Simon Brooke

Anarcho-syndicalist, autistic, crofter, cyclist, depressive, entrepreneur, geek, searchable, Zapatista. Politics & environment, especially #LandReform. he/him.

Twitter: [@simon_brooke](https://mastodon.scot/@simon_brooke )
GitHub: simon-brooke
FetLife: Simon_Brooke

Credo: Life is harsh. What we can do - and what we should do - is strive to make it less harsh for the people around us.

Addendum: you would not deliberately block a wheelchair ramp. Do not post images to social media without alt text.

Home Page: https://www.journeyman.cc/~simon/
Real World: Standingstone, Auchencairn, DG7 1RF, Scotland
Blog: https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/

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Last Notes

2024-09-28 08:47:49

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Suits me fine if they do. The #Tories become a fringe right wing mouth-frother party, and #Labour move into the space the Tories have vacated, leaving more room for the #SNP or @npub1nzf…lckw to become a really solid party of the left.

2024-07-10 11:13:06

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aye, but: the whole point of taxes is to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. The billionaire tech bros want to pay exactly the same for their public services as disabled single parent POC whom they would not dream of employing.
Better solution is just to eat the billionaires.

2024-07-06 10:05:48

The most depressing discovery to come out of my analysis of Thursday's #GeneralElectionUK?
If we'd adopted #ProportionalRepresentation for the UK at the same time as we did for the #ScottishParliament and #SeneddCymru, we'd have had NO #Conservative governments this century, no austerity, and no #Brexit.
Blog post here:
https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2024-07-06-the-election-and-after/
https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/112/738/968/256/056/110/original/083a750b6a6eb405.png

2024-07-06 05:47:57

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very strong agree. In fact they're designed to prevent functioning democracy.

2024-07-05 20:47:38

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Finally: to those responding saying 'well, ACTUALLY, #Labour DID win because they've got the majority of seats in Westminster': no.
The Labour party won one third of the votes in an election in which under two thirds of the electorate voted. Fewer than ONE IN FIVE voters in Britain support this government. It has no mandate to do anything. If it tries, then, like Thatcher with the poll tax, it will find the difference between Westminster games and real politics.
To govern, you need consent.

2024-07-05 16:55:18

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The third thing is that -- at least here -- the poorest and most disadvantaged had lowest turnout. Now, you may say that the lumpenproletariat never vote, that they are systematically uninformed, that that's their choice, and so on. But none of the parties had an offering that was attractive to the marginalised, and that was THEIR choice.
40% of REGISTERED voters didn't vote at all, which is larger than the number who voted for the "winning" party. There's LOTS of votes to be won there.

2024-07-05 14:54:16

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The second thing is that all these parties will now tack right. #Labour's right wingers are in the ascendant (falsely) claiming a victory -- and will have to contrast themselves against a group of #Greens and independents to their left.
The less toxic #Tories have disproportionately lost their seats, leaving more extreme Tories; who will seek to reclaim votes from #Reform. The #LibDems will target more ex-Tories. And the #SNP will try to win votes back from Labour.
#GeneralElectionUK

2024-07-05 13:28:31

OK, the first thing to say about #GeneralElectionUK 2024 is this: #Labour lost, and lost badly. They lost, in fact, HALF A MILLION VOTES compared to their 2019 result.
All the major parties, including the #LibDems, lost. Labour just lost less badly than either the #Conservatives or the #SNP.
#UKPol
#ScotPol
https://media.mastodon.scot/media_attachments/files/112/734/098/155/535/840/original/1aecb9fa5678b666.png

2024-07-05 09:20:44

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You're dooming all Europe to war for our lives.
The idea that #Putin is going to stop at the Dneiper, or the Vistula, or the Rhein, or the Seine, or the English Channel, is for the birds.

2024-07-03 20:20:33

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I also plan to vote Green. Not in the hope of electing a Green MP, but
1. As part of my project to delay the end of the world by as much as possible; and
2. To frighten the mainstream parties into action with the size of the Green vote.
If that results in a Tory getting in who would not otherwise have got in, I'll be sad; but I will still believe I have done the right thing.

2024-06-29 07:32:18

"They claim they're protecting women from #trans people. No, they're not. They're just using the opportunity of claiming they're protecting women to actually constrain the rights of women in the process of doing so" – @RichardJMurphy on fascism.
He's right to imply that the whole anti-trans movement is, if not fascist, at least fascism-adjacent. Yes, Joanna Cherry, I am looking at you.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/06/29/its-time-to-talk-about-fascism/

2024-06-25 10:07:46

"When Just Stop Oil covered Stonehenge with orange cornflour last week, Keir Starmer was called upon to decry the act, which he dutifully did, even though anyone with even a very slight knowledge of geology will know that the marks won’t last. But that wasn’t what the Labour leader was being asked. Rather, the question was whose side was he on, between “respectable” people and disruptive ones?"
#ClimateEmergency
#JustStopOil
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/24/the-nature-march-had-a-huge-turnout-so-why-didnt-it-make-bigger-news

2024-06-19 22:25:30

According to the Sunday Times rich list, Rishi #Sunak and his wife have between them £651,000,000, up by £122,000,000 last year alone.
Approximately 3 million people in the UK use foodbanks.
So the Sunaks could afford to give EVERY SINGLE foodbank user £40 each out of income alone -- and he'd still have his full Prime Minister's salary and allowances to live on (and two rent-free houses to live in).
So why doesn't he?

2024-06-15 12:08:27

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and part of the answer is, #gift back. Not necessarily to the same people – if we develop a culture of generosity, everyone benefits. And almost whatever it is you do, you can afford to gift some of it. Got slack time? Find someone in your community who needs your skills, but can't afford them.
That's how we make the world better: step by step, where we are, with the skills we have.
#GiftEconomy

2024-06-15 07:50:26

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Most #OpenSource software is produced by software engineers and enthusiasts in their spare time as an act of curiosity, generosity, or social conscience: a contribution to making the world a (slightly) better place.
It is neither 'product' nor 'by-product' but conscious #gift -- and this is a good thing.
Viewing open source as something produced primarily by industry and academia is not merely wrong: it's missing the point entirely.
#GiftEconomy

2024-06-15 07:44:20

I'm beginning to make notes for an essay evaluating Margaret #Thatcher's historical legacy; it's my thesis that every single thing wrong with Britain today can be traced directly back to her.
Can anyone think of single thing which she did which has had, in the long term, beneficial consequences?
#UKPol

2024-06-13 18:55:20

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Note that what she accuses Soros of is supporting the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood. Behind the whole anti-#Trans campaign is a determination to return all women to 'Kinder, Küche, Kirche'.
Trans rights are the current battle ground in the wider struggle for womens' reproductive rights, and rights to engage in civil society at all. We must defend our Trans comrades.

2024-06-04 06:38:38

If you're saying that #Trans people cannot use lavatories of their legally assigned and recognised gender, you're essentially saying they cannot safely use lavatories in public places at all. Which means you're saying that they cannot travel, and cannot exist in the public realm. Which means you're also saying that that legal recognition is meaningless and worthless.
Trans people are our brothers and sisters, our comrades. Is this really the world we want to build for them?

2024-05-29 05:14:22

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I truly hope you are wrong about the EU.
I have no evidence that you are wrong, this is just hope. But yet more crises seems impossibly hard to cope with.

2024-05-29 05:06:02

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I also think we've run out of time.
By the time #Starmer has frittered away his first term in government (as he will) on 'steady as she goes, don't frighten the #Tories' policies, the world will have reached the point where even mitigating the #ClimateEmergency will have become an impossible, cliff edge cost; and at that point there will be no space left for people of good will to do anything but put their shoulder to the wheel in the task of saving the planet.

2024-05-29 05:00:48

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Voters will return, I think, and in very large numbers. I cannot see #Starmer's government being anything but a huge disappointment to voters in #Scotland.
But I think it will make no difference. The #SNP could win 80% of the vote in Scotland and Westminster would still not concede #ScottishIndependence; and, unless they can recruit much more able people, as long as the SNP seek to be in government in Scotland, they will never achieve that large a share of the vote. >>>

2024-05-29 04:37:37

Lesley Riddoch here arguing, essentially, that we all have to bite our tongues, haud oor whischt, and vote #SNP, because "they're the only parliamentary route to #ScottishIndependence. I count Lesley as a friend and as someone I greatly respect, but I think she's wrong here: there is no longer a parliamentary path to independence.
The Lesley Riddoch Podcast: Campaign Pains
Episode webpage: https://share.transistor.fm/s/981581dc
Media file: https://media.transistor.fm/981581dc/601cf266.mp3

2024-05-28 05:53:38

Destroying the planet we live on -- the only planet we can live on -- is of course totally legal and even supported and subsidised by governments around the world (including #Scotland's).
But PROTESTING against destroying the planet? That's illegal. That's very, very illegal. Don't even think about doing that.
#ClimateEmergency
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/23/alarm-as-german-climate-activists-charged-with-forming-a-criminal-organisation

2024-05-27 12:59:25

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I wrote about this three years ago. I really don't want to be proven right.
https://www.journeyman.cc/blog/posts-output/2021-11-15-the-everyone-dies-event-class/

2024-05-23 05:06:33

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Is the solution not to tax the absolute fuck out of speculative profits in #housing, and spend the proceeds on building a shit-ton of new #SocialHousing rented at such low rates that it forces rental prices down in the private rental sector?
Subsidies just drive the speculative bubble higher. What we need to do -- everywhere in the world -- is destroy it.

2024-05-19 20:03:51

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Name one democratic constitution written in the past fifty years anywhere in the world which mandates a second chamber.

2024-05-19 19:52:46

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Or you could have no second chamber at all, like all modern democracies.

2024-05-19 14:12:07

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where in the world do you have an appointed legislative chamber that isn't corrupt? Ours includes many people who have simply bought their way in, including one who is the son of a very senior foreign spy from a hostile country, and others who are there simply because they were friends and/or sexual partners of former prime ministers.

2024-05-19 06:22:05

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they'll all have to go because there's no place for an appointed legislative chamber in a democracy. The whole institution is systematically corrupt.
#HouseOfLords
#AbolishTheHouseOfLords