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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The take that persuaded, or at least gave me pause, was that cruel behaviour is bad for the person doing it, whether or not it affects who or whatever it is done to. But it is quite sad that some want to move onto arguing rights for things, before we've even got close to sorting rights for people.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

And with no way of knowing what exactly it is about you caused you to win, the temptation to ride off on all manner of daft ideological hobby horses and do all sorts of quick tricks to buy temporary popularity is easily given in to.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

This is also I figure part of why being in government is more difficult. You don't get the nice clear signal for where to steer if, as in 2016 for the Tories and much to everyone's disbenefit, you win.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Hm, off into tax exile is he? I hear Burgundy is nice this time of year...

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Idly musing on counterfactuals, I wonder if the wheels would still have come off the Starmer wagon this year absent the Iran war and its consequences...

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Indeed, I'm just starting to get the very vaguest sense that he might not be about to find the 3% after all...

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

It did feel a bit like going 'fine, you're so smart, you find 3% for defence'... But I was just glad of who it wasn't, at the time.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

In so far as there's ever 'an election to lose', this is probably the one. Only thing that worries me is if they break something loadbearing to the European Union. But that has a momentum of its own, the risk of a new Empty Chair Crisis or something seems low-ish.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

RN wins by a stonking great margin in the presidential on low turnout, then a National Assembly is elected on more normal turnout, no majority, more years of paralysis follow where nothing gets done, maybe throw in a debt crisis or something, hopefully not a full war... Not a good time, regardless.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Absolutely. If Burnham had vastly exceeded all expectations and was polling at 40% I could see it. But as it is, there really are new constraints this year, the best plan is to hold on till '29 and go for an election among the equivalent of the street parties from the ending to Return of the Jedi...

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Seems some of the speculation simply suffers a surfeit of savviness...

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I thought that was improving in recent decades? Although I suppose it can just now be bad rather than catastrophic.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Indeed, extreme poverty causes high birth rates, Haiti there demonstrating the case. Nunavut... Outlier, I don't know, long cold winters? I wonder though if extended low birth rates might in turn cause poverty, establishing a feedback cycle over the very long term.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

All well and good to talk about how, if and when we do this, there will be improvements we can make... But this is promising omelettes for everyone using the eggs counted before the chickens are hatched, or whatever.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

No local core of recently retired voters who've recently switched to them..?

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Is this deja vu, or are my post 33.333 recurring middle aged faculties fading...

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Plus a sort of three month grace period where you can celebrate your age of hobbit majority. Many advantages.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Even that's a bit generous by my reckoning, but it seems fair given the terrible trend of deferring actual adulthood further into people's twenties. Put it at 33 years and four months, for a nice exact round number, mirrored by old age starting at 66 years and eight months, that's my pitch I think.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

What's this, the BBC going on about the Nats again?

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

We must not overlook the silence of the current and previous Prime Ministers in the face of the UK's now annual race riot, the blockading of ports, the arson of hotels and such. The fact that someone with Sunak's record can get ahead of them like this, and he has, should absolutely shame them.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

That this iteration of the left apparently doesn't is a problem, it leaves them pandering to the nasty place they imagine it as. This iteration of the right is even worse, but I suppose that just points to only a brief and frustrating turn at the wheel for them.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Just keeps coming back to the idea that if you want to be chosen to lead a country for long enough to leave any evidence you did, it helps to at least like it, at least a bit, and say so at least some of the time...

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I doubt there's much of an increase in baseline parental anxiety, it is natural to worry after all. But new technology gives people a lot more ways to pick at their worry and lets them feed their anxieties. Another aspect of the society wide phone addiction issue. He says, judgily, on a phone.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

At least it's not yet more sports merch, I guess...

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Ed Davey kept that opinion pretty quiet then!

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

At some point one does have to assume it's contrarianism as a bit. At that point it is if course time to haul off and start a fight... No, wait, hm

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

...scratched into the plastic are the words 'the internet is forever'. Nothing beside remains...

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

People might very well look at the balance and decide it isn't as disastrously one-sided as all that, or indeed that it's worth it anyway. Doesn't mean they're stupid or haven't realised there are tradeoffs or are expecting whatever industry lobby to magic it all away.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Just going, ah, the other side is stupid... Well, it's what a lot of people are doing here, English carmakers quips and such. I would just observe that a similar attitude didn't stop Brexit.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Well, OK, but then there are things the remaining UK would want to keep as well, so you know, give and take and we might well be able to come to a happier constitutional settlement with acceptable economic implications that an independent state would be well placed to resolve.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Indeed. Who even said that anyway? Alex Salmond, OK, and what's he been up to lately?

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Well, you can choose to do better or you can choose to reinforce the downward spiral...

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

That is the sort of thing that I'm complaining about. To anyone not fully bought into the unionist side it comes over as a smug dismissive caricature.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Indeed, I anticipate both of them will be coming to sort the whole thing out for me.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Well, if the remaining UK decides to be nasty then there are other levers to pull, which are also facts, and it could all get very unpleasant. Or we could go with the idea that there'd be a more velvet divorce shaped resolution which would be a more respectful place to start the discussion from.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

This whole thread is a very smug unionist knocking-over of straw men. Of course it's quite easy to put up an unreasonable or ill considered version of the other side, say, oh how stupid, don't they realise England will negotiate hardball, and pretend the whole thing is settled...

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

A modest proposal, hopefully there's still time to get a candidate for it into that by-election. And for the 'And St Pancras' part of the constituency... I wonder if they've still got the plans for that Sphere they were talking about building over near Stratford?

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Indeed. It's not ideal, I don't want to do Scrooge and go 'are there no tall buildings, no bridges?', or limit it to those who can afford that train to Switzerland. And the one that keeps coming up, medical professionals just sorting it on the quiet, won't do. But it needs better than this bill.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

It probably wouldn't have created a brand new legislative house for the titled aristocracy and clerics of a state religion, which would have been a nice start even if nothing else has yet been done.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I figure it was a badly enough designed starter home that one is better off just continuing to rent... Whatever that is in the analogy. My position moved from strong but not very well considered support to deeply ambivalent in the past year, but I did like the opt-in/out idea, a good compromise.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

They should bring that back. Dial up the circus music another notch, fit the White House with cameras, sell the rights on streaming...

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

It is a strange one, and a tough challenge for us on this side of the fence on the issue. A consequence of seeing all concerns as illegitimate has been that when Labour decided to be accommodating, they've lacked the intellectual rigour to discern and ended up waving in all the concerns at once.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Contrasting it to the blackshirts and their ideas for ethnic cleansing, which are evil and fall completely outside of the range of democratically legitimate options. And which the past two governments have been unable or unwilling to hold a line against.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

The article doesn't seem to be calling for these things to be done, but is observing that they exist and represent the political side of the immigration reductionist argument, which makes for bad but democratically legitimate policy.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

I might just be a humourless grump, but it makes me think less of every political figure involved when they do these sorts of things. Certainly I take it as a signal that they've given up and are looking to have their political afterlife as a pundit rather than as a grandee...

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

The co-dependently rubbish dynamic stretching from Corbyn and May through to Badenoch and Starmer... Dare we dream it could be ending? Well you've got to hope at some point.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I don't think much of Burnham relitigating Thatcher, but if he's got the political skill to turn the topic back to relitigating Truss instead, and that causes the Tories to wake up, that'd be a nice virtuous cycle change from the doom spiral we've been stuck in since... Well, for a while now.

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Still default to unpacking that acronym as Private Military Companies, on a careless glance read...

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TJM @tjmarsden.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

I'd still want to update it to read that he's in a 'serious but stable condition', given recent developments.

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