This account is mostly for arguing with people who are wrong. Holds low-status opinions and values; hence blue tick. Followers ignored.
Fradswell
Joined February 2014
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Tenaciter retweeted
Reminder: just yesterday we learned that:
A) a former ISIS guard for a beheading squad came to yookay illegally on a boat, obviously because of the ECHR/HRA he can't be jailed or deported, living freely;
B) SAS guys sent on missions to deal with ISIS beheaders were then arrested for MURDER for dealing with them; they were lied to by the military police; they have been told they can never be clear of the charges (because the ECHR/HRA means any time some lawyer like Jolyon or Hermer wants to team up with nutters on a ECHR case, the government will be forced to investigate again and remember Hermer's friend *invented* war crimes to bring cases against British soldiers, but obviously wasn't jailed, triples all round in the Inner Temple).
So we're importing the jihadis at scale while prosecuting for murder SAS we rely on to defend us from the jihadis - and if you don't like this you're fascist and it's a reason to ban X in yookay.
No you will not see Kemi-kasi campaign on these issues because the Tories agreed with Labour for 25 years that this combination is 'defending civilisation'. The Tories imported many of the jihadis now in the news, and the Tories approved all the worst officials and lawyers in SW1 bringing the lawfare cases, including against those who were given medals by the Queen for stopping IRA terrorist attacks - they now have to beg for cash for lawyers in their 70s/80s.
And because Reform is a bin fire which can't maintain focus on anything for 2 minutes -- like Kemi-kasi -- you probably won't see anything sustained from them either.
Tenaciter retweeted
And here is that brutal neoliberal austerity which wrecked a generation.
A nice old building burns, and so the pearl-clutching begins. Where were these pearl clutchers when austerity was wrecking a generation? Why does one town hall grab their attention but millions of schools, hospitals, and homes dilapidated by neoliberalism are of no importance?
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
France's level of public social spending was third highest in the world at 30.6% of GDP in 2024. Excluding the pandemic, it is slightly down from its 31.9% high in 2014. Total public spending is 57.2%, second highest among large countries not at war and near all-time highs.
ourworldindata.org/grapher/social…
ourworldindata.org/grapher/histor…
Tenaciter retweeted
Having watched the TRIGGERnometry episode with Owen Jones, it seems clear what Konstantin is trying to do. He wants to have constructive conversations with woke Marxists to see if common ground can be found. It's admirable, but futile.
I spent a decade on the boards of The Guardian and the BBC trying to engage with these people, understand them, see if there was any way we could negotiate or compromise, and what I learned was that there's just no point.
It's not that we disagree with each other. It's that we exist on entirely different plains of reality.
They think men can get pregnant. They think random Somalians are English. They think Charlie Kirk getting shot is a cause of celebration. They think importing third world rapists is an acceptable trade off for being able to call your society "multicultural." They think that whiteness is evil, capitalism is a sin, the West must be destroyed, Islam is awesome, non-whites cultures are superior, and that mentally vulnerable teenagers should be sterilised and their genitals mutilated.
No amount of discussion with an indoctrinated woke Marxist ideologue is going to convince me that I should become one or that they should stop being one. Our perspectives are so diametrically opposed that we may as well be a different species.
Furthermore, I don't simply think that they're wrong. I think they're evil. Actively evil, and that the damage they cause is catastrophic and unforgivable. I don't want to find common ground with them anymore. I'm no longer interested in trying to understand them. I don't want to talk to them, I don't want to engage with them, I don't want to see them.
I don't care why Owen Jones thinks Hugo Chavez isn't a dictator or why he thinks importing Afghani's statistically far more likely to rape women than native Britons are is acceptable.
We should spend a lot less time trying to win them over or convince them that they're wrong, and a lot more time deciding amongst ourselves how we're going to fix the dire situation we find ourselves in.
Tenaciter retweeted
This is such a revealing admission. But poor John doesn’t even realise it.
My criticism of the BBC is that it has been captured by progressive groupthink. And, of course, if you’re part of that mindset, you’re not going to notice the problem. You’re not being made to broadcast things you fundamentally disagree with because, broadly speaking, you’re on the team.
Well, I can tell you that I’ve been made to broadcast things I disagree with on many occasions. I’ve felt impotent fury at some of the news lines the BBC has carried, and continues to carry to this day - particularly on harmful gender ideology and identity politics. And don’t get me started on the BBC’s Covid coverage.
Yet here is John effectively saying: “Well, I’ve never had to broadcast anything I disagreed with, so I don’t see a problem.”
That is precisely the problem.
Tenaciter retweeted
Peak economic illiteracy: blaming capitalism for the ability to “close the door behind you,” as though a free market gives businesses the legal power to stop competitors from entering. If the door is actually closed, ask who has the power to close it, licenses, regulatory barriers, subsidies, exclusive privileges, or other state restrictions.
And of course socialists will nod along, because nothing gets scrutinized less carefully than an argument that sounds like it’s flattering their worldview.
Bill Burr: “Capitalism is a great thing if it’s regulated and they started deregulating it in the early 80’s and that’s how we ended up where we’re at. This new way of doing business where you come up with something and you just close the door behind it, nobody else is making money in this sector of business except for me. It’s out of control. You can tell it’s a monopoly when they don’t give a fuck. It used to be where all you had was your reputation, quality of your product, and how you treated your customers. Live Nation are internally sending emails laughing about how much they’re fucking over people. Why would you guys be joking about that?”
Tenaciter retweeted
The Coates family are worth billions, yet throughout their ownership of @stokecity we've still had to operate within the same rules as everyone else.
They've invested hugely in Stoke-on-Trent, creating jobs through Bet365 and contributing millions to local charities, education and the NHS.
But none of that gives them, or anyone else, a free pass on football's financial regulations.
If the allegations against Man City are proven, the ramifications are enormous. The damage done to the integrity of the game would be immeasurable.
Yet all we seem to hear is denial and deflection.
Personally, I hope the Premier League throw the book at them.
The UAE owners have invested billions into Manchester and have helped transform the local economy, creating thousands of jobs and opportunities for people.
The Etihad Campus alone has supported around 14,000 jobs, with the latest £300m+ development expected to create another 2,600 jobs.
So if the Premier League thinks it can push Manchester City into a situation where the owners pull back their investment, a lot of people are going to feel it.
Workers will lose jobs. Businesses will lose customers. The local economy will lose billions in investment.
This isn't just about football anymore.
Keep playing with 115 if you want.
Just remember that there are real people and real jobs behind that investment.
Tenaciter retweeted
Do you know how bad a product must be to be called 'absolute shit' compared to Microsoft Teams?
The European Commission has rolled out an alternative to Microsoft Teams.
But officials using it aren't impressed, with one describing the tool as “absolute shit.”
vist.ly/5kje9
Tenaciter retweeted
Sure, Jared. I'll bite.
First, before we begin, let's establish that nothing is "free." Also, "Government-funded" is just another way of saying "taxpayer-funded." Now that we've cleared that up...
Can you explain why feeding children is automatically everyone else's responsibility except the parents?
Nobody is arguing that hungry children should go without food. But there's a difference between helping families who genuinely need assistance and making taxpayers responsible for feeding every child, regardless of their family's ability to pay.
And let's stop pretending these programs involve nothing beyond a free lunch. Federal child nutrition funding also supports breakfast programs, after-school snacks, summer meals, food procurement, cafeteria operations, staffing, equipment and administrative expenses.
Compassion for children shouldn't mean abandoning parental responsibility or pretending public programs have no costs.
Maybe before demanding that everyone else foot the bill, we should ask why the responsibility of feeding a child has somehow shifted from the parents to the taxpayer.
Answer that -- and we'll really get somewhere...
Tenaciter retweeted
“The fasten seat belts sign is on”.
This is a message I received early this morning from one of the UK’s most experienced, savvy and respected financial traders. Someone I have come to know and trust for the last 25 years.
10-year bond yields are now almost 4.5pc - up some 50 basis points over the last month.
30-year yields this morning went above 6pc - a 28-year high.
Yet the UK’s political and media class continues to focus on party posturing and folksy rhetoric, ignoring the slow-motion disaster that has been happening on the UK’s sovereign bond markets for at least the last 18 months - a disaster that will inevitably, unless we drastically change course, turn into a fully blown market meltdown.
At that point, the UK government won’t be able to borrow enough money to finance our already spiralling debt interest bill.
Britain’s financial management will be taken over by overseas technocrats - that will be the condition of additional borrowing, to maintain the basic functions of the state, as happened in Greece and Italy back in the early 2010s and here in Britain 50 years ago this year (when we were forced in 1976 to apply to the IMF for a bailout).
The austerity then imposed on Britain would make 2010-2019 feel like a picnic - far, far worse than it would be if we took serious action now to control our public finances.
Lower-income households would suffer most - and there would be serious damage done to the UK’s already rapidly-fraying social fabric ….
I have been warning about these looking fiscal dangers publicly, in my newspaper columns and elsewhere, since at least early 2024.
Doing so hasn’t been easy or fun. I have been dismissed and derided by numerous economists, “economists”, officials and policymakers - as well as lots of journalists.
I absolutely don’t want a disastrous 1976-style outcome - which is why I’ve taken the blows and issued the warnings.
The state is too big. Public spending is out of control. Our fiscal rules are a convenient nonsense - designed to kick the can of financial reality into the future. We need to get real … and take bold action to tame the growth of spending, push back a now totally over-bearing state and snap the British economy out of today’s high-tax-high-borrowing-low-growth doom loop - the result of myopic, counter-productive policy-making by successive governments for the last decade and more …
Other prominent economists who agree with me - ie who are financially-literate, can read a yield curve, have a passing interest in economic history and who understand the dangers of some 80pc of UK government borrowing going on debt interest as it currently is - need to chuck “career risk” in the bin, and start saying publicly what so many of them have, for quite a while now, only had the bottle to say to me in private …
Remember: “The fasten seat belts sign is on”
Tenaciter retweeted
And, over the dead body of our entire energy policy, environmental, industrial policy, strategic planning, security, and economic policy bureaucracy. Thank goodness for remaining property rights that they couldn't stop it, at least in some states. Can we learn a lesson?
Tenaciter retweeted
Power selects for a specific personality type, and it is not yours.
F.A. Hayek spelled this out in 1944. In a centrally planned system, the people who rise are not the most competent or the most honest. They are the most willing to exercise force against strangers, the most comfortable with contradiction, and the most skilled at coalition-building through favors rather than merit. Government filters for the bad ones from the start.
The mechanism is straightforward. Political power means controlling resources you did not earn. Capturing that control requires outcompeting rivals who have no ethical constraints. A principled candidate refuses to promise contradictory things to different voter blocs. An unprincipled one does it without blinking. The unprincipled one wins. Repeat this selection pressure across hundreds of electoral cycles and you get the U.S. Congress in 2026: a body where the average member has held office for over a decade, raised millions from interested parties, and delivered almost nothing measurable to the people who voted for them.
Bureaucracy compounds the problem. Once entrenched, state agencies attract people who want authority without accountability. You cannot fire most of them. The FDA, the TSA, the Federal Reserve all function this way, staffed by individuals whose career advancement depends on expanding the agency's reach, never on serving you efficiently.
Tenaciter retweeted
Ludwig von Mises was born 145 years ago today. Here’s what the Austrian economist had to say about socialism:
“The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement.
They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent.
They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau.”
Tenaciter retweeted
The actual cure for student loans is simply to make the schools hold the loan.
If the school is on the hook for the loan, it has a real interest in a) charging a price that reflects the future earnings of students and b) taking reasonable measures to ensure the students succeed
Tenaciter retweeted
I’m sure Macklemore will come to her defense.
🚨 IRAN SENTENCES SINGER TO 74 LASHES FOR PERFORMING WITHOUT HIJAB
Iranian singer Parastoo Ahmadi has been sentenced to 74 lashes, a 2-year travel ban and a 2-year ban on artistic activities over her viral December 2024 Caravanserai Concert, where she performed without a hijab.
Eight musicians and production crew members received the same punishment. The concert was streamed online and drew millions of views.
@selenaryan_
Tenaciter retweeted
Fair, equal tax is a flat tax.
You pay the same % on your first pound as I do on my last.
If I make many more pounds than you, I’ll pay more tax.
That’s fair.
That’s honourable. That’s equitable.
thetimes.com/article/06b8e3f…
"News that ministers have failed to arrest a fall in planning approvals will heap pressure to bring back "Help to buy".
Such a broken record: we can't increase supply so let's increase demand.
