• Labour's current leader may not be an outright Marxist like his predecessor, but the Marxist influence is visible nonetheless in the Party's current priorities. Belief that it's virtuous to penalise the bourgeoisie, or references to 'sharp-elbowed parents', are standard Marxism-inspired tropes, observable these days among 'conservative' politicians as well as the more overtly left-wing ones.
The most notable action so far of the new government has been to make private education more expensive. The people most penalised by this are not the wealthy, but those at the margin who have saved hard to keep their children out of the clutches of damaging comprehensive schools, and who now won't be able to.
search warrants
• Another indicator of Marxist inspiration is a love of the state. We all know by now — or should do — that the 'withering-away-of-the-state' idea was one of Marx's phoney tropes. Most Marxists, both before and after 1917, have known full well that communism necessarily involves a larger and more powerful state apparatus.Labour long ago stopped being the party of civil liberties. It seems to have been the Conservatives (!) who came up with the idea that police should have the power to search houses without a warrant, but Labour made no protest at the time and now seems pleased to be able to put it into law. The only person to have objected, as far as I can make out, was Priti Patel.*
What it seems to mean is that police will be able to enter your home without a warrant, simply on the basis that some app — probably produced in China — shows that a stolen phone is located somewhere on your territory.
YouGov suggests that only 30% of the electorate strongly support this change in the law. May I suggest a rule of thumb for abolishing a centuries-old civil liberty? How about 'strong support from more than 80% of the population'. Not: 'strong support from 30%, plus enthusiastic support from Westminster elites'.
Prime Minister wanted
• No wonder the Conservatives were given a massive thumbs-down at the election. I have seen it suggested that the batch just booted out were more leftist even than Sir Keir's current Cabinet.
Now whence could come a strong party leader not afraid to back non-leftist values? Personally, I would have no objection to the role being contracted out to a foreigner. Or how about an AI — with appropriate safeguards of course.
It seems British humankind is no longer capable of producing a suitable individual, able to survive the militant tactics of the SJW cultists, and general trashing by 'liberal' media. Decades of socialist mindset and tall-poppy syndrome have seen to that. (America, take note.)
Britain's broken roads
Dear Amazon.com, please could you fix our roads?
You helped the people of Britain through the COVID crisis by supplying them with things they needed. Well, there is another crisis now, and we could do with your help again.
Local government departments don't seem able to cope. Although they have very kindly spent a lot of money on reducing speed limits from 30mph to 20mph, this hasn't helped much. Driving through a pothole at 20 is not a lot better than driving through it at 30.
I wonder whether you could perhaps agree, with local dignitaries, to some kind of trial, in a test area. I suspect that, in some areas at least, local people would be willing to contribute financially towards the cost of such a scheme — in the hope of a future reduction of council tax, once the scheme was proven successful.
Yours etc.
* via Sophie Chambers @ The Conversation