tomo,
Evidence and reason have taken a back seat for a long time. That is probably part of the reason you're stuck with Labour. When we had Turnbull as the Liberal candidate here, I consciously voted Labor on the basis that the Liberals under Turnbull were a Labor Party in all but name. Might as well have the ones with accurate labelling.

The assassination attempt on Trump has given the media something to say a whole lot of nothing about. They're loving it.

Bit of a conundrum for Mr Trump. The competence of his Secret Service protection is pretty questionable, but the alternatives have their own problems.

If he augmented the government agents with private security agents, finger-pointing would be inevitable.

If he opted to do without the government agents and go completely private, they would have much weaker powers.

And either way, how would he know the private people were going to be any more loyal to him than the government agents?

Listened to Brendan O'Neill's interview with Melanie Phillips at the weekend. She's a dual citizen, but spends most of her time in Israel. I agreed with much of what she said about the unfair reporting and different moral standards demanded of Israel and the Palestinians (and their backers), but I wasn't happy to see her reaching for the "race memory" of the Holocaust among her justifications. That's taking the wrong lesson from history. It boils down the Basil Fawlty immutable fact: You started it, you invaded Poland. There's nothing anyone can do to "fix" it. The right lesson is more to do with what Milgram's experiment showed: that a scary proportion of apparently decent people can turn into monsters under certain circumstances. I don't think there's any research suggesting that that proportion is any different amongst Jews.

Tomo,

Its ok because apparently all that oil is just shipped off overseas so wont increase our energy bills anyway...apparently?!?

Also apparently its ok because apparently whats there is hard to get?

The supporters of this move are contorting themselves in to pretzels of ignorance to agree with this move. However this is what Labour voters wanted...just a pity we all know have to pay for this through our energy bills.

tomo,
I enjoyed hearing the fellow's views too, and his English was well up with other Russians I have known (1.75x speed made it harder).

It does seem the new crew in the UK have hit the ground running. The Labour Party doesn't seem to have much time for the workers anymore, perhaps Friends of Friends of the Earth would be more accurate.

Russ Roberts of EconTalk has had a fair few guests talking about Israel/Palestine/Gaza since the Hamas attacks, and they have covered a range of views. All have been moderate, whether pro-Israel or pro-Palestine. His most recent guest is a step or two beyond moderate, I suppose, but it's interesting to see a couple of the commenters complaining about the airing of such views. The because shut up line of reasoning is very popular these days.

I thought most of his points were fair enough, but he did tend towards sophistry: it's not like apartheit because they taxed the blacks and we never taxed the Palestinians. Does that detail *really* bring the analogy tumbling down? Russ could have done a better job probing such weaknesses.

I've seen at least one Sabine Hossenfelder YouTube video before (probably from a link at Jo Nova's), but this one explains how she ended up as a YouTuber. Spoiler: it was her waking up to the sheer uselessness of academia.

tomo,
That French footage with all the Palestinian flags has been tagged as having come from a different demonstration. At least they were chanting in French.

Glad you enjoyed the Utopia snippets. Similar message to Yes Minister, but (a) less lighthearted and (b) taken from the perspective of the few competent (and frustrated) public servants rather than that of the frustrated politician. Politicians appear occasionally. They never have a clue what's going on.

Nice gig for MEPs. Very bad form for that fellow to go telling everyone about the generous hush money.

Watched the Tucker Carlson interview at 1.75x (took a few minutes to get the cadence of the fellow's accent — not altogether inappropriate that "house" and "chaos" should be similar). Wasn't keen on the interviewing style — trying to get him to mouth Tucker talking points — but the guy wasn't so easily led.

Climate was given the most time. Not well spent I think. His view was plain enough: adapt as necessary. And he said the obvious: it's *not* a global problem; it'll have to be a lot warmer climate before it's any problem to Russia. The long-form interview served more to obscure rather than highlight these views.

Mailman,
I agree with your leery view of politicians and their parties. Not much evidence that they believe in any of the high principles they spout, and it's doubtful there's any form of vote counting that can fix that. OTOH, I am a bit worried how many people there are (several at Jo Nova's for example) who say democracy is broken; we need something else. FWIW, I'm with Churchill on democracy: worst system apart from all the others.

On the optimistic side, I see evolutionary forces at work with government policy, where we try some stupid ideas (e.g. open-ish borders) and they get properly knocked on the head when the stupidity becomes apparent to everyone. On the pessimistic side, the Bolsheviks were a teeny tiny fraction of Russians when they had their revolution, yet the Soviet Union continued its grim existence until the mid-'80s.

Somewhere between optimism and pessimism, the rise of "populist" leaders is the first signal during my lifetime that large numbers of people are becoming fed up with the establishment (the parties and the bureaucracy). I'm hoping the establishment gets back in its place with a whimper, not a bang.

Robbo,

How did you get that fly on the wall documentary of the Labour cabinet?