Donald Roy

@djr2024
94 Followers
20 Following
2.4K Posts
Traditional #labour man - fifty plus years a party member and #union member -resident #putney - within #wandsworth - #economist - #internationalist and #traveller - aspiring #novelist

It says a lot about the state of British politics that many people do not think that Morgan McSweeney's phone was actually stolen but rather has been magicked aways to hide messages he may have had (on that phone) to & from Peter Mandelson....

Of course, it may well have been stolen but the fact that people (and the media) are speculated on how convenient it was that the phone has 'disappeared' suggests trust in politicians is not particularly high (as we already know).

#politics
h/t BBC

The political class is obsessed with the level of public debt (as a proportion of GDP), but if we are really concerned about debt then we really should be looking at it in the round - public debt, corporate debt *and* private (household) debt - then the UK is no outlier!

(debt in itself is not necessarily an issue, its the ability to fund repayments that matters; debt has always been a useful way of utilising the future to fund the present!)

#debt #politics

h/t Economics Observatory/LinkenIn

This Tuesday Denmark goes tp the polls & while Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats may just scrape through with weakened support, its not a foregone conclusion.

If Frederiksen does manage to retain power many may conclude that even when things are not looking great, standing up to the Tangerine Tyrant can pay (electoral) dividends. Which would be handy....

Of course, if the SDs los we can expect Trump to claim its all on him.

#Greenland #Denmark #politics

h/t FT

Little Englanders foaming at the mouth about Islam in Britain, you sound like a 75 year old pished guy in a bowler hat and orange sash ranting in the pub about the looming threat of the papacy.

Ordinary Muslims you'd encounter in the UK are no more sinister and alien than ordinary Catholics. One day a week they maybe (or not) go to a fancy building to talk about God in a way that you don't connect with. Please try to be normal about that rather than let it eat your whole identity.

From Trump claiming that the Iran war was already won, to Trump now requesting $200,000,000,000 for his war — this man is all over the place.

But the president who cannot afford healthcare for the American people, now wants 200 billion for — and I am quoting — "making Iran great again".

Good luck in the midterms.

@ChrisMayLA6 I remember Julian Tudor Hart telling me that he’d never contributed to GDP as publicly funded services are counted as costs. His work on blood pressure saved, and is still saving, millions of lives. Marilyn Waring’s 1995 documentary gives an excellent critique of this method of accounting. Also, remember when our nationalised services gave much better service than we have now, and produced generations of youngsters with apprenticeships? Not counted in GDP. I’m with Polanski
The #ft has reported today that #petermandelson managed to get £ 1.5 M from the consultancy firm #globalcounsel - which he founded - through sales of shares. It has now folded in ignominy. This dwarfs the £ 75 k he got from the #ukgovernment in order for it to avoid a tribunal!
Although the projection is in the public domain and thus cannot and should be ignored I would advise a degree of caution in interpreting it. The use of #ai appears to be novel - which raises questions of reliability. Some parts of it are consistent with other evidence - patterns of ethnic and religious voting preferences reported in the most recent #britishelectionstudy published late last year would support the projection for #barnet .
The projection has the #greens gaining control of no fewer than nine boroughs currently controlled by #labour . These are #brent , #greenwich , #hackney , #hammersmithandfulham , #hounslow , #lambeth , #lewisham , #walthamforest and #wandsworth . #labour retains control of two - #newham and #redbridge . Remaining boroughs are projected to be under no overall control. This would represent the weakest position for #labour in #london since the 1968 to 1971 period.