Links - 15th November 2025 (2 [including Phones in Schools])

Voices: Banning phones in schools is the wrong way to keep children safe - "Psychologist Professor Peter Etchells, author of Unlocked: The Real Science of Screentime, also tells me that a ban may seem obvious, but could have unintended consequences. He cites the learnings of a ban in Florida schools, which led to 30 children in a year of primary school age being suspended for violating the rules. I know from my work with schools that some children have second phones they hide at school. A statutory ban needs consequences, so what will your school decide they are, and how will that affect your child’s education? Can your school afford the phone lock pouches, or would the money be better spent on upgraded sporting facilities? Sport has been shown to improve the mental health of pupils. Banning anything creates a culture of secrecy and shame, which may mean your child won’t tell you if they do see or experience something terrible on their phones, and then they have to process this alone. Dr Martha Dieros Collado, author of The Smartphone Solution and a clinical psychologist with 20 years of experience in family therapy, says that digital citizenship must be embedded in all learning, at home and school, from a young age. She cites the example of a 13-year-old girl she worked with who was receiving more than 300 WhatsApp messages each morning and feeling intense pressure to read each one. She needed to be shown how to navigate that – a skill that is useful for all children. We need to instil critical thinking in our kids and get more tech-savvy ourselves as smartphone users. You cannot protect your children through avoidance, and I think a ban feels like punishing some children for things they haven’t done yet."

School bans alone not enough to tackle negative impacts of phone and social media use - "Students attending schools that ban the use of phones throughout the school day aren’t necessarily experiencing better mental health and wellbeing, as the first worldwide study of its kind has found that just banning smartphones is not enough to tackle their negative impacts. In a landmark study published today (Wednesday 5 Feb) in Lancet Regional Health Europe, 1227 students from 30 schools across England provided data about smartphone and social media usage and a range of mental health, wellbeing and other outcomes. Among the schools that took part in the study, 20 had various forms of restrictive phone policies in place. The study, which was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), found that there was no difference in outcomes for students who attend schools that ban smartphones throughout the school day.. Smartphone bans in schools did lead to a slight decrease in students using phones (of approximately 40 minutes) and social media (approx. 30 minutes) in school, but the study suggests that the impact is small and that school policies banning recreational phone use didn’t lead to a meaningful reduction in the overall time spent using phones and social media... “We did find a link between more time spent on phones and social media and worse outcomes, with worse mental wellbeing and mental health outcomes, less physical activity and poorer sleep, lower educational attainment and a greater level of disruptive classroom behaviour."
This suggests that the proposed causation is in the wrong direction

DM Transatlantic: Smartphones should be banned in the classroom - "Citing the work of an Oxford psychologist, Lucy Foulkes (Ref: New Statesman), Jenkins suggests ‘well-meaning efforts to discuss mental health with young people might be inadvertently steering them towards negative outcomes… Rather than encouraging [young people] to navigate the normal ups and downs of life as part of the human experience, we teach them to view these struggles as indicators of issues requiring immediate diagnosis and intervention.’ (Ref: Strangers and Intimates Substack) Jenkins also points out that there have been other events, like the global economic crash and subsequent recessions, as well as the prominence of activists such as Greta Thunberg who promote a ‘climate catastrophe’, which can make young people fearful about their future. Indeed, it is this contemporary narrative, Jenkins argues, where ‘the younger generation is constantly confronted with the notion of an uncertain future that leads to anxiety and fearfulness rather than the particular challenges of our age’. It’s hardly surprising that they are anxious, when they are constantly led to believe they have no future, she says. In addition, Jenkins is one of many critics of Haidt who argue that he has made the classic error of confusing correlation with causation. In other words, just because the decline in mental health in the young coincides with the advent of the smartphone, doesn’t mean the latter is causing the former. There have been a range of events which could be said to define our post-2007 era that Haidt fails to consider properly. In a series of blogs from the London School of Economics, other academics have also been critical of studies such as Haidt’s which claim a link between mental health and smartphone use in the young. They point out that many such studies are prone to cherry-picking their evidence, choosing studies that support their hypothesis and downplaying any research that does not support their claims. In addition, many overstate the extent to which internet addiction is an issue among adolescents, depriving young people of the agency to make decisions for themselves. Such studies often make claims beyond what the data actually shows and dismiss a range of alternative explanations for the rise in mental-health problems in children (Ref: LSE blogs). Another British psychologist, Pete Etchells, is also sceptical of the link between screen-based activities and poor mental health. In his recent book, Unlocked: the real science of screen time and how to spend it better (2024) Etchells also highlights the correlation versus causation problem, arguing it could be as easily argued that mental health issues are leading young people to spend more time on smartphones, or there could be a third factor at play, such as loneliness (Ref: Time). Etchells further suggests that concern over smartphones and mental health may be akin to the ‘moral panics’ that have accompanied innovative changes throughout history. For example, he points to past concerns that TV might promote violent behaviour or radio could lead to addiction. As far back as the nineteenth century, a moral panic ensued around the repeal of the paper tax in the UK, where some people worried that ‘women, children and the working classes’ would need to be ‘protected’ from an influx of trash literature. Even as far back as Ancient Greece, philosophers such as Plato worried about the damaging effects of poetry. In a review published by Nature magazine, American professor of psychological science and informatics, Candice Odgers, argues that the idea that digital technologies are rewiring children’s brains is ‘not supported by the science’ (Ref: Nature). She suggests that hundreds of researchers, including herself, have searched for the kinds of effects being suggested and they have produced a mix of small associations or no associations whatsoever. In fact, she says, when associations are analysed over time, they suggest ‘not that social-media use predicts or causes depression, but that young people who already have mental-health problems use such platforms more often or in different ways to their healthy peers’ (Ref: Cap X). For Odgers, the rising hysteria around smartphones could be distracting us from tackling the real causes of young people’s problems... Timandra Harkness, British journalist and author of Technology is Not the Problem argues we are wrong to point the finger at technology (Ref: Technology is Not the Problem). The study of previous panics around technology suggests that technology is often the scapegoat for broader social problems. Today, ‘successive generations … have less independent time outside adult supervision, and fewer opportunities to take risks and initiatives for themselves’. In the absence of other opportunities, is it any surprise that young people turn to smartphones? (Ref: UnHerd.)" Climate change hysteria and other left wing neuroses have very real harms

Tribe 'has bricks thrown at them' by angry locals for 'reclaiming stolen land' - "The self-proclaimed 'Queen' of the Kubala Kingdom posted video footage of harassment by a group of locals she said included bricks being thrown at them, racial attacks, and shouting and intimidation. Queen Nandi, 43, a mother of seven who was born Jean Gasho, is joined in the tribe by her husband 'King Atehene' and their handmaiden Asnat.  They have settled in a forest in Jedburgh, with the intention of reclaiming land they claim was stolen from their ancestors in the Highlands 400 years ago. Their presence had baffled locals but last night tensions escalated with the 'queen' reporting they had been attacked with 'bricks' and 'racial slurs' by locals who wanted them out."

Germany: Husband-wife duo Mohammad and Israa beat Berlin ticket inspector until he went blind in one eye, called him 'dirty n****r' during attack - "German public servants such as police officers and firefighters are under constant threat in the capital of Berlin, but even seemingly benign positions, like a ticket inspector, can also suffer severe violence.  Two thugs, 24-year-old Mohammad A. and his wife Israa M. (22), a husband and wife duo, beat a 47-year-old ticket inspector until he went blind in one eye.  The incident occurred on Aug. 18, 2022, on the M29 bus at the Wittenbergplatz stop. The ticket inspector was checking tickets on the bus for the BVG, the Berlin transport authority...   The defendant, Mohammad A., said in court, “I’m so sorry about your eyes.“  He was on probation at the time of the incident."
Do left wingers love Muslims or blacks more?

Emotional support alligator is no longer welcome in Pennsylvania Walmart - "A western Pennsylvania man and his emotional support alligator took a shopping cart spin around the local Walmart, where he claims they've never had a problem — but this recent trip earned them orders to stay away, the retail giant confirmed Thursday.  Wesley Silva, 60, and his 5-foot-long, 32-pound reptile named Jinseioshi made the local news after a trip to a Walmart in West Brownsville, where he pushed the alligator around in a shopping cart as she was wearing a dress. Before concerns about the recent visit were raised, Silva insisted he and Jinseioshi experienced nothing but praise... Before Jinseioshi arrived, Silva already had a zoo's worth of reptiles in his animal family, including six snakes, a leopard gecko, a Komodo dragon, an ocellated skink and a second alligator. He also has a dog.  Silva, a pastor at a Baptist church and a Brethren church, stopped just short of calling his worship of reptiles a holy act.  "In the Bible, God talks about us having dominion over animals, and I developed an affinity for the reptiles," said Silva, the father of five children. "I find them very soothing."  The reptile collection started three years ago when a daughter wanted a snake. "

Meme - Josh RR Jokien @joshcarlosjosh: "Pippin to Frodo when they're back home in the Shire:"
Phil Lester @AmazingPhil: "gonna confess i'm still not sure what the ring from lord of the rings actually did except make you invisible and angry"

Rachel Gilmore on X - "it's so funny how men online literally can't handle the fact that I'm both extremely smart AND extremely hot. it breaks them. very sad"
Jonathan Kay on X - "There’s a small subniche of twitter addicts who are effectively codependent with their own trolls. The trolls use their ideological opposition as an excuse to make antisocial ad hominem attacks. And the twitter addict uses the trolling as a pretext to package their megalomania as an expression of righteous self validation"

Doctor left patient for sex with nurse in operating theatre - "A married doctor had sex with a nurse in an operating theatre while a patient was under anaesthetic, a medical tribunal heard.  Dr Suhail Anjum, 44, and the nurse were caught in a “compromising position” by a “shocked” colleague at Tameside Hospital who walked in on the pair.  The tribunal was told that Dr Anjum, a consultant anaesthetist, had asked another nursing colleague to monitor the male patient halfway through the surgery so he could take a “comfort break”.  Instead, Dr Anjum went to another operating theatre at the hospital in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, where he had sex with the woman, named as “Nurse C”... Dr Anjum said the incident took place during a “stressful time” for his family following the birth of his youngest child in January 2023."

About speed camera: now the data is in: in three weeks, 32000 tickets total, 10000 in New Westminster (500 per day) : r/Vaughan - "Personal Disclosure: Traffic Enforcement Experience in New Westminster
Over that three weeks, my wife and I have received a total of three tickets, three in 51km/h, one in 52kmh, another 54kmh. Each ticket came with an average fine of approximately $95.  As part of our daily routine, I travel along that stretch four times a day for school drop-off and pick-up, amounting to roughly 80 trips per month. I want to clarify: I’m not a speedster, nor is my wife. Like many of you, we’re ordinary residents managing everyday life behind the wheel of a family vehicle.  The reality is that no one checks their odometer and the speed limit sign 100% of the time. You’re talking to your kids, reacting to unpredictable road situations, or momentarily distracted—and you drift slightly above the limit. In this case, going just over 51 km/h in that zone is enough to trigger a ticket.  This isn’t a complaint, but a reflection on how easily honest, everyday driving can result in penalties—even when safety isn’t being compromised. I respect the role of traffic enforcement, but I think we should also acknowledge the human side of driving, especially in school zones frequented by local families."

Luigi Mangione says he was beaten up by 'ladyboys' in Bangkok ahead of CEO murder: report - "Suspected killer Luigi Mangione reportedly said he was attacked by a group of transgender women while he was partying in Bangkok ahead of the deadly CEO shooting... The New York Times said Mangione messaged his friends about his "wild nights" during the trip. In one encounter, he was allegedly assaulted by seven "ladyboys""

Prosecutors say Luigi Mangione inspired others by killing health care CEO - "Prosecutors say Luigi Mangione, accused of killing the CEO of UnitedHealthcare on a Manhattan sidewalk, has inspired others to embrace violence over reasoned debate.  As evidence of Mangione’s growing influence, prosecutors cited the last month’s deadly mass shooting at the National Football League headquarters... “Simply put, the defendant hoped to normalize the use of violence to achieve ideological or political objectives,” they said. “Since the murder, certain quarters of the public — who openly identify as acolytes of the defendant — have increasingly begun to view violence as an acceptable, or even necessary, substitute for reasoned political disagreement.” In a footnote, prosecutors referenced the gunman who went into an office building not far from where Thompson was shot in midtown Manhattan, then killed four people including an off-duty police officer, a financial services firm executive and a security guard, and wounded others, including an NFL employee.  Mangione is accused of leaving behind evidence showing disdain for the insurance industry. Similarly, the NFL headquarters gunman identified as Shane Tamura left behind a handwritten note blaming the league and football for causing chronic traumatic encephalopathy, known at CTE, prosecutors noted. Tamura, who took his own life, accused the league of hiding the dangers of brain injuries linked to contact sports.  “Almost immediately, members of the public sympathetic to the defendant touted Tamura’s actions as a laudable continuation of the defendant’s philosophy,” prosecutors said.  Prosecutors said Mangione has “openly cultivated supporters” by setting up a website and directly addressing them. They said Mangione also has catalogued all of the supportive letters he has received on his website."
Time to jail the "far right" to keep people safe

Why does the academic year for primary / secondary schools and JCs not align with universities? : r/askSingapore - "Good question!  Traditionally, the O and A levels scripts were sent to the UK by ship for marking and this took several months. Hence, there was a long delay between the end of the exams and the beginning of the next education tier.  For instance, between the end of the O levels and the start of post-secondary education, there is an official gap of 3 to 5 months, 3 for JC and 5 for polytechnic.  In the 1950s and 60s, the university academic year actually started in early May because the scripts were only back in Singapore in March. They later pushed the university academic year back to July and then August to accommodate NS, which was 2.5 years in the past.  In most countries, the school leaving exams end about 2.5 to 3 months before the end of the academic year whereas in Singapore, they end almost at the end of the academic year. In the UK, the academic year ends on Aug 31 and the O and A levels end around mid June. Hence, all the marking is completed within the academic year. In Singapore, the marking of the exam scripts cannot be finished within the academic year and spills over the next academic year.  Also, in other countries, students pick their schools before they take their exams. For instance in the UK, they choose their universities and courses before they take the A levels and conditional offers are made to the students. If their actual A level exam results meet the requirements, they get to go to the course they have had the conditional offers.  The Singapore system is actually outdated and very slow. Students waste a lot of time waiting for their results and picking their university courses. It is crazy how developing countries like China, India, and Vietnam can do this more efficiently than our world class education system."

Meme - "I really wish I could own the libs by triggering them with my love of America, Jesus, the police, the flag, and chihuahuas.
Temu: you're not gonna believe this..."

Meme - Coon Rapids Minnesota Sales And Ite...: *Coffins* "We are using them as coffee tables but bought for when we die. We are relocating no room for them."
"$400 - Two special built coffins"

Meme - "Mom, I'm dating our neighbor."
"He could be your dad."
"Age isn't an issue, mom."
"No, I don't think you understand me."

Meme - Dr Asif Munaf: "Jews are born with the inherent ability to deceive."
"This you, Asif?"
"The suspended doctor selling workers sick notes on demand. 'Rogue' online service offers certificates for months off work with no medical tests or consultation. A suspended doctor is selling sick notes online to customers who want to go on holiday, take months off work for alleged Covid infection or care for an ill dog, The Telegraph can reveal. Asif Munaf, who was suspended from the me register ever anti-Semitic social media posts, runs Dr Sick Ltd, a company that offers same-day sick notes for as little as Without any face-to-face or phone consultation, Telegraph reporters were able to obtain medical certificates granting five months off work for Covid, six weeks for anxiety over a sick pet, and four weeks of home working to enable them to go on holiday abroad. All three notes were issued within hours of the requests being made. A dossier of evidence has been shared with the General Medical Council (GMC), which regulates doctors, and the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the healthcare watchdog."

Meme - "I now pronounce you husband and wife, till death due you part."
Busty Denise Milani: "Hi I'm death."

Meme - "I DON'T ALWAYS USE THE WRONG MEME. BUT WHEN I USE THIS ONE, NO ONE CARES" *Jamilya Damon*
:3 [swf] - Taringa!

Meme - Hitler: "A world domination cult
That hates the Jews
Considers itself a Master Race
Dehumanizing & removing the rights of those who don't fit their ideal.
Imposing its ideology through violence
Anti-West
Uses Propaganda to Mobilize Support against Jews
Wants to Mark People to distinguish them
Islamist:
"A world domination cult
That hates the Jews
Considers itself the Best of People
Dehumanizing & removing the rights of those who don't fit their ideal - Dhimmitude
Imposing its ideology through violence
Anti-West
Uses Propaganda to Mobilize Support for Palestine and uses Propaganda against Jews & Christians
Wants to Mark People through the Dabbat al-Ard to distinguish them"

Meme - "How To Liberal
March: *angry robot with Ukraine flag*
April: *angry robot with Palestine flag*
May: *angry robot with Mexico flag*
June: *angry robot with Iran flag*
What Flag Will It Be Next Month?"

Meme - Jo @JoJoFromJerz: "Has a single Republican come forward to denounce the politically motivated and deadly shootings of lawmakers in Minnesota?"
Bob E. I Drone Pilot & AirBnB SuperHost @cot5r: "@grok Could you summarize the response from Republican lawmakers regarding the deadly shootings of lawmakers in Minnesota?"
Grok: "Republican lawmakers have condemned the June 14, 2025, Minnesota shootings that killed Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband and injured Sen. John Hoffman and his wife. President Donald Trump called the incident "terrible," stating, "Such horrific violence will not be tolerated in the United States of America," and expressed support for Minnesota. Minnesota Senate Republican Leader Mark Johnson said, "Senate Republicans are unified in our condemnation of this brazen act of violence," thanking law enforcement for their response. These statements reflect a unified Republican stance against the politically motivated attacks, though further responses may emerge as the situation develops."
Left wingers just love misinformation

Cambridge historian seeks recognition for first English king - "A University of Cambridge academic has joined calls for greater recognition of the first king of England.  Aethelstan ruled England from 927 AD to 939 and united the kings of Wessex, Mercia, Northumberland and East Anglia/Danelaw under a single crown.  He was also king of the Anglo Saxons from his coronation in 925, and was buried in Malmesbury Abbey in Wiltshire.  David Woodman, a professor of history at Cambridge University who has written a new book about the king, said: As we approach the anniversaries of Aethelstan's coronation in 925 and the birth of England itself in 927, I would like his name to become much better known. He really deserves that." Aethelstan was the grandson of Alfred the Great and in 929 he conquered the last Viking kingdom, York, at the Battle of Brunanburh, making him the first Anglo-Saxon ruler of the whole of England.  He died in Gloucester in 939 and was succeeded by his half-brother Edmund.  Woodman, from Robinson College, said: "There has been so much focus on 1066, the moment when England was conquered.  "It's about time we thought about its formation, and the person who brought it together in the first place."  Prof Woodman said he blamed a lack of public relations for this.  "Aethelstan didn't have a biographer writing up his story.  "His grandfather, Alfred the Great, had the Welsh cleric Asser to sing his praises.  "And within decades of Aethelstan's death, a wave of propaganda ensured King Edgar became famous for reforming the church. This completely overshadowed Aethelstan's earlier revamping of learning and religiosity."  Edgar was the son of Aethelstan's brother Edmund, was the great-grandson of Alfred and became king of all England in 959."

A wave of longevity is sweeping across Africa. It isn’t ready. - "Across Africa, a stunning success story has quietly taken hold: Decades of progress have begun delivering a wave of longevity that promises to reshape the demographics of the continent. But as lifespans lengthen and villages begin to fill with the old, pensions and social safety nets are minimal, medical care is lacking and routine problems of age are so commonly unaddressed that cataracts turn to blindness and minor infections end in death."

Bond markets show the world is flirting with disaster - "G7 public debt is at an all-time high, and no government has any serious plan to bring borrowing under control. Instead, from the US to Germany, policymakers plan to borrow more to finance further massive public spending increases. Some growth in parts of public spending, especially on defence and infrastructure, is long overdue. However, these targeted expansions are merely the thin end of the wedge. We face ever-growing, long-term increases in public spending as a result of ageing populations, as governments try to honour promises of generous state pensions and public healthcare provisions. The costs associated with these long-term commitments are amplified by overly generous welfare programmes and other handouts, which distort incentives to work and save for old age. This impairs public finances on both sides of the ledger – by decreasing potential receipts from income taxes as well as increasing transfer payments... Advanced economies are already on the path of slowing growth and rising debt that cannot be solved by raising taxes further, since excessively high taxes are a key cause of the slow-growth trap we have fallen into. The real puzzle is why governments seem so reluctant to tackle these budget challenges and restore confidence to markets, especially when they are being penalised so heavily for inaction... Rising and volatile government debt costs crowd out private investment, harm confidence, curtail credit growth, create financial stability risks and constrain policy choices – for central banks as well as governments. The first government that takes serious steps to bring spending and taxes into better balance and to put long-term debt on a sustainable path will be rewarded by financial markets with a lower cost of borrowing and inflows of capital seeking a genuine safe haven. It may be that governments are reluctant to curtail spending because they believe it would be politically unpopular. I am not convinced. The current bond market wobbles are the third such episode this year. Judging by the near-persistent press coverage of these issues, it is hard to believe that the average voter is unaware of the economic risks associated with the advanced world’s present fiscal mess. The misunderstanding lies not with the voter, but with the policymaker who routinely overestimates their own role in creating economic growth. Ronald Reagan said: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’.” He was not wrong... Governments tend to learn the hard way. The route through the mess may be that markets force an adjustment somewhere"

Tens of thousands of federal jobs should be eliminated, says the MEI - "There are 367,772 federal employees, or nine per 1,000 residents, compared to 7.2 when Trudeau took office. By comparison, the United Kingdom has 7.4 federal employees per 1,000 residents and Germany 6.2 employees per 1,000 residents."
The cope is going to be that a big country needs more civil servants

Public safety minister’s phone number was in document seized during 2006 terror finance probe - "Gary Anandasangaree’s phone number was found in a document seized when RCMP national security officers searched a suspected Tamil Tigers fundraising office in 2006... Anandasangaree is now Canada’s Minister of Public Safety, putting him in charge of the nation’s counter-terrorism agencies, including the RCMP, Canadian Security Intelligence Service and Canada Border Services Agency. The document in which his contact information appears was discovered during Project Osaluki, an investigation into the World Tamil Movement (WTM), which allegedly raised millions in Canada for the Tamil Tigers, a designated terrorist group... The RCMP filed the document, which listed Anandasangaree’s phone number and a dozen others, in court in a file titled “Contact list of area coordinators”... before joining cabinet, Anandasangaree wrote letters urging border security officials to allow a suspected former member of the Tamil Tigers to resettle in Canada. While Anandasangaree initially said he only did so because he was the MP who represented the man’s wife, Global News reported that court documents indicated the woman had never lived in his riding."

Life inside the BBC: ‘You felt you had to apologise for being white and middle class’

Life inside the BBC: ‘You felt you had to apologise for being white and middle class’

"As calls for reform mount, two former BBC employees have spoken to The Telegraph on condition of anonymity, offering a rare glimpse into the culture at the corporation.

Former employee #1

“There was something of a Left-wing cabal – and if you were more centrist in your politics, your opinion wasn’t appreciated. Eventually, you just stopped speaking up. They would absolutely talk about diversity of voices, then shut down anybody who didn’t agree with them.

“I don’t think it was a conspiracy, more the weight of opinion in the room and a self-fulfilling prophecy through recruitment. If you weren’t part of the more woke, Left-leaning brigade, your opportunities for progression were limited. I saw it in interviews – anyone who didn’t fit that agenda could be easily dismissed from the shortlist.

“There was also this clamouring for diversity that made a bit of a mockery of it. They had a diversity scheme, but when they couldn’t find enough external candidates they just put internal people on it who wouldn’t have got through in a fair competition. Suddenly, people who weren’t particularly good at their jobs were in really sought-after positions simply to fulfil quotas and make things look a certain way.

“It was a climate which brought out some strange behaviours in the bosses as well. For instance, young Asian women were given opportunities over black males, who were perceived as being more of a threat to the jobs of their superiors. White managers were comfortable celebrating a version of diversity that didn’t ‘challenge’ them. That was certainly my observation.

“I also saw a certain worldview carried forward in programming. There were documentaries that were supposed to be about discovery, but they started from a fixed view and followed it through to the end – so then you’d have whole films built on confirmation bias. They weren’t coming from news or current affairs – they were more about culture or society, and there was no process to challenge them.

“I don’t think people [in the corporation] are deliberately deceitful. I have a lot of respect for the corporation, but the BBC has fallen into its own echo chamber.

“It’s also become scared and apologetic – embarrassed about existing, embarrassed about being white and middle class, almost. It lost touch with the broader audience in the regions and became very metropolitan. It doesn’t shout about what it does well, doesn’t own up properly when it gets things wrong and spends most of the time hoping nobody notices the stuff in the middle.”

Former employee #2

... "There was a period when younger generations were over-empowered, and it skewed certain outcomes. People with very little experience were given far more say in decision-making than they should have had, mainly because older, white and middle-class staff were paranoid about the ‘optics’ of saying no.

“The fetishisation of youth meant that, regardless of whether they were any good, the assumption was that young people must know the answer. They don’t – or not yet, anyway. In some cases, there were people in very senior jobs who were far too inexperienced, making big mistakes with compliance and duty of care, and they were protected by the managers who’d put them there. Being young became a qualification in itself.

“Culturally, it also became a place where you felt you had to apologise for being white and middle class – you felt your privilege very keenly. I generally think that’s a good thing, we should all be more aware of how good we’ve had it, but there is a point where experience and authority should hold sway, regardless of whether it’s coming from someone white and middle class. I mean, everyone was given unconscious bias training, which I found quite interesting – although, it’s all a bit ‘Meghan’, you know, ‘Confront your privilege! Own your privilege!’

“Anyway, in hindsight, I’ve never worked anywhere else where people went around apologising so much for who they were – and because almost everyone was white and middle class, you also had this strange situation where people were trying to drum up ‘protected characteristics’ for themselves. It was like, ‘Is it enough to be middle-aged? Could that count as a protected characteristic?’ It all became a bit ridiculous."

 

Links - 15th November 2025 (1 - Japanese Media vs Wokeness)

Meme - Japan: "The model *Konatsu Kato*
The character *Shimizu Hinako from Silent Hill*
West
The model *Hannah Hoekstra*
The character *Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn*"

Smash Bros’ Sakurai says Japanese devs should focus on domestic, not Western tastes - "Super Smash Bros and Kirby creator Masahiro Sakurai says Japanese developers should focus on making games for the Japanese market, instead of trying to appeal to Western players... According to Sakurai, Western players buy Japanese games with the expectation that they will provide something different from Western-developed games, so there’s no need for Japanese studios to adapt.  “It’s not necessarily my own idea, but the trend in the games industry is that Japanese people should go for what Japanese people like,” Sakurai explained (via machine translation).  “A while ago, there was certainly a culture of making Americanised products, because various works were popular in the US. However, I feel that ‘Japanese game lovers’ overseas are not looking for such things, but for something unique and interesting from Japan.  “In other words, I think the ideal is to make the games the way you like them, and the people who can accept them will enjoy them.”"

Meme - DARLING: "American female empowered character vs Japanese female empowered character *Half-blue haired non-binary pudgy individual with half-shaved head & short hair, bad complexion, a red nose and frumpy dressing, normal elegant lady*"

Japanese Fans Unhappy With Square Enix's Decision To Censor Female Characters In 'Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake': "Everyone Involved Should Apologize At Akira Toriyama's Grave" - "Like their Western counterparts, Japanese fans are furious over the discovery that Square Enix’s upcoming Dragon Quest III HD-2D has censored legendary series artist Akira Toriyama’s original female character designs."

Kadokawa President Apologizes for "Pro-Censorship" Remarks - "Kadokawa president and chief executive officer Takeshi Natsuno apologized on Wednesday for "inappropriate remarks" he made last week concerning sexually stimulating content in manga. His comments, which were made on an ABEMA Prime program regarding the appropriateness of gravure in boy's magazines, were criticized for expressing a "pro-censorship" view and for conveying a misleading impression of Kadokawa's corporate direction.  In the July 21 program, Natsuno was responding to a question regarding what he thought would happen if gravure disappeared from magazines. He said that although one shouldn't force something to disappear entirely, Japan is overflowing with manga that is "even more stimulating than gravure."  "With that in mind," he said, "a lot of Japanese manga won't pass review at Google or Apple. So, while keeping that in mind, I do somewhat have the feeling that we have to re-establish the standards of what is okay to release and what isn't for the internet era. In the publishing industry that I'm in, everyone is in the pro-freedom of speech camp, but I do get this strong feeling that we have to redraw the line somehow."   The comments were criticized strongly online by various writers and creators. Love Hina and Negima! creator Ken Akamatsu commented that while he did not think that Natsuno expressed his remarks with the seriousness or conviction to attempt convincing other large publishers to censor their manga, a person with his level of influence has the power to impose self-censorship at Kadokawa. He also pointed out that unlike other publishers such as Kodansha and Shogakukan, Kadokawa is listed on the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. "It appeals to shareholders to conform to the standards of foreign capital," Akamatsu said.  Novelist Mikito Chinen tweeted: "If [censorship] were to happen, then Japan's manga and anime would lose all their predominance. Manga and anime are received well overseas because they were created with freedom and without consideration for what will do well there. It is quite dangerous for this kind of opinion to emerge from Kadokawa."   In his apology, Natsuno acknowledged that although he participated in the program in an individual capacity, it was inappropriate of him to say such remarks as the president of the company. He emphasized that his comments have no bearing on the direction of the company. As repentance, he will take a 20% pay cut for three months between August and October. On Twitter, he also apologized for any crude words or profanities he uttered in the program.  Dwango managing director Shigetaka Kurita also assured his followers on Twitter that the Niconico platform has no plans to adopt censorship or restrictions of expression."

Love Hina Mangaka Warns Of Rising Pressure From Foreign Markets To “Introduce Political Correctness Into Manga” - "Mangaka Ken Akamatsu, perhaps best known as the mangaka behind the extremely popular Love Hina series, recently shared his concerns regarding the rising pressure from Western markets to “introduce political correctness” into manga and the possible negative effects such a push could have for creators and fans across the medium... Akamatsu later remarked, “if you don’t go abroad, [the political correctness] problem isn’t a battle at all,” which prompted Kobayashi to share his “personal idea” that “I don’t think [a series] will sell that much when it comes to selling [itself as politically correct].”  “The point is, ‘Manga that was released without being conscious of political correctness cannot be read due to the political correctness problem,’” said Kobayashi. “I think this is a mess. Like [a fire].”...   In turning to the debate of ‘mass appeal’ vs ‘artistic authenticity’, Akamatsu observed, “The one that hits may go to Hollywood, [but], it is better to have freedom of expression.”  “Manga is mainly about freedom of expression, and it feels like you don’t give in to political correctness,” noted Akamatsu, before questioning,  “Is it a loss if the politically correct works get overwhelming power? I wonder if that means.” However, Kobayashi reassured Akamatsu “even if there is entertainment that goes against political correctness, it would be different if this (current idea of political correctness) remains the same 10 years later, 20 years later, 30 years later, and so on.”  “It wasn’t even five years ago. I was told recently,” Kobayashi said. “The possibility that this will become the standard for the future is not zero, but it may change again.”  He concluded, “That’s why I think it’s important not to win or lose in the short term, but to always create something that you can be proud of as entertainment.”"

Meme - "A MONSTER IN A JAPANESE VIDEO GAME *Attractive Lady Dimitrescu from Resident Evil VILLAGE*
A NORMAL GIRL IN AN AMERICAN VIDEO GAME *Unattractive Abby from the Last of Us 2*"

Meme - packergirl: "WTF?! shouldn't it be a job requirement for an English Dub script adapters for JAPANESE ANIME to know JAPANESE? No wonder botched Japanese anime and video game English Dubs are problem"
Jamie Marchi: "Is that supposed to be a gotcha? Most of the script adapters don't speak Japanese"

Thread by @BoundingComics on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "In honor of the current reckoning against poor, meme-riddled, politically-motivated Japanese-to-English translations in anime, manga, and video games, allow us to provide proof that such butchering is not rare, but rather the industry norm.  Don't believe us? Read on!🔽🧵🔽
NEO: The World Ends With You Localization Changes Script To Insert Anti-Capitalism Dialogue Line
Western Localizers Upset River City Girls Zero Offers Option For More Literal Translation, Claim Their Work Is Being Disrespected
Resurfaced Interview Sees Skies Of Arcadia Translator Admit Localization Team “Rewrote A Lot Of The Dialog Completely”
Netflix’s English Dub Of Tiger & Bunny 2 Changes Dialogue To Have Golden Ryan Criticize “Outdated Gender Norms”, Declare Himself A “Feminist”
The House In Fata Morgana Author Pushes Back After Western Localizer Boasts Of “Rejecting” Inward-Knee Female Character Designs For Being “Unnatural”
Seven Seas English Localization Of ‘I Think I Turned My Childhood Friend Into a Girl’ Changes Feminine Male Into A Transgender Girl
Western Localizer Reveals Seven Seas Always Intended To Localize Feminine Male As Transgender Female, Says Translator “Consulted Trans People” On Changing Character’s Identity
Seven Seas Apologizes For Intentional English Mistranslation Of I Think I Turned My Childhood Friend Into A Girl, Promises To Revise Script “To More Accurately Reflect The Author’s Original Intent”
English Localization Of Square Enix’s ‘Live A Live’ Found To Be Riddled With Poor Translation And Censorship
English Localization For ‘Utawarerumono: Prelude To The Fallen’ Under Scrutiny Over NIS America’s Cutting Of Lewd And Gendered Dialogue
Crunchyroll Removes Gendered Language From English Localization Of “ONIMAI: I’m Now Your Sister!”
Western Localization Of ‘Fire Emblem Engage’ Removes Gendered Language, Censors Romantic Confessions
Western Localizer Brags About Deliberately Botching HIDIVE’s English Subtitles For ‘My Life As Inukai-San’s Dog’
'Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro 2nd Attack’ ADR Scriptwriter Defends Their Use Of Memes In Series’ Localization: “I Am A Storyteller, Not A Robot”
Viz Media’s English Localizers Force Mansplaining Reference Into Latest ‘Twin Star Exorcists’ Chapter
Viz Media’s English Localization Of ‘Mashle: Magic and Muscles’ Replaces The Term “Lolicon” With “Pedophile”
Viz Media Makes Corrections To Latest ‘Jujutsu Kaisen’ Chapter After Fans Discover Original Localization Ruined A Hype Moment
Western Localizers Insert Mansplaining Reference Into English Releases Of ‘The Dangers In My Heart’ Manga And Anime
Viz Media Censors Lewd Dialogue Related To Giselle Gewlle From Global Localization Of ‘Bleach Thousand-Year Blood War’
Of course, this is far from a comprehensive list of their poor work - after all, as a small team, we can only cover so much!...
Don't let the localizers gaslight you.
Sentai Filmsworks Replaces The Term “Lolicon” With “Problematic Age Gap” In Their Localization Of ‘Dark Gathering’ Anime
Seven Seas Entertainment To Revise Censorship Edits Made To English Release of ‘I’m In Love With The Villainess’
And how could we forget this one!  Funimation Script Writer Jamie Marchi Blames Criticism Of Edited Dubs On Misogyny: “I Have A Vagina, Deal With It”
Funimation Inserts Reference To Non-Binary Identities Into English Dub Of Sk8 The Infinity"

"Dude is definitely blacklisted after this": Jelloapocalypse drama explained as Patreon post goes viral - "Content creator and voice actor Jelloapocalypse recently went viral on social media platforms after criticizing his Lovely Complex anime project. In a now-deleted Patreon post, the YouTuber expressed disdain for the original show and how the changes he made to the dubbed series marginally improved it... the content creator, whose real name is Brendan Blaber, openly criticized Lovely Complex’s script after working on the show's writing and directing. They also revealed that the voice actor discussed the “problematic” aspects.  @MinModulation also took to X to reveal that the production house involved in the dubbing project was dissatisfied with Jelloapocalypse and allegedly fired him. With the voice actor’s personal thoughts about the work he was contracted to do online, one netizen believed that he would not be getting voice acting roles anymore... the show was localized because Lenti was dissatisfied with the original version of the anime. For those unfamiliar, localization occurs in animes when dubbing to factor in cultural differences.  In the blog post, Blaber went on to diss the show’s characters, like protagonist Risa Koizumi, who is “inconsistently written” and “does nothing but miscommunicate and cause problems.” He also claimed that the show had pacing issues and problematic transphobic tropes.  Blaber expressed that the biggest point of contention for dub writers was to alter the original script’s queerphobic dialogues. He revealed that Lenti passed the changed script through “trans sensitivity readers” and also cast numerous trans actors to take on the roles of the transgender characters...   Jelloapocalpyse went on to discuss how the way characters interact was “wrong” and the “obtuse” jokes in the show.  In a Reddit post, the voice actor also revealed that anime distributors allegedly did not allow political “buzzwords” like “sexism,” "patriarchy,” and “chauvinism” to be used in any localized anime, as the anime community prefers to watch the “racist/s*xist/transphobic/etc” content “for the strangest reasons.” Sound Cadence Studios released a statement on February 13 announcing that they were aware of the “unsanctioned statements made by a contractor in regards to our Lovely Complex dub project.”"

Ali Wong Says She Hates Eating Asian Food With Non-Asian People - "Ali explained that past experiences of dining on Asian food with “squeamish” non-Asian friends led to her irritation." Is this "anti-blackness"?

Perma Banned - Posts | Facebook - "TLDR: "Anime where last few men on earth are oppressed by women, women most affected"
Full story:
Funny ironic story:
-Be JP "Feminist League"
-Gets upset at World's End Harem
-Claims to be a muhsoggykneestic anime"

NISAmerica employees talking on Stream how they change Japanese jokes that they find "a little sexist" to be more "culturally appropriate" for their players and better reflect their values, and how they work in things that are "even better" than the Original sometimes : KotakuInAction

Meme yuna @Y_uunaa: "She's not THAT unrealistic"
*Sugoi Dekai / Uzaki-Chan superimposition*

Meme - "Know the journalism rules
Baldur's Gate 3: "I have sexual content"
"Empowering" - Appropriate
Soul Calibur VI, Artery Gear, Nekopara, one more Japanese game: "I have sexual content"
"Lowlife degenerate pervert weeb!" - Inappropriate"

Meme - The Questbro: "My local comic shop is closing everything is 75% off. Let me break this down. Pics 1 and 2. Western comics Pic 3. Manga. Pic 4 Wargaming/Warhammer. Says it all really.
*empty shelves for Manga and Wargaming/Warhammer, full shelves for Western comics*"

How Netflix's Cowboy Bebop Is Changing The Anime (& Why That's A Good Thing)
‘Cowboy Bebop’ Canceled by Netflix After One Season - "The space Western had a rough reception. The 10-episode series garnered only a 46 percent positive critics rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Fans seemed to agree, giving the show a 56 percent positive audience score on the site"
Cultural appropriation and imperialism are good when they push the liberal agenda

Meme - English: Turkey Day (11/26), Toy Day (12/24), "Ho ho ho! Happy holidays!"
Japanese: Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, "Merry Christmas!"
Why are Western translators like this?"

Dead or Alive director: Fans demanded larger breasts - "The Dead or Alive series is as well known for its female characters' anatomies as it is for its fighting, but director Yohei Shimbori said an effort was made to subdue the gratuitous fan service in Dead or Alive 5. At least, until fans saw it.  "We were getting feedback from the overseas offices to tone down the sexuality — to tone down the sexiness of the game, and of the characters," Shimbori told Gamasutra. "We actually got a lot of feedback from people who were playing [a demo for the game included with Ninja Gaiden 3], saying, 'We want bigger breasts. Make the characters more like that.' That was kind of surprising.""
Western offices tried to push their agenda rather than faithfully conveying the truth. Big surprise

Meme - "Western Localizer Proudly Brags About Butchering Sentai Filmworks' English Localization Of '2.5 Dimensional Seduction'"
"English Localizers Furious Over Japanese Publisher Shogakukan's Decision To Use Al Translations For Light Novels: "They Don't Care About The Works They're Ruining""

Links - 14th November 2025 (2 - Left Wing Economics: The UK)

Labour’s private school VAT raid to raise more than expected - "Nicholas Pietrek, headmaster at Stafford Grammar School, which raised fees by 20pc in January, told The Telegraph: “We were absolutely unable to absorb the VAT and passed it on in full.  “To try and help our parents, we did not put fees up at all in September but the increase of National Insurance, minimum wage and business rates have had a huge impact on every school.  “I don’t believe there is anyone in the independent sector who sees this as a tax grab but rather as an ideological move against independent schools.”"

Bridget Phillipson’s legacy won’t just be the destruction of schools, but of knowledge itself - "Unsurprisingly the cash influx to state education promised by the taxing of private schools failed to materialise because all Phillipson’s measure has done is squeeze people and schools. Making everyone poorer is an eternally alluring goal for the Left, but generate investment it does not... From September 2026 it’ll now be illegal for academies to hire staff without a formal qualification. So a Nobel Prize winner or an Olympic rower who hasn’t got the correct accreditation won’t be allowed teach... In her war on choice, quality, history and meaning, Phillipson is picking up a thread woven deep into the fabric of society by Labour’s Anthony Crosland. With his 1965 Circular 10/65, local authorities were urged to get rid of the tripartite system of selective education – including the 11 plus – and in so doing to end the sorting of pupils into grammars, comprehensives and technical colleges. The system of grammars, which sent thousands of working class boys to Oxbridge and thus offered a radical new social mobility, was fatally eroded.  By the 1970s and 80s the rot was all but immovable – everything was about an egalitarianism akin to the pernicious woke concept of “equity”. It wasn’t that all children should have equality of opportunity, but that they should all be squashed down into an equality of outcome. Except, of course, for when that child was the politician’s – or the politician him or herself.  Abolition of academic selection was the passionate commitment of SDP founder Shirley Williams, Labour education minister between 1976 and 1979. Odd, then, that she moved close as possible to selective school Godolphin and Latymer before it went private in 1977 so that her daughter could attend. Williams herself went to St Paul’s, Antony Crosland to Highgate School, Tony Benn to Westminster, and in more recent times, Corbyn’s cronies, like Seamus Milne, also went to public school (Winchester). Such an education is right and fine for them and their children, but not for other people’s. During his intermittent tenure as schools minister over ten years from 2010, Nick Gibb tried to row back the rot. He instilled phonics, which is how children actually learn to read, rather than this interpretative “look and see” approach. He also tried to instil a respect for knowledge, rather than only “skills”. As education minister, Michael Gove valiantly tried to empower schools to give a proper education while also mandating a solid curriculum of canonical texts, history and science. Exam results duly improved England. But it was an uphill battle: the culture of Leftism in the teaching unions has long been so extreme in trying to insist on standards, he became a hate figure.  In that sense, Phillipson is preaching to the converted, and her legacy will be the ruination not just of education, but of knowledge itself."

Leading private school offers tax-free education to Britain’s fleeing parents - "A leading private school is opening campuses in Spain, Italy and Portugal to attract wealthy families fleeing high-tax Britain.  Brighton College will open new schools in Madrid, Rome, and Lisbon from September 2027 for boys and girls aged three to 18, with the benefit of not having to pay VAT on fees."

Labour should want more children to go to private schools. It’s their voter base - "Labour’s vote, flagging as it is, is being propped up by the scions of our private schools. Parents pay for their children’s education for a variety of reasons: academic selectivity, comprehensive facilities, broader curriculums, family tradition, and so on. But in all the open days I attended – and from my own brief experience as a teacher in one of the country’s great nine boys’ schools – I can’t remember “sympathetic to socialism” as a top selling point... A overdose of noblesse oblige means spending a life cringing, apologising and rectifying.  By contrast, the penchant for Reform and the Tories among those who attended grammar schools reflects the Right-tinged ethos of such institutions: a basic admittance that not all shall have prizes, that merit and hard work should be rewarded, and that some pupils, academically at least, are more equal than others. Having this drummed into you at a young age is unlikely to make you as sympathetic to the calls of open borders, climate posturing or gender woo-woo as your average private attendee."

Overtaxed and underperforming, Britain is stuck in a cycle of doom - "Megan Greene, a member of the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee, recently described underlying activity in the economy as weak and warned of prolonged pressure on consumer spending.  That hardly fits the narrative of an economy on the mend. Overall, the economy is underperforming its potential, largely because it’s being choked by policies that actively discourage growth.  Rather than attacking unemployment head-on, the Government chose to raise employer National Insurance (NI) contributions in the last Budget – a move widely criticised by business groups as “anti-employment”.  Higher employer NI disproportionately hurts entry level jobs and low-paid workers.  Research from the Centre for Economics and Business Research showed that by December 2024, there were already 948,000 young people not in work, education or training – the highest level in a decade.  Since then, companies have responded as predicted: announcing job cuts, freezing recruitment and scaling back hiring. Job vacancies hit a four-year low by September 2025.  Calls for a phased implementation of the NI rise were ignored. In its attempt to raise revenue, the Government may have inadvertently shrunk the tax base – a textbook misstep in understanding the Laffer curve. The consequences are clear: higher costs for employers, fewer jobs and weaker growth.  Housing was meant to be a centrepiece of the Government’s pro-growth strategy, with a target to build 1.5 million homes in England by 2029 — around 300,000 a year.  The economic rationale is strong: new housing supports construction, job creation, mobility and investment. But the delivery has fallen flat.  Between July 9 2024 and June 15 2025, EPC data show that approximately 186,600 new homes have been completed in England, well below the target.  Meanwhile, housing affordability remains dire, and the construction sector – a key growth multiplier – continues to stall. The Government’s net zero ambitions have further complicated the economic outlook.  The decision to halt new North Sea exploration may have been politically symbolic, but it has increased reliance on imported energy, raising costs for manufacturers and households alike.  Combined with higher corporate taxes and regulatory uncertainty, this has eroded Britain’s global competitiveness. What was billed as a “Budget to rebuild Britain” increasingly looks like one that risks engineering a slow-motion recession. Despite the underwhelming results so far, proposals for further tax increases are being floated: higher capital gains rates, a possible wealth or mansion tax, and additional increases to income tax and National Insurance.  But raising tax rates doesn’t guarantee more revenue. Following last year’s capital gains tax rise – from 10pc to 18pc for basic-rate taxpayers and 20pc to 24pc for higher-rate taxpayers – CGT receipts actually fell from £14.5 billion in 2023/24 to £13.1bn in 2024/25.  The lesson is clear: tax increases that suppress economic activity end up delivering less, not more, to the Exchequer. Yet the Government seems determined to plug the fiscal black holes it has created with policies that further depress growth and employment.  Britain has climbed to the top of the Laffer curve and is now sliding down the wrong side. Each new tax rise brings diminishing returns, yet the response is always more of the same.  It’s a dangerous cycle: higher taxes to offset low growth, and low growth caused by higher taxes.  Meanwhile, the UK’s debt burden is edging toward unsustainable levels. Debt interest payments for 2025/26 are forecast to reach £111bn – nearly double the defence budget and far more than the country spends on education.  In the event of a black swan shock, the UK would enter any future crisis with its credit card already maxed out.  Without stronger growth, rising debt interest will increasingly crowd out vital public investment. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK’s debt-to-GDP ratio could soar to nearly 300pc by 2070.  The UK urgently needs a reset.  Policy should be judged by whether it delivers productivity, investment, job creation, and sustained growth. But instead, we are being prepared for another round of tax rises.  With no serious effort to contain or reform public spending, these increases now appear inevitable – and, with them, more economic stagnation. Britain cannot tax its way to prosperity."

Labour has no concept of economic growth - "The word “growth” appeared 49 times in Labour’s manifesto. From this, voters were entitled to conclude that “growth” might have been a priority for the party, and to cast their votes accordingly.   Such an impression would not have survived beyond Labour’s first Budget. Between the barrage of tax rises and the accompanying rises in the rates of benefits and the National Minimum Wage, it became clear that, despite being elected to fix the economy, Sir Keir Starmer and his colleagues were more interested in redistribution.  The consequences of this approach have been painfully apparent since, with hiring suppressed and inflation stubbornly high. Yet the Government appears to have learnt no lessons from this debacle, as briefing ahead of next month’s Budget is indicating more tax rises, particularly on savers, and little political will to cut spending on welfare.  Alongside these fiscal weights, the march of redistribution through regulation continues. The Renters’ Rights Act is set to deal a devastating blow to the functioning of the housing market, while the Employment Rights Bill will further discourage hiring. The effect, in Labour’s eyes, is to build a fairer economy. This is disputable, but what is in no doubt whatsoever is that these measures are not ones that would be taken by a government truly set on growth.  It is difficult to shake a suspicion that the reason for the focus on the division of surplus rather than the size of the pie is simply that the Government has realised it has no working theory of growth.  The promised green jobs boom and glut of cut-price energy has failed to materialise. The idea that the state could command growth through investment has collided with the state of the public finances. Growth through a larger population has run into implacable electoral opposition. And with no Left-wing solutions on offer, there is little hope that Sir Keir and Chancellor Rachel Reeves will hold their noses and borrow from the Right. The result appears to be a Government trying desperately to play what few cards it has – appealing to egalitarian instincts, borrowing more, hoping that Britain might be dragged along in the tailwind of faster growing economies – with little plan for what might follow. It did not work last year. There is little reason to expect it to do so now.  Madness, as they say, is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result."

Object Zero on X - "In the UK the take home minimum wage for working a full time job is:  £20,660  The take home wage at the £100,000 tax cliff (only 4% of Brits earn above this) is:  £68,600  This is a net income ratio of 3.3:1  Now let’s compare that to… oh I don’t know… how about 1960’s USSR?  According to this 1977 study https://wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/media/documents/publication/op1_soviet_industrial_wage_structure_chapman_1977.pdf  The ratio of average earnings between the top 10% of earnings and the bottom 10% of earnings in the Soviet Union was:  8:1 in 1956 5.8:1 in 1959 5:1 in 1968   This is the era of Sputnik and was the height of the Cold War Space Race.  So the UK in 2025 is a far FAR flatter income distribution than the Soviet Union at the absolute height of the Cold War.  Talk about gaslighting? We live in a communist dystopia that claims to be capitalism, meanwhile China lives in a capitalist utopia that claims to be communism.  Open your eyes folks.  Next should we look at censorship and state control of information?   Should we look at the number of people in prison for wrongthink?  Should we look at state seizure of private wealth?  Enough already."

Britain is broken. Even our Left-leaning youngsters know it - "According to figures compiled by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen), the majority of British adults now believe that our overly generous welfare system is stopping people from supporting themselves... it’s what the poll reveals about the changing attitudes of school leavers and Left-wing young adults that’s most fascinating. These are the Jellycat collectors. This is the duvet-day brigade. And when 28 per cent of this notably floppy demographic is “strongly agreeing” that people now need to be depending less on benefits and learning “to stand on their own two feet”, you know there’s a problem... these newly-hardened youthful attitudes are showing up not just around benefits claimants, but tax cuts (20 per cent now believe that we should reduce taxes and spend less on health, education and social benefits), as well as stricter sentencing for criminals (34 per cent strongly agree that people who break the law should be given stiffer sentences).   Now, if all that mounting fury can somehow be harnessed and used in the right way, we might just be able to turn “broken Britain” around."

‘This is not a blip’: Markets punish Britain for losing its way - "“Emerging markets are generally countries which are moving forward,” says Jagjit Chadha, a professor of economics at Cambridge. “We are going the other way.”  Chadha, who for years ran the respected National Institute of Economic and Social Research (Niesr) think tank, says the UK is more like a “submerging market”... Currently, the UK’s 10-year borrowing costs stand at 4.5pc, higher than America’s rate of 4pc. It is also almost two percentage points above Germany’s 2.6pc, and firmly above the 3.3pc that markets demand from crisis-stricken France.  In fact, yields on UK bonds, otherwise known as gilts, are now closer to the 6pc rate paid by Indonesia than they are to German government debt... “There’s been a reaction of markets to a very steep increase in borrowing,” says one top international official.  “If you compare the pace of debt increase in the UK compared to other countries, there is no doubt it has been faster.”  James Athey, a fund manager at investment house Marlborough, says Labour’s inability to cut spending on welfare has particularly damaged Britain’s fiscal credibility... All of which means the illusion that debt was somehow free, a view which emerged after the financial crisis and took hold during the pandemic, has vanished... “The UK is on a sticky wicket. It is a combination of zero growth, relatively stubborn inflation, and the fact that there are quite a lot of linkers in the UK,” says Filippo Alloatti at Federated Hermes, referring to index-linked gilts, on which interest payments directly track inflation... Reeves has conceded that Britain risks slipping into a “doom-loop” in which weak growth forces further tax rises... While freezing prescription charges for another year or temporarily removing VAT on energy bills will help, it is also likely to draw the ire of the very institutions she claims to idolise.  Hundreds of years of history will tell you that attempts by governments – often in developing economies – to influence prices have often gone badly wrong.  As a paper published by the World Bank recently put it, price controls often have “good intentions, but bad outcomes”.  While the Reeves playbook to bear down on prices is far from the extreme versions seen in countries like Venezuela, controls such as energy price caps have previously been called out by the IMF for distorting the economy.  Huge government-mandated increases in the minimum wage have also stoked inflation... Britain has become dangerously reliant on public spending to fuel the economy... Productivity in the public sector is barely above levels seen in 1997, meaning that despite all the technological advances over the past few decades, for every £1 spent on schools, hospitals and teachers, it still gets about the same amount out.  By contrast, output per hour in the private sector is about a third higher than its 1997 level.  Chadha at Cambridge University warns that the bloated state is sending the wrong message to Britons: work doesn’t pay. “The fundamental problem is that the size of the state is too large,” he says. “Expenditure of 45pc of GDP is huge. That is the reason for the fiscal deficit. Expenditure is too large, the state is too large, but nobody is talking about it – all we are getting is more taxes thrown on us.  “If we just tell people I’m going to tax you. If we just tell entrepreneurs I am going to levy big taxes on you, they are simply not going to work in the same way as if they are told they are going to reap all of the benefits.”  Chadha warns that the UK’s role on the world stage has been diminished as a result.  “We were the first industrial nation, the first country to industrialise and have sustained economic growth,” he says. “We were at the forefront of science, education, productivity, for most of the 20th century.”  He adds that Britain’s decline has been rapid. “Just look at the post-war settlements, Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill. We would not expect to be seen today in the same way. Were they to redesign the UN, I don’t think the UK would be given a permanent seat on the council. That is how far we have submerged.”  An ever-growing reliance on the state, combined with an inability to get things done, has serious implications for growth.  Reeves may talk constantly about wanting to grow the economy, but unless she walks the walk on ripping up red tape and welfare reform, Britain is destined to remain in the slow lane. “It’s going to be very hard to tax your way to growth,” says Nuwan Goonetilleke, at Standard Life owner Phoenix, which has almost £300bn of assets under management.  Moody’s, the ratings agency, warned this summer that UK policymakers may have lost the recipe for growth... Welfare reform is crucial to improving productivity and getting inflation down.  Policymakers also blame Britain’s worklessness crisis for stoking inflation.  There are currently 2.8 million people neither in work nor looking for a job. A smaller labour pool means bosses have to pay more for talent. “It’s one of the real challenges that we face,” says one top policymaker.  “The UK has been a clear outlier in terms of inactivity,” says another."

‘I earn £71,000, yet people on benefits seem to have a better lifestyle than me’

North Sea giant blames windfall tax as it halves UK investment - "The scaling back of investment has already led to Harbour cutting 600 jobs since 2022... Harbour said the levy has left it facing an effective tax rate of 111pc in the UK, prompting its decision to wind down its domestic operations... Growing cost pressures and Ed Miliband’s decision to ban all new drilling in the North Sea have led many oil and gas operators to scale back investment.  Trade body Offshore Energies UK has warned that 1,000 oil and gas jobs are being lost each month. Stephen Flynn, MP for Aberdeen South and the Scottish National Party’s Westminster leader, said: “The results from Harbour Energy are explicitly clear – the Labour Government is destroying jobs and the Budget must spell the end of Labour’s crippling tax on Scotland’s energy... Andrew Bowie, the shadow Scotland secretary, added that the decline of Scotland’s oil and gas industry was the “result of political decisions”.  He said: “Energy Secretary Ed Miliband is hell-bent on destroying a world-class industry and supply chain.”"
Weird. Isn't the SNP committed to net zero? They also love taxes on "the rich"

The fiscal black hole nobody dares talk about - "We’ve heard a lot about “fiscal black holes” over the past year. Feigning anger and shock, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, claimed to have discovered a £22bn such black hole in the public finances after assuming power in July last year.  Never mind that the bulk of it was accounted for by inflation-busting pay awards in the public sector that she herself was signing off on. Regardless, the shortfall was roundly blamed on the preceding Tory government and became the main excuse for one of the largest tax-raising budgets in decades.  Not that it’s solved the problem. A year on, and the “black hole” – the amount that has to be raised from tax rises and spending cuts to enable the Chancellor to meet her fiscal rules – has grown even larger, with today’s shortfall variously estimated by economists at anywhere between £30bn and £50bn.  The world has changed, the Chancellor insists by way of justification for what everyone agrees will be another shocker of a tax raising budget in less than two month’s time.  Indeed it has, but mainly because of the Government’s own actions, which have undermined growth and dealt a hammer blow to business confidence.  If Britain was “broken” when Labour came to power, it might seem even more so today after 15 months of ineptitude and shambolic policy reversals. To meet her fiscal rules – and to fund the Government’s growing list of spending commitments, to which scrapping the two-child benefit cap seems to have been added in the last few days – Reeves must raise taxes anew, even if by doing so she only further stifles growth.  The Chancellor seems to have forgotten the first rule of holes: when in one, stop digging."

Labour's austerity is far worse than anything done by the Tories - "The Labour Government keeps on proudly assuring us that it will not impose “austerity”. There are all sorts of problems but Labour tells us that it has cleverly found a way to deal with them without resorting to something so awful. “Austerity”, in the minds of Labour MPs, is something that Tory governments impose. It is axiomatic that austerity is a particularly Tory thing. It is “Tory Austerity” – something nasty and unpleasant, as though the Tories have some kind of sadistic streak.  That is never going to happen under kind, good-hearted Labour. It is true that Labour raised taxes in the last Budget and is going to raise taxes again in the coming Budget. These tax rises will – as tax rises must – make everybody poorer. But you must understand that this is not “austerity”.  Labour has increased prices for all sorts of goods especially the prices in labour-intensive industries such as catering, restaurants, coffee shops and bars by increasing National Insurance. The cost of the National Insurance increase mostly went through to higher prices – higher prices and some reduced hiring of staff. As a result, we pay more for a coffee, more for a meal out, more for a drink in a pub and, come to that, more for all items in supermarkets. If we pay higher prices, it follows that we have less money left over. So, again, we are poorer. But, let’s be clear, that’s not called “austerity”, either. Oh no. The tax rises have, of course, led to lower economic growth. The economy has effectively been turned into a no-growth economy. There is barely a flicker of the candle, hardly any edging forward of progress or any perceptible moving of the needle. So, as a result, pay packets are not increasing as they would otherwise have done. We are less well-off than we would have been. But that, again, apparently is not “austerity”. Meanwhile, Labour has done nothing to tackle the amazing rise in the numbers of people of working age who are claiming welfare benefits. Labour backbenchers wouldn’t like to be responsible for doing anything about that. It would be against their principles. So we now have a vast army of people who, in old money, would simply be called “unemployed”. They are capable of working but instead they are leading lives which do not develop their abilities or give them self-respect. They are poor and without prospects of getting any richer. Once again, this is not Labour’s idea of “austerity”.  To summarise, we have lower take-home pay because of taxes, we have higher prices in shops and restaurants, we have stingy economic growth so pay rises are meagre and we have a vast and growing army of people whose lives are unrewarding and impecunious. In short, we have reduced circumstances for everyone from the richest to the poorest. We are nearly all poorer. But we do not have what Labour would call “austerity”.  So what, exactly, is austerity in the mind of a Labour minister? That is easy to answer: it is cutting the expenditure of the public sector... The only thing that counts is the public sector, the non-producing part of the economy and the part of the economy with the worst record of productivity growth.  It is a misbegotten, self-serving idea of what austerity means. It is the favouring of one interest group and their trade unions over the interest of the great majority of the public. The national interest does not figure. It is the public sector interest that matters...  Yes, it is different from Tory austerity. But Tory austerity was usually an attempt to right the ship. It might have been painful but at least it was trying to get us back on course. Labour austerity is just as painful but, instead of putting things right, it means increasing taxes and regulation in such a way that we are going even more off-course. Taxes are reaching such a level that growth becomes more difficult. Unemployment – real and hidden – will continue to rise. Our national debt will be harder to contain. Labour austerity is austerity without an exit."
Left wingers love tax rises, because they don't pay much tax

Labour is now officially the party of the benefits class - "Ever since Rachel Reeves first promised not to raise taxes for “working people”, we’ve all been wondering what precisely her intriguing term meant. Now, at long last, it seems we may have the answer.  According to reports, the Chancellor is planning to hike taxes for those earning more than £45,000 a year. If true, this presumably means that those earning less than £45,000 a year are deemed to be “working people” – while those earning more than £45,000 are not.  I find this notion fascinating – not least because among those earning more than £45,000 are an awful lot of plumbers, electricians, painters and decorators, and various other types of tradesmen, all of whom were traditionally regarded as members of the working class. As in, the group whose interests the Labour Party was originally founded to champion.  In 2025, however, it appears that Labour no longer views these tradesmen – or, for that matter, train drivers, doctors and senior nurses, among others – as “working people”. Instead, I can only infer that it views them as rich, lazy, bourgeois parasites who deserve to be punished for their insatiable capitalist greed... Of course, the responsibility for this development does not lie with Ms Reeves alone. Earlier this year, she did make at least a token attempt to halt the rise in welfare spending. Labour’s MPs, however, put a sharp stop to that. Any cuts to benefits, they thundered, would cause incalculable “pain and difficulty” to claimants. (Curiously enough, they made no mention of any “pain and difficulty” endured by the taxpayers who are forced to fund these benefits.)  All of which means that the following is what we can apparently expect from the Budget: working people, who are now classified as non-working people, will be made to pay more to support actual non-working people.  On the face of it, such a plan may sound bemusing – not to mention economically ruinous. But, in purely electoral terms, perhaps there is a certain cynical cunning to it."

Labour’s broken tax pledge: It is the beginning of the end for both Reeves and Starmer’s Government - "The idea that we have had austerity is for the birds. As the Chancellor pointed out we have the highest debt in peacetime at close to 100 per cent of GDP and we spend £100bn a year just paying the interest on the borrowing.  And why is that? Even during the so-called period of austerity under the coalition public spending rose. We are deeply in debt because we spend more than we earn as a nation, not because we are insufficiently taxed. Even as she was claiming to get a grip on the public finances Ms Reeves and her colleagues were happy to dole out pay rises to public sector unions without getting anything in the way of reform in return. Free stuff like breakfast clubs and nurseries, which did not exist until a few years ago, continue to be chucked around with gay abandon. An attempt to rein just some of this in by scrapping the winter fuel allowance for most pensioners was abandoned in the teeth of Labour backbench hostility. What we heard was an admission that any serious effort to reform either the welfare state or the NHS – the two biggest consumers of public money – has been abandoned... Ms Reeves said she wanted to be honest with the British public but she is being disingenuous to put it charitably. The apparent difficulties she faces – poor productivity, war in Ukraine, high energy prices, soaring debt – all these were known last October when her debut Budget whacked taxes onto the very people who create jobs and prosperity. Indeed, the promise not to raise taxes again was reaffirmed as recently as July by the Prime Minister. It is hardly surprising that trust in politicians, never particularly high among British voters, has collapsed. A recent study by the More in Common think-tank found that 87 per cent of people trust politicians not very much or not at all. This year’s British Social Attitudes Survey reported that “just 12 per cent trust governments to put the interests of the nation above those of their own party just about always or most of the time, a record low”. Taxation, the cost of living, immigration controls, small boats and the rest: voters feel that successive governments – of both stripes – have lied through their teeth about everything while trying to convince us that they are the victims of unexpected events rather than the perpetrators of our misfortunes"

Labour won last year’s election on a big lie - "If Britain’s growth potential is worse than previously thought, then Labour, which has been in power for little more than a year, can hardly be blamed for it.  Instead, Reeves will cite 14 years of Tory austerity together with the damage done to trade by Brexit, also in her eyes a mistake for which Labour was in no way responsible.  Yet for the roots of Britain’s fiscal predicament, you have to go all the way back to the end of the Second World War, and the foundation of today’s welfare state.  This set in motion progressive real-term increases in social spending that further accelerated after the fall of the Berlin Wall – when the delusional belief that what used to be spent on defence could instead be diverted into welfare took hold – and then finally exploded out of control during the pandemic.  Whatever the excuses, the fact is that last year’s election was won on a big lie. For any government not prepared to tackle welfare spending, a rise in income tax would always have been inevitable."

How Trump Proved Experts Wrong on Israel

From 2023. Of course, the lesson that left wingers take from this is not that the "experts" aren't always right, but that Jared Kushner is corrupt, which is why he brokered those deals (not to mention blaming Israel for the Palestinians not wanting peace):

How Trump Proved Experts Wrong on Israel

"It had been conventional wisdom among foreign policy experts that solving the Palestinian issue was key to achieving a broader Middle East peace. Trump came into office and tested a completely different theory. He showed that if you simply stopped taking Palestinian grievance seriously and worked on other issues, you could cut deals with others in the region. While even some of Trump’s critics felt the need to praise the achievements of the Abraham Accords at the time, since then the lessons of the entire experience have been memory holed, and the Biden administration has gone back to the older failed approach, with predictably disastrous results. Overall, the whole affair is a good demonstration of how elites remember events that accord with their ideological and moral convictions while ignoring those that contradict them. Trump’s successes should give us hope that future administrations not corrupted by partiality towards the Palestinian cause can achieve similar breakthroughs.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has always been part of a larger dispute between Israelis and the larger Arab world. Israel fought coalitions of Arab states in 1948-49, 1967, and 1973, and governments of the region have often supported the Palestinians through financial and diplomatic means. The Middle East peace process has therefore always focused on not only solving the Palestinian issue but trying to find ways for Israel to live alongside neighboring states. In 1979, it signed a peace treaty with Egypt, and did the same with Jordan in 1994. Before late 2020, these were the only countries that Israel had normal diplomatic relations with in the Arab world.

It had always been taken as given by US foreign policy elites that Israel could not make progress towards a wider regional peace without settling the Palestinian issue...

Yet in August 2020, Israel signed normalization agreements with the UAE and Bahrain during a ceremony at the White House. Four months later, a deal was reached with Morocco. Then came Sudan on January 6, although in the midst of all the chaos that country has been facing, the implementation of this particular deal remains in limbo, and it didn’t get much notice given the other events of that day here at home.

These were remarkable diplomatic breakthroughs. We had gone over a 70-year stretch of time in which Israel normalized ties with just two Arab states. Then, in the closing days of the Trump administration, it reached agreements that were implemented with three more, with a possible fourth on the way. There were talks of other countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, eventually joining soon after this happened, but time ran out and after the Biden administration came into office the entire effort got sidetracked.  

You would think that foreign policy experts would take a deep interest in what the Trump administration was able to accomplish. To make things even more embarrassing for them, the Abraham Accords were facilitated by Jared Kushner, a man with no previous foreign policy experience whose hiring was treated as a sign of the corruption and nepotism of the Trump administration.  

Some on the left tried to downplay the significance of the agreements, arguing that Israel hadn’t really made peace because it wasn’t at war with the nations it had just established relations with. This is true, but across the entire history of the conflict, the goal of normalizing ties between Israel and other countries in the region has always been seen as a self-evidently good thing. It reduces tensions, facilitates communication, makes future wars less likely, and forms the building blocks for greater integration. In May, Israel and the UAE signed a free trade agreement, and economic integration with Bahrain and Morocco are also going forward. None of this would have been possible without normalizing diplomatic relations first. In addition to the more tangible benefits of establishing ties, there is also the symbolic importance of the idea that Arabs and Jews can interact with one another just like people of most other nations do in the international system. Normalization was never not seen as a big deal until foreign policy elites had to give Trump credit for what he had accomplished.

What did Trump do differently than previous presidents? First of all, Kushner deliberately put aside the Palestinian problem and did not let it get in the way of the countries of the region coming together. The Trump administration did not completely ignore the Palestinians. It tried to work on a peace plan and opposed Netanyahu’s efforts to annex parts of the West Bank. But when Kushner and others found, as officials in previous administrations had, that Palestinians weren’t serious about working towards peace, they were willing to stop listening to their grievances and move on.

Aaron David Miller, who worked on the Camp David negotiations under Clinton in 2000, recently said that although Israel at the time made offers that the Palestinians couldn’t accept, they at least put forth something...

The only thing the Palestinians would ask for was that Israel stop being a Jewish state. Note that this was all before Hamas took over Gaza. During the Trump administration, it was clear that Palestinian leaders still could or would not deliver any kind of agreement that would allow Israel to survive. But this time, the US was ready to use Palestinian intransigence to its advantage...

Many Arab elites had come to realize that the Palestinian cause was hopeless. While Hamas is a terrorist movement that rejects the existence of Israel on religious grounds, Fatah itself is not a credible partner for peace either. Regarding Abbas, Ravid writes that “Kushner grew increasingly convinced that the Palestinian president had no genuine interest in changing the status quo, and that he had elevated trips to foreign capitals to raise money into an art form.” Neither ideology nor self-interest compels Palestinian leaders to strike a deal with Israel. By the time of the Trump administration, this had become common knowledge in the region, and making the point salient helped get Arabs to move towards establishing relations with Israel despite the lack of progress on the Palestinian issue.

The second important thing that the Trump administration did was take a more hawkish stance towards Iran. During the Obama administration, the Israelis and most of the Gulf Arab states opposed the negotiations leading to and the ultimate signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain felt threatened by Iran in a way they did not feel threatened by Israel. They were thus willing to build closer ties with the Jewish state in the service of standing up to a common adversary. The approach of the Obama administration had been to blur the line between friend and enemy in the region, trying to find ways to work with Iran while being quicker to criticize traditional partners. 

Although the Trump administration proposed a peace plan, it also unquestionably took the side of the Israelis on many important issues...

According to the way foreign policy elites had traditionally thought about the region, this should have made peace between Israel and the Arabs much more difficult to achieve. The Palestinians warned the Trump administration that moving the US embassy to Jerusalem in particular was a “red line” for the whole region. Instead of witnessing an eruption of violence, however, the Trump administration soon went on to sign more peace agreements between Israelis and Arabs than every previous administration combined.

For decades, the term “Arab street” has been used to refer to mass sentiment in the Middle East and the pressure it puts on leaders. The idea is that governments in the region generally cannot take a more accommodating view towards Israel because they would otherwise see riots and mass unrest, and the US must similarly walk on eggshells.

Somehow, the Arab street went to sleep when Trump and Netanyahu were both in power. Some leftists have argued that October 7 actually proved that the approach of the Abraham Accords was mistaken and you couldn’t expect Palestinians to take their mistreatment lying down. In response, one has to note how the terms of the debate have shifted. The left used to argue that we had to address Palestinian grievances for the sake of peace across the Middle East. That position is untenable after the Abraham Accords. Trump being more unambiguously pro-Israel than previous presidents not only did not make the Arab Street erupt, but coincided with historic improvements in Arab-Israeli relations. Leftists have now moved on to arguing that while other Arabs don’t care, the Palestinians themselves will at least fight back against their own dispossession.

What’s become clear after October 7, however, is that, as I’ve argued before, Israel has the capability to destroy Hamas. The only chance Palestinian militants have is to hide among civilians and hope that they get bailed out by the United States. The Biden administration, facing pressure from the left, appears to be trying to save Hamas even as it claims to want them gone, although this might be a ploy to allow it to continue supporting the Israeli war effort.

What we can conclude from all of this is that the threat coming from the so-called Arab street is largely a mirage. What actually matters is the behavior of Western leftists, who care about the Palestinian cause precisely because it is so hateful and dysfunctional, just as how they romanticize the most anti-social elements of the criminal underclass at home. In 2021, Mike Pompeo gave a speech in which he said that State Department officials sought to undermine the Abraham Accords in order to maintain the delusion that the Palestinian issue was the key to regional peace.

The idea of the Arab Street serves as an excuse for liberals to justify what they want to do anyway. Most Americans naturally lean towards Israel, and have no attachment to the Palestinian cause. The only way to convince them that the US should take Palestinian grievances seriously is by referencing the wishes of the wider region. From this perspective, the Abraham Accords are a huge embarrassment, because they prove that the Arab Street either doesn’t care that much about Palestinians, or can be repressed by leaders who are tired of the entire conflict and simply want to move on. It is for that reason perhaps unsurprising that members of the Biden administration refuse to even say the words “Abraham Accords,” as the term must remind officials of how Trump and Kushner succeeded in an area where they have constantly failed. Haaretz is now reporting that while Arab countries have been publicly calling for Israel to not fight such an aggressive war, behind the scenes they are encouraging it to not stop until it destroys Hamas...

Due to differential birthrates, every generation of Israelis is more right-wing than the one that came before. If you believe, like I do, that neutralizing the Palestinian threat is a matter of having the will to ignore human rights concerns, then this means that the odds of Israel doing what it takes to settle the conflict increase each year...

Biden would not have transferred the US embassy to Jerusalem or recognized Israeli claims to the Golan Heights, but no president is likely to ever reverse those moves. And while Democrats and even some Republicans might pressure Israelis regarding new settlements, it’s a completely different dynamic to try and get those that already exist to be dismantled. I expect Israel to keep creating new faits accomplis, which can contribute to Palestinians losing hope."