Monday, December 09, 2024

The Joy of Six 1297

Josh Self says the rise of Reform could consume Kemi Badenoch and then the Conservative Party: "As Conservative Party leader, Kemi Badenoch has the privilege of interrogating the prime minister every Wednesday afternoon. And yet Farage can probably corral more support with a single TikTok (addressed to his one million followers) than Badenoch with her six scattergun PMQs. The bottom line is this: even before the English council elections, when Reform could evince serious strides, Farage is a far more visible (and effective) critic of the Labour government than Badenoch, the de jure opposition chief."

"Important issues are being obscured by the swirl of errors, confusions, and hyperbole which has reappeared around UK freeports and ‘charter cities’ or ‘states within a state’ – particularly on social media but also crossing over into the traditional media. Dispersing this fog is difficult because the claims made are convoluted, fragmented, hard to pin down, and difficult to disentangle from the occasional truth they contain." Chris Grey on the debate about freeports.

Teenagers are vaping. So what? asks Democracy Coma.

Happy birthday to Joan Armatrading, who has enjoyed an extraordinary, pioneering career as a Black British woman singer-songwriter. She recently talked to the Guardian.

Francis Young opens The Box of Delights by Philip W. Errington: "To this day, the Bishop of Tatchester’s rush to find his mitre and ensure that Tatchester Cathedral celebrates its 1000th Christmas is my iconic image of Midnight Mass, as the carol ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ fills Tewkesbury Abbey (the real Tatchester). It was not until years later, as a young teenager, that I read the novel by John Masefield on which the adaptation was based, and then I found an even richer source of fantasy and magic."

The Opinionated Reader enjoys Gloucestershire Folk Tales by Anthony Nanson: "Sky-ships are flying over Bristol, a pious nun becomes the innocent prey to a heathen, a mysterious woman haunts a village, requiring fresh flowers on her grave."

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