Links - 8th June 2020 (1)

Tony Blair and the left’s perverse preference for failure over success | Andrew Rawnsley - "It is many unhappy returns to the Labour party, which has just celebrated its 120th birthday. In all that time, it has only managed to produce three leaders capable of winning a parliamentary majority. Two of those leaders are deceased. The other is Tony Blair, who is sometimes wished dead by unpleasant people on the left of the party he once led. Before him, the party lost four consecutive elections. Under him, the party won three in a row, two by landslides. Since him, the party has reverted to its losing ways, going down to another four defeats on the trot. FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL BLAIR BLAIR BLAIR FAIL FAIL FAIL FAIL. Were we talking about any field of endeavour other than Labour politics, were we talking about football management or medical research or space exploration or novel writing or filmmaking, Mr Blair would be hailed as a genius, the more so for being the sole winner amid so many losers. Yet he is disdained or denounced by much of the party to which he delivered so much electoral success. Even in the wake of a spectacularly crushing defeat, they would do anything but look to their only living winner for any inspiration and guidance about how Labour might one day return to power. In the most recent TV hustings between the remaining contestants for the Labour leadership, the trio were asked to name the Labour leader of the past 50 years whom they most admired. I am guessing that the producers set the time limit to exclude Clement Attlee in the hope that this would stop the contenders from selecting the easy Labour crowd-pleaser. The Corbynite continuity candidate, Rebecca Long-Bailey, picked Attlee regardless, not knowing or conveniently forgetting that the postwar Labour prime minister had a reciprocated hatred of the sectarian left, equipped Britain with nuclear weapons, fought wars and would loathe the politics of Jeremy Corbyn... None of the contenders selected Tony Blair, the only person to have won an election for Labour since 1974. And he ruefully remarks that he will not be publicly revealing which of the leadership contestants he is going to vote for lest it “damage” their chances. When pollsters put a similar best leader question to Labour members, Mr Corbyn, the two-time election loser who smashed the party’s parliamentary representation down to its lowest level since 1935, was the activists’ number one. Tony Blair had the worst favourability rating, coming in below Jim Callaghan, who presided over the Winter of Discontent that ushered in 18 years of uninterrupted Tory government, below Michael Foot, who led Labour into the catastrophic “suicide note” election of 1983, and even below Ramsay MacDonald... Throughout its history, Labour has had this perverse compulsion to revere its failures and recriminate against its winners. Note that this inversion is very particular to Labour. The Tories behave quite differently. Margaret Thatcher was her party’s three-times winning leader of the 20th century. Her record was far from spotless. Yet Tories prefer to champion her achievements and forget the mistakes. Many Labour people do the exact opposite. They obsess over the flaws and compromises of their periods in power and obliterate all the positives. This happened to Attlee and Wilson, too... When the public are asked to rate recent Labour leaders, they don’t put Jeremy Corbyn anywhere near the top of their hit parade. Funny that. The voters, not sharing the perverse left’s preference for failure over success, place Tony Blair first."
This is surely linked to leftist hatred of success and fetishisation of failure

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Kirkby: Why Labour voters have gone Tory - "‘What is it that drives those voters to you now? What do you think that you need to deliver to them?’
‘One of our big selling points on the doorstep during the general election campaign was Boris. For some reason, or no other reason, he resonates with working class people. They see him as a proper leader, like a Churchill figure.’
‘But that's the opposite of identity politics, isn't it? Because he's a posh guy, and he went to Eton and all the rest of it, but, but you're saying that that simply is not an issue here.’
‘It's not an issue. I don't think it ever really has been an issue. The issue has been the Labour Party have always told people in places like Ashfieldthat you can't like the posh boys. You can't like part of the educated boys. We have to realize that in a place like Ashfield, we were brought up with strong conservative values. We really work hard, do well at school, get a good job and do the very best for your children. They're conservative values. But at the age of 18, we're told we can't vote conservative. But now the penny’s dropped. And Labour is going to be out of power for a long time in places like this… obviously crime and disorder. And work as well. You know, work should always pay. We always say the Labour Party having conversations about benefits and welfare. It’s only the Conservative party that talk about work and doing well through work and getting on in life and having some sort of aspiration.’
‘It's an interesting one, that, because politicians always talk about fairness. And you always wonder when people talk about fairness, well, what does that mean to you, to people who live here? What does fairness mean?’
‘Fairness means that everybody has a chance in life. They have opportunities for education, to have training and for jobs. Now you can give people the opportunities in life for training, jobs, etc, it’s up to the people then to take them opportunities and make their life better. The Labour Party seems to want to suppress that and keep people on welfare and in low paid jobs... we've had probably 30 years in a place like Ashville since the pits and the factories have gone. And people say to us, if we leave the European Union, you are gonna lose jobs, you’re going to lose opportunities, you’re gonna lose investment, and I say to them, people, we lost them 30 years ago, so you cannot beat us with that stick anymore.'...
‘If Labour wants this seat back, what have they got to do in the next four or five years? Give them free advice.’
‘If I'm honest, I look at the potential leadership candidates. And all I see is which one can keep me in the job the longest. And at the moment? The minimum one is probably 15 years.’"
This is an interesting indictment of grievance politics - not just the modern version but also the traditional version. Of course the leftist response will be that stupid people vote 'against their own interests'

Lucas Lynch - ""What if we just let black women run everything?"
"Dem Baltimore Mayor Sentenced to 3 Years in Prison Over Children's Book-Related Fraud"

Rwanda Is The No. 1 Country For Women In Power But They Still Face Challenges In Daily Life - "Records show that immediately following the genocide, Rwanda's population of 5.5 million to 6 million was 60 to 70 percent female... The call for equality was led not by thousands of women but by one man — President Paul Kagame, who has led the country since his army stopped the genocide... for some of these women, the very real strides that they were making outside the home could feel less like liberation and more like a duty to be fulfilled. Being a "good Rwandan," as she termed it in her research, meant both being patriotic — serving her country through her public work and career — but also being docile and serving her husband. As a result, Justine said, a female politician could stand up in parliament, advocating for issues like stronger penalties for sexual violence and subsidized maxi-pads for the poor, but find herself scared to speak out about the oppression in her own home. And so Justine would end each interview asking these female legislators what seemed to her to be an obvious question: Would they support a Rwandan women's movement? A movement to change not just the public roles for women but to re-evaluate gender relations on all levels? Would these powerful Rwandan women be willing to stand under the banner of feminism?Almost all of the women said no. Feminism? "That's not Rwandan," they told her. "That's for Westerners.""

The mixed tale of women's empowerment in Rwanda - "not all Rwandans are convinced by the government's narrative on women's empowerment or development; dissidents and critics of Kagame say the country is a police state.According to one of them, Claude Gatebuke, the executive director of the African Great Lakes Action Network, many of the gains - persuasive as they may seem - are part of a facade and antithetical to the touted empowerment of the country's citizens.Rwandan society, on the whole, is fundamentally unfree, Gatebuke argues, calling the number of women in parliament a "smokescreen to help the government of Rwanda and President Kagame, in particular, with donors and international PR, while carrying out repression within the country". Gatebuke, who is based in the United States, says that when it comes to economic development, young women, including single mothers who try to sell wares on the streets of Kigali are arrested and harassed daily by police officers... Only the Green Party is allowed to operate as a critical opposition party in the country and in 2017, just two men were permitted to run against Kagame.Two women who tried to run against him in 2010 and 2017 were later arrested... For all intents and purposes, Rwanda is still a patriarchal society, with high levels of domestic violence that often goes unreported. Deeply ingrained societal expectations mean that women's empowerment often ends at the front door to the home"

Rwanda – real equality or gender-washing? - ""When people shout: 'our numbers of women are' ... it's for publicity," Muvunyi said. "When you look into deeper issues and what we should be expecting from these women, you don't see the results."Failures are often just swept under the table, says Muvunyi. That ministers have very little power and can barely make decisions concerning their own budgets, for instance, is a lesser known fact. And in parliament, women have failed to weigh in on legislative changes on topics like parental leave. "The official maternity leave in Rwanda is still 12 weeks and that is not much," said Umutoni. The handling of Rwandan women in opposition is especially critical, Muvunyi noted. "If you claim that you are empowering women and at the same time you put in prison those ones who feel empowered and ready to run for the highest office, what kind of empowerment are you talking about?"When businesswoman and politician Diane Rwigara wanted to challenge Kagame in the 2017 presidential election the electoral commission did not accept her candidacy. She was accused of forging the required signatures for her candidacy, tax evasion and calling for an overthrow of the government. Additionally, alleged nude photos of Rwigara were leaked during her campaign. In September 2017, she was arrested, and only acquitted of the charges over a year later."

Why Detroit Residents Pushed Back Against Tree-Planting - "A landmark report conducted by University of Michigan environmental sociologist Dorceta Taylor in 2014 warned of the “arrogance” of white environmentalists when they introduce green initiatives to black and brown communities. One black  environmental professional Taylor interviewed for the report, Elliot Payne, described experiences where green groups “presumed to know what’s best” for communities of color without including them in the decision-making and planning processes... The tree-planters met stiff resistance: Roughly a quarter of the 7,500 residents they approached declined offers to have new trees planted in front of their homes... the rejections had more to do with how the tree-planters presented themselves and residents’ distrust of city government than it did with how residents felt about trees... The residents Carmichael surveyed understood the benefits of having trees in urban environments—they provide shade and cooling, absorb air pollution, especially from traffic, increase property values, and improve health outcomes... A couple of African-American women Carmichael talked to linked the tree-planting program to a painful racist moment in Detroit’s history, right after the 1967 race rebellion, when the city suddenly began cutting down elm trees in bulk in their neighborhoods. The city did this, as the women understood it, so that law enforcement and intelligence agents could better surveil their neighborhoods from helicopters and other high places after the urban uprising.The city was chopping down trees at a faster clip at this time. And  the city was flying helicopters over their homes at one point—to spray toxic DDT from above on the trees. However, the government’s stated reason for the mass tree-choppings was that the trees were dying off from the Dutch elm disease then spreading across the country"
Cutting off the nose to spite the face; conspiracy theories are "lived experiences"
Addendum: Of course, it's not just black and brown communities that environmentalists push their agenda onto. But no one cares about "majorities"

How to Dial Phone Extensions Automatically with Your iPhone
Works for Android too

BBC World Service - The Food Chain, Asma Khan: My life in five dishes - "‘My father's from the north, a Rajput Muslim, my mother's from the east, a Bengali Muslim. It's an unusual combination. People tend to marry within their own region. But it's great because I inherited two food cultures, very strong, distinct world cultures... [Food at home] was always too much, because my father could never eat rice. He's not comes from a rice growing area, and my mother would never eat roti. For her roti was not even food. So it was really really odd because the problem is that if you eat rice, and you eat roti, totally different things have to be made. You know, with rice, the stuff that has got more gravy, with roti the stuff which is more dry. And my father and mother just ate different food. And the advantage was that we on our table, we had incredible variety. I realized that you know, what goes with what, what are the spices of the North, the spices of the East, you could taste the difference.’...
‘The briyani you have in restaurants, don't want to slag them off, but really the briyani you haven't restaurants are makeshift, to put it very delicately. You will never forget a briyani made traditionally. Everything is cooked separately, salted separately. It's not an easy dish to make. So you cook the meat, that's layered at the bottom. Then you layer dried fruits and prunes and saffron milk and other kinds of spices. Then you put the potatoes which are cooked also with saffron and other things. And then the rice goes on top parboiled. And then on top of the rice you pour saffron milk and caramelized you know onions and other things are put in there. Briyani takes eight hours and you need to cook a depth of rice, which can take so much heat and steam because the rice just above the meat is very wet. The rice on the top is parched. And the way that briyani works is you flip it round and as the grains hit each other, the parched grains sucks the moisture out of the wet grain. And then that is the beauty of briyani, that every grain is perfect. That can only happen when you cook that depth of rice. Which means you need to have at least 60 to 100 people to eat. And then, very frighteningly, you seal the whole thing and you can’t even see what's happening. And then you boil it at very high heat. You seal it with dough, so now that steam can’t come out. And in that steam, everything cooks. But you need to know exactly where to cook it because if it overcooks it will be a mush...
She remembers what it was like to feel isolated as a newlywed in Cambridge, and unwanted as a second daughter in India. I wonder whether this has informed her decision to employ only women in her restaurant. But not just any women - women who like Asma were once alone in a foreign country… from the Yazidi camp, I want to open all female kitchens around the world, where women are deprived, where women are destitute, that a woman is not valued. And eventually I want to take this train back home to Calcutta. To the red light district. My dream is to open a chai *something*, a tea shop in the red light area. For the young girls born from the prostitutes, you know, the trade. I want them to know they don't need to sell their body they can sell food.’"
Maybe hiring discrimination is good in the UK if it helps "minorities"
At least she doesn't pretend all prostitutes wouldn't do that job if they had a choice