump up kids with sex hormones and perform elective surgeries on their undeveloped genitals.  He’s a freak, but apparently, because he’s white, balding, and has no accent, that makes him “folksy.” (The New York Times on Tuesday also described Walz as “a folksy former football coach.”)  The same media that tell us it’s beautiful and brave to be obscenely fat proclaim themselves to be the arbiters of what constitutes all-American “folksy” charm.  That’s in contrast to J.D. Vance, who the media have teamed up with Democrats to brand as “weird.”   To wit, everybody in Washington expected Kamala Harris to choose Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate, but, the Times said, Walz “jumped to the top of Ms. Harris’s list, boosted by cable news appearances in which he declared that Republicans were ‘weird.'”  In favor of reducing abortions and banning irreversible sex surgeries for minors? Ew! Weird! Passing out government IDs to illegals while publicly checking your white privilege? All-American! Folksy!  It was a weird VP pick. Then again, Kamala Harris is a weird person and now she has a weird running mate."
Why would all the media be saying the same thing at the same time? Obviously they must be reporting reality accurately

End Wokeness on X - "Governor Tim Walz after he let rioters rip Columbus down outside of the Capitol: "They had legitimate concerns" - Walz "I will not shed a tear" - Walz's Lt Gov"

Nicholas Fondacaro on X - "Van Jones admits that Kamala picking Walz was her "caving in to some of these darker parts in the party" in terms of appeasing "anti-Jewish bigots" that have "gotten marbled into this party.""

Governor Tim Walz on X - "To all trans youth in Minnesota: You are loved and valued."
Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ on X - "He loves transgender children. He’ll help them get away from their parents. He’ll pay for their sex-change hormones. He knows that child castration is life-saving, gender-affirming care. He might be from a previous generation, but he is listening, learning, loving. An ally."

Governor Tim Walz on X - "On George Floyd Remembrance Day, we honor him and every person whose life has been cut short due to systems of racism and discrimination.   My administration remains committed to deconstructing generations of systemic racism and inequities in our state."
Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ on X - "Walz still celebrating “George Floyd Remembrance Day” in 2024. He speaks fluent critical race theory."

Ian Miles Cheong on X - ""She's also a historic candidate. She's going to be the first woman president and that's incredibly exciting. And you know, she's Indian. She's black. She's everything. You can be more than one thing, it's incredible. I'm Jewish and Irish. I wish I was black—every white Jewish  guy wishes he was black."   Ben Stiller on why you should vote for Kamala Harris.  So, you should vote for Kamala Harris not because she's a decent leader (she's not) or because she has a lot of experience (she doesn't) but because she's a woman who's Indian and black.   Identity politics is cancer."

End Wokeness on X - "Minneapolis Mayor Frey begged for the National Guard to stop the BLM riots. Governor Tim Walz ignored him."

Nicki Neily on X - "🚨This is dangerous and indefensible:  Vice President Kamala Harris’ newly announced running mate — Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — signed a bill in April of 2023 allowing the state to make custody determinations if a child is denied access to sex-change procedures."

Migration Policy in the UK

Collingwood 🇬🇧 on X

Britain's migration policy is an important driver of the protest, riots and ethnic violence that have erupted since the horrific attacks in #Southport. This thread tells the story of that policy, while aiming to provide as comprehensive and objective an overview as possible.

The story starts with the Nationality Act of 1948. Prior to the Act, the concept of a 'British Citizen' did not quite exist. Britons, like Indians, Jamaicans, or Hongkongers, were subjects of the Crown to which they owed allegiance. The 1948 Act, prompted by the accelerating changes in the Empire after WWII, effectively put those born in the UK’s Dominions and Commonwealth on equal footing to Britons. In other words, somebody from Kingston, Jamaica could live and work in the UK as freely as somebody from Kingston-upon-Thames. 

Britain's politicians and civil servants grossly underestimated the number who would use this opportunity. The Cabinet Papers in the National Archives show that what started as a trickle turned into a flood. For the five years after the Act passed, "immigration from colonies remained at no more than 2,000 per year. This increased in 1954 and had reached over 135,000 by 1961.” By the late 60s, there were well over a million non-whites in Britain, up from only a handful after the war. Most had alien cultures--and often religions, too. 

This posed a unique problem for England, where the majority of the newcomers settled. As Benjamin Schwarz showed in his superbly written essay, Unmaking England, Britain had remained essentially unchanged for nearly a millennium and a half--or much longer.  

Genetic records show that the matrilineal ancestors of some three quarters of white Britons were already in the British Isles some 6,000 years ago. Angles, Saxons, Frisians and similar (which brought no more than 250k) essentially completed the mix. "As the dean of British geneticists, Oxford’s Sir Walter Bodmer, explains, the country’s genetic history reveals 'the extraordinary stability of the British population. Britain hasn’t changed much since 600 AD.'" To be clear, this not to make an argument for blood and soil nationalism. 

Instead, it is to demonstrate the unique stability of England. For instance, in the 1960s, it was shown that English children had played many of the same games since the 1100s. Robert Tombs argues that the English have a claim to be the world's oldest nation.  

This singular permanence allowed England to develop a system of law and governance based not on the whims of foreigners, or abstract ideas imposed from high, but on custom and an organically developed, shared understanding that made the people one with the law. 

Ironically, Britain's stability had previously made it uniquely tolerant of eccentricity and thus highly effective at integrating foreigners and making their children English (think Holst, Handel, Disraeli, Conrad, Churchill, Elliot, et al.) The problem posed by the  immigration of the 1950s and 60s, therefore, was the scale and speed, which inevitably led to the formation of ethnic immigrant enclaves, making integration impossible.  

In 1968, two of Britain's greatest politicians offered competing solutions to this predicament.

Roy Jenkins was perhaps the most consequential British politician never to have been Prime Minister. An elitist and a liberal, Jenkins was highly intelligent, an assiduous worker, a greatly esteemed biographer and a man of letters. He was also the intellectual force behind much of Britain's liberal shift since the 1960s. Jenkins argued in a 1968 speech that the country should not become a 'melting pot', turning out everybody in a common mould. Instead, immigrants could keep "their own national characteristics and culture." Thus integration would not mean flattening assimilation, but "equal opportunity accompanied by cultural diversity." This, then, is the core of multiculturalism, which has little to do with race, and is instead the idea of many cultures living in parallel and tolerance.

Enoch Powell disagreed. An ambitious and curiously intense man, Powell was perhaps the finest intellect to serve in Parliament since the war. He knew thirteen languages, was then the second youngest man to make professor (after Frederick Nietzsche), and had during the war had been promoted from Private to Brigadier. Crucially, he had fallen in love with India during the years he spent there, and had been horrified by the inter-ethnic violence he saw. He had also travelled to the USA in 1967, where he had seen first hand the bloody conflict between African-Americans and the police. He believed that the multiculturalism that was de fecto emerging in Britain would inevitably lead to the same outcome. He therefore favoured ending immigration coupled with a programme of voluntary repatriation.

In April 1968, Powell gave a speech in Birmingham to set out his case. What became known as the 'Rivers of Blood' speech was one of the most notorious incidents in British political history. Powell's prose was peppered incendiary language, including racial pejoratives. Edward Heath, the Prime Minister, and the rest of the Cabinet were appalled by the speech, and Powell was sacked the next day. The speech was so inflammatory that Powell was cast to the backbenches forever, and advocating for reduced immigration became next to impossible.  

Yet, that same year, the government pushed through the Commonwealth Immigrants Act to curtail migration. In 1971, the Immigration Act did likewise. Both generally worked, holding net migration low until the late 1990s. 

In 1997, Tony Blair's 'new' Labour was elected. They immediately set out to raise immigration levels in a deliberate effort to make Britain truly multicultural; to make Jenkins's vision of a diverse Britain real. In 1997, they removed the Primary Purpose Rule, which required those marrying foreigners to prove they had not wed in order to secure British residency. In 1998, they removed border exit checks to all destinations, making it impossible to know who was in the country and who had overstayed their visa. In 1999, they expanded student permits. In 2000 they relaxed work requirements. In 2004, they expanded post-study work visas. All of these steps (sometimes taken outside Parliamentary scrutiny) led to significant increases in immigration, as the below charts from @MigrationWatch show. Added to this immigration came even more from the EU. 

In 2004, the EU expanded with the accession of the so-called A10 countries, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Given eight of these countries had recently been members of the much poorer Soviet Bloc, many existing EU members harboured concerns that sudden access to the EU’s freedom of movement rights would lead to a surge in migration. The Netherlands, France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Luxembourg thus placed restrictions on migrant workers from the 'A8' countries, including quotas or 2-5 year transition periods. Not Britain. The Home Office estimated that only 5,000-13,000 immigrants a year would arrive from the 'A8’ members, and it therefore saw no need to apply restrictions. 

In reality, average immigration from the A8 nations into Britain was 72,000 per year, eight times more than the middle of the Home Office’s forecast range. The same thing happened with the accession of Romania and Bulgaria in 2014: by 2017, there were 413,000 Romanians and Bulgarians living in Britain, implying that some 90,000 had immigrated every year since the beginning of 2014--three and a half times the government’s estimate. Labour's policies led to a monumental increase in migration, as the chart below shows. 

In 2016, Britain voted to leave the EU, in part because freedom of movement within the single market made controlling migration near impossible. Yet while Conservative governments have ended free movement, they have *increased* overall immigration. In 2022, Britain In 2016, Britain voted to leave the EU, in part because freedom of movement within the single market made controlling migration near impossible. Yet while Conservative governments have ended free movement, they have *increased* overall immigration. In 2022, Britain believe that Britain's immigration system is one of the most liberal in the world. 

Migration policy since 1949 increased in the proportion of the non-white British population, from 0.1% in 1951 to near a quarter in 2021. Rightly or wrongly, this has been unpopular.

ENDS

In tweet 20 of this thread, I incorrectly identified Edward Heath as Prime Minister. At the time, he was Leader of the Opposition. Powell, therefore, was sacked from the Shadow Cabinet, not, as I wrote, from the Cabinet.

Links - 10th August 2024 (1 - General Wokeness)

National Autistic Society says media reports on an autism cure study are ‘deeply insulting’ - "Tim Nicholls, Assistant Director of Policy, Research and Strategy at the National Autistic Society, said that the study was deeply insulting to the more than 700,000 autistic people in the UK.  He added: “We are completely baffled why this has even been published by UK papers. This is a case study of a single set of twins using interventions that are themselves questionable. There are absolutely no conclusions at all that can be drawn from this and to suggest otherwise is just irresponsible journalism. We’ve repeatedly told outlets that we can help decipher shoddy research and avoid misinformation being published.  “Autism cannot be “cured” or “reversed”. Imagine seeing headlines that a core part of your identity could be “reversed”. Language like this sets us back and just goes to show how far we still have to go to build a society that works for autistic people.” The use of Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) has long been criticised by autistic self-advocates as it tries to make autistic children fit neurotypical standards and act like neurotypical children."
It is better to let people suffer than be offensive. Better for autistic people to be unable to find a job and live on disability benefits
This is a clear case of rent-seeking

Autism can be reversed, scientists discover - "Two non-identical twin girls in the US were found to have a level of autism at 20 months old that required “very substantial support”.  A groundbreaking trial saw their parents and a team of medical experts create a bespoke two-year programme of interventions designed to help the children thrive and flourish as much as possible.  Scientists say the programme was successful, with both girls undergoing “dramatic improvements” in the severity of their symptoms... “One of the twins’ symptoms were reversed to the point of being indistinguishable from children who had never had a history of autism symptoms,” Dr Chris D’Adamo, study author from the University of Maryland, told The Telegraph... The scientists do not use the term “cure”, but believe the improvements are unlikely to be undone over time.  “Because autism is a developmental condition, one can safely say that once they have overcome the developmental aspects of autism and returned to a typical developmental trajectory, they are very unlikely to exhibit the common symptoms of autism again,” said Dr D’Adamo.  “Symptoms that could return might be more along the lines of things like anxiety, gastrointestinal issues, sensory issues, but not necessarily the behavioural aspects of autism.”  The twins underwent behavioural analysis, speech therapy and a strict gluten-free diet and nutrition programme as part of the trial to reduce inflammation."

Now the botanists have come for “offensive” Latin binomials for plants - "Remember first that every species has two names: the Latin binomial that is standard for the scientific literature (e.g., Passer domesticus), and the “common” name, which varies among countries (e.g., “House sparrow” in English).  Along with the present climate of trying to purify the world from words considered offensive and hurtful, scientists have been trying to purify species names, too, changing common names to conform to modern ideology.  They’ve had mixed success with animals.  Common bird names, for example, are being purified, especially when birds are named after “bad people”, like John James Audubon. Anybody who had a connection with the slave trade is toast.  In fact, some have suggested that we simply ditch all common names derived from people’s names, and use descriptors of the bird’s appearance and location.  But even that has its drawbacks. Reader Lou Jost, for instance, pointed out that there is substantial benefits to conservation to name organisms after people... of course common names vary from language to language, so the purification process occurs only in Anglophone countries.  The debate over the Latin binomials for animals has already been settled by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), which decided that ANIMAL bibnomials will not be changed, for those Latin names are standard throughout the literature, and changing them now would seriously screw up the literature. The ICZN did suggest, however, that Latin names proposed for newly described species not be such as “would be likely to give offense on any grounds. But that is only their suggestion, not a rule.  So you could still name a species like the blind cave beetle Anophthalmus hitleri (yes, it was named in der Führer’s honor), though I doubt anybody would do that now.  As for common names, the ICZN has no authority over them, and no recommendations.  I agree with their decision not to give new Latin names to already-described species, as this would seriously confuse the scientific literature. And of course what’s considered “offensive” changes as our morality and ideology changes. Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, for instance, were slaveholders, and any Latin binomials with their names would be seen as “offensive”; as should “Washington, D.C.” site of the ill-named “Jefferson Memorial.”   But the ICZN decision goes for animals only. The botanists, on the other hand, have just decided that offensive Latin names for plants already given can be changed, and some will be changed. Click below to read the article in Nature... The damage to the scientific literature is potentially large. Yet the International Botanical Congress also seems to be vetting all newly suggested Latin names as well... the botanists have created a slippery slope here. If they can change one name, they might change others, as was suggested by Thiele in an earlier article... You know how these things go.  Once “caffra” is changed to “affra”, people like Thiele will create a movement to change older species names not derived from “kaffir”, because, after all, opposing changing the names of plants named after those in the slave trade (or who did other bad things) would be considered racist, and who wants to be called a racist? (Note that even the vote for “caffra”—>”affra” was pretty close.)  It is the loudest people, even when they’re in the minority, who ultimately win in this kind of endeavor.  These acts are performative only, for offensive species names don’t seem to affect whether people go into botany or zoology because of offensive Latin binomials (I haven’t heard of a single case). The Botanical Congress should simply make a suggestion to avoid offensive Latin binomials and then keep its sticky fingers off names that botanists suggests for new plants. And, after making the “caffra” change, they should vow that this one change will be the only older species name to be changed, and will also be the last one."
First, they came for the Confederate Generals...

Meme - Caltbern: "GW's newest customers:"
Coyle Hoy City @TheKyleHighCity: "i love this change. once they remove the genocidal and misogynistic language from the game completely I might consider starting to play it myself"
William @WilliamJamesHo5: "it won't be WH40k any more if they keep changing it. It shows how creatively bereft libtards really are."
Coyle Roy City: "i think it would be a great tool for teaching my students about inclusion and the importance of uplifting oppressed voices if they just ironed out some of the more problematic aspects of the game"
William @WilliamJamesHo5: "Play a different game then, the clue is in the games title itself "WARhammer". "In the grim darkness of the future, there is only war"
Coyle Hoy City: "No i wanna play this game and i don't want it to be about boring war and death stuff"
Evil cannot create, only destroy

Meme - *2 smiling Lego Arab men throwing smiling Lego Queer Flag T-shirt man off roof*

Meme - Reuben Klopek: "In the series "The boys" they let a character known for his bestiarity have a intercourse with a black chick. What did they mean by this?"

Meme - 2004:
Wojak: "That's racist!"
Wojak: "Oh, sorry"
2014
Soyjak: "That's racist!"
Wojak: "No, not at all"
2024
Soyjak: "That's racist!"
Chad: "lol"

Thomas Sowell Quotes on X - "One of the great mysteries of our time is why so many people who are either born rich or who gain great wealth in the media are so hostile to the values of American society and Western civilization. The most plausible explanation I have heard is that this stance enables them to enjoy their wealth with a clearer conscience as friends of the "underdogs" and enemies of "the establishment"—even though in reality they are really friends of parasites and enemies of civilization."

i/o on X - "Here is a question to put to those who believe that unequal racial outcomes in the US are due to racist "systems" and "structures": Could you please identify the precise "systems" and "structures" that result in Asian-Americans outperforming whites in most outcomes? After all, if "systems" and "structures" are behind the last-place outcomes for blacks, then there must be "systems" and "structures" that are behind the first-place outcomes for Asians. So, what are those precise systems?"

Meme - "*Trans flag* ARE GROOMERS"
"*Trans flag*? HOW ABOUT CATHOLIC PRIESTS?"
"WHAT IS THE SEXUALITY OF THOSE PRIESTS?"
"YOU'RE A BIGOT"

Gay wage gap - Wikipedia - "The gay wage gap is the pay gap between homosexuals and heterosexuals. In the United States, men in same-sex marriages have a significantly higher median household income than opposite-sex married couples: $123,600 and $96,930, respectively. Individual gay men earn 10% more than straight men with similar education, experience and job profiles, and individual gay men who are married have a significantly higher median income than heterosexual married men"
Structural heterophobia!

j on X - "Pedophilia is a queer identity. In fact, the “most resolutely queer of all sexual positions” as explained by Lee Edelman, Published queer theorist author and professor. The queer cat is out of the bag now, they are going to have to own this 👇"

Minor Attraction: A Queer Criminological Issue | Critical Criminology - "Despite a cultural tendency to sexualize youth, individuals who are primarily attracted to minors are subject to suspicion and stigma across society, extending into criminology and criminal justice. The prevailing assumption is that minor-attracted persons (MAPs) are mentally ill and predatory. However, there exists evidence that minor attraction is a sexual orientation, and the parallels between the treatment of MAPs and LGBT populations are striking. Employing queer criminology’s use of deconstructionist techniques, we address the current state of criminology and criminal justice, which sees MAPs as a suspect population warranting formal control. We then argue for the use of queer criminology as a framework for future research with minor-attracted populations, which could have important implications for criminal justice practice and policy."
Weird. I thought this was a conspiracy theory

Charlotte Gill on X - "The Mayor of Hackney introducing Thinking Spaces, “a safe and therapeutic space where Black and Global Majority (14+) community residents can openly discuss and process the lasting effects of systemic racism”."
Wilfred Reilly on X - "The idea that white people are making young minorities "unsafe" - by existing or whatever - is one of our era's great and un-remarked-on redefinitions of reality."

Melissa Chen on X - "I am a liberal insofar where liberalism is about protecting minority rights from the majority. But today, liberalism is more about minorities imposing their will and their norms on the majority and eroding the moral ground for the majority to say anything about it.  This is not the liberalism that I signed up for."

Carlos That Notices Things on X - "No wonder libs all turned on Harry Potter, the main lessons it teaches are things like:
The government can't be trusted
Arming teenagers & starting militias is cool
Jocks are the good guys
Get married and reproduce
Genetics matter
Don't give a word power by not saying it
Progressive Harry Potter fans never were able to get over the fact that they ended up being a lot more like Percy Weasley and Dolores Umbridge than any of the heroes
And that's not even touching on Percy Weasley and Dolores Umbridge, two almost perfect caricatures of what selling your soul to the regime looks like (hicklib striver and single childless shrew) or how a conspiracy theorist is easily best girl (Luna) or the Jesus symbolism
Nowadays Slytherin house would just be another school and they would all be villains, not an integrated part of society that you have to learn live with.  Has society just gone crazy in 30 years? Or were these books always deeply trad?"

Head of Pride Toronto says he’s disappointed protest stopped parade : r/toronto - "They should have had them arrested and removed so the parade could continue. This sets a terrible precedent going forward.  Now what happens if some religious alt-right group blocks the parade next year? Either the parade is canceled again or they are arrested and get to claim that Pride and TPS respect BLM and Palestinian free speech, but not theirs. It would be a win-win for those nut jobs."
" they would get removed in short order. they use kid gloves with protestors they consider 'allies'.  but more of these 'allies' will try to do the same thing next year if they let them"

Doctoral Candidate Who Sought to Prove Justice System Was 'Racist Against Blacks' Stabbed to Death by Black Male in Chicago - "Anat Kimchi, a 31-year-old Israeli-born doctoral candidate and scholar at the University of Maryland, wrote a paper published in the Journal of Quantitative Criminology in 2019 attempting to prove America's criminal justice system was racist against "young black offenders" and "black drug offenders."  While visiting Chicago over the weekend, Kimchi was ambushed and stabbed in the back and neck while walking near a homeless encampment at 401 South Wacker at around 3:35 p.m. Police said witnesses told them the assailant was a homeless "slim black male with long dreadlocks who wore a red bandana and a blue tank top," CWB Chicago reported.   Every last media outlet appears to have hid the suspect's description in accordance with their new rules against "amplifying narratives that connect Black and brown communities to crime" but CWB Chicago reported it straight."

Meme - "Riot regrets 'unnecessarily sexualized' design of League of Legends champion Kai'Sa"
League of Legends: "Spotify might be wrapped but Nudyr isn't. *naked male model*
League of Legends: "does anyone have the technology to make this possible *putting fingers through screen to touch six pack*"
Only women can be sexualised

Meme - "Employee shows up 2 hours late to work because she was having her hair braided do I write her up?
 I (22M white) manage a small shop in the food industry and I had an employee (16F African American) show up over 2 1/2 hours late to work because she was getting her hair braided.  She did tell a shift leader that she might be a bit late that day but we expected it to be maybe 30 minutes to an hour.  My thoughts are she knew she had a shift and could have rescheduled either one days in advance, I am a new manager and I’m very lenient. I’ve been doing this for only about a year now and I still haven’t written up any Employee even though we have a strict three strike and your out rule.  My wife pointed out to me last night that because of cultural differences and the amount of time and effort it takes to braid hair that I shouldn’t write her up and let her off with a warning.  I don’t know what to do because I don’t want to give one employee favor over others, but also I’m a white male and I guess that could be considered discrimination. I’m just looking for advice."

Meme - Bennett's Phylactery @extradeadjcb: "single-exposure HIV transmission (without meds) is about as likely as a woman getting pregnant with condom use  Which is to say, it's actually pretty difficult to transmit - An AIDS epidemic in a community requires a huge number of people with genuinely crazy sexual practices"
"Type of exposure - Estimated median (range) risk of HIV transmission per exposure
Receptive anal intercourse - 1.11%
Insertive anal intercourse - 0.06%
Receptive vaginal intercourse - 0.1%
Insertive vaginal intercourse - 0.082%
Receptive oral sex (fellatio) - 0.02%
Insertive oral sex (receiving fellatio) - 0%
Blood transfusion (one unit) - 90-100%
Needlestick injury - 0.3%
Sharing injecting equipment - 0.67%
Mucous membrane exposure - 0.63%"
michael wave @SzMarsupial: "mum, can you come and pick me up? yeah, yeah there’s children on this website claiming hiv is and should be a punishment for having too much sex again"

Bennett's Phylactery on X - "And AIDS has been defanged because the government forces the rest of us to pay them $2,000/mo for the antiretrovirals so they don't have to even marginally curtail their sexual behavior (which would have stopped the problem cold in the 80s, & which they angrily refused to do)"

Dungeons & Dragons Is Shedding ‘Race’ in Gaming. Here’s Why It Matters | Scientific American - "Dungeons & Dragons now reigns as a cultural powerhouse, the OG of tabletop role-playing. In its 50th anniversary year, the storied fantasy role-playing game is now making a long-overdue, and noteworthy, correction to its scientifically benighted treatment of race... Wizards of the Coast, will release a “Player’s Handbook” that changes the terminology of its character’s physiological types, previously referred to as races, and replace them with the term species... Kids playing a fun game will no longer pick up a botched, eugenical notion of race alongside their 20-sided dice... others appreciated the move but felt it didn’t go far enough. They recommended the removal of other material that could be deemed offensive. This last group is highly critical of the biological essentialism, parroting scientific and evolutionary language to explain marked social and cultural differences between groups, that comes with the use of terms like race to distinguish between humans and others like elves, dwarves and orcs, particularly because of stereotyped real-world associations made at times to these fantasy species... This was often discussed in the same breath of “evil races,” as different species were assigned an overall cultural moral stance, with some—such as orcs—deemed inherently evil. Particularly since the influx of new fans with the fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, these ideas were roundly criticized by scholars and others as reinforcing a sense of “nature not nurture” in terms of racism, discrimination and morality, echoing human genetics’ origins in white supremacy, marking some groups as inherently “bad.” Scholars such as Benjamin Carpenter of the University of East Anglia have noted that the races labeled as “evil” had analogues that were sometimes associated with real-world racial and ethnic minority groups, essentially smuggling old prejudices and stereotypes through a game."
"Science"
I guess we won't have half-Orcs or half-Elves anymore

Meme - "im WOTC which means i dont believe in evil races"
"dude im a fucking goblin i don't care im going to take your shit and then kill you"

Residents symbolically cleanse Michigan town after white supremacist march - "The group of parents, grandparents, teachers, and other community members, later grabbed brooms and mops, as they washed down the sidewalk in front of the historic Livingston County Courthouse, the same place where the approximately dozen white supremacist supporters gathered July 20, before marching through the downtown area."
This is a fascinating insight into the crypto-religious nature of wokeism

Manchester airport video shows lead-up to police kick incident - "Greater Manchester Police (GMP) officers can be seen trying to restrain one man before a second intervenes. A fight breaks out and two officers are punched to the ground... Akhmed Yakoob, who has been speaking publicly on behalf of the family, said "nothing could justify a kick to the head of a defenceless man". He described the police involved as "highly-trained officers" who "should not be seeing red". In the latest video to emerge, a man wearing grey clothes struggles with a male officer and punches are thrown. Another man, who is dressed in blue, punches two other officers to the floor. The officer who is grappling with the first man breaks away and points a Taser at him. While he is pointing the stun device, the man in blue runs over and punches him. Another male officer then tasers the man in blue, who falls to the ground with the first male officer, who he is still holding on to... protests were held outside a police station in Rochdale, with demonstrators accusing Greater Manchester Police (GMP) of institutional racism... GMP said there had been a "clear risk" the firearms officers could have had their weapons taken from them, and three officers had been taken to hospital, including a female officer whose nose was broken... Human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar told BBC Newsnight he was disappointed that leading politicians, including Mr Burnham, had asked people to consider the context to the incident. There was "no justification" for a police officer to act this way, he said, adding that the context was "irrelevant"."
The police are not allowed to defend themselves against "minorities"

Teenager’s lawyer steps aside after Manchester airport ‘assassination’ remarks - "The lawyer for the family at the centre of the Manchester airport brawl has said he is stepping aside as investigations into the incident gather pace. Akhmed Yakoob became the focus of criticism after claiming 19-year-old Muhammed Fahir was the victim of an “attempted assassination” that had left him “fighting for his life”. In footage that emerged at the weekend, Fahir could be seen throwing punches at police officers before being incapacitated with a Taser. An armed officer was then filmed kicking the teenager in the face and stamping on his head... Yakoob, a director at the Birmingham-based firm Maurice Andrews Solicitors, said the media had tried to “sabotage” him since he started representing Fahir’s family last week... The 36-year-old, who has 200,000 followers on TikTok and has been posting frequent updates about Fahir’s case, came under investigation by the Solicitors Regulation Authority this year after he used social media to promote a false claim of racism against a young teacher. He stood as an independent candidate in Birmingham Ladywood in the general election after coming third in the vote for West Midlands mayor in May. He apologised in June after being criticised for saying on a podcast that “70% of hell is going to be women”, and for failing to condemn a guest saying he would give his wife a “backhander” if she made money dancing on TikTok."

Manchester Airport video is a lesson for the BBC - "What follows is a tale of two video clips. Last Wednesday, the first of the two emerged on social media, appearing to show an officer from Greater Manchester Police kick a helpless young man in the head. In a statement, GMP explained that its officers had attempted to arrest a suspect only to find themselves subject to “violent assault”, thus requiring an aggressive response. But as the backlash grew, the force changed its tone, trying to placate the rising public anger at what was shown in the video. It admitted the footage was “truly shocking” and that “people are rightly extremely concerned.” Various public figures made similar statements of their own. Among them were local Labour MP Paul Waugh, the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham, and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper. On Friday, the BBC weighed in with a BBC Verify analysis of the video. This was mostly a description of the actions of the police, specifically the kicking, hitting, pushing and use of pepper spray. The reporter, Richard Irvine-Brown, stated the BBC had “not been able to find footage that shows what led up to the incident” — which was unfortunate, because this turned out to be of crucial importance. The very next day, a second video emerged, providing the missing context for BBC Verify’s blow-by-blow account. What it seems to show is a full-on brawl — in which, as per the GMP’s original statement, police officers suffered multiple attacks. In contrast, the first clip only showed us the outcome of the struggle. Even with this second clip, it must be stressed that we still don’t know the whole story, which may not exonerate the police of all blame. Nevertheless, it was enough to change the narrative overnight. In a Sunday morning interview, Burnham warned about “a phenomenon of our time”: that is, the perils of social media. “Video will emerge from whichever source”, he observed. “Everyone then becomes an expert on it.” Public order can be threatened by this “rush to judgement”, which “politicians really shouldn’t be part of”. Wise words — it’s just a shame they came too late. The BBC also has cause to reflect. The release of the second video came after the corporation’s analysis of the first, but just how useful was its examination? Apart from the locations depicted, what exactly was verified? Did the BBC tell us anything about the provenance of the video? Did it question why the clip just happened to start at the point where the officer landed his kick? Did staff ask themselves whether dwelling upon partial footage of a complex and confused situation would help or hinder public understanding? Perhaps, like everyone else, they should have waited for more of the truth to come out. That at least might have allowed them to ask how it was that a distorted narrative went unchallenged for several days — involving not just random nobodies on the internet but also the mainstream media and prominent politicians. Yet BBC journalists are now in a poor position to do that: after all, they’ve made themselves part of the story."
As with the current riots, "BBC Verify" is spreading misinformation. Ironic (but not surprising)

Links - 9th August 2024 (2 - Left Wing Economics)

Idi Amin - Wikipedia - "On 4 August 1972, Amin issued a decree ordering the expulsion of the 50,000 Asians who were British passport holders. This was later amended to include all 60,000 Asians who were not Ugandan citizens. Around 30,000 Ugandan Asians emigrated to the UK. Others went to Commonwealth countries such as Australia, South Africa, Canada, and Fiji, or to India, Kenya, Pakistan, Sweden, Tanzania, and the United States. Amin expropriated businesses and properties belonging to the Asians and the Europeans and handed them over to his supporters. Without the experienced owners and proprietors, businesses were mismanaged and many industries collapsed from lack of operational expertise and maintenance. This proved disastrous for the already declining Ugandan economy. At the time, Asians accounted for 90% of the country's tax revenue; with their removal, Amin's administration lost a large chunk of government revenue. The economy all but collapsed"
Left wingers have a poor grasp of history, so they want to drive the rich and talented away

Mwme - Chris Freiman @cafreiman: "Your periodic reminder that Sweden and Norway have more billionaires per capita than the US"
@ Mariana G-O @MariGO2thepolls: "Is the take that Sweden is better or worse because of this ?"
Chris Fretman: "I think that Sweden does a lot of stuff right, although I'd say the most interesting takeaway from this is that "billionaires shouldn't exist" democratic socialists often say the US should emulate these countries that have more billionaires per capita"

Henry Shevlin on X - "I was on a panel recently where I said something positive about markets. Another panelist said "Surely you didn't mean to say [positive thing]?" I replied that I did, I'm a neoliberal. He was confused and said words to effect of "But haven't you heard that neoliberalism is bad?"
It was genuinely as if I'd said "Oh I don't believe in gravity." By contrast, I think I could have said that I was a Seventh Day Adventist or Zoroastrian and no-one would have batted an eye."
Dan Williams on X - "I frequently encounter a mixture of incredulity/hostility for just calmly stating my view that markets - and more generally capitalism - are on net good."
David Pinsof on X - "It's one of the great tragedies of intellectual life that people who claim to care about alleviating poverty and promoting intergroup tolerance are hostile to the single greatest alleviator of poverty and promoter of intergroup tolerance in the history of humanity."

Meme - wanye @wanyeburkett: "New York Times:  “Shocking new data show that NBA players are better at shooting free throws than the general public, which demonstrates conclusively that access to the NBA explains disparities in shooting ability”"
"Representation relative to population share. Here's the income distribution of students with a 1500 or higher on the SAT. On average, richer kids do better."

Tony Blair: My advice to Keir Starmer - "Since 2019, we have seen the number of working-age people off work on long-term sickness rise by 800,000 to a record 2.8 million. Spending on disability and incapacity benefits has risen by a whopping £18 billion; and spending on mental health in England is now 10 per cent of the NHS budget."

Labour declare war on 'sick note Britain' as Streeting unveils plans - "Health Secretary Wes Streeting yesterday declared war on 'sick note' Britain. He used his first speech in his new role to outline plans to get people off benefits and NHS waiting lists and back to work. His comments came against the backdrop of 2.8 million people now being classified as economically inactive due to long-term sickness – with the figure having increased by 127,000 in the past year. Mr Streeting, stressing that the Department of Health is 'no longer simply a public services department', insisted: 'This is an economic growth department. And the health of the nation and the health of the economy are inextricably linked... In a move likely to anger the left of the Labour Party, Mr Streeting pledged to work 'hand in hand' with the private sector to speed-up access to drugs and technologies that can improve patient care and make the NHS more efficient."
Looks like fascism has arrived, and neo-liberalism is more alive than ever!
Of course, the left hate the private sector

NHS must end 'begging bowl culture' and drive growth, says Wes Streeting - "He vowed to tackle the worklessness crisis and deliver growth to the economy in his first appearance since being appointed health and social care secretary, saying the NHS and Treasury would work in “lockstep” to reduce the almost three million people on long-term sick leave and boost the economy.  “It’s a rethinking of the role of the department,” Mr Streeting told the Tony Blair Institute’s Future of Britain conference on Tuesday.  “It means ending the begging bowl culture, where the only interaction the Treasury has with the Department of Health is ‘we need more money for X, Y and Z’.  “The starting point has got to be we will help you achieve your mission for growth and improve the prosperity and lives of everyone in this country by making sure that we are with you lockstep in driving growth. That is a big shift in mindset and focus and activity.” There are currently a record 2.8 million people of working age who are unemployed because of long-term sickness, according to the latest data.  It is the most common reason for unemployment. Expert estimates put the cost to the economy at about 7 per cent of GDP, which equates to about £150 billion a year. A report by the Tony Blair Institute published on Tuesday revealed that by cutting heart disease rates by a fifth among 50 to 64-year-olds by using existing drugs such as statins and weight loss jabs, there would be an extra 50,000 employees in the UK workforce within five years, adding £2.2 billion to the economy.  If the rate of disease was reduced by a fifth across the five other major diseases preventing people from working – diabetes, cancer, chronic respiratory illness, musculoskeletal disorders and mental health conditions – it would boost the economy by £20 billion by 2030, as well as reducing costs to the NHS and benefit spending by even larger sums."
The left wingers are going to be disappointed more and more money is not the prescription. And since they hate economic growth, this is going to be double galling

I won't give in to union pay demands, insists Sir Keir Starmer - "The Prime Minister said not all their demands could be realised because the public finances were in “a very poor state”, adding that he would prioritise economic stability as part of an attempt to bring mortgage rates down... His comments have sparked a backlash from unions, which traditionally back the Labour Party. Daniel Kebede, the National Education Union general secretary, said: “This is not what we want to hear from the new Prime Minister. We expect an above inflation teacher pay offer that is fully funded."

LCBO strike: Group wants grocers allowed to sell alcohol during work stoppage - "LCBO workers have now been on strike in Ontario for a full week and at least one group says it might be time for the government to consider allowing other retailers to sell spirits. Jay Goldberg, who is the Ontario Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, held a press conference outside Queen’s Park on Friday to call on the Ford government to consider opening up alcohol sales to grocery stores and other private retailers during the labour disruption, calling it the “perfect opportunity” to evaluate the LCBO’s current monopoly on spirit sales. “The union says that they offer the best service, the best customer service and the best choice and selection. But while they are on strike we believe that Ontarians should have an option. Ontarians should have a choice and we can see how it goes at grocery stores. Ultimately, Ontarians can be the judge as to whether or not these unionized government-run LCBO locations are actually the best in terms of convenience, price and service,” Goldberg said. The Ford government has previously said that the LCBO will retain the exclusive right to sell spirits in the province, even as it allows convenience stores to beginning selling beer and wine... The union representing LCBO workers, however, has spoken out against the expansion of ready-to-drink beverages into grocery and corner stores and has suggested that the issue is a stumbling block to reaching a deal with the province. Premier Doug Ford, for his part, has said that the government will not walk back its plans to expand alcohol sales in an effort to end the strike... “I think what Ontarians will find is what we have found in many other provinces, like Alberta, British Columbia and Saskatchewan: having more locations and more choice and more convenience means not having a government-run monopoly.” The union representing LCBO workers has previously warned that the Ford government’s plans to open up the sale of some alcoholic beverages to private retailers could result in significant job losses among its members. “Doug calls himself a businessman. And I want to know what business person gives away some of their most profitable products and the largest growing market really right now and gives it away to everybody else,” Colleen MacLeod, the chair of OPSEU/SEFPO’s liquor board employees division, told CP24"
Left wingers hate competition and choice and love government monopolies, so they support the strike. But then, is there ever a strike they don't support?

Malcolm Jolley: The LCBO strike was a spectacular misstep - "I’m not sure how many of the LCBO strikers want to be on strike, but I have a pretty good idea that the union leadership at OPSEU needs the 9,000 members who work for the provincial monopoly more than the 9,000 needs them. A freer market in the sale of alcoholic beverages is certainly unlikely to grow the due-paying membership that pays the union leadership’s salaries. An LCBO cashier with enough seniority to have regular hours does better than a typical private sector one, but not that much better. This industrial conflict is not about putting shoes on the feet of the children of coal miners. It’s about who gets the spoils of government money.   As the two sides dig in, the customers seem okay and free from panic. My son, home for the summer from university, went on a beer run to the nearest location brewery-owned Beer Store. He reported it was no more busy than usual. When I visited a Wine Rack store, owned by the Arterra winery group, I was the only customer on a Sunday afternoon. The sales clerk told me it had been busier than normal over the weekend, but the shelves were fully stocked. The bottle shops I’ve been into, like the one attached to a fancy coffee spot, were also fully stocked. There’s lots of wine, and beer, around.  Winos, like me, tend to congregate around other winos, since after all these are the people who like to drink wine. An informal poll of half a dozen of them reports that none are short of stock. They’ve just switched from retail shopping at the Liquor Control Board to ordering directly from Ontario wineries or the agencies that organize imports. There’s no panic.  I have ordered two cases of wine from importing agents since the strike began. The first arrived in two business days, the other in three. This is not as convenient as strolling into my local monopoly store and buying the wine for dinner that night, but it’s not bad. And the wines are more interesting, generally. They are also more pricey since these are wines targeted chiefly for the restaurant trade. Then again, the wines in the LCBO have also gotten more expensive in the past few years, so an extra dollar or two a bottle seems less painful than it might have before."

Doug Ford to allow ‘ready-to-drink’ cocktails in supermarkets and convenience stores this week : r/canada - "I don't get it, why should the LCBO have a monopoly on this stuff exactly? I like how it is in the United States or Europe, where I can purchase alcohol at a grocery store."
"Or like in Quebec ahahah, grocery stores and convenience stores have alcohol, some even have wine sections but only hard liquor is limited to liquor stores."
Doug Ford to allow ‘ready-to-drink’ cocktails in supermarkets and convenience stores this week : r/canada - "Here in BC we've been selling booze in grocery stores for 10 years now and it's really been basically a non-issue for the most part. This is just how alcohol sales work in most modern societies."
"Ontario is run by a cartel aka OPSEU, that's why. Its also full of obstructionists that want regressive policies that basically every other jurisdiction has changed for the better.  Same old story, Public sector Union trying to keep strength in their numbers and line their pockets by keeping monopolies that would be frowned upon if in the private sector.  They've become a greedy corporation just like the private sector ones they bitch about."
Doug Ford to allow ‘ready-to-drink’ cocktails in supermarkets and convenience stores this week : r/canada - "And East Asia. I lived in Japan and you could buy beer or ready made drinks out of vending machines, 24 hours convenience stores, while you get your groceries. There were even small businesses that just sold booze run by individuals; like if someone wanted to open a specialty wine shop.  I don't particularly need a White Claw at 11pm, but I'm unsure why there is such a stark difference between Ontario and the rest of the civilized world. Even our own fellow provinces. My friend wanted to provide wine on the tables at his wedding reception and had a budget. He and his brother drove to Quebec to buy it at Costco.  Why can't OUR Costco do the same? Never made sense to me."
Doug Ford to allow ‘ready-to-drink’ cocktails in supermarkets and convenience stores this week : r/canada - "Government monopolies on alcohol sales make exactly zero sense. Those revenues were garnered by using anti-competitive practices and should never have been taken by the province in the first place. If anything the province should write a check to every Ontarian for the money they stole from them over the years."
Left wingers love government control of the economy and featherbedding and hate private business and choice, and cannot understand how competition lowers prices (I've seen some claim more competition will mean higher prices)

Doug Ford to allow ‘ready-to-drink’ cocktails in supermarkets and convenience stores this week : r/canada - "In the UK when they allowed supermarkets to sell alcohol prices actually came down a lot. This is because the supermarkets went direct to the suppliers."
Doug Ford to allow ‘ready-to-drink’ cocktails in supermarkets and convenience stores this week : r/canada - "The profits LCBO makes go directly to fund healthcare, infrastructure, and public programs. If they allowed all liquor in grocery stores then the price would increase and the profits would go to the Weston family and your taxes would increase to cover the programs LCBO profits funded."
"Somehow every other country manages without an lcbo funding them"
"TIL - only the Westons own grocery stores in Ontario.  I beg you to learn more about the LCBO and what it does and where it earns money. Even if all LCBO stores closed, the LCBO would still earn money by distributing products to retailers, be they Lowlaws, Sobeys, Metro, Costco, Walmart, 7-11, Quickie, mom and pop etc. But, Ford has NOT said that he want to close LCBO stores, so they would still be generating money via retail as well as distribution to other sales locations. What he wants to do is treat adults like adults and move us from the prohibition age to one that is closer to life in the real world, but even then, he won't fully liberalize alcohol sales, as the LCBO will still be the key distributor that (in the main) must be used by all."
Doug Ford to allow ‘ready-to-drink’ cocktails in supermarkets and convenience stores this week : r/canada - "Cool! The anal MD is volunteering to establish provincial grocery stores, gas stations, banks, telecoms, cable operators, car manufacturers - in fact, anything that you can buy from the private sector is going to be nationalized!"

LCBO strike seems to have given Doug Ford’s Tories a boost, but government’s poor approval rating is a warning sign, survey shows : r/ontario - "CBC reported that Ford's own internal #'s show his booze plan will cost the province more than just sticking with the LCBO.  Like everything else, privatization will cost us more for basic services."
I like how alcohol is a "basic service" and the gains in consumer welfare don't matter

Meme - "Why are people saying "Why should I pay for someone's college student loans when I didn't go to college?" Instead of "Why should I pay for some billionaire's tax cuts when I'm not a billionaire?""
This is very telling of the left wing mentality. Besides the zero sum game, where if someone pays less taxes someone else must pay more, they also think the state owns part, or possibly even all, private property (at least of "billionaires", i.e. everyone richer than them), so what you keep is a boon from the state

Robert R. Raymond on X - "Smartphones are not capitalism. Capitalism is when Apple makes it so you can't replace batteries in your iPhone and then sneaks in battery-draining code into their iOS updates so that you're compelled to buy a new iPhone 11"
"Everything I dislike is capitalism. Everything I like is not capitalism"

Meme - The Globe and Mail: "There's no shortage of government rhetoric claiming the rich aren't paying their fair share of taxes. According to the 2024 federal budget: "The wealthy are currently able to benefit from tax advantages that middle-class Canadians and, especially, younger Canadians are rarely able to benefit from.""
"Overtaxing the rich can lead to problems"
Mark Petrisor: "Wow, what a terrible column. That parable fails to explain why executives who get paid in stock options should only have to pay tax on 50% of their income while employees like nurses and fire fighters etc. have to pay tax on 100% of their income. The wealthy and anybody that agrees with this column should really just GTFO. But don't forget to sell off all of your physical assets and don't let the door hit you on the way out."
Yet more evidence that the left just hate rich people. It's interesting that this person actively wants to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Of course, when his taxes rise to make up for the drop in revenue, it will be proof that capitalism has "failed" and the "rich" will need to pay even more, because that's their "fair share"

Dubai set to welcome more millionaires as UK wealthy move their money - "the U.K. – already the source of many of the UAE’s expatriates – is projected to see its millionaire population drop by 17% by 2028, according to Swiss bank UBS. The trend is likely to accelerate in the wake of the landslide election victory for the U.K.’s Labour Party in June, many financiers believe."

Thread by @smilleralert on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "It's well known that lower income people tend to suffer much worse health. Is poverty at the heart of this disparity, and, if so, could a large cash transfer help close this gap? We examine an RCT that provided 1000 low income participants $1000/month for 3 years. We find… The cash generated big improvements in stress and mental health, but they were short-lived. By the second year of the transfer, treatment and control reported similar rates of stress and mental health, and we can rule out even small improvements. There was no effect of the transfer on physical health, measured via self-reports, clinical outcomes derived from blood draws, and admin records of mortality. For the former two, we can rule out even very small improvements (the mortality effects are more noisy). Surprisingly little effect on self-reported access to medical care. No effect on exercise or sleep. Again our confidence intervals rule out even very small effects. Mirroring what we see for mental health, the transfer generated large but short-lived reductions in food hardship/food insecurity; even by year 2, no significant difference across treatment arms.
But! The cash did lead to people using more medical care: hospitalizations and ER visits go up, dental care did as well, and spending on medical care goes up by about $20/month. Possible that this higher usage could have improved health over a longer time horizon. Suggestive results: frequency of drinking alcohol goes up (perhaps due to more socializing), but reports of drinking interfering with responsibilities goes down, as does reported abuse of painkillers. (Note these results don't survive an adjustment for multiple testing) There's so much energy in health policy now for addressing "social determinants of health"--and poverty in particular. Could cash transfers be the way to meaningfully and effectively reduce health disparities? It's hard for me to look at these results and say yes. What's great about cash is it gives the freedom to choose what you want to consume! But that also makes it a rather blunt tool for addressing health specifically. Our participants consumed more leisure, food, housing, and other stuff. And different people chose different things. Those consumption choices did not appear to improve their health on average, but they were the things participants wanted, as revealed by their own choices. This is a feature of cash, not a bug!
If the goal policy is to improve health specifically, there are health-targeted interventions that we know work--make medical care cheaper, expand coverage, reduce barriers to initiating a primary care relationship. But if your goal is to reduce poverty or even just to give people the freedom to consume what they want, cash transfers are still an important tool in the policy portfolio."
Does Income Affect Health? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial of a Guaranteed Income | NBER
Clearly, they didn't give them enough money
The implications for basic income are interesting

CRA says 2M Canadians invited for automatic tax filing pilot this year : r/PersonalFinanceCanada - "Great news. People underestimate just how easy it is to file a simple tax return. Also H&R block - get fucked!!"
"It's easy only if you have a job and maybe some investments. If you own a business or rental properties think again."
"As it should be; exploiting others for profit (employees or tenants, in those cases) is a position that should be scrutinized at a much higher level, systematically."
"Wait, it's now morally wrong to have employees?"

Meme - "It's always rich leftists telling everyone else to share. And those rich leftists always have giant properties in spots that were supposed to be underwater 20 years ago"
Michelle Obama: "someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more."
"$11.7M Marthas Vineyard mansion. $8.7M Hawaii mansion. $8.1M Washington mansion. $1.7M Chicago mansion"

Thread by @Aella_Girl on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "it freaks me out a bit how extremely misguided economic opinions permeate so much of media for young people. I watch youtube and people will casually drop anti-landlord, anti-capitalist, etc. sentiment in completely unrelated videos. I really fear for voting shifts in the future. normally i'd think uneducated economic activist opinions is a niche thing and if i'm seeing it then it's probably some selection bias, but it pops up in places i wouldn't expect to see it. And NO sane economic understanding is casually popping up in the same places. we're headed in an actually fascist direction, not the flashy memeable fascism but the sort that well-meaning people don't realize is fascism, which is by far the most terrifying type. i do admit i'm using 'fascism' loosely. While fascism does seem to include 'ignoring individual interests for the good of the whole' and heavy control over economy, maybe a more accurate term for what i'm saying would be authoritarianism. tho tbf i get the impression that a lot of the younger demographic that's anti-capitalist and anti-landlord are also using 'fascism' to mean a government passing laws that restrict behavior, just in ways they don't like (e.g. abortion, immigration)"

David Trone on X - "🧵When I’m out on the trail, I get a lot of questions about how we can reduce crime. I’m committed to comprehensive solutions that address the root causes, not just the symptoms. A lot of times that’s poverty, educational gaps, and lack of job opportunities."
Thread by @Rafa_Mangual on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "🧵 Antisocial criminals are the “root cause” of violent crime—not poverty, educational gaps, or a lack of job opportunities. Notice the vagueness throughout the OP. Those who advance this claim (against the weight of the evidence) never bother to explain the mechanics of how poverty, unemployment or educational inequities cause a man to stab a teenage girl to death because she rejected his advances. Here you have a literal millionaire gangster who live-streamed himself shooting an unarmed man at point blank range over nothing. Why didn’t his immense wealth stop this shooting from happening? Consider also this case of another millionaire who killed a guy over a $1,200 drug debt. Why? Not because he was poor. It was, according to a key witness in the case, “the principle.” And how does this claim (“poverty, etc. causes crime”) explain the many crimes committed the Bernie Madoffs, Jordan Belforts, Eliot Spitzers, etc.? They don’t say. The reality is that the relationship between crime—esp. violent crime—doesn’t run in the direction these folks claim. Are many offenders poor, undereducated, and underemployed? Yes. But they never consider that these things are outcomes associated w/ antisocial dispositions. Then there’s the lack of relationship between crime measures and socioeconomic indicators at a macro level. E.g., in 1990, NYC had 2,262 homicides. By 2017, that number was down to 292. Did NYC solve poverty? No. NYC’s poverty rate in 1989: 18.8%. In 2016: 19.5%. Did violent crime rise during the Great Recession? Nope. Between 2006–2009, NYC’s unemployment rate for working age black men jumped from 9% to 17.9%. NYC homicides fell from 596–471 over that period. Nationally, the homicide rate dipped 15% between 2007-2010, despite the unemployment rate doubling. And between 1980–2016, income inequality rose by 20%; but the violent crime rate declined from 593.5 per 100k to 386.3 per 100k.  NOT what you’d expect if poverty, etc. ➡️ crime.
Then there’s the “Crime/Adversity Mismatch” problem articulated by Barry Latzer, which shows that there exist massive disparities in group offending rates between groups with similar levels of socioeconomic status. Then there’s the within-group changes in both socioeconomic status and criminal perpetration over time, which are also incongruent with the theory posited in the OP. See, e.g. screenshotted excerpt from my book 👇🏽 The only reliable short-to-intermediate-term solution to crime, as Barry Latzer and I argue in the piece below, is NOT attempting to solve society’s most intractable problems (poverty, inequality, etc.), but rather to responsibly enforce the law:
As for the half-hearted “systemic racism” claim advanced by Mr. Trone, understand that it is a claim with many holes. The biggest of them is that the claim’s singular focus on disparities in *enforcement,* as if enforcement measures are the system’s only outputs. They’re not. What Trone and others don’t realize is that there are very stark disparities in violent victimization (see below). These disparities tell us not only who suffers the brunt of the violence problem, but also who stands to gain the most from violent crime reductions. The undeniable reality is that policing reduces crime (see trove of evidence in thread below). So does incarceration. Both policing and incarceration combined to produce a big chunk of the 1990s homicide decline. And how were the benefits of that decline distributed demographically? 🤔 So here’s the $6M question: Why would a “racist” system so disproportionately *benefit* the group Trone says the system discriminates against?"

Two Tier Policing in the UK

Aodán Hill 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 on X

Two Tier Policing: A Thread  

Two Tier policing is the primary criticism of the police by the British right, who argue that British law enforcement treat some people harsher than others. 

Is there evidence for this? Let's take a look.

It's important to note that Britain's police are not a monolith. The three legal systems of the UK (*England & Wales*, *Scotland*, NI) organise police differently and there are different leaderships in different areas. Because of this, this thread will focus on police in *England, Wales* alone.

The allegations of two-tier policing in 2024 can first be seen with the Harehills riots. Harehills is an area largely populated by Romani and south Asians, and after a Romani family had their children removed, riots broke out. The police were attacked by locals and retreated.

 

The children were later returned to the family and the Family Court judge commented while doing so that it was important to take "the temperature down in this case", suggesting community tensions were a contributing factor in their decision.

In Harehills we saw the police retreat, in Manchester we have seen another weak response from the courts. A man assaulted multiple police officers at Manchester Airport and broke the nose of a female officer. The officer who detained him has been suspended.

 

Finally, we can look at the policing in Birmingham, where a mob attacked a pub under the impression that "far-right" protesters were gathering there. A man was violently attacked and some reports say his liver was lacerated.

 

The victim is now being blamed for inciting the attack and despite the violence they faced, the owner of the pub is barring the victim and talking about how sensible and great the marchers were.

 

These are 2024's incidents but we have some others that can be discussed too. In the 2020 BLM protests, 27 police were injured and the police responded by getting on their knee in solidarity with the protesters. Keir Starmer did the same.

 

During these protests, a group called FF Force led a militaristic demonstration. Wearing uniforms comprising fatigues and stab proof vests with their logo on it - a violation of the Public Order Act 1936. Their paramilitary aesthetic drew condemnation from the public...

 

...but not from Greens co-leader Jonathan Bartley, who described them as loving and just. 

 

The leader of FF Force is an anti-vaxxer and anti-Semite who claimed that Jews control the financial system. This is loving and just, according to the Greens.    

 

At a school in Batley, a teacher showed a caricature of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in a religion class. In response, masked Islamist protesters launched a campaign to intimidate, abuse, and threaten him. The teacher received no protection and was forced into hiding.

 

A report by Dame Sara Khan found that investigators were more concerned with the offence felt by local Islamists than the danger posed to the teacher. Something to keep in mind is that the report warned "of a wider cultural problem of 'self-appointed community faith leaders'".

Finally, police officers were injured when fireworks were launched at them by pro-Palestine protesters in London. Many of these protesters were carrying anti-semitic or anti-white placards.

 

One placard intertwined a swastika with the Star of David, one placard contrasted the "right side of history" with the "white side of history". In addition, many protesters wore Hamas headbands.

 

In these cases many protesters were arrested, but faced light sentences. Of the many who wore Hamas headbands, I could find just one arrest, a Khaled Hajsaad who travelled from Birmingham and received no jail time despite his implicit support for a proscribed organisation.

 

One judge, Tan Ikram, had liked pro-Palestine content online before giving conditional discharges to protesters who were arrested for terrorism. Ikram had previously sentenced police officers to time in jail for making racist remarks in private to one another.

 

With this we have highlighted the leniency from the police & courts towards protesters who align with other causes: the left-wing, Islamism, and "counterprotests" against the far-right. 

 

But how are the "far-right" protesters in England being treated?   

 

Keir Starmer has waged war on them. While thousands of other violent criminals, including machete murderers, are being released to free up space in our jails, courts are fast tracking rioters. One rioter has already been sentenced. The southport murderer will be tried in January.

Videos are being spread showing that the police are violently beating these protesters, despite their colleagues in other forces having retreated in Harehills. When asked about two tier policing by a journalist, Met Commissioner Mark Rowley knocked the microphone to the ground.

In an interview yesterday, West Midlands Police indirectly admitted to two-tier policing when they attributed the lack of a police presence in Birmingham to their discussions with "community leaders", who assured them there would be no problems.

 

A reporter present in Birmingham, Fraser Knight, reported that he was chased out of the area by a mob of South Asians who followed him with what he suspects was a weapon. A similar situation was recorded by Sky News, whose journalists were harassed by masked protesters.

So far there is ample evidence of "counterprotesters" brandishing weapons and intimidating locals & the media, but Keir Starmer has only declared war on the "far-right" protesters.

 

This level of gaslighting brings me to finish this thread with a note about Rotherham, where rioting spread. Rioters attempted to burn down a hotel hosting migrants, which has received rightful condemnation. But Rotherham was known before this as the centre of sex abuse gangs.

 

Local politicians, social services, and the police collaborated to cover up the organised sexual abuse and rape of children by predominantly south Asian gangs. Their reason? According to some councillors, they feared that they would be fuelling racism.

 

You read that correctly. The possibility of people becoming racist was a bigger issue to the Rotherham Borough Council than the rape of children. 

 

Which leads me then to ask: would white people be let off with raping children as long as the police feared a backlash from whites?  

 

I am not condoning the riots. I explicitly condemn them.

 

However I agree that these riots, just like the BLM riots, are a symptom of underlying problems. They did not emerge in a vacuum.

 

This is the inevitable consequence of the government's choice to ignore concerns over mass immigration, and their two-tier policing is undeniable.

 

Rioters who are labelled as "far-right" face the full force of the law, rapidly and without mercy. Rioters who aren't labelled far-right? Kiddy gloves.

 

An addition: Far-right activist Sam Melia received two years in jail for putting up offensive stickers. Two years.

 

On the contrary, a BLM rioter and "grooming gang" participant, Hamoud al-Soaimi, received no jail time for his sexual assault conviction.

 

Very strange.