Neil Schofield-Hughes

Does “the public are the bosses” also apply to decisions about Cymru and Scotland’s constitutional futures?

We who always believed that behind that performative blokish vibe and all that Manchesterism nonsense there lurked the heart and mind of an utter blithering idiot are being vindicated by the day, aren’t we.

Burnham was Labour's last chance at plausibly being anything other than continuity Thacherism. The same bankrupt ideology that privatised water, outsourced the NHS, created the housing crisis and much more. They have no answers and can't ever pretend to from now on.

I did know this, and I have long been an admirer of Danny Dorling’s writing (unfortunately we in Cymru don’t have the powers to do this). Imagination and political will to deal with poverty. Things not seen at Westminster - least of all under Labour - for a long, long time.

We need the odd reminder that one reason for Brexit was that, in our post-imperial ruins and ragged finery, the British were too arrogant to accept other Europeans as our equals. The UK’s - England’s - return to Europe depends on its learning humility. I guess it’s going to be a long wait.

One of the rationales behind axing prescription charges in Cymru was because in the long-term it was cheaper - people who struggled to pay and didn’t follow prescriptions were far more likely to end up in (costly) acute care. Still, Northern Soul vibes, pub snacks and loudspeakers on the bus…

Exactly so. Essentially this government is privatising the national response to war and climate change.

Britons should use money we haven't got to buy food the country doesn't grow, store it in homes that don't exist, in spare rooms that got taxed away, so we can survive when reservoirs nobody built run dry because of a climate the govt won't protect. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Right now, there are hundreds of households in Cymru without power thanks to Storm Austen. The ideology here is pretending that you wouldn’t be more likely to use your stockpile as a result of climate change and failures by privatised energy networks rather than war.

It will be worse in the UK, because it will be sanctioned by a neoliberal government that regards extractive data centres as part of its “growth” agenda.

Subsidising car use is not a responsible or intelligent policy at a time of climate collapse. And is deeply regressive - the biggest beneficiaries will be those driving 3-tonne SUVs around the Home Counties. This is cheap Focus leaflet populism.

The history of Westminster rule over Cymru and Scotland has always been extractive. Unionism is at one level the political rationalisation of pillage.

Exactly this. Labour still seeks to trade on its past reputation as an ethical party that is on the side of “ordinary people”. When in reality its politicians are corporate shills with an addiction to performative cruelty; and its members mired in self-deceptive bullshit. Decency is elsewhere.

On so many issues - not just on North Sea drilling (the original context of this post).

I think the onus is increasingly on Labour to demonstrate why their attitudes to some groups in society - young and disabled people on benefits, trans people, protester against genocide and climate change - does not mean they are a party of sociopathic bullies who get off on harming the vulnerable.

It’s all so performative. Parking tickets! Loud music on buses! Labour declares the end of Thatcherism but won’t control rents, or raise tax on capital gains to match that income from work, and will still drill the North Sea. Neoliberal Labour is still intact. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Thames Water asks creditors for another £2.4bn. Up to 30% of TW revenue covers financial costs. Debt spiral deepens problems, it borrowed to pay dividends. Hedge funds funding TW, hoping to asset-strip, hike bills, govt bailout. Let it go bust. Nationalise permanently.

Brilliant work by cartoonist Ben Jennings, perfectly capturing the absurdity of counter-terror policing in the UK. #SallyRooney #SarahHelm

Mr Healey - you are an ignorant, short-sighted, fool Have you taken any time to look around you - to see and understand what is happening to our world? There is NO growth on a dying planet www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Exactly this. For Cymru too. For me, support for #annibyniaeth is support for a Cymru that looks outward; a modern, democratic, sovereign state taking its place in the EU and within wider international institutions. It is about rejoining the world.

“You can tell the economic character of a nation by the way its infrastructure works.” Powerful words from George Monbiot on BBC Question Time explaining how Wales’s economy was built to extract wealth rather than enrich its own people, and why we need the powers to put that right. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 #Annibyniaeth

Sorry - “Labour must fight back”? Labour has actively promoted tje language of “strivers and shirkers” and “hard-working families” and continues to cut benefits and promote workfare. Why does anyone believe that Labour is a party of compassion and decency? www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

And this is one key reason why I, an English immigrant to Cymru, support independence. It is about the right to decide how we are governed and how our resources are used. We are rich in renewable energy - let’s see that wealth invested here in Cymru, not in the city of London or offshore.

I wonder why people cannot see that the “safe space” narratives used to justify this are at a basic level no different to the “protecting our women and girls” mantras of the hard Right; both are about exclusion and control.

Absolutely. There is apparently nobody left in the Labour Party with the intelligence or self-awareness to realise where their authoritarian paranoia is leading them. It’s as ugly as it is pathetic.

Not for the first time, Labour needs to grow up.

“If you live in Scotland, if you choose to make your life here in Scotland, then you are one of us.” Scotland belongs to everyone who calls it home. No matter where you're from, your background or your beliefs, everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. #SNP26

It’s almost as if Burnham’s position on Europe is purely performative and isn’t really politically serious at all.

I somehow missed this. I laughed long and loud.

Exactly this. And we need more politicians willing to say this in terms, rather than bloviating about legitimate grievances.

#Tactics of #Neoliberalism "Sensible centre" "There is no alternative" "Fiscal responsibility" "We just can't afford it" "Cutting red tape" "The nanny state" "Punishing Success" "Tax us less" "Austerity" "Starve the beast"

It is wholly obvious that when the men on the populist right talk of “protecting” women and children they really mean “exclusively owning and using as chattels”. Why are mainstream politicians and media so scared of pointing this out?

If Putin stops fighting, the war ends. If Zelensky stops fighting then his country will be occupied, leaders murdered, language banned, businesses stolen, children kidnapped. That's what happens in Russian-occupied Ukraine.

I think it was Pierre Bourdieu who wrote that every established order naturalises its own arbitrariness. Which is why we have a Labour government that criminalises opposition to genocide and climate change but tells masked street fascists that they have legitimate grievances.

Where did that “growth” go? Corporate profits? Rentier extraction? Or household incomes, which would provide a far better indicator of wellbeing? And then if so, did it favour the worse-off or the affluent? Headline growth figures tell us so little about real lives.

This thread. Labour has never learned the lesson - one repeated over and over again in history - that what you appease, you empower.

The great Ignazio Silone wrote that no fascist régime has ever struggled to recruit its bureaucracy. It’s a thought that has been with me ever since Brexit.

Fair enough, but Brexit was never really about real-life experience, but about ideology and emotion and not letting go of Empire - the exceptionalism of a decadent, failing state. Going back to Europe means building a new political, and crucially, cultural narrative.

What particularly infuriates me is that this is a Labour Party whose rhetoric is all about “hard-working families”. When in truth Labour has become a party that speaks for affluent rentiers.

“Reform has to take ever more extreme positions to keep winning headlines. As horrific as Jenrick’s comments are, they should be understood less as a policy proposal than as the political equivalent of a toddler acting out for attention.” Cruelty is weakness. liveapp.inews.co.uk/category/482...

Exactly this. We can’t wish the referendum result away. But we can ensure that the positive case for joining reflects the need for security in a dangerous world.

I love the brutalist bus shelters on Lewis and Harris. Masterpieces of form and function.

Freedom of movement is a central plank of the EU treaties. Once again, Labour’s rejoin talk is exposed as empty mood music. They’re just not intellectually across the issues. At the most basic level.

Indeed.

Indeed. For any rational government investing in decarbonisation initiatives like heat pumps should be a complete no-brainer. Sadly, what we have in the UK is performance and vibe, not rational government.