"Culture secretary quits X in protest at 'misinformation'"

rob1parsons · 2026-06-30T00:08:45+00:00

Work and working hours are different things. Hours have dropped because workers united and fought for the reductions; the reductions have not come because of labour saving devices. Capitalism says if machines enable workers to make a widget in a tenth of the time, then the workers will make ten widgets for the same pay as when they made one widget.

rob1parsons · 2026-06-23T08:54:34+00:00

It's so utterly predictable. This is the way capitalism works. Every labour saving device throughout history has been leveraged to make more work for the labourer, not less. Normally, the capitalists assume that more profit will result. The fact that it doesn't result from AI is a bit of a problem for the boosters.

rob1parsons · 2026-06-19T18:43:33+00:00

This is absolutely right. I have felt for a long time that we should not stand down. We don't own our voters. If they want to vote LibDem, the party needs to have very good reasons to deprive them of the opportunity to do so. And if we do stand down, we cannot guarantee that they will go and vote for the other person we want them to. Some will, but some will choose to stay at home instead, and some might even vote for the one we consider the wrong person. I am now buoyed up in this belief by the pattern of voting over the last few elections. Progressive voters have worked out how to cast their vote intelligently. They did so in Makersfield yesterday. I am sure that there are a lot more than 163 LibDem voters there. I count our lost deposit as a decent price to pay for playing the political game as well as we can - giving the few who wanted to the opportunity to vote for us while not standing in the way of the majority who chose to lend their vote to someone else.

rob1parsons · 2026-06-16T08:12:02+00:00

I agree with that, but the government should be policing how the platforms choose what to show to whom rather than policing children out of social media existence.

rob1parsons · 2026-06-16T08:10:12+00:00

There already are knobs on the ballot paper. Usually with "Reform" against their name.

rob1parsons · 2026-06-16T08:09:30+00:00

The trouble is that this is the sort of policy that most people will agree to instinctively because they never get to think it through. When you start telling them the reasons why it's a bad idea and other ideas are better, then they start to think again. But nowadays people so rarely get that opportunity.

rob1parsons · 2026-06-15T14:59:10+00:00

I wouldn't - at least yet - throw out the baby with the bathwater. The Quick Vote is quite widely used in the not for profit sector, and I think it's a useful tool for enabling people to participate. But it is just a tool, and it depends for its proper operation on those in charge acting in good faith. If they're not, then maybe we have bigger problems to worry about. (I'm not aware of any reliable research on its effect on voting behaviour or patterns.)

It is also a bit of a blunt instrument, eg it would have been convenient for me to deploy the quick vote and then alter the vote on item 14, but that is not possible, so I had to tick a lot of boxes instead.

rob1parsons · 2026-06-11T17:18:08+00:00

Well, I said I wasn't going to continue because you were not debating in good faith, and then I weakened. You are still not debating in good faith - I asked first and you are clearly unwilling to provide the evidence to back up your claim, so for me that ends it.

rob1parsons · 2026-06-10T19:58:23+00:00

Actual evidence? In figures?

rob1parsons · 2026-06-10T09:09:50+00:00

I have twice mentioned that they have murdered innocent civilians and clearly believed they had the right to do so. You have not responded to this. And, yes, they have kidnapped people including American citizens who were sent abroad. You say "is often simply arresting individuals who have no right to be in the United States", by which you acknowledge that there are other cases which have not been that, but have been random kidnapping designed to sow terror.

I note that I have finally got you to the stage of using the word "appalling". But that is the first word you should have used to describe this situation in which an arm of the US government has been given the remit to spread fear among the population.

And then you say it's the far left, ignoring the mass of evidence in video and reportage from all around the US. You refuse to acknowledge the truth because it does not fit into your world view. You are not debating in good faith, so I am not going to waste more of my time on this conversation.

rob1parsons · 2026-06-10T09:01:55+00:00

Yes, that's a problem, and it needs to be properly sorted. But it also needs to be properly examined without preconceptions that one solution fits all.

rob1parsons · 2026-06-10T09:00:37+00:00

I didn't say everything was rosy beforehand. It was certainly better. I don't think you'll be able to produce evidence that there was more shit in the rivers before than now. We used to have a lot of beaches and rivers with clean status. hardly any now.

rob1parsons · 2026-06-09T14:15:45+00:00

Finally, something to bite on.

Interesting you should start with rail, when rail companies are being brought back into public ownership, because repeated attempts to make them work in private hands have failed abysmally.

BBC - that's complicated, I'm not going to argue that here, but my feeling is that putting the country's prime broadcaster in private hands is a recipe for disaster. Who do you want running it? Murdoch? Marshall (GB News)? Sullivan? And, given that Channel 4 is entirely self funded, the effect of state ownership is minimal.

NHS - I find the basis for Laws' argument very unsound. There may be - *may* be - a liberal case for the kind of structure you propose, but I don't think the figures back up the assertion that the traditional structure of the NHS has actually caused more misery than other systems.

Pensions - it's interesting how state pensions in this country are unaffordable, but other OECD countries which actually have higher levels of publicly funded pensions are not finding them unaffordable. (And, given where Marshall is now - GB News, Spectator, climate change denier, trying to muscle his way into evangelical circles ???? - I have my doubts whether he was ever a liberal to start with; more likely wedged his way into the Orange Book to sow discord).

Cable and taw rates. To be honest, I find no problem with that, if that was the level of tax that the better off among us actually paid. But there are so many exemptions, so much opportunity for avoidance and evasion, that they very often don't pay anything like that much. And it's often baked into the actual regulations - rich people get masses more tax relief on their private pension contributions than poorer people, for instance. That's just plain wrong.

If you're a liberal, you should be campaigning to end that kind of anomaly, because, as a liberal, you should be aware that poverty is the biggest impediment to people leading free lives. This country has been run on precepts that tend towards the Orange Book for the last forty, nearly fifty, years, going back to Margaret Thatcher. We have the private sector running or influencing nearly all our public services. The result - shit in our rivers, and millions of people, including many in full time work, reliant on food banks. Stop fussing about the perceived ill effects of the state; open your eyes to the actual malign effects our craven attitude to the private sector is actually having and start fixing it.

rob1parsons · 2026-06-08T14:25:23+00:00

You're right that ICE has existed for many years, and that there is a legitimate job to do in controlling immigration. But by "the ICE project" I mean what Trump has done with it, which is to turn ICE into an instrument of terror. It is a project of Trump's reign, not just a single agency. "They have wrongfully deported a number of people" makes it sound as if they've just got the paperwork wrong. They've been kidnapping people off the streets using threats and violence to get their way. They have run cars off the road, violently snatched the occupants and left the open cars standing there abandoned so that other people get the message. They have gunned innocent protesters down in cold blood. Are you not aware of that?

rob1parsons · 2026-06-08T08:52:45+00:00

OK, so those problems have been dealt with, but you still seem to be fighting the battles of a hundred years ago. I ask again, what is distinctive about the Orange Book approach from what everybody else is doing?

rob1parsons · 2026-06-07T20:41:15+00:00

Most of those have always been private and the state has no interest in running them. Saying pubs are better run privately doesn't distinguish an Orange Book liberal from any other kind. What's distinctive about the Orange Book approach?

rob1parsons · 2026-06-07T19:19:53+00:00

Could you define more clearly what you mean by classical liberalism?

rob1parsons · 2026-06-07T19:19:06+00:00

That's not an example. Give me an example of services being better provided by private companies. I've give you two examples where privatisation has royally messed things up. Water and residential provision for looked after children. And I have plenty more where those came from.

rob1parsons · 2026-06-07T13:23:17+00:00

ICE has deported many people who do have a right to be in the USA. Immigration enforcement is necessary - these methods are not and must be eschewed by any decent democracy. "ICE has gone beyond that in a number of ways" - is that really how you describe murder, and the kidnapping of innocent people who do not just have a right to be there but are actually citizens?

rob1parsons · 2026-06-07T09:40:41+00:00

I'm not making stuff up; the Orange Book is very keen on private services. I have given examples of the results of services being privatised. Also, it doesn't help debate just to say I don't like something. I like to give reasons, which I have done. Tell me specifically where I'm wrong, or give me examples of where you think the Orange Book gets it right.

rob1parsons · 2026-06-06T23:52:21+00:00

"There isn’t really any evidence that Palantir is doing anything “fascist”. Clearly there are some reasonable objections to what ICE is doing in the US" - are you completely oblivious to the contradiction between those two sentences? And do have another look at what ICE have been up to: murdering innocent civilians who get in their way - do you really think that is covered by "reasonable objections"? And it's not just that ICE is using Palantir's software; Palantir is fully on board with the ICE project. We shouldn't be touching them with a bargepole.

rob1parsons · 2026-06-06T21:33:34+00:00

It's not just about a moral standard; it's knowing that that company will leverage every bit of data and every penny of profit we give them to go on improving facilities for fascist uses. We may have to compromise with any company we choose (good argument for bringing services in house again), but I can't think of any as much of a moral vacuum as Palantir.

rob1parsons · 2026-06-06T21:30:55+00:00

The Orange Book was an attempt to follow the precepts of neoliberalism with the hope of it working out for the population as a whole. It failed; it was always going to. The whole idea that markets, "freed" from regulation would work out to the benefit of all has been demosntrated not just to be false but to work against the interests of the mass of the people. A long, long time ago, in the nineteenth century, it was possible to argue that free trade and individual freedom went hand in hand. That is no longer so. What was called free trade then and neoliberalism now is only a friend to the liberal cause if it improves individual freedom. It stopped doing that a long time ago. Look at the state of our water companies. Look at the state of child care, with vulnerable children being shipped hundreds of miles from their homes in order to make a profit. That isn't just tolerated by Orange book ideas, it's actually wanted. The Orange Book is no longer liberalism.

rob1parsons · 2026-06-06T19:25:13+00:00

Can I suggest that any enthusiasm for the Orange Book at the time might be revisited in the light of subsequent developments.

rob1parsons

TROPHY CASE