Jim Obey reposted
Jim Obey
Jim Obey
@jimob1.bsky.social
All opinions are other people's passed off as my own.
313 followers231 following4.4K posts
Netanyahu 'The Jewish and Zionist majority must unite', against....? '...while Eisenkot has said Arab-led parties do not meet Zionist criteria to govern', by demanding equal rights? www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...
I bought 426 tins of spam for trick or treaters. They'll thank me after the zombie apocalypse! Jesting aside, it's fantastic that we finally have an economic plan. 👏👏 www.bbc.com/news/article...
Will there be actual reform, or (a la Starmer) a defensive crouch cosplaying reform (by rearranging hundreds of pencils) in order to get re-elected?
The UK economy has been stuck in a slow-moving crisis for 18 years. Wages have stagnated, prices have risen and basic services have been cut – giving rise to a widespread sense that everything is getting worse. If Burnham doesn’t respond, Reform will benefit. substack.com/home/post/p-...
Jim Obey reposted
the trump administration just fired someone but this time it is… no it is another woman they fired
Britt McHenry is no longer in her role as a press advisor for Trump’s Department of State following a viral video that showed her throwing a drink at a Wizards game, FOS reports She had just joined the admin last month
With winter coming, we should all keep buffer stocks of oil and gas next to the fireplace? www.theguardian.com/society/2026...
Instead of investing in buffer stocks of grains, we should all keep a big bag of crisps? However for a gov. committed to balancing budgets, this, £2 bus fares and private parking measures cost the state naff all. Like Cameron's Big Society transparent and pathetic. news.sky.com/story/be-rea...
Politics isn't a 'spectator sport', unless you're a technocrat who eschews democratic debate. Blame foreigners for (non-negotiable) belt tightening, job done. www.ft.com/content/b97d...
Jim Obey reposted
Whilst bill payers (not 'investors') will pay the fine, powerless regulators need to go through the motions. Another illustration of how the logic for privatizing water only ever amounted to markets, wavey hands, things. 🤦
Anglian Water fined puny £1.6M for polluting 14km of River Brain. Ignored alarms telling them that sewage was being dumped. Highest levels of toxic ammonia. AW has numerous criminal convictions. No exec prosecuted, licence to operate not cancelled. Fleecing normalized.
Jim Obey reposted
Will no one think of the racists. 😢 I do hope asylum seekers in detention centres are having a whip round. www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...
Greece have run primary surpluses for ever (in order to bail out German/French banks) and this happens? 'Child hand me a chair!' If adopting the € is a condition for the UK to rejoin the EU, the response should be a flat thanks, but no thanks. www.theguardian.com/world/live/2...
Retaining the hateful Mahmood as Home Sec and effectively banning the book 'Normal People' is followed by drill baby drill. Where the US leads...
Government support for drilling at #Jackdaw takes a wrecking ball to any pretence of UK climate leadership & pours fuel on an overheating world - and for what? It’s equivalent to just 2 months of UK gas demand, creates just 27 direct jobs & has *no* impact on energy bills🧵1/4
Tories will die on the hill of defending fundamental market freedoms. Humans? Yeeeah, not so much. But anyway, the Tories aren't like nasty Reform because Badenoch said so VERY LOUDLY.
The ECHR is not a "left-wing project" but a "safeguard against arbitrary government" He describes the Tory party now as “a political party that cannot tolerate support for fundamental human rights.” What a disgrace. How are they different from Reform exactly? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
'Comparatively, France is indeed covered in nuclear power plants, housing, high speed rail and the like. This is not because France has made repeated attempts to deregulate.' In the UK, deregulating = fewer *vague* rules = more that is legally challengeable. backofmind.substack.com/p/the-mirage...
There is evil as in enjoying doing evil shit, but also...
“I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy.... Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.” — Dr. Gustave Gilbert, U.S. Military Chief Psychologist in the Nuremberg Trials, Nuremberg Diary
Whilst Minsky's theories were vindicated by the GFC, empirical evidence found Woodford's theories wanting. Hmm... www.ecb.europa.eu/press/blog/d...
Jim Obey reposted
Protestors Criticized For Looting Businesses Without Forming Private Equity Firm First https://theonion.com/protestors-criticized-for-looting-businesses-without-fo-1843735351/
This is it. Energy costs are upstream of *everything*. So if you want to do industrial policy...
Electricity costs put UK steelmakers in worst position against EU rivals. Govt subsidising energy cost of 10,000 businesses via public purse. Others suffer too. Govt not attending to real causes - faulty pricing formula based on cost of gas, profiteering by energy companies. Nationalise energy.
'One rule for me and another for thee'. Can anyone else spot the grim irony here? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
A person whos internal monologue asks is this plausibly deniable, rather than 'are we the good guys?'
Cooper: "We did not get involved in any of the offensive action on Iran" US planes were taking off from British bases to bomb Iran & Keir Starmer boasted that within 2hrs of the war starting RAF pilots were shooting down Iranian missiles. Does that sound like not being involved?
Jim Obey reposted
Replying to @laywilliams.bsky.social
7) This is a very small sampling of reasons we ought not to be persuaded by McCloskey and others who have argued along similar lines (e.g., Pinker, Cowen, etc.). You can't ignore moral psychology, politics, and social relations and pretend you have a political philosophy.
Weber, the trouble with economists is that "they obsess over ideological purity and are inflexible when searching for solutions, regardless of society’s symptoms." Ideological economic assumptions disregard reality - they're off with the fairies. www.theguardian.com/business/202...
Yes. But (contrary to Schopenhauer) progress means that there are more, or bigger, steps forward than back. I wonder whether we're in a step forwards or step backwards phase? 🤔
“No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on what was written previously; and that every change means progress.” — Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena
Jim Obey reposted
You can no longer buy "Normal People" in the UK? Says it all. www.rte.ie/entertainmen...
Reeves? Healey? Please stay behind after class and write this out 100 times.
Fiscal responsibility matters. But defining it narrowly as meeting deficit and debt targets can be self-defeating. Cutting spending in a weak economy reduces growth and investment, potentially leaving debt higher relative to GDP.
Wanting sweets is fine, the justification used to dispossess another child of theirs (assuming the kid with the sweets also has rights) is another thing. Whilst Zionism isn't racist in theory, the question is, is it possible for it not to be in practice?
The objection to Zionism isn't an objection to 'national self-determination'. It's an objection to national self-determination - at the expense of another people. Palestinians have rights as much as anybody else.
Jim Obey reposted
An answer to the question: ‘What happens when a nation’s ruling class is thirty-somethings who’ve learned about the world from comic book movies, Something Awful, video games & poorly digested cybernetics?’ Answer: It rationalises consuming the spectacle of violent cruelty as liberation.
One military technology company co-founder who declared he had “been outspoken on wanting public executions for over a decade” suggested that non-public executions were fascist.
Jim Obey reposted
The ever excellent Lonergan, 'Debt matters where there is credit risk – and there is credit risk only where the state has surrendered its monetary sovereignty. Dalio has taken a feature of the euro area and mistaken it for a law of public finance.' ericlonergan915540.substack.com/p/the-dalio-...
Hmm, the cynical wings of both the Tories and Labour came out on top, whilst the left of both parties purged. I'm far from convinced by Burnham, but he's a sign that the demise of the Brexit cargo cult is progressing one funeral at a time?
The final decision gave Tories a way out of the deep-ass hole they had dug themselves into, and it gave the nastiest bits of Labour back the status and control they wanted. Job’s a good un: that’s everyone who matters catered to and all we need to do now is smooth this bullshit over a bit.
Jim Obey reposted
Whilst wealth taxes were 'a huge success' in Norway, unfortunately many of their economists left in a fit of pique.
New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854
Jim Obey reposted
Trump announces deal to import Russian diesel. Yet he imposed tariffs on China and India for importing fuel from Russia. 3 weeks ago signed law threatening 500% tariffs on India and China. Now facing midterm election defeat ... and Utter bankruptcy of Trump foreign, economic and other policies.