harry

[harry @bucolic_comrade]

Thank you comrade. I've decided to collate pieces I have written onto a Substack, Levellers & Revellers - 'Class-critical and socialist perspectives on New Zealand political economy and society' - here: https://t.co/AzVvarIFVP

[Musical Chairs @MusicalChairs14]

Great piece. Worth adding this excerpt from the 1960 Stats NZ Yearbook.

[Felix Helberg @unitas_spiritus]

i think one of the most interesting legacies of socialist east germany is that a majority of east germans until the 2010s identified themselves as "working class", while in West Germany only 20% or so did. during the GDR in surveys even factory managers self-identified as workers

[EuropeanPowell @EuropeanPowell]

Grace Blakeley's recent piece about Labour as a "cartel party" captures something real about how Burnham manages his contradictions, a different promise to every faction, nothing that can be pinned down.

But I am less interested in the performance than the mechanism underneath it.

Character critique tells you a politician says different things to different people. Structural critique tells you what he actually built, and who benefited from it.

What Burnham built in Manchester was the institutional architecture that made a publicly designated regeneration zone investable, directed £160 million in state aid into it, established a Mayoral Development Corporation with compulsory purchase powers, and in doing so transferred enormous land value to Blackstone, the world's largest alternative asset manager.

That outcome did not require bad intentions. It did not require a backroom deal. It required a zone, a development corporation, and a private equity firm that understood what public money does to land values better than most elected politicians do.

The zone architecture is not a Labour story or a Tory story. It is bipartisan by design. Freeport and SEZ boards across the UK include Labour MPs, Lords, Baronesses, and councillors alongside Conservatives.
The public opposition was always the performance. The freeport/SEZ board memberships were always the policy.

What is specific to this moment is the pairing.
As Starmer is to BlackRock, so Burnham is to Blackstone.

One built the free zone architecture in government.
The other implemented it as Mayor, and is now seeking to be the next Prime Minister of Britain.
Both have built the conditions in which the same class of asset manager extracts value from publicly funded infrastructure while the mechanism remains largely invisible to mainstream commentary.

That is what I write about. Not the contradictions. The architecture.

[kim jong deux… @fabiodeuxbeer]

🚨 NZ LEADS FROM THE FRONT 🇳🇿

New Zealand is once again punching well above its weight as Joseph Mooney MP is confirmed to be worlds first parliamentarian to entirely replace their brain with ChatGPT tokens.

Your thoughts on this?

[Liberation News Network @l_n_n_26]

Christopher Steele is producing more unconvincing spy thrillers. This is a lame attempt to dispose of responsibility for the Mandelson scandal away from the British establishment, which Mandelson is absolutely creature of, to Moscow. This is the same ludicrous manoeuvre they've used time and time again and it really needs to be called out for the transparent nonsense that it is.

[Banana Republicistan @Kelarepublic47]

@clashreport yeah sick leaves are the problem and not the yanks blowing up Nord Stream supplying the gas to german industries

[harry @bucolic_comrade]

Anybody But Israel

[Politics UK @PolitlcsUK]

🚨 NEW: Peter Mandelson has reportedly been in contact with Russian spies for over 35 years

He was considered a "privileged contact" and "one of the most significant Russian achievements in manipulating UK politics" in the last 30 years

[@Telegraph]

[. @playboicurrryy]

high difficulty level escape room concept: u are laying in bed and u have one hour to get out of bed

[☭⚢kayᡕᠵデᡁࠣ𐂯亠🏳️‍⚧️🔻 @KH4MAS]

“Socialism is a total revolution in humanity’s very social being. It is the end of pre-history.”

[Ash Sarkar @AyoCaesar]

This worrying development takes place in a wider context of debanking for political reasons, against both the right & the left.

Banks have no right to interfere with legitimate journalistic activity. Lloyds must either disclose their rationale, or reinstate the account immediately.

[Peter Oborne @OborneTweets]

This is very troubling and upsetting. Massive implications for free speech. Lloyds needs to explain itself and fast.

[Samplo Corvodina of Streatham @TreborRhurbarb]

It understandably got buried beneath the shocking sexual abuse and paedophilic trafficking, but something remarkable about the Epstein files is how worried the ultra rich seem to be of mass revolutionary uprisings.

[Manu 🇵🇸 @Cocuto_]

Watching more movies so I can understand Minions & Monsters better

[Prem Thakker @prem_thakker]

Currently going mad viral on TikTok

[The Anti-Genocide Project @justinpodur]

As a lifelong purveyor of leftslop, I attest it's often the only explanation for many phenomena, especially economic phenomena.

[ABB @Mont_Jiang]

It's possible the US is positioning itself for a global depression caused by the Hormuz closure. The US may be better prepared for this than most countries, and would be in a position to re-assert monetary dominance throughout the crisis.

[The Last Farm @TheLastFarm]

This is the bravest, most heroic shit in history. The Palestinian resistance is unbelievably inspiring. They’re expanding the human capacity for righteousness

[Liquid Times @Liquid_Times]

In the lead up to a change election National's offering low interest loans for solar panels, which we can already get from Aussie owned banks & Labour's offering free prescriptions, which we can already get from Aussie owned chemists.

[Lei Gong @gonglei89]

What if eliminating financial rents is actually good for economic growth and innovation 🤷🏻‍♂️

[The Last Farm @TheLastFarm]

Liberals are unable to imagine things that already happened and were in fact wildly popular