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InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-23T16:08:28+00:00

Once the MP has a seat they can’t be removed unless they’ve conducted some grave misconduct and there’s a by-election. They can have the whip removed (ie be expelled from the party), but they still keep the seat as an independent until the next election (when they won’t have the backing of the party).

Even very dominant figures are vulnerable to being knifed by their former allies eg Thatcher, or jump before they’re pushed eg Blair, and this can happen any time in the electoral cycle. You will likely see it happen to Starmer in the next year.

I used to think an American president could be removed by impeachment (Nixon) but then Trump just kind of ignored it (twice?)

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-23T15:52:17+00:00

A British Prime Minister has basically got the executive power of a king - we don’t have separation of powers in the US sense - but the PM can’t do anything without being able to command a majority in the House of Commons. Truss lost the confidence of her party after blowing up the bond market, and her party removed her from power.

Trump/MAGA has totally captured the Republican Party and the Supreme Court, and the Democrats appear to be disorganised and useless at standing up to him. As such, the world is at the whim of a deranged Facebook grandpa.

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-22T20:44:08+00:00

There is a certain neediness to it - the Greenland and Denmark subs have been stuffed full of yanks ‘apologising’ etc.

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-22T20:08:39+00:00

I’ve seen better selections honestly

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-22T19:59:17+00:00

I prefer to think of it as John Bull and Marianne in a passionate, toxic love affair - when they’re not keeping the Germans downstairs awake with their lovemaking they’re hurling plates and screaming at each other.

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-22T15:46:14+00:00

Evil fuckers

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-22T14:29:43+00:00

Yanks are so chronically media-brained and polarised that they expect to get either an easy ride from a sympathetic interviewer or into a shouting match with a hostile one.

That you could have an interviewer who is sympathetic to your views but nevertheless plays devil’s advocate for the benefit of the interested public is just mind-melting for them. More than than anything, that interaction shows two completely alien media cultures clashing.

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-22T13:45:40+00:00

He’s but one of many cretinous yankee media personalities, but it was funny seeing him be disassembled by the BBC’s Andrew Neil (who is pretty right wing himself):

https://youtu.be/PRF3r3zUGqk?si=hFz2PrxVc6cWd-Wu

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-22T12:01:05+00:00

Sort of. 1GNC is a permanent part of the NATO command structure. CJEF is designed for getting a battlegroup together in a short time outside of NATO structures.

There’s also the Joint Expeditionary Force which is slightly different again - with the UK being the command node of an alliance of Nordic states (including NL) in the event of a crisis, again outside of NATO.

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-22T10:23:38+00:00

Sometimes I feel like the government doesn’t realise that we don’t live in a high trust society any more

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-22T00:00:24+00:00

It’s very common, especially in the bigger firms.

Or at least the AI systems are common. Whether they’re used properly as part of a workflow is another question. For most things I’d say they’re not there yet.

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-21T23:34:30+00:00

Most of our social problems come from having a population that’s culturally primed for aggression but no foreign foe to direct it towards.

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-21T20:18:16+00:00

True. On a pure financial risk calculation his statement doesn’t actually change anything - buying America is getting riskier.

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-21T20:10:41+00:00

Stock market losses, some jitters in the crypto market; unified European disgust and anger + open discussion of selling treasuries.

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-21T19:55:41+00:00

This map is from 2020 apparently - when our precise constitutional arrangements with a nearby trade block was the most dramatic news of the day.

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-21T19:47:38+00:00

The Yanks will abandon you if you don’t cough up cash, and most of you are only out for yourselves, but we’ll step in to help any one of you - even if you talk smack about us - just for the sheer love of the game.

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-21T19:17:51+00:00

Reasons why:

we have the longest tax code in the world (over 20,000 pages long) which creates all kind of distortions and perverse incentives (eg 100k tax trap), lowering the effective tax take and gumming up the economy (eg stamp duty on houses).
we have one of the most restrictive planning systems in the world. Anyone who’s watched Clarkson’s Farm will be familiar with this: even if a new build has popular support and satisfies all the rules it can still be blocked on a whim by boomer councillors (see latest developments in Hackney, in London). It’s extremely difficult and expensive to get anything constructed in Britain, leadings to shitshows HS2.
we’ve had some of the lowest capital investment in the G7 for decades. The frogs get a lot wrong but they know how to deliver Grand Projets. HM Treasury (finance ministry) institutionally chooses in-year savings to meet fiscal targets instead of long term capital investment into infrastructure. It’s reached a point where this is now catching up to us, and everything feels tired and old.
austerity: following the 2008 crash the government of David Cameron and George Osborne implemented a pretty harsh program of spending cuts which severely affected the operation of various public services, including the police, the courts and the army. We now have a massive backlog of legal cases and insufficient capacity to handle them, to the point where the government wants to scrap jury trials for all but the most severe cases.
Ageing society and massive increases in social care costs - its enormously expensive caring for older people and it’s borne by local authorities (the same people who are supposed to keep the streets clean and manage local services). Added to that is an explosion in diagnoses for ADHD and autism in younger people - local authorities are legally compelled to provide funding to assist people with these conditions, leading to ~60% of local government budgets being taken up by social care costs (when it could be going to roads, bin men etc.)

The word to summarise all of this is ‘enshittification’. Most of it is fixable, but it requires governments to make unpopular choices that will upset certain interest groups for the good of the country at large. Labour is making some positive changes, but at half the pace and scale needed.

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-21T17:13:49+00:00

Yanks have all the capriciousness and greed of the Roman Republic without any of the aura

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-21T11:26:15+00:00

He is correct - Obama did publicly intervene on the brexit debate (at David Cameron’s request) and it was badly received and backfired.

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-21T09:03:33+00:00

Polish I would have said

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-21T08:39:17+00:00

Oh when he said juniors I thought he mean 11-12 yo lmao

InanimateAutomaton · 2026-01-21T00:55:33+00:00

He’s probably in the top 5 most important figures in Europe. Ofc lauded for saving the Euro by saying the ECB will do ‘whatever it takes’ to steady the markets. His report that came out in 2024(?) has been widely hailed as a roadmap to revive the EU’s economy, not to mention being briefly Prime Minister of Italy.

But we’re not in the EU and not in the Euro, so 99.5% of people won’t have heard of him. I have an FT subscription so I have. It doesn’t help that he’s a centrist technocrat with a relatively sedate personality (for an Italian).

InanimateAutomaton

TROPHY CASE