Humans are naturally cooperative creatures. The ability of people to dominate other life forms on the planet, to produce a built environment structured to their needs, to ensure food and water supply, to develop complex civilisations and produce all kinds of structures and objects designed to enhance interest and comfort, and to interact on a social plane that includes communication of abstract thought – all of it is a result of coordinated endeavour.
This cannot be achieved without altruism. Ever since humans have existed, people have contributed to the communal good or to the individual good of other humans through acts of social solidarity.
It is of course possible to construct an argument that selfless acts are performed on the basis of expecting wider advantage to oneself or one’s descendants from the fruits of societal advancement, but it is not necessary to believe that empathy and kindness are a manifestation of subconscious selfishness. In fact it is rather perverse to do so.
The argument was popular in the West in the 1980s when dismantling the intellectual underpinnings of the welfare state was a prime mission of those in power. But it is counter-intuitive, does not survive introspection nor observation, and it is unnecessary.
In fact it is not merely in seeking directly to help others that humans may act without selfish motive. There have always been those, for example, who seek to advance the frontiers of knowledge for its own sake, because they are intellectually fascinated, without seeking to derive any personal advantage or even practical benefit to humanity from their area of research.
The quest for spiritual enlightenment or for artistic expression is often followed with no thought of gain.
Poor people, who can hardly afford to, give to charity. Those hundreds setting sail today on the Sumud flotilla to bring aid to Gaza put their lives in danger, from an opposition to social evil.
None
Personally, when I investigated Israeli crimes in Southern Lebanon under Israeli drones and in the sights of Israeli snipers, or when I went to jail for revealing the truth of the conspiracy to imprison Alex Salmond, I cannot convict myself of any ill motive. I was acutely aware of my own danger and of my own responsibilities. A belief in the need to oppose the wicked actions of those controlling the power of the state, and a belief that knowledge of the truth is an essential public good, drove me in both circumstances.
I sat with Ghassan Abu Sitta in a Beirut cafe discussing the fortune he could be making as a plastic surgeon in London when instead he had chosen to work in circumstances of the most extreme professional stress and personal danger on earth, striving to save lives in Gazan operating theatres.
Ghassan is a Palestinian Scot; and there are dozens of healthcare workers with no cultural or ethnic connection to those they serve who have braved the terrors of Gaza to save lives.
Can you imagine how much more common altruism might be if the entire state were not constructed in order to teach us that it is abnormal?
Yet we live in a neoliberal society of which the carefully structured and regulated social model operates on the assumption that everyone wishes to gain maximum resources to themselves, and that the activities of a tiny percentage – who often do little discernible work in production – are hundreds of thousands of times more worthy of reward than those of ordinary workers.
It is not an accident. It is not the natural order of human society. All kinds of human societies have existed, and all have been constructs. They can be patriarchal or matriarchal, communitarian or hierarchised, religious or secular, aggressive or pacific.
Modern neoliberal society is structured around monetary systems that store wealth, in currencies that largely exist as digits in computers, and which are allocated to institutions and individuals through state-regulated systems that in no sense capture societal value as the basis of reward.
Take the UK’s richest citizen, Jim Ratcliffe. What is the basis of his wealth? Did he invent something? Did he pioneer a new form of management? Did he build vast new industrial plants that employed tens of thousands of people?
No, he did none of those things, and indeed arguably he did the very opposite of those things. All he did was accounting tricks with digitised currency units, and then indulge himself in football clubs and Land Rover nostalgia.
I have still never seen a satisfactory explanation of Epstein’s wealth, yet nobody finds it strange to associate with people whose billions have appeared through mystical financial structuring.
For a period of approximately half a century from about 1930, the primary function of states was seen to be ensuring the welfare, comparative economic well-being and social mobility of the vast bulk of its citizens.
From the Reagan/Thatcher era that changed, and the prime activity of states became the fine-tuning of the systems of finance and resource-holding in order to increase the concentration of capital. In other words the state became the facilitator of the relentless accrual of the assets of the nation into the hands of the already wealthy.
As a result we live in an incredibly unequal society, and one in which the living standards and income security of the majority are highly precarious, with disastrous social consequences of scapegoating and xenophobia.
It is at this moment that the major social disruptor of Artificial Intelligence has arrived.
Those of my generation did not usually foresee the impact of the internet. I remember typing green text on a black screen in Dundee in 1979 and being amazed I was playing Dungeons and Dragons with somebody in Manchester.
A decade later we had home computers that made noises I will never forget as they connected down the phone line; if you were lucky you would get a good enough connection to send a plain email.
There are those who foresaw the decline of city centres, the delivery culture, the fall in in-person business and social activity, the growth of corporate knowledge gatekeepers, state control of personal data, and all the other things that happened since.
I was not one of them. Similarly many people were talking about the effects of AI long before I started to give it serious thought. I remember visiting Julian Assange in Belmarsh and listening to his main views on the subject, realising that despite being isolated in jail he understood the subject far more than I did.
He was particularly worried about the centralised power that would arise from the concentration of resources required to achieve AI, and the potential for further abuse and population control by ever-expanding state power. I have to confess at the time I was hazy about what he was stating.
In short, I am not much of a seer. But I want to look for the moment at the more prosaic question of AI’s capacity to replace people in the workforce.
You can’t sit on an AI, and one isn’t going to convey the children to a camping trip: nor can you eat it. Manufacturing and food production will not be massively affected by AI (though design of course will).
What AI will be able to replace is the kind of financial pimping service for world oligarchs in which the UK specialises. Investment managers, insurance underwriters and several score kinds of banker are no longer going to be needed as humans. Vast swathes of civil service employment and administrative employment in the private sector are under threat.
I want to make, for now, just two very obvious points. The change is going to be much bigger in service-based economies like the UK and the other Western “post-industrial” economies. They have imported their needs from the non-West in return for payment based on their services earnings that will be largely redundant. I see AI as contributing to the shift in economic power from the West.
That is potentially a good thing.
The second point is that any advance that increases productivity with less labour ought to be a boon to all mankind, enabling people to work less and society still to receive as much in goods and services.
But as the AI revolution is starting at a time of maximum inequality, and where states are structured to reinforce that inequality; this of course will not happen. Unemployment will rise and people will be driven into desperate poverty, while all the productivity gain will be harvested by the billionaire class.
That is our immediate future.
The need for a more egalitarian society is urgent. The need to break away from systems that enshrine and glorify selfishness and greed is urgent. Otherwise the future is bleak.
We need a politics of altruism and empathy.
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Agree with your tack, Craig. What we need is an actual Democracy not the oligarchy we have now. A democracy where the population of the country tell the politicians what they will and will not do, not the joke, one cross every 4 or 5 years or so ‘democracy’ we have now where the politicians and the establishment enforce on the population what will be done.
On a general note I would recommend a recently published book by Luke Kemp titled “Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse”. Being a historian yourself I think you would find it a fascinating read.
“Jeffrey Epstein probably made his initial millions from fees for making Leslie Wexner’s L Brands much more streamlined and tax-efficient. It’s possible that blackmail was also involved. After his death, Wexner claimed that Epstein had stolen from him. Much of the rest of his wealth probably came from asset appreciation.”
Beware of the opposite of survivorship bias. Sure, the ruling class does bear a resemblance to a group of rats in a bucket, but capitalism contrary to some people’s belief is NOT just based on competition but is extremely centralised and increasingly so. (Just as Marx predicted.)
Top scientific research departments in academia have a lot of super-rich bastards hanging around, probably with new faces appearing and old faces moving on, but I don’t buy the idea that Epstein just got lucky because someone had to, and that his “assets” just increased in value, as if he were a Daily Mail reader who’d chosen the right account or the right place to buy a house.
New York Times:
https://archive.is/JefbE
1. “At one session at Harvard, Mr. Epstein criticized efforts to reduce starvation and provide health care to the poor because doing so increased the risk of overpopulation”
^ That and not “philanthropy” is the authentic view of the ruling elite.
The NYT account about how Steven Pinker said oh no, things aren’t like that, because the poor will just reproduce more, and how he got given the bum’s rush, is laughable in its superficiality. This is Steven Pinker we are talking about FFS!
Obviously nobody wants to say they were great pals with Epstein – not because of the eugenics but because of the sexual abuse of minors.
Almost everyone knows they are opposed to the sexual abuse of minors. But few have an inkling of what eugenics is really about.
As Pinker well knows, there are other methods of reducing the population than starvation and not treating people when they’re ill. Pinker is not a humanitarian. He is a raving Zionazi, as anyone can verify by reading his book “The Blank Slate” (pushing the line that differences in “intelligence” are inherited – for the Nazi bit) and hearing him sneer at how stupid “goys” are (for the Jewish-supremacist bit).
https://www.hnn.us/article/steven-pinker-are-jews-smarter
(Imagine if someone had said about black people what Pinker says about “goys” in this article. Let’s try it: “My grandfather was in the KKK. He always told me his n***** employees were stupid. He was such a comedian. I don’t think he was wholly serious. KKK men are so good at humour, you know. They love laughing at themselves.”)
2. Epstein’s “introduction agent” was a guy called John Brockman. Brockman is important as a spider at the centre of a web of “popular science writers” who have been very influential, because many in the professional middle classes read heavily-promoted popular science books, e.g. by Daniel Kahneman, Yuval Noah Harari, and indeed the aforementioned Steven Pinker.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brockman_(literary_agent)
Eugenicists’ plans have been prepared for by various popular science writers and even novelists such as Dan Brown.
People like Daniel Coyle and Geoff Colvin have also been published who are aware that “genius” is a product of hard work and opportunity, not superior birth, and who oppose what we can for shorthand call the IQ lie, but the fact that they are allowed to be published is what you can call recuperation. There is no real debate. There are no riots against the rulers’ plans. If anyone says anything, well hey look, these guys have had their stuff in the bookshops too.
3. “Mr. Epstein was willing to finance research that others viewed as bizarre. He told one scientist that he was bankrolling efforts to identify a mysterious particle that might trigger the feeling that someone is watching you.”
That has gone through Chinese whispers but it’s a little window.
Having spent a fair bit of time in that milieu, I’m of the opinion that the large majority of people involved in advancing the frontiers of knowledge would stop pretty quickly if they weren’t being paid a salary. I may be currently spending three or four hours most days writing up scientific papers on a voluntary basis, but I’m very much the exception. I’m also not sure that our host does have any moral responsibilities towards the people of Lebanon (or no more than to those of, for example, Sudan), but he certainly has a legal and moral responsibility for the children that he (presumably) chose to bring into this world (at least until they’re 18).
The basis of Jim Ratcliffe’s wealth is idiots at ICI & BP etc being prepared to sell assets to his company for far less than they were really worth. It took out high-yield debt to pay for them; there were no accounting tricks. He’s a good businessman: If he were only worth a mill or so, I doubt whether he would be giving his son 300 grand in an attempt to bail out a music festival. He’s also 72 and won’t be around forever. As far as I know, our host has no idea what he’s going to do with his billions when he dies (he can’t give them all to Man Yoo to spend on players that can beat Grimsby, as there are FFP rules).
Jeffrey Epstein probably made his initial millions from fees for making Leslie Wexner’s L Brands much more streamlined and tax-efficient. It’s possible that blackmail was also involved. After his death, Wexner claimed that Epstein had stolen from him. Much of the rest of his wealth probably came from asset appreciation.
Lastly, as the weekend is getting under way; even though I like discussing Skripal stuff with people on here, this was best thing to happen to me this week:
BBC Radio 1: Calibre in the Mix, with Martha (2 Sep 2025) – 2hr radio podcast *
(Around the half-way point I was thinking: I can’t believe I’m not on drugs.)
Enjoy the weekend whatever you’re up to.
—
* “This show is the place to discover new and underground electronic dance music. From dubstep, to jungle, to techno and beyond, Martha takes you on a journey through the sonic innovators pushing the scene forward.
This week, Martha shares a Test Press track of the week, which is an ode to the historic dubstep night, FWD.
Previous guest mix DJ Peroli shares her Love Letter to the Club, illustrating a shuttered Brazilian spot.
Martha provides a running-themed Deep Frequencies mix, designed to get you moving ahead of the Great North Run taking place on the 7th of September. With tracks from Soul Mass Transit System, COFFINTEXTS, Paurro, Club Angel and more.
Plus, legend of the D&B scene, Calibre drops by to share a special new 140bpm mix full of his own original sonics, made exclusively for the show.”
Produced by We Are Grape for BBC Radio 1 Dance.
I was a research scientist too (I hold a PhD in physics) and I don’t agree. To get access to research facilities and communities, it’s almost essential to get some kind of appointment, but many scientists seek appointments (usually poorly paid anyway) in order to be able to do the research – they don’t do the research in order to get the appointment.
It’s some years away, but as they strive to make AI conscious, it’s akin to inviting an alien life form to earth. In that it may prove friendly, maybe not?
The technological singularity—or simply the singularity— the hypothetical point in time at which technological growth becomes alien to humans, uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable consequences for human civilization.
AI designing smarter AI systems and consolidating; designing smarter AI systems and consolidating…ad infinitum. Anyone, data scientist or not, who says they know what the outcome will be is lying.
“Singularity” was used by the monstrous mass murderer John Von Neumann and then taken up by Google-paid dickhead Ray Kurzweil.
Oh how these scumbags like to think the effects of their wickedness will reach the point of irreversibility. The discourse of singularity is an anti-hope operation.
Nonetheless they must be stopped. They are certainly smashing up an increasing amount, boxing humanity into a tighter and tighter corner.
This is what Ian Tillium meant about raising the high ground. See his 1994 essay.
A computer program cannot become conscious in the way they’re saying. You and I are conscious. Our consciousness does not work through discrete acts of processing discrete bits of information. All computer programs do. (Even fuzzy logic, quantum computers, Al.)
Consciousness is NOT an emergent property of complexity.
Nonetheless, there are such things as tulpas… Or maybe in this case the term “golem” would be more appropriate.
@Relapsed and @Townsman
“
I’m struggling to see how that’s a disagreement with what’s quoted.
Other than the difference between “I’m doing X because I want to” and “I’m doing X because it’s the system”. But who cares, when it’s coming from guys who ARE the system. Who wants their take on it, unless they leave it and condemn it?
Well, what we don’t need is the State deciding how to allocate our altruism.
Yet that’s what we have now.
The State doesn’t trust our individual personalities and positions, instead it just tells us to pay up and shut up.
Humans are naturally co-operative creatures, but they don’t like being told how to do their co-operation, and what rules will be applied.
I blame the inevitable over-reach of socialism.
WJ: “I blame the inevitable over-reach of socialism.”
Now that is funny! Socialism hasn’t been anywhere near power for several decades. Do you means its existence, even as an abstract concept, is to blame?
Socialism hasn’t been anywhere near power for several decades.
That’s true.
But it’s even worse than that. Confidence in democracy is declining in the West rapidly because the major parties in many western countries have become averse to any internal debate: instead of seeing political debate as healthy, they see debate as public displays of division; throw in the paranoia about displaying division (weakness) to foreign adversaries, and we’ve arrived at debate-free politics that increasingly resembles the top-down dictatorships that they claim they oppose.
At Labour’s upcoming conference the delegates will go through the motions of debating, maybe there’ll be a few impassioned speeches over Gaza, proscription orders etc, but the votes aren’t binding, and the leadership will just ignore the results. There is literally no way for anyone to influence Labour party policy and Starmer will sit on the stage like Kim Jong Un, totally impassive.
regardless of socialisms, democracies and other political things. I am interested in the system of distribution that people would consider fair.
At the moment we have only one stone ball rushing through the universe.
With a limited amount of habitable surface. A finite amount of water and air. And with a growing number of consumers. And imperfect methods of consumption that can destroy entire ecosystems, like the Aral Sea was drained due to the diversion of water from the rivers that feed it, to the fields.
Why should it be fair that some of the consumers have the right to more resources? They didn’t even participate in creating it in any way! I mean, first of all, landowners who derive income from their right to the land, like some kings.
For some reason, instead of thinking about this injustice, we are all busy arguing about which method of electing a king is more progressive.
IMO.
Regarding the planets finite resources and wealth distribution. I would posit that there is a direct correlation between population size and wealth inequality.
For example, poor people in general tend to have large families, lots of babies, whilst wealthier peoples tend to have smaller families, less babies.
As such, fairer wealth distribution, leading to less wealth inequality would/could lead to a smaller more stable population and thereby less impact on the planets resources. Without genocide or wars.
To achieve this would require a robust definition of what is acceptable personal wealth – and a way of enforcing it. Also, I would suggest there needs to be a mandatory separation between ‘personal wealth’ and ‘business wealth’. For example, owning and running a multi billion dollar company should only have a miniscule bearing on ones personal wealth. And, maybe shareholders in a business should have some liabilities in regard to a business’s productivity profit/loss.
However, I cannot see any changes being allowed to happen. The capitalist mindset is too deeply entrenched, selfishness rules, mankind has not evolved sufficiently to support a fairer society. So, we are stuck.
“Now that is funny! Socialism hasn’t been anywhere near power for several decades. Do you means its existence, even as an abstract concept, is to blame?”
It’s probably just a misattribution to socialism of the totalitarian bureaucracy that so often, unfortunately, seems to accompany it. The fact that fascist societies can also suffer from bureaucratic totalitarianism seems to pass unnoticed. The desire of the rulers of any type to control an ever greater area of the lives of the people they rule, often for the “best” and most “public spirited” motives (think of the children!), is a completely separate phenomenon to the type of regime that the society that suffers under intrusions into their agency, lives under.
@Wally – Come back and discuss socialism when you’ve distinguished between collectivity and state.
You know Trump’s putting soldiers on the streets? What position does that action have on your scale of socialism vs not-socialism?
Wally Jumblatt
How do we explain the rush to go to war on that basis?
You are actually fighting for the rich as they are the one’s who have any assets to defend.
Or you are fighting for say ‘ British Value’s ‘ whatever they are.
Fighting to defend your Mortgage and the individual right to pay your landlord’s mortgage is even funnier.
I’m sure you know being an ‘ individual ‘ means the getting of money by fair means or foul maybe by borrowing and then it is your individual job to buy things you don’t need in order to keep the whole capitalist freedom train on the rails.
If you think that is individual freedom I have some shares in a Garden bridge across the Thames to sell you.
The problem is, that being rich is the gauge of success these days and is deemed to make you intelligent enough to be an MP or some kind of Guru.
Well these people have run the show for a very long time ( not the Socialists ) and the future looks iffy at least and highly dangerous at worst..
Trump’s Idiotic Christian Believer Hesgeth has had his Defnnce Department re – named as The Department for War.
He must be pretty rich to have that kind of individual intelligence.
Always remember:
It’s not where you finish – it’s where you start ( privilege).
It’s not what you know – it’s who you know.
The MSM headlines on the British reshuffle are assuming almost unheard of levels of stupidity in their audience.
Lammy is described as promoted, as if “deputy prime minister” means something. It doesn’t.
Cooper is described as moved out of the Home Office because of immigration. Is there some kind of rule that every front page must mention immigration at least six times? Far more important is where she has gone to, not where she has come from. Nobody wants the Home Office. Sure there will be some dosh coming from the Community Security Trust – probably enough to keep Theresa May happy – but that’s it. Nobody likes talking to cops and screws.
And of course it’s all supposed to be a “crisis”, and to have something to do with Farage. Perhaps next it will have something to do with Jordan having a boob job, or a football match.
The truth is that Medvedev called Lammy an “idiot”. I don’t like some of what Medvedev has said about the war, but one must recognise that Beary Bear-Face spoke correctly about Lammy. Everyone knows Lammy is a moron. He was never even the real foreign secretary. That’s Jonathan Powell.
Meanwhile Powell’s fellow MI6-er, Minouche Shafik – woman with three citizenships – has been appointed as PM’s “adviser on the economy”. The bonds market is in big trouble. A lot of money will be pocketed on the day it blows, but those who own the ship don’t want retards as the skipper and skipper’s mate. Shafik and Powell are far more important than Lammy, Cooper, and Mahmood.
Not a war criminal and candidate for the Hague then.
Olly Robbins was pictured alongside Cooper in her new role as Foreign Secretary. It’s the same permanent, security service associated, officialdom isn’t it, regardless of the shop front ‘facade’ of a change of govt, management, the backroom management remains the same. Powell, Robbins are just two familiar names, as I’m sure there are many others.
I’m not a fan of the US presidential appointments to cabinet. But at least a change of president really does mean a brand new administration with new thinking, different priorities etc. Maybe the British securocrat dominated ‘securocracy’? system came about because the political class were viewed as incapable, incompetent?
6Brian Red
September 6, 2025 at 09:45
Lamm’ys wiki page includes the following:
“Lammy studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, graduating with a 2:1 in law.[12] He was called to the bar of England and Wales in 1994 at Lincoln’s Inn. He went on to study at Harvard University, where he became the first black Briton to attend Harvard Law School; he studied for a Master of Laws degree and graduated in 1997.[12][13]”
This suggests that he isn’t stupid – unless you believe that SOAS hand out 2:1 law degrees to idiots.
IMO he is however intellectually narrow, incurious and ignorant. As his strange comments about men growing a cervix suggest.
And see ” In 2009 Lammy took part in the BBC television quiz show Celebrity Mastermind, scoring a low 13 points. Among his incorrect answers were saying that Henry VIII was succeeded by Henry VII; that the surname of Marie and Pierre, Nobel prizewinners for research into radiation, was Antoinette, not Curie; and that Versailles was a French state prison.[168][105]”, also from his wiki page.
Of course Medvedev is not an authority on wisdom or idiocy.
Yet another one trying to invisibize Lammy’s role in the Genocide.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/ten-ways-britains-governing-elite-has-supported-israels-genocide-gaza
In 2015 Lammy revealed that his Harvard law degree had been paid for by a group of Jewish lawyers. May help to explain his crimes against humanity.
https://www.thejc.com/news/community/lammy-tells-langdon-of-his-debt-to-jewish-backers-vsmq0b3u
Apparently, he was supremely arrogant at the FCDO – this according to Craig’s source. It’s never justified being arrogant, but it’s especially irksome when someone has nothing to be arrogant about. Based on that Celebrity Mastermind appearance, Lammy doesn’t. All the questions and his answers:
What was the married name of the scientists Marie and Pierre who won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1903 for their research into radiation?
Lammy: Antoinette
Answer: Curie
Cockpit Country is a rugged, inaccessible area on which Caribbean island?
Lammy: Pass
Answer: Jamaica
Which former Conservative leader, in a magazine article in August 2000, claimed that while working as a delivery man’s assistant he downed around 14 pints of beer a day?
Lammy: William Hague (correct)
Which fortress was built in the 1370s to defend one of the Gates of Paris and was later used as a state prison by Cardinal Richelieu?
Lammy: Versailles
Answer: The Bastille
In February 2008, which Tottenham Hotspur player scored the first goal of Fabio Capello’s reign as England football manager?
Lammy: Aaron Lennon
Answer: Jermaine Jenas
James Gandolfini played a Mafia boss called Tony in which American television series?
Lammy: Godfather
Answer: The Sopranos
What name is used for the highest gallery of seats in a theatre?
Lammy: Pass
Answer: The gods
Which organisation was founded in 1909 as the home section of the Secret Service Bureau to counteract the threat of German spies?
Lammy: MI5 (correct)
Which American military award is given to those who are wounded in action and bears the inscription for military merit on the reverse?
Lammy: Pass
Answer: Purple Heart
Chris Martin is the lead singer with which award winning British band?
Lammy: Coldplay (correct)
Which variety of blue English cheese traditionally accompanies port?
Lammy: Red Leicester
Answer: Stilton
What term for a top floor luxury flat originally meant a shed or out-house?
Lammy: Penthouse (correct)
In 2006, Sandi Toksvig replaced Simon Hoggart as the presenter of which topical Radio 4 quiz show?
Lammy: Pass
Answer: The News Quiz
Which American chat show host has business ventures including Harpo Productions and Oxygen Media which operates a 24 hour cable television network for women?
Lammy: Oprah Winfrey (correct)
Who acceded the English throne at the age of 9 on the death of his father Henry VIII in 1547?
Lammy: Henry VII
Answer: Edward VI
In chemistry, what French word is used for a tube for transferring measured amounts of liquids?
Lammy: Pass
Answer: A pipette
Which country’s so-called ‘Rose Revolution’ of 2003 led to the resignation of its president Eduard Shevardnadze?
Lammy: Yugoslavia
Answer: Georgia
Who acceded the English throne at the age of 9 on the death of his father Henry VIII in 1547?
Lammy: Henry VII
Which variety of blue English cheese traditionally accompanies port?
Lammy: Red Leicester
He ought to have considered a career in comedy.
Come on! The man knows whose job it is to confront spies, what a penthouse is, and how many pints of beer a day a conservative leader can drink. I have no idea who this guy is, but he seems like he wouldn’t mind being a conservative leader.
Everyone in Westminster and the media was well aware of that. It was far outweighed by the fact he is a pitiless zionist. That’s why there were no objections from the commentariat or his Tory ‘opponents’ when he was appointed Foreign Secretary at a time when Britain was up to its neck in a genocide.
Do not assume Lammy is an outlier. He is a true indicator of what the rest are really like – corrupt fuckwits.
“unless you believe that SOAS hand out 2:1 law degrees to idiots.” I do believe it, however, probably only rich idiots.
The education system, like the judiciary, like the government, like the NHS, etc. are corrupt. Money talks.
“This suggests that he isn’t stupid – unless you believe that SOAS hand out 2:1 law degrees to idiots.”
Fair enough, but the alternative isn’t any better: he’s reasonably intelligent, but extremely ignorant and bigoted. The level of ignorance and prejudice he displays is reasonable for someone who’s stupid, but frightening for someone who’s intelligent and a cabinet minister.
@Brian Red, under the British imperial quasi-Constitution, ‘Prime Minister’ isn’t a formally explicit role either. This should be worrying. Not least as one of the nuclear triumvirate. But does the deputy hold the doomsday keys when the PM is on the WC?
These two American service people showing a wonderful sense of altruism… https://x.com/QudsNen/status/1963832007697342814
Talking of Grimsby, Jason Stockwood, the owner of Grimsby football club who used to be mixed up with Lastminute.com and Match.com, has been appointed “investment minister” in the British government. He’ll be made a “lord” for this purpose.
Sounds like a cushy number, “investment minister”. Can’t remember it being advertised, though. What a great system, parliamentary democracy is.
Shades of Dido Harding, crooked former CEO of TalkTalk, who became chair of “NHS Improvement” and CEO of the Health Security Agency, similarly from the house of lords and ladies, when her Oxford pal Boris Johnson was in No.10.
Will Mike Ashley of Sport Direct be next?
Or how about Stephen Fitzpatrick of Ovo? The guy made a lot of money very quickly. He must be a great ontie prenner, right, and clean as a whistle? Great role model for the kidz.
Or Philip Green – why not?
C’mon, Labour! See how far you can go, filling ministerial jobs with scum. The bigger fines their companies have been handed, the further you gotta promote them in public service. It’s what the Jarrow marchers would have wanted.
Patronage on a level not seen for 200 years.
Well, yes, although humans are not the only lifeform to practice mutual aid. Despite some people’s parasocial relationships with chatbots, I don’t think this includes AI, though.
I expect something along the lines of science fiction writer William Gibson’s Jackpot meta-events are likely to depopulate the planet one way or other. Our systems tend to have inherent weaknesses and complex interdependencies which lead through tipping points to cascade failure.
What happens when money is perceived as worthless? There are a few foreseeable inflection points, but what would happen if another form of life was encountered or emerged with a different origin story? Bacteria on Enceladus or a General Artificial Intelligence?
Well, you know, morality, or social inclusion, or fair taxation, have slipped out of view.
Our leaders, across Europe, are in agreement, we will poke the bear.
The outcome may be catastrophic, so the question ‘Why?’ hangs in the airwaves like a miasma.
Is the answer ‘because Israel’?
Must Europe be destroyed? For vengeance? All the top seats at the table are taken.
Colonel Macgregor reflects on the portents, pretexts, and preparations happening today, while we look another way: watching the flotilla sail into the jaws of doom.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WfW84CrdDHU
The apples hang heavy on the trees. Blackberries and sloes abound, and rose hips will feed the birds this winter
I think we are far away from a politics of altruism with or without A!. What we need right now is a politics of common sense and rational thinking. I have been watching on and off this afternoon the livestream of the Palestine Action protest which ended up on Parliament Square. The protest seemed good humoured early on but as time went on the police started to implement their clearly pre-arranged plan of arresting each one of the placard holders sitting on the grass and it is going on as I write. I don’t think I have witnessed such ugly disgusting scenes as wave after wave of “stormtrooper” police go in and carry out their pensioner terrorists one by one. By 7.00pm the total seems over 500 with more to come with squads of around 8 police to every one arrested. The police must be in their thousands from all over England and Wales.
Who will be the first MP to and when will they ask questions about the stupidity, futility and cost to the British taxpayer of this ugly and disgusting operation? Will they be allowed to ask any questions? And will they get any convincing answers? I somehow doubt it.
Read Robert Ardrey’s African Genesis and then see if you can maintain your belief in the basic goodness of human nature. One thing he points out is that humans have a dual nature. On the one hand, we have empathy and compassion for the group we belong to (though not only those things), and on the other hand we have aggression and animosity towards other groups.
He calls the idea of basic human goodness the romantic fallacy. To blame things like war and greed on capitalism is a form of psychological displacement. Wishful thinking.
You’re an honest person – read that book and see if you can maintain your optimism.
I can think of endless examples of people displaying empathy and compassion towards people not of their group. I cited the many foreign medical staff in Gaza.
Of course there are contrary examples. But the examples on the other side are much stronger – like the attitude of the Israeli people to the Palestinians in general. They’re not exactly rising up against their government’s actions at the moment, in-fact most Israelis support it.
To think that people like Netanyahu are doing what they’re doing out of anything other than their own nature doesn’t look plausible to me.
Ardrey talks about things like the territorial imperative being a basic drive, the prevalence of hierarchy across the animal kingdom (and in humans), the importance of aggression in human nature and tribalism.
He’s an honest writer and thought it through thoroughly, based on the best research at the time. It doesn’t mean do nothing and don’t act on your own instincts and empathy (if you happen to be that kind of person, which you clearly are), but it means be realistic about what can be achieved and the forces ranged against you in human nature itself.
The book’s message is plainly false. And life is short. Something tells me you already agreed with the message before you read it. Or were you a humanitarian but he convinced you to change cable-cars?
Out of interest, does Ardrey mention that those humans who came out of Africa came not alone but with another species with which we co-evolved, namely dogs?
See also the silver fox experiment in Russia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox
Cooperativeness affects evolution. That is who we are.
See Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods’s excellent book “Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity”.
The biologists who ran the Siberian experiment have also written a book, which I have yet to read: “How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog)”.