A Quebecker’s Love Letter to Alberta

I saw a left winger write a whole long article full of nonsense, accusing other people of not understanding history and claiming that the NEP was good for Alberta. Hilarious. 

A Quebecker’s Love Letter to Alberta

"Let the Eastern Bastards Freeze in the Dark!” This pithy phrase, coined for a bumper sticker by an enterprising Albertan in the early 1980s, crystallized public opinion in the province...

While in many ways Calgary and Alberta are unrecognizable compared to the early 1980s, the bubbling anger of that time has resurfaced, perhaps more profoundly than ever. The hundreds of thousands of Albertans transplanted from central Canada have experienced the obvious disparities in how different regions are treated. We understand central Canada, infuriating as it may be, and love the West on its own terms. We share the West’s current discontent and can help explain it.

Central Canadian ignorance regarding the West is indeed vast. My own was a veritable Marianas Trench of stupidity...

Alberta and the Prairie provinces more broadly were a palpably “high trust” society – Calgarians leaving their houses unlocked into the early 1970s was no urban legend. Its echoes persist today. These various elements combined into what was later dubbed the “Alberta Advantage”. Far more than merely the lower taxes and other pro-business government policies to which this term is usually attached, it was Alberta’s rich social capital, with a younger, more dynamic population, and a hard-to-define but unmistakeable common “spirit”, that catalyzed opportunity and economic development.

Little if any of this was known beyond the region, so that a widening gap grew between this real West and central Canadians’ perceptions. Alberta’s economic clout after the 1973 Arab oil embargo was initially viewed with distant bemusement. Before the critical discovery of oil at Leduc (just south of Edmonton) in 1947, the region had been rural and agricultural. Besides the vagaries of weather and commodity prices, Westerners suffered at the whims of Eastern politicians, protectionist trade policies and the bankers of Montreal’s St. James Street, then Canada’s financial nexus.

Less than a decade after Leduc, gushing royalties and taxes from the thousands of oil and natural gas wells being drilled all over Alberta funded almost half the provincial government’s expenditures. The OPEC cartel’s actions then saw global oil prices more than triple to $12 per barrel (equivalent to almost $90 today), with Alberta’s royalties rising proportionately and reaching 60 percent of total provincial revenue in 1980. Central Canadian bemusement became envy and resentment. Yeah, so Alberta now had easy money. Weren’t they just “sitting on” all these resources that they just “dug up”?

This is what might be called the “Beverly Hillbillies” view of Alberta, after the eponymous Sixties sitcom. Albertans, while out hunting squirrels, could just shoot into the ground and up would come the bubblin’ crude. Of course, anyone who’s actually explored for or developed hydrocarbons will know that interpreting subtle seismic readings from 5,000 metres down, or landing a 3,000-metre horizontal wellbore in a 5-metre zone, isn’t like shooting squirrels. It’s a mix of hard science, vision and grit, capital-intensive and high-risk. The technical challenges are greater than, say, damming a river to generate electricity. After all, beavers build dams.

Still, their narrative of the West gelled in the minds of the Laurentians: a resource-rich hinterland of uncouth, increasingly uppity locals of which we know little and care less. How different from the story of another resource-endowed region – a contrast which helps explain Alberta’s current predicament...

Quebec “distinctiveness” has bewildered, bewitched and often enraged Canadians for decades. Its chosen path in the constitutional, economic and social realms being, let’s say, markedly different from Western Canada’s.

Quebec is confident and comfortable with its entirely self-serving approach to Confederation, rarely deviating from the long-term goal of increased power...

The “equality” between the two levels of government and the associated division of powers would have to be respected. Quebec would retain “fiscal autonomy”. Maintaining its “equality” within the federation would require “asymmetry” of policies, with Quebec cooperating (only) while upholding its interests. Quebec would conduct its own international relations to protect its jurisdictional independence.

But Quebec’s aspirations extend beyond provincial interests. It also announced it would use federal institutions to promote its “vision of Canada” and seek to “extend the Canadian Francophone space” (while, incidentally, eliminating Quebec’s “Anglophone space”). Intending to continue “leadership in Canada”, Quebec would exercise its responsibilities “without interference” and remain “free to make its own choices and…assume its own identity.” The rest of us would have no choice in the matter, as Canadians were called upon to “duly recognize” Quebec’s “affirmation” of its “strong national identity” and ensure that Quebeckers “see themselves better reflected in Canada.” Was any of this in the pre-nup?

These goals have been advanced through both constitutional and extra-constitutional means, namely Quebec separatism. They’ve worked in parallel since the 1960s, almost as “Plan A/Plan B” scenarios, with the separatist threat – including two unsuccessful referenda, the first in 1980, lost decisively, the second in 1995, which came within a whisker – providing leverage to extract concessions from Ottawa. 

Quebec’s constitutional wranglings preoccupied and at times paralyzed the country for decades...

The feds tend to view concessions as situational or even enduring, while separatists merely regard each additional power as yet another step toward inevitable separation. Quebec in this way has deftly accumulated special accommodations. The province receives a minimum number of seats in the House of Commons, regardless of its population growing more slowly, while massive imbalances favouring Quebec and other eastern provinces persist in the unelected Senate. Quebec’s government has argued these preferences must be maintained whatever future population shifts occur. Quebec is similarly granted three justices on the Supreme Court of Canada, greatly disproportionate to its share of Canada’s population (22 percent and dropping). The corporate headquarters of both CN Rail and Air Canada are required to be in Montreal even though both organizations do the vast majority of their business outside Quebec. 

Special treatment and carve-outs for Quebec exist in myriad areas, notably immigration. In 1991 the feds granted the province exclusive choice in immigrants and refugees, plus an initial handout of $755 million (2025 dollars) for “integration of newcomers”. Ottawa has continued to lavish disproportionate benefits on Quebec with, for example, 56 percent of federal immigrant language training dollars in fiscal 2007, despite the province only welcoming 16.5 percent of newcomers. Nice deal.

Given Quebec’s goal to advance its “vision of Canada”, how does it run its own affairs? That la belle Province has a, shall we say, “ethically challenged” political culture is no secret. Even the golden Centennial year, 1967 (much enhanced by 60 years of rosy memory) was tainted. That is literally tainted: diseased or already dead and putrifying animals had been secretly turned into burgers, hot dogs and pizza ingredients for the tens of thousands of Canadian and foreign tourists who flocked to Montreal’s Expo ’67.

The “tainted meat scandal” erupted only in 1975, just one year before the city was to host the 1976 Summer Olympic Games, but the lingering odour was soon overpowered by the breathtakingly corrupt misspending for the coming games. Quebec taxpayers were stuck with a gargantuan bill not paid off until 30 years later. All for a half-built Olympic stadium that began falling apart before it was finished. Then there was the long-running Sponsorship Scandal, which brought down the Paul Martin government in 2004. More recently, the Charbonneau Commission discovered – wait for it – corruption in the Quebec construction industry. There was even suspicion of a “link between political financing and awarding of contracts.” Shocking.

Other aspects of Quebec’s “distinctiveness” include its approach to the economy; dirigisme is, after all, a French word. The public sector is 24 percent of total employment, several points higher than the Canadian average and 20 percent more than Alberta’s. Generous government programs abound, notably Quebec’s famous “$10/day daycare” and bargain-basement university tuition, frozen for the better part of 40 years.

Quebec also indulges its green sensibilities by blocking national energy corridors and not developing its substantial unconventional natural gas reservoirs. Similar shale reservoirs generate vast amounts of production and wealth in nearby Ohio and Pennsylvania and could supply the province or foreign markets for decades.

Meanwhile the province doggedly persists in extirpating the English language from the public square, with the recent Bill 96 now micro-managing even the lettering on retail packaging and signage. Previous discrimination and bullying cued the exodus of some 600,000 Anglo-Quebeckers, which the provincial immigration deal replaced with francophone immigrants from North Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere. An energetic subset of these are now publicly “engaged” on the issue of Gaza and “Palestine”, with Montreal hosting numerous, often violent protests since the October 7^th, 2023 Hamas pogrom.

Quebec’s transformation into a proud linguistic monoculture and distinctly second-tier economy over the last six decades was done consciously and deliberately. As fascinating as this social experiment is, it’s all underwritten by massive subsidies from other provinces, one in particular...

Ballooning energy prices caused by the aforementioned Arab oil embargo brought the Trudeau Liberals’ West-crushing policy centrepiece, the National Energy Program, or NEP. Its sheer stupid rapacity has come to symbolize all the misguided federal policies directed at the region; its mention today can still trigger instant anger among those who lived through it.

Trudeau’s so-called “made-in-Canada” oil price, which actually meant government-mandated below-market costs for Eastern Canada at Alberta’s (and Saskatchewan’s) expense, plus numerous other statist interventions, combined with an inevitable oil price drop and recession to devastate the region. From its peak of around 60 percent in 1981, the percentage of provincial government revenue coming from oil and natural gas fell to just over 20 percent by mid-decade. Unemployment rose from about 3.5 percent in 1981 to over 11 percent in 1983. With rising interest rates and unemployment, tens of thousands lost their homes and businesses, while for hundreds of thousands more, the 80s became a lost decade even as Ontario (and the U.S.) boomed...

Robert Mansell, a University of Calgary economist, documented the vast transfers Alberta since the early 1960s had sent to other provinces, mainly Quebec. Mansell’s latest work places the total amount at $611 billion in net transfers from 1961 to 2017, and $180 billion just in the 2010s...

Speaking to an Edmonton business audience in 2001, Chrétien mused that Alberta’s “fabulous wealth [was] making life difficult for other provinces” and that the province which nobody had helped in its hour of need could perhaps “spread its wealth across Canada.”...

More recently, the Globe and Mail criticized Alberta’s United Conservative Party Premier, Jason Kenney, for even mentioning Alberta’s huge equalization payments, saying that this fomented resentment and fuelled “talk of separation”. Barry McKenna speculated that what many Albertans really wanted was “the unfettered right to build pipelines and get the province’s oil and gas to global markets.” No kidding; but that’s not allowed either...

Predictably, Justin Trudeau further contributed to national unity by channeling Chrétien. After his election as Liberal leader in 2012 he observed that, “Canada is struggling right now because Albertans are controlling the…social democratic agenda.” By which he apparently meant Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who had had the temerity to win a majority the year before. Asked whether Canada would be better off with more Quebecers in power than Albertans, Trudeau replied: “I’m a Liberal, so of course I think so.” It’s interesting that Trudeau didn’t say, “I’m a Quebecker, so…” but perhaps that’s just implicit – being a Liberal means identifying with Quebec first.

One can only marvel at such multi-generational consistency, from Trudeau Sr. asking farmers in Winnipeg, “Why should I sell your wheat?” to Chrétien and Trudeau Jr., the latter sacrificing Alberta’s economic development to an international environmentalist agenda. So far there’s little sign the Carney government will back away from, let alone abandon this...

Current Premier Danielle Smith passed the Alberta Sovereignty Within a United Canada Act in late 2022 to defend Alberta’s constitutional jurisdiction and push back against unconstitutional federal laws – and invoked the act the following year to counter Ottawa’s so-called “clean electricity” regulations. Recently Smith’s government launched the Alberta Next initiative, with similar objectives. Smith kicked things off by summarizing the multiple Liberal laws and policies crippling Alberta’s economy which she says have led to $500 billion in lost investment capital over the last 10 years. Add that to the outflow of funds tracked by Mansell and you have $1.1 trillion in economic punishment meted upon one province.

The enduring theme is that, for over 60 years, one federal party has imposed central Canadian politics on the entire country. A policy inimical to and specifically designed to smother the political culture, economy and growth of the West. The question facing Albertans, and Westerners more broadly, is whether they will tolerate this any longer.

Will Albertans soon witness a massive, spontaneous unity rally? Or perhaps a mighty pan-Canadian caravan converging on Calgary or Edmonton? With the real likelihood of an Alberta sovereignty or separation referendum in the next couple of years, one might wonder.

After all, that’s what happened on October 27, 1995, when Quebeckers looked like they were about to vote to leave Canada. Thousands of Canadians flocked to Montreal’s Place du Canada in what became known as the “Great Love-in”. Ostensible Westerner and former PC Prime Minister Joe Clark cranked out a book exhorting Canadians to “get in your cars and drive to Quebec” to share the love and convince Quebeckers to stay.

There’s no doubt the Laurentian Elite view Quebec’s possible separation as an existential threat. The West’s concerns are mere irritants or “grievances”. This is obvious in reactions to the current Alberta secession question. One response disputes that Ottawa has mistreated the West at all. According to this argument, Alberta is “soaked in self-deception” and consumed by “dangerous myths” of a malign federal government. In reality, the ever-benevolent feds kickstarted the oil sands and furthered resource development.

The always-reliable Globe and Mail contends that this is an “Alberta problem”, that Smith should avoid placating local separatists and rather than “a clenched fist” extend a hand of cooperation to Ottawa. Veteran columnist Andrew Coyne similarly views those pondering secession as “a minority of malcontents in the richest province in the most blessed country on Earth,” ingrates “marinated in self-pity.” Smith, Coyne argues, is “odious” for using “that same minority of malcontents as a weapon to extract concessions from the rest of Canada.”

Good point! What province would ever employ threats to extract concessions from Ottawa? Coyne concludes that Canada is only responsible for Alberta secessionism in so far as Canadians have a “long history of indulging the pernicious idea that [separation] is a legitimate response to [complaints] of ill treatment, real or imagined.” This thinking culminates, or perhaps bottoms out, in the Toronto Star’s David Olive calling for Alberta to separate, citing our “incurable sense of grievance” and the “self-involved parochialism of [its] current political class and its followers.” No love-in here; but perhaps as a favour, Olive could lay out how Albertans might engineer their exit.

Elected scoffers like Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet maintain that Alberta’s complaints are mundanely economic, not part of a “national project” like Quebec. “I am not certain that oil and gas qualifies to define a culture,” he recently sneered. As if decades of lost livelihoods and unrealized potential, of losing your home over a “few points” of raised interest rates, were trivial. And this while other regions are subsidized, none more than Blanchet’s...

Setting aside economics, federal-provincial wrangling and verbal jousting with pundits, what patriotic ties are Albertans and Westerners to draw upon? What grand, unifying vision are Ottawa or the federal Liberals offering? Fortunately, they have been clear about this. The country was formed in a criminal act of imperialist theft which involved routinely genocidal acts against its original inhabitants. Canada’s founders, including our first Prime Minister, were largely reprehensible, and monuments to them must be removed or ideologically sanitized. It causes one to wonder, just what are “malcontented” Western separatists actually betraying?

Yet despite dating from such a heinous historical period, our 19^th century federal institutions are absolutely fit for purpose today. We strive toward diversity and tolerance, welcoming millions of newcomers to our shores, but remain systemically racist, as stated by our former Prime Minister. We are either a post-national state and/or the most European of non-Europeans, as the case may be. While it would likely be better for Canada never to have been founded, we are still better than the Americans, especially whenever there’s a Republican in the White House. In that case, we must rise up to defend our sinful institutions and ill-begotten way of life. Surely Westerners will find this mix of economic entrapment and inverted jingoism plain irresistible. 

All indications are that attitudes aren’t changing. The federal government is reportedly making legal preparations to combat Alberta secessionism. While the constitutional status of First Nations is progressively reevaluated and expanded, with many asserting an “Indigenous veto”, it’s out of the question for the West. Development of the West’s resources and economy will depend on the “national interest ” (as it previously depended on “social licence”) and subject to veto by – wait for it – Quebec...

All evidence points to the Laurentians doubling down on their errors of the last 60 years. It’s hard to imagine any event short of a near-death experience dislodging them from this mindset. Ironically, everything suggests that accommodating Alberta would actually help Canada and Canadian unity, whereas the same cannot be said for appeasing Quebec...

It’s worth repeating that recent polling shows an overwhelming 90-10 provincial consensus that new energy pipelines are critical. Other polling suggests at least half of Albertans want Smith’s government to prepare a plan for exiting Canada should our reasonable demands again be rebuffed. Over one-third would separate right now. And if Easterners think separatists are just old, white, cranky males, there simply aren’t enough of us around to generate numbers like that.

The most recent demographic analysis of polling data showed that separatist sentiment amongst new Canadians and young people is significant. Almost a quarter of “non-whites” supported separation, while only Gen Z’s support for secession is below 30 percent (at 21 percent). Among Gen X, one-third are for getting out. More recent data place support for forming a country out of everyone west of Kenora even higher, at 35 percent."

Links - 23rd August 2025 (1 - Left Wing Economics: UK)

Matt Allen from Brighton admits work is ‘not in psyche’ - "A DAD-OF-THREE on benefits admitted that work is “not in his psyche”.  But Matt Allen, who lives in social housing with his wife and their three children, said he is not abusing the benefits system.  Matt works a few hours each week as a yoga teacher and says he has “no intention” of finding full-time paid work...   Matt, who battles an autoimmune disease, says it is more important that he and his wife are at home with their children rather than working.  However he said he is not abusing the system because his family has a “minimalist impact on society”.  In the documentary Stacey asks: “How do you do it all Matt, is it all benefits?”  He responded: “Mostly, but we claim the very bottom line.”...  Stacey questions Matt on why other parents work to provide for their children.  When asked what he would say to them, Matt, who claims £190 a week of benefits, said: “Spend more time with your kids - it’s simple. I have no intention of working a 45 or 50 hour week - it’s just not in my psyche.”...   Adele seemed relaxed about Ulysses’ lack of literacy skills at the age of eight.  She said: “What’s it stopping him from doing other than meeting test requirements?  “I don’t know any home educated children who go past the teenage skills and don’t pick up the literacy skills.  “At the moment he’s eight years old and it’s absolutely fine for him to take his time picking up those skills - so it’s not urgent right now.”  Adele also said the family do not enforce teeth brushing, saying: “We do put toothbrushes out in the bathroom but not fluoridated toothpaste and we do not enforce teeth brushing.”"

ANDREW NEIL: Rachel Reeves has spent like a drunken sailor. Now she's in a mad scramble for tax rises. This is what's coming... she risks tilting us into a death spiral - "Britain’s beleaguered Labour Government has begun a desperate scramble to determine which of our taxes should be jacked up – and by how much – in the autumn Budget. Even though we’re now in the midst of the summer ‘silly season’, when political news tends to take a back seat to more frothy activities, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Chancellor Rachel Reeves are already in cahoots to soften up worried financial markets and hard-pressed voters for major tax rises. Friendly newspapers and sympathetic columnists are being briefed on how a further steep rise in taxes, which are already at historic record levels, is unavoidable. Barely a week goes by without some Labour grandee floating their particular pet scheme to get us to pay more tax. Failed former Labour leader Neil Kinnock has proposed a 2 per cent wealth tax on assets over £10million claiming, ludicrously, that it would raise more than £10billion (ludicrous because no wealth tax anywhere in the world has ever raised anything like that). Former Labour PM (and Chancellor) Gordon Brown has gone public with his plan for swingeing increases on gambling levies, raising more than £3billion a year to pay for abolishing the two-child benefit cap. He also wants Reeves to fiddle with the fiscal rules (as befits a past master of such sleights of hand when he ran the Treasury) to give her headroom to spend more. In May, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, whose grasp of tax matters isn’t even rudimentary, sent Reeves a ‘confidential’ memo (which of course was promptly leaked, to Rayner’s advantage with the Labour Left) proposing various tax-raising wheezes, from limiting pension tax relief to higher taxes on dividends to aligning capital gains tax more closely with the higher rates of income tax.,, Associates of Starmer and Reeves have been busy floating tax rises of their own. In the past week journalists have been briefed on everything from cutting pension tax relief to slapping a new ‘windfall tax’ on bank profits (but not on energy companies, since Labour has already sucked the life out of North Sea oil and gas)... A wealth tax, however, is a non-runner. It would take ages to set up and Reeves needs fresh cash now. As extensive foreign experience illustrates, it would also generate de minimis revenue. It could even cost the Exchequer by turning the current rush of rich taxpayers from our shores into a stampede. Labour is forced into a potpourri of tax rises because in its 2024 manifesto it ruled out raising income tax, VAT and National Insurance contributions (NICs) – the three biggest generators of tax revenues. The Treasury insists that pledge will be kept. Perhaps. But I wouldn’t hold your breath. Labour has already broken most of the other tax promises it made to win power. Indeed, it’s really reneged on not increasing NICs too because, though last October’s rise affected employers’ contributions rather than those of ‘working people’, in the end it’s the workers who pay the price in the form of lower wage growth and fewer jobs, as many (especially in the hospitality sector) are already finding out. Let’s not forget that Labour politicians insisted during last summer’s election campaign that they had no plans for a general increase in taxation. The tax rises they had in mind were small and limited to things Labour affects to hate – like private schools and non-doms – which would not affect the vast majority of voters. That promise was smashed to smithereens months later in Reeves’ October Budget, which increased taxes by £40billion. At the time, she was adamant this was a one-off rise forced on her by the so-called fiscal ‘black hole’ she had inherited from the Tories. Voters could be sure she would not be back to empty their pockets a second time. But the new black hole she now needs to plug is all too real – and entirely of her own making. The Left-leaning National Institute of Social and Economic Research said this week it could be as big as £50billion. That looks a bit toppy to me. But it’s likely bigger than the one she invented last summer. Reeves has presided over a stagnant economy and spent like a drunken sailor – a fatal combination when it comes to national finances. There is now a yawning gap between her spending plans and the revenues taxes are generating. Since the debt markets are no longer in a mood to indulge her profligacy, she can’t fill the gap with more borrowing. Hence the mad scramble for tax rises. Of course, there is another way. The bloated British state consumes more than £1trillion in public spending a year – and rising. It should not be beyond the wit of a prudent government to make significant savings, thereby avoiding the need for more borrowing or higher taxes. But Starmer and Reeves are being held hostage by their own backbenchers: ever since they forced the Government to abandon even the most modest of welfare cuts, they’ve made it clear they will not countenance public spending cuts of any kind. So brace yourselves for tax rises. Last autumn’s hefty tax increases have already taken their toll on economic activity. The British economy is now stuck with next-to-no growth, rising unemployment and persistent inflation. Somewhat absurdly, Reeves tried to take credit for the Bank of England’s cut in interest rates on Thursday (the Bank sets rates independent of government). In reality, she has rekindled inflationary pressures, thereby impeding the Bank’s ability to cut rates in the future. She has presided over a sharp rise in the national minimum wage and a huge increase in NICs. Both have contributed to reigniting inflation. Food prices in particular are surging. The Bank expects overall inflation to spike to 4 per cent by September – double the 2 per cent it is charged with delivering. It expects groceries to rise 5.5 per cent this year. The British Retail Consortium fears it will be 6 per cent. So much for Labour tackling the cost-of-living crisis... the scale of tax rises she is now contemplating for her second Budget risks tilting the economy into a death spiral. Scary times, indeed."

Who’s actually going to pay our pensions in 20–30 years if the UK keeps its birth rate low and also restricts immigration? : r/AskBrits - "I'm an English additional rate taxpayer, my European wife has 2 masters degrees from top unis here.  We've been financially rinsed and treated like criminals just for me to live in my own country with my wife. The visa process is incredibly arduous.  When we were younger and poorer we paid £900pcm to share a shitty room in a 4-bed HMO in East London, next door to an identical house occupied by a non-working Bangladeshi family who couldn't even speak English, and were living freely in social housing.  Now we see the cost of literally everything going up, pensions becoming more out of reach for people, whilst our governments (blue and red) seem determined to import as many people like our old neighbours as possible.  We're quite tired of paying higher and higher taxes, an NHS surcharge for a visa, and going into hospitals just to see hordes of people who we know full well didn't pay their way, people who in many cases can't even use the NHS without needing a translator.  Anyway, that's why we'll be following many of our friends and moving abroad next year."
"Hello fellow disappointed skilled immigrants. My wife is a welding engineer with the highest possible globally accredited certificates with experience in nuclear and I am an AI researcher with a doctorate in agentic AI. You could say our skills are in demand at the moment and you could say we are good tax cows to be milked and would be in the nation's interest to have the fruits of our work here. Yet, we pay unjustified amounts for the visas, go through these lengthy and demeaning processes, just to be met with general hostility and an incapable of progression economy and watching policies after policies that are effectively Brits shooting themselves in the foot again and again.  General consensus is oike this: Illegal immigrants breaking laws? Awww poor them. My mom coming over as an EU citizen to dogsit so we can go on a holiday? No, that's illegal, hurr durr!  Yeah, thanks, no more. My current project terminates in the autumn then we are off the sinking ship."

Opinion: The desperate need for a return to economic growth - "In the 1980s, Dutch Disease supposedly caused problems for resource-based economies whose buoyant exchange rates priced their other industries out of world markets. In the 2020s, Canada and the U.K. are suffering what could be called “Anglo Disease,” where bloated, deficit-spending governments are a drag on national economic potential, stalling the engine of progress and generating stultifying stagnation. There is a prescription for Britain’s ills, however, and Canada’s, too, if we pay attention. It comes from Jon Moynihan, an Oxford- and MIT-educated corporate leader, now a member of the House of Lords, whose 2024 book Return to Growth: How to Fix the Economy may be the most urgent policy read in years. In it, Moynihan cuts through the political and statistical noise and provides a practical policy road map rooted in data, history and what in recent years has become uncommon sense. Moynihan identifies three “devils” dragging Britain into stagnation: ballooning government spending, punitive taxation and suffocating regulation. His counterpoint? The three “angels”: free markets, free trade and sound money... The argument is moral as much as economic: growth is a bulwark of democracy, social cohesion and prosperity. Britain’s problem is not a lack of capacity but a lack of will: an entrenched political class that mistakes management for leadership. Moynihan makes the critical but obvious point that “if an economy can grow large enough, then only a small percentage of GDP needs to be confiscated in taxes to pay for needed services.” That’s why economic growth — the creation of more pie, rather than over-sharing of a gradually shrinking pie — should be policy’s over-riding goal. Without growth, countries cannot afford the social services that allow them to be largely socially democratic and mostly peaceful and egalitarian. The problem now is that government continues to grow despite the economy not keeping pace. The outcome is inevitable: if a state continues to borrow to pay its bills, it will eventually go bankrupt. The U.K.’s story should make Canadians deeply uncomfortable. In nearly every meaningful way, we are on the same trajectory. A relentless focus on growth, competitiveness and institutional renewal is needed here, too. As the federal government proposes unparalleled new spending with no guarantee of commensurately strong economic growth these risks compound for Canada. Projections are that by 2050 Canada’s net debt-to-GDP ratio will be almost identical to the U.K.’s, at roughly 130 per cent . It does not take an economic genius to understand that, continuously larger deficits in an economy poised for recession make snowballing debt unsustainable. Stagnant economies breed populism, protectionism and social unrest, hollowing out the middle class and eroding trust in institutions. Britain and Canada face much the same problems. Increasingly, they are the world’s problems. Jon Moynihan’s book is a self-help template for any advanced economy sliding into complacency. If we ignore its lessons, we risk a future where growth collapses, democracy decays and lawlessness and conflict overwhelm us."
Clearly, we need to push degrowth and "tax the rich", because endless growth is cancer
Left wingers claim that Canada's debt is relatively low, so there's no harm continuing to pursue their disastrous policies. But in the UK, left wingers don't see the need for reform either, so

An exodus is already underway in Starmer’s Britain: get ready for four more years of it - "In our current employment market, even an Oxford degree is of limited value. An article this week about five Oxford graduates, struggling to find work after more than a year, provoked much debate and some mockery. Not for the first time, social media reminded us that we are what GK Chesterton called “veneered vandals”, savages under the thinnest of layers, and people lined up to criticise the supposed sense of entitlement of the graduates.  In fact, the five Oxonians came across as ambitious and determined. They were making ends meet through temping, tutoring and working summer jobs while firing off hundreds of application letters. They were simply finding out, like so many people of their age, that three years of study and tens of thousands of pounds in student debt no longer get you onto the first rung of a career ladder... Before lockdown, the UK budget was on its way to surplus. Now, the Government is borrowing nearly £150 billion a year, two thirds of which must go to pay interest on past borrowing. No one has a plan to undo the supposedly emergency spending of 2020. The only debate is over whether taxes must rise to meet the new commitments, or whether we carry on borrowing.  Did we imagine that we could pay people to stay home for the better part of two years without suffering an economic hit? As a matter of fact, I think a lot of us did. The same people who spent lockdown howling down attempts to loosen restrictions as “putting the economy before lives” are now angry and bewildered because prices, taxes and unemployment have risen. Britain has reached the end of a long run of structurally high employment. For more than 30 years, our jobs market was the envy of Europe. Yes, we could be hit by external events, notably the global financial crisis. But we bounced back quickly, because we understood that the best way to encourage employers to hire people was to make it easy to fire them... in a country with restrictive regulations, every employee is a potential liability, and companies hang back warily. In such countries, unemployment is structurally high, especially among young people. That has been southern Europe’s tragedy for decades.  British governments used to understand this. Neither Tony Blair nor Gordon Brown tried to undo the labour reforms of the 1980s. Both knew that, if they wanted revenue for public services, they needed a buoyant economy.  Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, by contrast, seem to struggle with the concept of cause and effect. Never mind their tax-and-spend policies. They appear not to grasp that raising the costs of employing people leads to fewer people being employed... If tobacco taxes reduce smoking and carbon taxes reduce emissions, what did they suppose jobs taxes would do? Sure enough, the number of employees on payroll plunged by 109,000 the following month, and has declined further in every month since. Britain’s overall unemployment rate is now at its highest since lockdown.  The really striking figure, though, is youth unemployment. Among 16- to 24-year-olds, the jobless rate has reached Mediterranean levels: over 14 per cent in recent months. Why? Again, because of our refusal to acknowledge that actions have consequences. Pushing up the minimum wage (which applies from age 16) and the national living wage (which applies from 21) makes MPs feel righteous. They have voted to raise minimum remuneration for 20-year-olds by 55 per cent since 2020. The trouble is that these repeated hikes end up punishing rather than helping young people, because they close off job opportunities and and push some onto welfare. Around 60,000 students a year go straight from university onto long-term sickness benefits. MPs with a basic knowledge of economics tend to keep quiet, because they are terrified of being asked how they would like to live on £10 an hour. It is an irrelevant question, but it turns politicians to jelly... Ignorant voters, self-righteous journalists and cowardly politicians make a potent combination. This year, the minimum wage rose by 18 per cent for 16- and 17-year-olds and by 16.3 per cent for 18-, 19- and 20-year olds. Result? Fewer jobs for young people. Openings in the hospitality sector are down by 22,000 since last year, and graduate postings have fallen by an almost unbelievable 33 per cent.  To repeat, policies have consequences. I sometimes think that the readiness to acknowledge trade-offs is the real dividing-line in politics. And I don’t just mean among politicians.  Among voters, too, there are those who look at the costs of policies, and those who go to the polling station humming “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good”. Hikes in the minimum wage are the least of it. The open-ended extension of equalities laws is an even greater deterrent. When retail workers can be compensated for being paid less than warehouse workers, supposedly on sex discrimination grounds, even though the retail workers were refusing to be redeployed to warehouses, employers can hardly be blamed for being reluctant to hire.  And that is before we get to Angela Rayner’s package of employment laws, the most far-reaching since the mid-1970s... Here is a paradox. Labour – the clue is in the name – is meant to be the party of the worker. Yet every single Labour-majority government has left office with unemployment higher than when it began. Every. Single. One. This one, unlike some of its predecessors, has wasted no time.  Already we can see where it is going: more and more workers’ rights, fewer and fewer workers. We are in a vicious circle. Higher unemployment means fewer people paying taxes into the system and more drawing benefits from it. Since Labour has already proven that it cannot cut spending – not even mildly to slow the rise in benefits claims – that can only mean even higher taxes, prompting more disinvestment, slower growth, higher unemployment and lower revenue.  According to a survey by the British Council, 72 per cent of Brits under 30 are thinking of working abroad, and who can blame them? We are pulling off the extraordinary double of simultaneous emigration and immigration crises, exporting our entrepreneurs and replacing them with people who go onto benefits. And, God help us, we have another four years of it to come."

Britain’s workers are being bled dry to nourish a new elite class - "all this early inflation-busting pay rise achieved was to send out a signal that going on strike pays in Rachel Reeves’ Britain.  The Government appears to have been on the back foot ever since negotiating with public sector workers over pay disputes and industrial action. Train drivers, junior doctors and teachers have all secured above-inflation pay rises.  It will not have escaped readers’ notice that the strikes have continued despite these deals. Those familiar with Anglo-Saxon history might have even foreseen this predictable consequence of the Government’s negotiation tactics. What makes Labour’s stance even more ill-advised and short-sighted than that of Æthelred the Unready, is the fact that, while bending over backwards to accommodate the demands of public sector employees, they appear to be squeezing the life out of the private sector. With the impact of increases in national minimum wage and National Insurance contributions hitting businesses hard, bosses are at their most pessimistic since 2016. They feel worse than during the Covid lockdowns, fraught Brexit negotiations and the aftermath of Liz Truss’s mini-Budget, according to a survey published by the Institute of Directors last week.  The majority – 85pc – of business leaders think that government policy so far will be unsuccessful in driving up desperately-needed economic growth. According to a House of Commons Library paper on public sector pay, in April 2024, median weekly earnings for full-time employees were £765 in the public sector compared to £714 in the private sector, “making earnings 7pc higher in the public sector”. This was the case before Labour took power; adding pensions to the mix makes the disparity even more stark. Last year alone, taxpayers were hit with a record £47bn bill to fund public sector pensions."

Even Italy is richer than Starmer’s socialist Britain - "Not only do Italians enjoy better food, warmer weather and la dolce vita, they’re now richer than us too. Adjusted for the cost of living, Italy’s GDP per capita has overtaken the Britain’s for the first time this century, according to the World Bank... For decades, the country has struggled with demographic decline and fiscal debt crises. In 2011 there was national humiliation when the then prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, was effectively removed from office by Brussels, which threatened to force Italy out of the eurozone.  Today, however, Italy seems to have achieved an enviable stability. Under Giorgia Meloni’s tough-minded conservative leadership, Italy is now among the most desirable domiciles in Europe, not least for millionaires fleeing the Labour Government’s tax raids... What Giorgia Meloni has grasped – but Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have not – is that if you keep tax rates low, people have less incentive to avoid paying them.  This is especially important in Italy, where much of the population used to keep their savings in cash, often literally under the bed, in order to escape the taxman. Thanks to a populist prime minister of humble origins who knows her compatriots well, that culture is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Ms Meloni has an instinctive sympathy for the small businesses, self-employed workers and farmers who are still the backbone of the Italian economy. She hopes to recreate the post-war economic miracle, known as il boom. That miracle was unleashed by the free-market policies of Luigi Einaudi, with annual growth rates of up to 10 per cent.  While Italy’s economy is now much less dynamic, living standards are rising. Here in Britain they are stagnant, partly due to low-skilled mass immigration. Ms Meloni has managed to cut the number of illegal arrivals from North Africa, which fell from 157,000 in 2023 to just 66,000 last year. Admittedly her deal with Albania to deport asylum seekers to processing camps there has run into trouble with the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. This is the EU court to which Starmer is keen to hand over jurisdiction under the trade deal he struck with Ursula von der Leyen at Lancaster House in May... Of course there is still plenty of poverty in Italy’s perennially depressed southern regions. But the poorest parts of the UK now suffer from a welfare dependency culture for which the Labour Party has just abdicated responsibility.  There is no equivalent in Naples or Palermo for the British phenomenon, visible in cities like Birmingham, of entire communities claiming mental health benefits and giving up on work."

Tax the rich more to fill hole in public finances, Labour members tell Starmer : r/unitedkingdom - "Reddit and Labour backbenchers only have one policy idea: TAx the RiCH. Meanwhile Nvidia is nearly worth as much as annual UK GDP."
Tax the rich more to fill hole in public finances, Labour members tell Starmer : r/unitedkingdom - "Would suggest the point is twenty years ago UK GDP per capita was the same of an average US state. Hey not California but still mid ranking.  Now it's significantly lower than even the poorest state being Mississippi.  And all we can offer up is taxing those that create wealth even more... It's a doom loop."

Tax the rich more to fill hole in public finances, Labour members tell Starmer : r/unitedkingdom - "Or they arnt investing but investing in say the USA instead"
"well then there is no downside to taxing them then is there? what are they going to do, pull out the investments that they already aren't making?"
"Or remainder leave.  Just because we start shooting ourselves in the foot doesn't mean you have to shoot yourself in the head also  At some point the tax doom loop will end. Almost certainly with the IMF"
"The downside is that you reinforce the doom loop rather than getting out of it. We're a nation in decline and taxing to fund welfare ultimately isn't going to solve that  The other downside is that they leave and then we'll have even less tax revenue to spread around (top 1% pay 29% of income tax)"

Links - 22nd August 2025 (2 - Diversity)

~~datahazard~~ on X - "All net growth in Federal employment is from hiring staff with disabilities. Now, 23% of Federal employees have disabilities, according to OPM. This used to hover around 7% until 2012, when it began its ascent alongside "wokeness""
~~datahazard~~ on X - "Nearly a Quarter of Federal employees are reported as being disabled by OPM. This is a stark increase from the historic 7% rate."

End Wokeness on X - "HAHAHAHAHA. Rep. Jasmine Crockett just admitted that she was a DEI hire."
Jasmine Crockett describes lobbying to get job 'because I'm Black' - ""When I first became a public defender, I had no criminal defense experience. I walked in, and I told my boss, Charlie, I said, ‘Listen, you should hire me.’ He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘Because I'm Black.’ Charlie looked at me like I was crazy," Crockett said."

Meme - "JAPANESE HISTORY *Black Yasuke from Assassin's Creed Shadows*
SWEDISH HISTORY *Documentary about black ‘The First Swedes’*
BRITISH HISTORY *Black Edward VI from My Lady Jane*
NORWEGIAN HISTORY *Black Jarl Estrid Haakon from Vikings Valhalla*
ITALIAN HISTORY *Macrinus from Gladiator II*"
Whitewashing is wrong and awful and literally structural violence

Caldron Pool on X - ""Australians don't have the same freedom of speech laws that they have in the United States, and the reason for that is that we want to hold together a multicultural community..." When did Australians choose to trade their freedom for multiculturalism?"

Rotimi Adeoye on X - "I remember being in a DEI training at an old job and some weird lady running it was telling people when you make a new friend if they are black, don’t immediately ask about their families because a lot of Black people come from “broken homes” Made me hate DEI, it’s very stupid"
I thought "stereotypes" were bad

Meme - The Missing Data Depot @data_depot: "In 1969, Judge Macklin Fleming wrote to the dean of Yale Law School about its new racial quota system (10% of students would be black). That year, Yale admitted 43 black students (only 5 qualified under the previous standards). Fleming made the following predictions:"
"No one can be expected to accept an inferior status willingly. The black students, unable to compete on even terms in the study of law, inevitably will seek other means to achieve recognition and self-ex- pression. This is likely to take two forms. First, agitation to change the environment from one in which they are unable to compete to one in which they can. Demands will be made for elimination of competition, reduction in standards of performance, adoption of courses of study which do not require intensive legal analysis, and recognition for academic credit of sociological activities which have only an indirect relationship to legal training. Second, it seems probable that this group will seek personal satisfaction and public recog- nition by aggressive conduct, which, although ostensibly directed at extemal injustices and problems, will in fact be primarily motivated by the psychological needs of the members of the group to overcome feelings of inferiority caused by lack of success in their studies. Since the common denominator of the group of students with lower quali- fications is one of race this aggressive expression will undoubtedly take the form of racial demands-the employment of faculty on the basis of race, a marking system based on race, the establishment of a black curriculum and a black law joumal, an increase in black financial aid, and a rule against expulsion of black students who fail to satisfy minimum academic standards."

Meme - RazorFist @RAZORFIST: "Björn Abandonsson"
RadioGenoa @RadioGenoa: "State TV in Sweden (SVT) has produced a big budget series called History Of Sweden. Here are the first Swedes. *black people*"

Jeremy Wayne Tate on X - "Has anyone ever made a more powerful case for reading Shakespeare and the classics than Maya Angelou?"
How ignorant. Didn't she know that she had a responsibility to decolonise the curriculum and that she was only capable of emphathising with people who looked like her?She should just have memorised black writers

Meme - "An Avowed dev just gave me possibly my favourite "ban reason" ever on Steam."
"The vast majority of the characters in positions of power and authority are female. Men are all some variation of incompetent, corrupt or evil, though they can get a pass if they have a unique identity of some description e.g. racial or sexuality. That is the more "subtle" brand of woke storytelling, based on intersectional hierarchy. Writers attempted this variety more often after overt preaching failed. The classic recent example of this type of woke was Starfield: in that game, you could immediately tell a characters intentions and their role in the subpiot by their place in that hierarchy. If you encounter a young female Asian leader, then you can 100% depend on her, she is competent, incorruptible and essentially flawless. If you encounter an older white man, then it doesn't matter how nice he seems; he's either got some huge character flaw that the quest will require you to clean up, or he will simply be revealed to be the villain of the subplot"
"Ban Reason: User was found engaging in Anti-Dei practices, which is not tolerated on this forum"

West Yorkshire Police blocks white applicants to boost diversity - "One of the UK’s biggest police forces has temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to boost diversity... West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.  The process has raised concerns that white British candidates are being unfairly treated, amounting to a form of positive discrimination that could be potentially unlawful... One whistleblower claimed black and far east Asian candidates were considered particularly under-represented and given a “gold” ranking, followed by those of south-east Asian origin who were in the silver tier. “White others”, including candidates from Irish and eastern European backgrounds, were bronze.  The whistleblower, who was heavily involved in sifting job applications for recruits, said he raised concerns over the policy with bosses but was warned not to interfere... WYP, the fourth largest force in the country, employs 19 diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) staff – many of them serving police officers – at a cost of just over £1 million a year. A report earlier this year suggested it spends more money on DEI than any other force... minority candidates were given months to register an interest and fill out applications. By contrast, some white candidates were given as little as 48 hours... But a senior employment lawyer, who did not wish to be named, said that the recruitment policy strayed into positive discrimination that is practised in the US but prohibited in the UK...  PAT officers also conduct the interviews and that, in a three-month period, not a single ethnic minority applicant failed the recruitment process. Police officers who had worked inside the force’s recruitment department told The Telegraph that entry-level vacancies for new constables and detectives were marked internally with an H, meaning Hidden, on the force’s computer system.  That meant the jobs were at that stage only open to ethnic minority candidates. They would become open to white British candidates at a much later stage in the process... WYP’s insistence that positive action was not used in the interview process was false, claiming to have “personally witnessed” members of the PAT “greeting candidates with unprofessional hand clasps and hugs and heard them tell candidates on numerous occasions words to the effect of ‘don’t worry, you’ve already passed and this is just a formality’.”  In his document, the whistleblower claimed: “I have several examples of direct dishonest, fraudulent and incompetent actions by candidates that PAT have not only turned a blind eye to, but often defended in order to hit their figures.”... The whistleblower told The Telegraph he was told to begin processing ethnic minority candidates before the window for white British applicants had even been opened."
Weird. We keep being told that this never happens and that white men are always unfairly privileged in hiring, and DEI is just to ensure a level playing field for anyone who isn't a white straight man, which is why we need even more DEI

Crémieux on X - "Thanks to the Supreme Court, we know that Harvard's admissions were so utterly corrupted by discrimination in favor of Black applicants that a Black applicant with terrible academics had higher odds of getting in than a top-decile White applicant. Asian had it even worse!"
i/o on X - "To put it into perspective: Only about 1 in 20 blacks who were accepted at Harvard in the early 2020s would have gotten in under academics-based race-neutral policies.  Let me explain. Harvard currently accepts about 3% of its applicants. Let's say it had selected students based solely on high school academic performance, and, further, that the school had been less selective than it is now — so let's say it accepted 10%, rather than 3%, of applicants. Extrapolating from the Harvard lawsuit plaintiff's consultant report, under a system that used only academic merit in its decision-making, only 0.94% of black applicants would have gotten into Harvard, rather than the 15.81% actually accepted, if the acceptance rate had been 10%. So roughly only 1 out of 16 blacks admitted under Harvard's affirmative action-based system would have gotten in under a academics-based meritocratic system.  But Harvard doesn't have a 10% acceptance rate. Its rate is only 3%. This means that, given the SAT score distribution curves for different racial groups (which heavily favor Asians and hugely disfavor blacks the farther you move toward the extreme right tails), even fewer than 0.94% of blacks would have been accepted in a real-world meritocratic scenario. Almost certainly it would have been fewer than 1 of 20 applicants.  This was the immensity of Harvard's preferential treatment of blacks, and of its institutional racism against Asians."

Why does male entertainment have to be inclusive to women while female entertainment just gets to exist as is? : r/MensRights - "If a genre comes out for men and women like it, the sequel will replace the male lead with a women and slowly turn into a female brand some examples. Fight Club, men liked it, now an all female version is coming out with the same feminist director from Barbie. Marvel, men liked it, now many of the superheroes are being replaced by women, black panther is now a woman, Thor is now a woman, hulk is now a woman, who talks about how much harder women's lives are than men. Now the reason people say this happens is because men need to be exposed to strong female role models and it's sexist for women to excluded from male spaces. But when you look at female entertainment, their portrayal of men is horrible yet they never have to be inclusive to men. Harley Quin Birds of Prey was advertised to be all about women, no male gaze, the actor from star wars even says this movie isn't for men, so the fact it isn't inclusive to men is the main selling point. Gone Girl, the main female protagonist kills an innocent man and pussy whips her ex husband. Stroll around the female recccomdations on netflix, there are movies of women assassinating men, castrating them. Yet, none of their entertainment needs to change to accommodate men nor do women need to lose out on female protagonist if men end up liking their franchises. Why is this?

'Diversity' now a factor in basically all university hires: report - "After a study set out to find how many Canadian university jobs mentioned “diversity” as a condition of hiring, it determined that the answer was almost all of them. Researchers with the Aristotle Foundation examined 489 job postings issued by 10 Canadian universities. Of those, just 12 didn’t contain some element saying that candidates would be prioritized based on their race, gender or sexual identity. “In other words, 98 per cent of academic postings … directly or indirectly discriminated against non-minorities,” concluded the study. “Only two per cent of vacancy postings did not contain any form of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) ideology.” Although Canadian universities have long prioritized diversity among their faculty and staff, since at least 2017 the policy has become explicit, with identity quotas put in place for everything from student admissions to hiring to grant awards. As an example, every single applicant to the University of Toronto — even if it’s just for a job as a maintenance technician — is asked to complete a “diversity survey” laying out their race as well as their “ethnocultural identities, gender identity, visible and invisible disabilities, and sexual orientation.” In some cases, universities will actively restrict a position to a specific identity group, such as a 2024 computer science position at the University of Waterloo that was open only to candidates “of a racialized minority.” Some of this has come as a result of federal mandates. Under the Trudeau government, federally funded Canada Research Chairs have become subject to strict identity quotas: 22 per cent of the positions must be given to “visible minorities,” 50.9 per cent must go to scholars who identify as women and 7.5 per cent must go to candidates with disabilities... 489 job posts ran the gamut from a health sciences librarian at the University of Saskatchewan to an assistant professor of economics at the University of Toronto. In 477 of the jobs, there was some part of the posting that made reference to “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI). In 131 positions, the only diversity element is a boilerplate statement. Every single job posting advertised by the University of Manitoba, for instance, includes a statement outlining the school’s commitment “to the principles of equity, diversity & inclusion and to promoting opportunities in hiring, promotion and tenure (where applicable) for systemically marginalized groups.” Other postings upped the ante by requiring applicants to fill out a diversity survey, explicitly stating that diversity characteristics were an “asset” or requiring the submission of an essay outlining the candidate’s commitment to DEI. In 16 of the postings, a job was explicitly barred to anyone not meeting certain identity characteristics. Only three universities were found to have posted a job that made no mention whatsoever of DEI: The University of British Columbia, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Dalhousie University and the University of Prince Edward Island. UBC was actually an odd mixture of jobs with intensely strict identity characteristics (such as a posting for a Black scholar in visual art), and six postings that contained no DEI component... the Aristotle Foundation called their report a “reality check” on Canadian universities, warning that DEI policies were harming “individual merit, academic freedom, and equality of opportunity.” “Should Canadian taxpayers fund public institutions that claim to serve the public interest but favour one race over another?” it read."
Clearly, banning people who don't have a certain identity characteristic from getting a job is how you hire the best and the brightest, which is why diversity makes business sense

Obsidian Co-Founder Urges Rejected Devs to Sue 'Avowed' Studio - "The co-founder of Avowed developer Obsidian is urging anyone who was rejected for an art position at the Microsoft-owned studio to speak to a lawyer and seek legal action after art director Matt Hansen accidentally exposed alleged racist hiring practices.   Chris Avellone was one of five co-founders that came together to create Obsidian Entertainment, a developer that struck big when it developed Star Wars: Knights of The Old Republic 2. Avellone served as design lead on the project and continued working with them until 2015.  Obsidian, now owned by Microsoft, has encountered a great deal of controversy surrounding its upcoming first person fantasy RPG Avowed. When the game’s use of pronoun selection in a fantasy environment drew the attention of X owner and world’s richest man Elon Musk, its art director Matt Hansen jumped all over the situation, launching into profanity laced tirades against the Tesla boss from his Bluesky (of course…) account.   Following Hansen’s fit, people started digging into statements he’d made in the past. That was when YouTube personality Asmongold made an interesting discovery. Hansen had in the past noted on social media that he made hiring based on race a priority. "Reminder to black artists out there who are looking for portfolio reviews or job advice: my DMs are open and you will always have my priority,” the uncovered Hansen quote said. “We got too many crusty white dudes in this field, please let me help you replace me one day — I want to go back to living in the woods.”   Making hiring decisions based on race is a clear violation of Article VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.   Additionally, back in March, Musk had made a statement against businesses that institute racist hiring practices against “white dudes.” Hansen jumped all over that statement as well.   “Oh Elon, you sweet summer child,” Hansen wrote back in March in response to Musk’s statement. “This will only embolden me, you sad sack of s***.”...   Avellone is no stranger to the gaming industry’s hypocrisy and cancel culture. In 2020, he was accused by two women of sexual misconduct and harassment. Without any proof, Avellone was immediately let go from several gaming projects.   However, he sued his two accusers for libel and won a seven-figure settlement from them. The accusers then recanted their statements, noting that the press had “misinterpreted” their comments.   “Mr. Avellone never sexually abused either of us,” the two women said after losing the case. “We have no knowledge that he has ever sexually abused any women.”"

Thread by @ChrisAvellone on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Based on recent news, if you were rejected from an art position at Obsidian in the past few years, call a lawyer – discrimination in hiring, esp for a Microsoft studio, can ensure you don’t need to apply for a job ever again. And it shouldn’t cost you a cent to initiate legal action – the lawyers will know what the case is worth, and they'll do the heavy lifting. This has nothing to do with my personal politics, but I believe strongly that hiring discrimination for any reason isn't something the industry should tolerate. I hope you agree."
Naturally he got called a Nazi etc for believing racial discrimination was bad

Chris Avellone on X - "I had an experience with a BioWare producer who showcased the full extent of their hiring practices, and it's a story for another day - but definitely was cause for a lawsuit."

Mac Smith on X - "At one studio I was told I could only hire by gender. I checked out from then on. No way I'm gonna tell my nephews that they shouldn't bother trying because some corporation was trying to reach some nonsense demographic quota."
Of course, he got insulted as an incel

Meme - Woman and child in room on fire: "I just hope an obese, lesbian, woman of color reaches us before a white man."
On the California fire chief

🇬🇧🇳🇱Israel🇮🇱latest🇺🇲 on X - "America's three most prominent Nazis are a black man, a latino and a black woman. Total victory for multiculturalism."
Presumably, Kanye West, ??? and Candace Owens

Meme - Netflix: "During World War Il, the only US Women's Army Corps unit of color stationed overseas took on an impossible mission. The Six Triple Eight, starring Kerry Washington and directed by Tyler Perry, is now playing. Battalion, forward march!"
Dane @UltraDane: "Their impossible mission was sorting mail in the mail room. The 6888 were mailroom sorters."

Jake 🇺🇸 on X - "Chief Diversity Officers are 60% white (only 10% black), 56% male (43% female), and perhaps unsurprisingly overwhelmingly Millennial (57%). So, the stats in my post quoted below appear to be inaccurate, but better data still show CDOs skew young, white, and male."

White men have least chance of getting on BBC trainee scheme - "Non-white applicants to the BBC’s flagship journalism training scheme were almost two and a half times more likely to get in than their white counterparts.  Since 2022, an average of 22.5 per cent of applicants were classed as coming from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds (BAME).  However over that same two-year period, BAME individuals made up 41 per cent of participants on the scheme.  In contrast, whites made up an average of 77.5 per cent of applicants but only 59 per cent of participants, since 2022.  This means that non-white applicants were 2.4 times more likely to be given a place on the highly coveted scheme than their white counterparts.  The two-year scheme, referred to as the Journalism Advanced Apprenticeship, provides participants with training and a potentially permanent role at the Corporation. The findings were released via the Freedom of Information Act. Female applicants also had a stronger chance of getting in than men, but by a lesser degree."
Weird. We are told that DEI is about levelling the playing field and ensuring people other than straight white men can get hired

Ethnic minority candidate given police job despite failing interview - "Senior officers in West Yorkshire Police intervened to ensure that an ethnic minority candidate who failed her interview was given the job... The female officer was initially rejected but eventually given a post after her case was taken up by the force’s chief officer team, which includes Chief Constable John Robins.  To get around her failure, West Yorkshire Police then scrapped interviews for officers transferring to the force, the documents show.  The move will increase pressure on the force, one of the UK’s largest, which has already been accused of prioritising ethnic minority candidates with “appalling racist hiring” practices.  West Yorkshire Police used the policy change to offer jobs to six other ethnic minority officers who had failed their interviews or had been rejected from shortlists in the previous eight months... the female candidate was allowed to join before pre-employment checks were carried out on the orders of the chief officer team... West Yorkshire Police said a complaint that the police constable had been “given favourable treatment” had been investigated “thoroughly” and no evidence had been found to support the allegations.  The force is under scrutiny after The Telegraph first disclosed that white British applicants are being temporarily blocked from jobs as new recruits to boost diversity... Chief Constable Robins said that he stood by previous comments where he said that he wanted discrimination against white candidates to be legal.  The documents seen by The Telegraph show that the female police officer was initially blocked from transferring to West Yorkshire Police while she was still on a two-year probationary period at another force.  A police officer in charge of sifting applicants refused her transfer “as she is still in her probationary period”, but was slapped down and told he had misunderstood the policy... she scored one E, four Ds and one C on her answers to the six set questions.   Sources inside the force said that officers generally needed As and Bs to secure a job. An E indicates “no answer given or answer irrelevant”, while a D represents “some good points but below an acceptable level”.  In the interviewer’s conclusions, the sergeant wrote: “The candidate seemed to have prepared answers which they ultimately attempted to force into the interview questions instead of working within the parameters of the question.”  The notes went on: “There were good aspects to the answers at times, but it was felt that some of the answers lacked the experience to provide comprehensive examples.”  He also raised concerns that she had referred to a historic online police resources platform that was no longer in use."
We know that she only failed the interview because of racism and sexism

U.S. Army on X - "Wherever the fight, our warfighters stand ready to win and defend the nation. 📽️ The 75th Ranger Regiment, @USASOCNews"
Wilfred Reilly on X - "75% big "cis" white guys, the rest big cis Black and Spanish guys, armed. We're going to war."

Los Angeles has fallen

Los Angeles has fallen

"Los Angeles is burning again, and it is not the Olympic flame. After riots in 1965, 1992 and 2020, Angelenos are bearing witness once more to a rash of violent unrest...

It is understandable if the world feels less than enthused about flocking to LA for the Olympic Games in 2028 – or the World Cup in 2026. Yet come they will...

Unless vast sums are spent on a Potemkin-like makeover, the world will also witness what many of us residents have long suspected – that the city is slipping into an inexorable decline.

Things were very different in 1932, when LA first hosted the Olympics. With a population of 1.2million – a third of today’s population – LA was still fledgling. But the 1932 games served as a wake-up call to the world that LA was on its way to becoming one of the planet’s great cities...

Numerous studies show that hosting an Olympics offers, at best, fleeting economic benefits – and often leaves enormous burdens. It can provide an opportunity to make a statement, heralding the rise of cities such as Berlin under the Nazis in 1936 or Beijing under the CCP in 2008. But staging an Olympics in a city plainly in decline seems a fool’s errand. 

Rather than a model for the future, Los Angeles today offers a masterclass in urban dysfunction. Drive through the streets of the South Side or along Central Avenue – historically black LA’s main thoroughfare, now predominantly Hispanic – and the ambience increasingly resembles that of Mexico City or Mumbai: cracked pavements, dilapidated buildings, outdoor swap-meet markets and food stalls serving customers, much as one would see in the developing world.

Homeless encampments are scattered throughout the city. In a friend of my wife’s neighbourhood, close to where we once lived, homeless people loiter in supermarkets and eat in the aisles. Others harass shop owners and tap directly into the city’s power grid. Many workers, particularly immigrants (both legal and undocumented), earn very little.

Once a middle-class haven with a broad industrial base, LA now has the highest poverty rate in California – and among the worst nationwide. Failing schools, dilapidated parks and an exodus of residents and firms suggest the city’s long-term prospects could be bleak.

Once known as ‘the city that grew’, LA has lost population since the early 2010s. By 2060, according to the state’s finance department, Los Angeles County will experience no growth – and could shed well over a million residents. The young – the lifeblood of any growing city – are already leaving, some 750,000 in the past decade alone. People may still come temporarily, but few stay to raise children. LA now has the second-lowest birth rate among the 53 largest US metropolitan areas, according to the American Community Survey. Younger Angelenos, according to one UCLA poll, are even more disillusioned than their elders.

Ironically, the foreign-born – long the focus of progressive concern – are also departing. For decades, LA, with over three million immigrants (twice as many as any other county), was energised by this influx. But life has soured even for many who arrived having been attracted by its ‘sanctuary city’ status. Since 2010, long before the rise of Trump, LA’s foreign-born population has been falling, while that of Texas or Florida has grown substantially.

 

This reflects a harsh reality: LA’s economy no longer delivers decent wages. Latino workers, once cost of living is considered, fare worse here than in most American cities. Home ownership rates for both Latinos and African Americans are among the lowest in the US. Neither the business community nor the political elite seems capable of reversing the trend. 

 

That decline of the business community, which proved so pivotal in driving past Olympic successes, is palpable. In 1984, LA County boasted a strong and highly motivated business elite, with 12 Fortune 500 firms. Since then, the region has lost many of its oil and aerospace giants, along with its largest banks. Today, the Fortune 500 count stands at just seven – only one of them within city limits, on the outer edge of the San Fernando Valley. 

The 1984 Olympics was led brilliantly by Peter Ueberroth, himself a successful businessman who managed not only to deliver an incident-free games, but also to turn a profit. Though the city was run by a Democrat, Tom Bradley, he was also a former police officer and was not about to allow criminal elements (always a force in LA) to disrupt the games. Organised labour also backed Bradley, as well as the corporate elites, for whom many union members worked.

Today, the contrast is stark. Few corporate leaders possess the cojones to address the reasons for LA’s precipitous economic decline. This is most apparent downtown, an area that has ‘benefited’ from vast transit developments, tax incentives and a new convention centre. Yet, despite billions spent, it remains strewn with encampments and sometimes fire-damaged buildings. The empty, never completed luxury high-rises there have become renowned among tourists for their elaborate graffiti.

Even Hollywood appears to have lost its lustre. It once epitomised American aspirations, and largely reflected mainstream values of family, romance, patriotism. It now caters to a narrower, more woke audience, often with ideologically driven content.

It’s no surprise, then, that jobs in the entertainment industry are being lost to both technological developments and more generous incentives elsewhere. Some entertainment executives now even suggest that LA could become ‘another Detroit’.

Michael Kelly, director of the Drucker Institute at Claremont McKenna College, notes that nearly every basic industry – from manufacturing to finance and business services – has shed jobs or at best stagnated since 2019. Only education and healthcare, both heavily subsidised by government, have grown meaningfully during the same period. Had LA matched the national pace of job growth, Kelly estimates it would have added 300,000 more jobs.

This decline has taken place in a city that once boasted a strong, dominant business class. Today’s business leaders – increasingly inheritors of wealth and middlemen – seem uninterested in reversing decline. Many, Kelly argues, prefer to chase prestige projects, like the massively successful Dodgers or the Lakers, rather than focus on improving economic and educational opportunities for young Angelenos, or keeping public parks safe. ‘They don’t care about fixing MacArthur Park or helping the South Side’, Kelly concludes. ‘All they care about is the Olympics.’

The business elites, the high-priced lawyers and the many fixers, can nurture their LA idyll, living in secure, ultra-pricey places like Brentwood (home to Kamala Harris), the Hollywood Hills or out further in Malibu or Palm Springs. They have stood by as the city’s political culture has nurtured a criminal class, strengthened by unrestricted immigration and often feeble law enforcement.

Once obsessed with growth, even to the detriment of the city’s natural environment, LA’s political establishment is now dominated by people who barely, if at all, support capitalism. While cities such as San Francisco, Houston and even New York shift back towards the political centre ground, Los Angeles in 2022 elected Mayor Karen Bass, a lifelong leftist who travelled to Castro’s Cuba as part of the Venceremos brigade. In 2016, upon Fidel’s death, she issued a praise-filled obituary to ‘El Comandante’. Her Castroite bona fides may have hurt her when she was briefly considered for Biden’s running mate – a position that went to Kamala Harris.

As the progressives have gained close to total control of LA, a wave of Chicago-style corruption has followed, with multiple city councillors and commissioners arrested. Bass impressed few during last year’s devastating wildfires, and the city’s rebuilding effort has been abysmal at best.

Under pressure from militant public-sector unions, Bass has kept business at bay with permit costs – high even by Californian standards. The last LA Olympics turned a profit, but if this one does not, the city may be forced to shoulder expenses it can scarcely afford. This year alone, Bass’s administration announced a budget deficit of over $1 billion – driven largely by surging public-sector wages.

With just three years until the Olympic Games open, the city’s progressive leaders seem to lack the will to protect their own constituents. Bass and California governor Gavin Newsom, along with Harris, have opposed the deployment of the National Guard, arguing, against all evidence, that the riots had been mostly ‘peaceful’ .

It may yet worsen. Bass faces mounting pressure not from business, but from radicals to her left – notably the fast-rising Democratic Socialists of America, a hard-left, anti-business, anti-Israel faction with four seats on the 15-member city council.

Those disappointed by Bass’s weakness on security may not have seen anything yet. The new wave is embodied by Isabel Jurado, a DSA activist who not only seeks to defund the police, but dreams of its abolition. Even more troubling is the rise of pro-Hamas agitators – visible in the current anti-ICE protests – and a radical fringe that is well-funded, well-organised and increasingly influential.

It is rare to hear a public voice push back against random violence. In the months leading up to the latest unrest, there were countless incidents including violent gangs of kids, vandalism and theft throughout the city, particularly downtown. Criminals are now so bold that they have started stripping copper wire from street lights, leaving some parts of LA in the dark. You don’t have to support Trump’s crude, draconian approach to want to see streets cleared of thugs, imported or otherwise. Yet the response of the city’s elites – political and corporate – seems to boil down to ‘party on, dude’.

Perhaps LA’s leaders are right. Perhaps the city will manage to pull off another great Olympics, provided enough security is deployed. But a recovery of LA’s former cultural and economic dynamism will require far more than fanfare and fireworks. It will demand precisely the kind of hard work this city has shirked for decades."