Quoted without comment
“Richard sent me photos of his private parts before I’d even met him,” says the redhead. “I thought this was very odd for a politician.”
Read More Quoted without commentfascists
mildly amusing roundup
Extremists. I can’t help but think this is a contribution to the ongoing debate about hero-of-the-blog Diego Gambetta’s work on engineers and terrorism. If stuff is upside down before you start the riot, fire, explosion, etc., your extremist cell could probably do with more engineers. Meanwhile, the SELF THOUGHT SPIRITUAL SCIENTIST guy next to him…
Read More mildly amusing roundupIPPR: I agree with…
The Institute for Public Policy Research has issued a report on the correlates of BNP membership and support (pdf). Fascinatingly, they reckon that there is very little or no correlation between BNP support and key socio-economic indicators like GVA per capita, growth, unemployment, immigration, etc. It’s as if a typical BNP supporter was, well, a…
Read More IPPR: I agree with……from the sea
What’s wrong with PROFIT?! Death to all Marxists! Hey, I usually try to remain calm, but this is getting unnerving. Everyone with any sense knew there would be an epic wingnut freakout after the US elections – the structural forces made it inevitable, after all the time spent denying plate tectonics – but who imagined…
Read More …from the seatoo many right-wing meetings
OK, so I got no takers for this prediction. My money’s on the Latvian or the Hungarian to out himself as a buffoon or neo-nazi. Not surprising, really. But what I didn’t expect was that even though the Latvian turned out to be the neo-nazi, the buffoon would turn out to be Timothy Kirkhope MEP,…
Read More too many right-wing meetingsHitchens Drinks Scotch in Psychic Counter-Insurgency
More information is becoming available about the Christopher Hitchens brawl. It appears to have been a telling moment in Decency. The crucial detail is that Hitchens didn’t just deface any old SSNP artefact – he scrawled on the monument to the first shots fired in resistance to the Israeli occupation of 1982. Now, I’m sure…
Read More Hitchens Drinks Scotch in Psychic Counter-InsurgencyEven More BNP Data…
Various people asked what would happen if I excluded London and Northern Ireland from the BNP analysis. Here’s a table showing the R-squared for each factor, first for the whole data set and then excluding these two outliers. (After all, who needs statistical analysis to know those two are weird?) Factor R-Squared R-Squared Excluding NI,…
Read More Even More BNP Data…Yet More BNP Data Analysis: Does Not Compute!
OK, so I’ve spent some time getting more data together on the correlates of BNP membership. I’ve created a table which contains the following metrics: population growth (%), change in population density (%), Gross Value Added(GVA) in 1991, 2006, change in GVA, % GVA growth, unemployment, long-term unemployment as a % of total unemployment, the…
Read More Yet More BNP Data Analysis: Does Not Compute!The Swamping Myth
You will hear all kinds of people in authority say that immigration, or population growth, is causing people to turn into racists and vote BNP, either just because (the rightwing version) or because of “pressure” on public services (the Decent Left version).Therefore, they usually say, we need a stingier immigration policy. If you’re reading this,…
Read More The Swamping MythThe Switzerland of the Middle East (for some periods of Swiss history)
There is a fascinating post at Pat Lang’s about a study trip to Lebanon which involved meeting some interesting and alarming people (Samir Geagea, described here as “a bit Lyndon LaRouche” – well, whatever hard things have been said, quite understandably, about the latter, he never commanded a militia that cut huge crosses in the…
Read More The Switzerland of the Middle East (for some periods of Swiss history)