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Emeritus Prof. Christopher May

ChrisMayLA6@mastodon.me.uk

<p>Retired Professor of Political Economy; now enjoying the fediverse.</p>

Posts

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    (Especially for my USA-based followers) One of the ways that the Tangerine Tyrant may try to skew that mid-terms in favour of the Republicans (and indirectly himself) is through the claim of &#39;wide-spread&#39; fraudulent voting.... so here&#39;s @BBC Verify setting out the claims and the *actual* evidence. Like so much else Trump is in no way a reliable witness on this. #USPol #Trump #politics https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckeq3vezxlx1o

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    Why won&#39;t politicians countenance major increase on taxes for the most wealthy? Tax Justice UK interviewed a range of MPs &amp; concluded that &#39;the barrier to taxing extreme wealth is a deeply entrenched pattern of political fear, economic uncertainty, institutional capture &amp; parliamentary self-preservation&#39;... But, it may also be possible to shift the dial; we need to make it much more &#39;costly&#39; for our political class *not* to raise the rich&#39;s taxes! #politics #t...

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    Each time someone claims the UK&#39;s fiscal problems are caused by the triple-lock on state pensions, or wealth hoarding baby-boomers&#39; are behind UK inequalities,, I see a major programme of political distraction. The UK&#39;s problems are not primarily linked to generational difference(s), they are the result of an ongoing programme of class warfare by the rich, which they are seeking to camouflage as a generational issue... it is not! The wealthy are the only dangerous minority here! #...

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    Perhaps a little more quietly than in the past, the next UN Climate Convention, CoP31 gets under way in two weeks time... we can expect: lots of pious words; but lots of blocking (through procedural manipulation, focus shifting and backroom diplomacy); claims the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement is not fatal... But, more generally what we will see is more about what we won&#39;t see... any concerted &amp; comprehensive agreed actions on climate change! #ClimateChange #politics #UN #CO...

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    Bill Gates is warning (in the Observer) that AI will see mass job losses, but the need for a &#39;safety net&#39; means that the wealthy (who reap much of the financial benefit ) will need to pay more tax. Whatever the merits of the second aspect of his argument, (as always) this sort of technological determinism undermines responses; AI &amp; associated technologies are not natural forces we need to deal with, they are human constructs whose social impact can &amp; *should* be fully regulated...

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    So, likely confirming many sceptics&#39; view of the Online Safety Act, Ofcom has concluded that in its first nine months it has had no discernible positive impact on the flow of inappropriate &amp; dangerous material reaching children via social media. As many argued at the time (and as I became convinced of after discussions in my timeline) this was the wrong way to address what remains a serious social problem. We need a much bigger stick to deal with BigTech! #politics https://www.thegua...

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    Many of us would like to see wholesale reform of the UK&#39;s second chamber (the Lords)... but while its hereditary elementhas been the focus of attention, as Huw Macartney (BirminghamU) points out, the real problem is the role of the wealthy (with a concentration of wealth in property - landlords - and corporate shareholdings in the Lords). Given its role in legislation, the domination by wealth, is a major problem for equitable governance &amp; skews legislation. #politics https://theconve...

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    While I agree to some extent with Miriam González Durántez that the Far Right&#39;s rise is because they are more committed to politics than an historically complacent centre, what she really doesn&#39;t identify is how the centrist political class have continually depicted the moderate Left as &#39;extremists&#39; too, and thereby played into the hands of the Far Right (as an &#39;acceptable&#39; extremism). The centre has proved to be really dangerously disingenuous in its views of the Left!...

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    Across the country people know the value of migrants who work across a range of sectors *and* contribute to the country&#39;s culture &amp; economy, yet the Labour Govt. like its Tory predecessors continues to deny this value, seeking to denigrate migrants in an attempt to appeal to voters with &#39;legitimate concerns&#39; about immigration. As Gaby Hinsliff, argues this hasn&#39;t worked on its now terms, and has also undermined the value of migrants to the UK. #immigration #politics https...

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    I see the BigTech builders of UK data centres are sufficiently concerned about the prospect of widening (local) political resistance &amp; protests that they are seeking Govt. intervention to deliver a &#39;compact&#39; to ease the local environment for construction... Of course, given our political class&#39; disdain for protest and people&#39;s local interest(s), we&#39;re more likely to see proscription of protest groups &amp; repression of campaigns against data centres. #politics #AI ht...

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    After years of speculation &amp; complaint, the Treasury has put a figure on the loss represents by the UK&#39;s failure to establish the sort of oil-revenue fed sovereign wealth fund the Norwegians have built. The estimate is that that fund would likely be worth around a £1 trillion, but instead the funds from peak earning in the North Sea were deployed by Margaret Thatcher to fund tax cuts.... One more reason to see Margaret Thatcher as a wrecker of the UK! #Oil #politics https://www.bbc.c...

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    Not sure what the implications of the decision to give the go-ahead to the Jackdaw North Sea gas field are?.... then here is a reasonable overview of the issues from @BBC Verify. As I&#39;ve said before away from the spotlight there is still good journalism happening at the BBC, just not by their high profile commentariat. #BBC #Jackdaw #FossilFuels #politics https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq4g13pplyzzo

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    And so The Canary goes dark, among recriminations &amp; conspiracy theories about attacks and partial &#39;de-banking&#39; from Lloyds.... The Canary claims it will offer its side of the story of its closure imminently, but given how the political class treats anything that looks left-ish, it doesn&#39;t take too big a leap to see something political behind the closure of a leading outlet for left-opinion &amp; analysis. They&#39;ll be more on this soon, I&#39;m sure.... #media #politics htt...

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    I&#39;ve made this point before, but thought I&#39;d make it again, today: One of the most serious problems that undermines the UK&#39;s public sector is a logic that sees cuts in funding for everyday normal activities as &#39;efficiencies&#39;, but then produces increased failures in the everyday provisions of services that need to be addressed (or rectified) by much more expensive emergency/reactive actions &amp; services. Everyday service cuts are a false economy seen in education, health,...

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    The World Health Organisation warns bed occupancy rates above 85% signals congestion &amp; difficulty absorbing additional demand. Nuffield reported overnight general &amp; acute NHS bed occupancy of 92.5% in the final quarter of 2025–26. In September, England recorded 99,290 instances of &#39;corridor care&#39;. So, the NHS is not &#39;running hot&#39;, its in continual crisis; slow discharge to social care is one issue, but a &#39;just-in-time&#39;/&#39;lean&#39; management logic is anoth...

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    A new campaign to collect media stories that prejudice &amp; abuse disabled people in one place - the Disability Media Action campaign - is looking for people to submit examples from the news media of such stories. As always, campaigning on an issue is helped by having a single detailed record, allowing trends to be identified alongside the serial offenders. If you have examples please contact them. #disability #media #politics h/t Disability News Service https://www.inclusionlondon.org.u...

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    So, around 53% of UK households are net beneficiaries of the state (with 47% net contributors). But the ONS calculates this through taxes (direct &amp; indirect) and benefits (including those in kind; education, the NHS) &amp; doesn&#39;t attempt to account for things like defence, the rule of law, policing, roads &amp; so on. So its a figure that is at best misleading &amp; at worst promotes a rampantly individualised politics (i.e. students presented as the sole beneficiaries of university)....

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    You&#39;ve seen a lot of bleating against the equalisation of income tax &amp; capital gains tax, but meanwhile the HMRC has been busy clawing back unpaid CGT, recovering nearly £500m in 2025/26; its renewed vigour on business taxation raised the haul by 82% up on the previous year. As this suggests, when the HMRC deploys more staff &amp; resources to business taxation, strangely the tax-take rises pretty significantly... its almost like business people were lying about their gains? #tax #poli...

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    Oh dear, more trouble for Palantir&#39;s attempts to capture patient data via the NHS... more NHS Trusts are rejecting the software &amp; the claims made for it... all as ex-Labour MP Tom Watson goes into bat for them (claiming if other technologies were available they&#39;d be competing with Palantir&#39;s... err, that exactly what NHS Trusts are saying!). The thing Palantir really seem to dislike is scrutiny &amp; scepticism about their performance claims! #Palantir #NHS #politics https:/...

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    You&#39;ll be unsurprised Amazon is using an AI-related tool to assess its distribution sites for signs of nascent union activity... Of course, Amazon denies the tool (Atlas) is being used to head-off unionisation efforts at specific warehouses, but then again they would say that, wouldn&#39;t they? Their problem is the information has arisen during &#39;discovery&#39; during a Court battle between Amazon &amp; Canadian union; and as such, the source is the firm itself. #unions #Amazon https...

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    I&#39;d take commentators claiming the Green Party of England &amp; Wales has been beset by Left entryism more seriously if they hadn&#39;t dismissed the party in the past as a marginal force in British politics. The worry that the GPEW has widened its focus &amp; encompassed views popular on the Left is not so much a worry about the policies the party espouses, as a concern they might actually gain more votes thereby disrupting the political class&#39; domination of the political agenda! #po...

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    If you&#39;ve not heard of Isabella Weber, you might want to read this profile, as she is looking like becoming the next political economist (my designation, not hers) to join the slowly growing group of analysts arguing we need to rethink the global economic settlement in various ways.... she joins Kate Raworth, Marianne Mazzacuto and others who are setting out a new approach to our global political economy. #economics #politics #inequality https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/oct/16/is...

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    The Labour Govt (under Keir Starmer *and* Andy Burnham) is casting around for money to bolster the UK&#39;s defence budget. So, of course part of that is seeking &#39;savings&#39; from other Dept.s including the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero; and there, it looks like support for heat pumps may be scaled back, undermining the Dept.&#39;s central &#39;mission&#39;. Presenting a &#39;choice&#39; between measures to shift energy use and national security is more political myopia! #p...

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    Meanwhile in Norfolk.... Anti-immigrant violence continues, with mobs storming houses they believe house immigrants (and/or refugees). This is the sort of behaviour that has been stoked by the Fascist Frog, ReformUK &amp; their familiars. The protestors are being goaded by those who claim to recognise their &#39;legitimate grievances&#39;... the toxic politics of immigration are directly responsibility for this public violence. #immigration #politics #Thetford https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ar...

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    So, of course, as more people use AI &amp; associated technologies to make job applications, so employers deluged with applications are using AI to sort, long list candidates. But, as we might expect, it transpires that AI prefers applications written with the aid of AI, being &#39;impressed&#39; by the forms of claim an AI-aided CV includes. Its classic &#39;enshittification&#39;, making the process less efficient, as humans need to intervene, and more, not less time consuming. #workers #AI...

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    Our political class generally, and the current Govt. in particular, often depict actions to respond to climate change as too expensive &amp; detrimental to growth (and by extension out economic wellbeing); so its no surprise that when specialised agencies conclude that actually *not* responding to climate change is more costly, and that climate change itself is endangering our security, such reports are buried (until someone finds them, that is). #politics #ClimateChange https://www.thenerve....

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    The proposed live-streaming of the execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan (who murdered 13 people on a USArmy base in 2009) represents a new low (hard as that might be to imagine) in the morality of the administration of the Tangerine Tyrant. Whatever one may think about death sentences, the live-streaming of the event makes judicial execution an entertainment, and this takes us back to the idea of public hangings &amp; burnings. The USA is accelerating into the/its past. #politics #Trump

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    Oh dear, the wealth advisors claiming that David Reuben (billionaire) had &#39;left&#39; the UK due to Labour&#39;s tax changes, have been caught out... he&#39;s been domiciled in Monaco for tax purposes by his own admission for over a decade. And given other evidence of a lack of &#39;exodus&#39; by the super-rich, it would be nice if the media started reporting real news not making up things that are convenient to their owners.... Not holding my breath, though #tax #politics #inequality h...

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    A favourite trope of the small-state crowd is to attack taxes by saying &#39;make work pay&#39; as if taxes had prompted a low-wage economy. The *real* issue is the share of national Gross Value Added that accrues to capital &amp; to labour (in aggregated terms). In 1975 workers&#39; share of GVA was 71.9%.. fifty years later that has dropped to 59.7%. So, while the UK&#39;s economy has largely stagnated, capital has increased its capture of value from economic activity. #economics #inequali...

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    Whatever went on around the permitter of RAF Farirford it has spooked the USAF, who this weekend &#39;moved&#39; their heavy B-1 Lancer bombers elsewhere.... Depending on your perspective this could be a panic response to a miss-reported criminal incident, an accusation the UK cannot provide security for airfields, or a bit of political theatre designed to hide something else (although what might be being hidden is not clear). #RAFFairford #politics #security https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/artic...