Tag Archives: politics

Depraved New World

It’s difficult to come up with a better explanation for what this book is like than the description on the back: Depraved New World (affiliate link) is a worryingly funny collection, which captures British politics at its most absurd. 

It’s a collection of John Crace’s political sketches, originally published in the Guardian, covering October 2021 to June 2023. A pretty eventful time in British politics.

Reading it now, in late 2023, is probably the perfect time. Much earlier and you can’t tell the “good” sketches or consequential events from the average ones. Much later and you’ll have forgotten some of the important details that are being written about. They’re sketches, not analysis of the events or a history. Between the chapters are occasional colour about what was going on, but, broadly, you’re on your own. Political geeks only! Some parts I’d forgotten, but smiled when I recalled. If you’d come across Braverman stepping on a guide dog’s tail on The Thick of It, you’d dismiss it as too unlikely and contrived.

If there’s a trend for the books I’ve read this year, it’s “entertaining but not a classic.” I would put “Depraved New World” in the same category.

Escape

Marie Le Conte is one of my favourite panelists on the Oh God What Now podcast. I thought I should make an effort to read one of her books, hence “Escape” (affiliate link). It is about how Millennials were the first generation to grow up with the internet and how they shaped it.

Whatever you make of the ideas or commentary1, one thing is abundantly clear: her personality shines through. You can hear her speaking every sentence. Fast, slightly scattered thoughts with the occasional random aside. In books of this type, it’s rare to come across lines such as:

Still, that isn’t quite the point I was trying to make

In works with less personality the preceding paragraph would have been edited out!

Another example.

(I’m very sorry, I’m going to have to pause for a moment to childishly laugh at the sentence ‘we were using our fingers instead of our mouths.’)

(Okay, I’m good.)

It’s not pretending to be a serious book, though there are serious points to make. It doesn’t quite hang together as a whole. She describes the chapters as essays, and that’s pretty accurate. Think of it as a collection of loosely related essays rather than a cohesive, single narrative.

The essays cover topics from finding your tribe to dating to how nothing is ever as good as it used to be2.

One of the serious points continues to be very relevant with the recent changes in ownership, and therefore moderation, of Twitter and Tumblr.

All we have now is this tiered internet, where everything non-sexual can co-exist — including racism, fake news, abuse, misogyny and the like — but nipples are beyond the pale.

And apparently I’m a terrible person.

I have been in full-time employment for nine years and I still bristle whenever someone sends me a short message with a full stop at the end.

I’ve seen people sign off their text messages. I don’t do that. But tapping space twice at the end of a text message feels like a small price to pay for have a full stop in the correct place3.

Overall, I quite enjoyed “Escape.” I wouldn’t say that it’s essential reading, or that it uncovers many new and unique insights, but you might find it relatable or funny.


  1. I’m not entirely convinced, personally. As a Gen X, I don’t feel substantially less online than many Millennials. ↩︎
  2. Millenials are getting old. ↩︎
  3. I guess this is the marker of me being Gen X. ↩︎

How Britain Broke The World

Popular opinion is that the whole of the UK was against Blair’s invasion of Iraq. Over a million people marched in London.

I wasn’t one of them.

I’m not sure that I was as politically engaged then as I am now, but the main reason that I wasn’t there was because I wasn’t entirely against the intervention. Sure, I never believed the justifications that they gave. The whole ability to attack in 45 minutes seemed unlikely, and the connection to Al Qaeda didn’t seem plausible either. Blair deserved all resistance he got for such obvious untruths.

So if I didn’t believe in the reasons given, why was I not against the invasion? Because the regime was abusive to its own population. We talk about choices and democracy and representation, but what can people do when they have such a corrupt, oppressive and violent government?

Other countries tend to say it’s not their concern. Does that mean it’s okay to let people suffer because they were unlucky enough to be born in the wrong country? I say no1. The international community has a responsibility to the world’s population, wherever they live2.

I should add that my (limited) support of the policy was about the idea of an intervention. The execution of the idea was clearly a mess, but no one marching knew that.

Anyway, the book.

As I tend to do, I second guess myself. Was my opinion, if not correct then, at least justifiable? If I didn’t know better, should I have known better? I got “How Britain Broke the World” by Arthur Snell to answer that question, and others.

It starts in 1997 with Kosovo and finishes with Brexit in 2021. I do think it strays from the title at times, which comes across as the book equivalent of click-bait. However, it largely answers my questions.

The simple chronological structure helps put the individual events into perspective. I’d forgotten some of them, and the details of many. In the end, I think my opinion on the Iraq invasion is similar to that of many of the interventions: the argument for doing something was there but the execution was poor3.

If there’s something to take away, it’s that we don’t learn.

You can see that because, weirdly, this is a very current book. By which I mean that shortly after reading various sections, I’d come across some contemporary event that was about the same thing. Russia. The Middle East. The US-UK “special relationship.” It’s all there and it’s all ongoing.

I can’t say I’m now an expert on any of these events or situations. It’s all complicated. Many of the challenges we have are from people who are trying to give simple solutions to complex problems4. But I can say that I am better informed than I was. To paraphrase, Donald Rumsfeld, I now have fewer unknown unknowns.


  1. It’s a slightly odd realisation to finally figure out that you don’t believe in the concept of a country. Not as in I deny that they exist, obviously, but in the sense that your potential shouldn’t be constrained by the place you happen to have been born. ↩︎
  2. Deciding what are universal rights has been a challenge, too. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights seems pretty good to me, though arguably it come from a liberal, western perspective so perhaps I would? ↩︎
  3. I realise this isn’t a wholly original take. I’m just slow on the uptake sometimes. ↩︎
  4. That’s Brexit in a nutshell. ↩︎

How Westminster Works… and why it doesn’t

If there’s one good thing that has come out of the whole Brexit omnishambles, it’s that my understanding of how British politics works has dramatically increased. I don’t think it’s worth the cost, but understanding how laws are debated and passed is something that should be taught in schools, but isn’t.

Brexit taught me about Proroguing Parliament and the various readings of bills. I learned of the role that committees serve and the works that the Lords do. It made me do homework to find out what a “three line whip” is.

My piecemeal approach to understanding the whole was interesting, but delegating the hard work of structuring it into a cohesive whole was worth it. Thanks, Ian Dunt.

This isn’t a balanced, academic treatise. Rather, it’s pitched as how it doesn’t work with an epilogue suggesting solutions to the worst problems. The writing is energetic, angry even, but clear and structured. This energy is what keeps the book entertaining, in what could have been a dry subject matter.

If you’re familiar with his podcasting work, you might be disappointed by the lack of swearing. If so, make sure you read the acknowledgements. There’s no bad language, but the vignette with his dog is illuminating.

A Decade in Tory

“A Decade in Tory” by Russell Jones was a shorter book than I thought. Ordinarily that might be a bad thing, but the reason for my confusion in this case is that there are nearly five hundred pages of footnotes and fifty for the index. There are plenty of criticisms you could make, but you can’t argue that it’s not well researched or that the events are made up.

Because, honestly, if you hadn’t lived through some of the stories, read about them as they occurred, you might well think they were fictional.

If it’s not obvious from the title, the book documents the various Conservative led governments from 2010 to 2022. It lists all the little twists and turns that you vaguely remember but had tried to forget.

That could all be a bit tedious and dry, but Jones has a way with words. He’s not going to win any literary awards but his description of some politicians are hard to forget.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, the precise physical intersection of a cursed oboe and the concept of gout.

And:

He’s so devoid of personality that his official portrait is the curtains behind him.

You might be able to guess who this is.

She’s like a modern-day Cnut; and that’s not a typo, you just think it is.

It’s simply structured, easy to read and very self-aware.

It’s absolutely fine to scream occasionally while reading this book.

It’s not a classic. It’s not pretending to be unbiased. It won’t change anyone’s mind. In fact, you’ll likely know whether you’ll like it. Check out his feed on Twitter if you want a free preview.

It made Tory MPs feel very cross, and made everybody participating feel very cross, and it achieved absolutely nothing. A bit like this book.

If you’d forgotten how rotten the Torys have become, this book is a great reminder. But it’s important to keep some perspective and understand that politicians are not all the same. Many genuinely do get into politics to improve people’s lives and make the world better. I hope you voted for them in yesterday’s council elections, and not the bunch of Charlatans this book is about.

Twitter

Sometimes it’s only when you start writing about a subject that you truly understand your opinion. That’s the approach I’m taking to answering the question: are you going to leave Twitter?

A few people have asked me in the last couple of months and the only response I have is that I’m not jumping ship and closing my account immediately.

But as the weeks have progressed, as I’ve written this piece, my thinking has evolved. It’s not that I’m going to immediately close my account but I can see The End approaching. Indeed, my usage of Twitter has dropped considerably.

When Twitter was delisted from the stock market, the concept at the top of my mind was this: can you judge a company on the person or entity that owns it?

Twitter has been badly managed or owned by incredibly rich people (or both) for a long time, but they still have millions of users. Is a change of rich person really that significant?

Is the fact that Musk isn’t terribly likeable a factor? Many people bought products from Apple even though Jobs was famous for pushing people to breaking point. You can appreciate the vision even if you couldn’t work for the individual.

To be clear, I’m not saying that no-one avoided Twitter and Apple for these reasons. I’m sure there are some, but not me and not millions of others. Is there a line that he could cross where I would leave immediately? Yes, and, in fairness, he’s got pretty close by allowing back some of the extremists who have been banned.

And, circling back to the management, Twitter has been a mess pretty much since the beginning. They seem to have difficulty shipping anything. They’ve largely eliminated the “fail whale” but what big, beneficial features have come since? The algorithmic timeline?1

Like it or not, maybe the company needs shaking up.

Though, starting on the “cons” side, shaking up the company like this likely isn’t what is needed. It is the tech equivalent of the Brexit “solution” to Britain’s problems. Needing change isn’t the same as supporting chaos.

I don’t understand what over seven thousand people do at Twitter, but neither did Musk, hence the call going out to some of those laid off, asking for them to come back. More slash and burn than measure twice, cut once.

And Twitter’s considered approach to changes is out, replaced by arbitrary deadlines and hunches. $20 for Twitter Blue? No, how about $8. Available on Monday. Or Tuesday. Could be next week.

One common reason that people have left Twitter previously is the volume of hate and harassment. While I don’t doubt their experience, it’s not something that I’ve seen personally. I stay in my little bubble with tech and jokes and a bit of politics.

But it doesn’t feel like we’re heading in the right direction. Musk’s naive views on free speech are perhaps the most worrying, not in the sense that they have the most direct, immediate effect but because they demonstrate that he doesn’t Get It.

My hope is that Musk quickly learns and pivots to a more sensible, nuanced position. But his recent tweets about American politics and abandoning putting warnings on COVID misinformation makes me think this isn’t likely. He seems to think that the problems at Twitter are about the technology, that removing a few micro-services and adding a few blade servers will make a difference. However, the problems are all about people, those who use the platform, those who advertise on it, and those who work there. Until he understands that, or defers to someone who does, things will continue to spiral.

In the end, as an end user, Twitter is all about the people I interact with every day. If they leave, it doesn’t matter whether it’s because of something that Musk said or did, or not. Their absence will make the site not worth visiting any more.

In short, I stay on Twitter despite the company that runs it and despite the person who owns it. I’m there for the geeky discussions, the dad jokes and despairing at the state of British politics. If that goes away, so do I. Find me here if that happens.


  1. Most long-time Twitter users think it’s terrible. While it does occasionally surface interesting Tweets, I do think I’d prefer the original reverse chronological timeline, too. ↩︎