frankPodmore

This was published a while ago by a zine that's now shut down, so I just republished it on my blog. Has a tone I guess half way between Nick Hornby and Chuck Palahniuk, if that makes any sense (I doubt it).

Three possibilities come to mind:

Is there an evolutionary purpose?

Does it arise as a consequence of our mental activities, a sort of side effect of our thinking?

Is it given a priori (something we have to think in order to think at all)?

EDIT: Thanks for all the responses! Just one thing I saw come up a few times I'd like to address: a lot of people are asking 'Why assume this?' The answer is: it's purely rhetorical! That said, I'm happy with a well thought-out 'I dispute the premiss' answer.

TL;DR: arguably.

Starmer responds to questions from the Big Issue journalists and from vendors. Nothing particularly groundbreaking here but it all sounds good.

A slightly too wordy and too long article that I nonetheless basically agree with. Key paragraphs:

Starmer’s strategic sense has been impressive, from opening his leadership consensually with qualified support for, and constructive criticism of, lockdown, to encouraging Boris Johnson to get his denials of Partygate on the record and leaving them there, to, most of all, his relentless focus on the voters he actually needs to win, rather than the ones who make the most noise.

This, of course, is the source of the biggest criticisms of Starmer from the left: that he won the leadership by relentlessly focusing on the voters he needed to win within the Labour Party, and then pivoted towards the national electorate rather than sticking with a prospectus whose chief appeal was to people who had already been shown to be a minority of a minority. I am not wholly unsympathetic to this view: his ten pledges were mostly bad, and he shouldn’t have made them; but dropping bad policies is better than sticking to them, and winning is better than losing.

After all, Jeremy Corbyn didn’t keep any of his promises, which may be why a recent election leaflet endorsing his bid to be the independent MP for Islington North gives so much prominence to his role in saving the Number 4 bus route.

Refreshing sanity from Conservative Home, of all places!

There's no equivalence between what Kevin Craig did (placed a bet on himself to lose) and what Craig Williams is accused of (using inside information to place a bet), and no need for a new law, given that what Williams is accused of is already illegal.

This is according to research by Get Voting. Seems worth sharing just to potentially have Liz Truss lose her seat!