Linkage

A surge in people being forced to live in bed and breakfasts and other temporary homes in England is costing the taxpayer £1.7bn a year, “shameful” council data analysed by the Local Government Association has revealed.

The worsening shortage of social housing and increasingly unaffordable private rents are among reasons councils are now paying for 104,000 households to live in temporary accommodation – more than at any time in the past 25 years.

[…] 

The LGA, the councils’ umbrella group, is demanding the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, use his coming autumn budget statement to increase housing benefit to make more private rented homes affordable to people on welfare, and to reform housing rules to allow councils to build more social housing.

“Council budgets are being squeezed and the chronic shortage of suitable housing across the country means that councils are increasingly having to turn to alternative options for accommodation at a significant cost,” said Darren Rodwell, the leader of the London borough of Barking and Dagenham and the LGA’s housing spokesperson. “Councils need to be given the powers and resources to build enough social homes for their residents so they can create a more prosperous place to live, with healthier and happier communities.”

It is practically first principles in the study of group identity that when we identify with a sports team, religious group, or political party, our self-esteem is bound up with that group. As psychologist Jonathan Haidt has famously shown, our group allegiances take on a deeply moral element. We naturally tend to associate our group and its values with moral goodness and our competition with moral depravity.

For Republicans (and Democrats), admitting that fascists and Nazis are on their side of the ideological spectrum—that they have any overlapping worldviews, values, or tactics with “us”—is a tribal psychology no-no. Fascists and Nazis, the exemplars of political evil, must share space with our partisan opponents. It works like a syllogism. Leftists are the bad guys. Fascists and Nazis are also bad guys. So fascists and Nazis are leftists.

Consider Republican governor and presidential hopeful Nikki Haley’s lament, posted on social media in June 2023, as she made a play for Trump supporters: “Do you remember when you were growing up…how simple life was, how easy it felt? It was about faith, family, and country.” The operative phrase here is “when you were growing up” — that is, when you were a child and therefore likely to be less aware of, or at least bothered by, disturbing news stories, complicated events, and hidden dangers. To claim that life itself is less simple and easy today is to confuse a life-cycle effect (what is true of people at a certain age) with a period effect (what is true of everyone at a certain point in history).

Although some people may think that intersex people are rare, they actually make up around 1.7% of the population, which is comparable to the number of people with red hair in the world. Many children are born with ambiguous genitalia, meaning that doctors are unable to identify their sex as either male or female. However, let’s get one thing clear: Sex is NOT binary.

[…] 

However, the ambiguity of intersex people’s sex leads to healthcare professionals operating on infants to adjust their sex in order for it to conform to either male or female sexual characteristics. Doctors are legally allowed – with the consent of the infant’s parents – to perform surgeries on children, stripping them of any kind of agency over their own bodies. These procedures can also cause serious problems such as infertility, pain, incontinence, and mental health issues.

Last month the government’s tender website, AusTender, published a contract between the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) and ShadowDragon Holdings, LLC. The contract runs for two years and is valued at $563,040.

ShadowDragon Holdings is an American company that sells software collecting “open source intelligence software, unique datasets and training” to organisations, including the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency as well as state police forces in New York and Michigan.

ShadowDragon’s products pull data from a range of public online platforms — reportedly more than “200 unique sources and datasets” — to make them searchable for its users.

The full list of places isn’t published but its promotional material lists places including Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, YouTube, X, Google, Amazon, Tumblr, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Reddit, 4Chan, Skype, Spotify, Twitch, Xbox network, PornHub, SoundCloud, Gab, Foursquare, Tripadvisor, Tinder, Etsy, PayPal, Flickr, Imgur, Disqus, eBay, GitHub, DeviantArt, Blogger, FetLife, BitChute, parenting forum BabyCenter, social network for Black people BlackPlanet and more. 

Many seniors rely on Centrelink for vital government services and payments. But recently, there has been growing concern over outrageously long wait times that seniors face when trying to contact Centrelink by phone or have their claims processed.

Despite Centrelink receiving fewer calls this year, the agency's performance in answering calls and processing claims has 'deteriorated'.

Only 60 per cent of calls are being answered within 15 minutes, with 9 million calls annually met with a voicemail asking callers to try again later due to high demand.

While serving in the Louisiana state legislature from 2015 to 2017, Johnson introduced a so-called “religious freedom” bill to legalize discrimination against married same-sex couples. He told the Baptist Message that he was “on the front lines of the ‘culture war’ defending religious freedom, the sanctity of human life, and biblical values, including the defense of traditional marriage.”

Last December, Johnson introduced a federal version of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law called the “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act.” The bill threatens to cut federal funding to libraries, school districts, hospitals, government entities, or other organizations for “hosting or promoting any program, event, or literature involving sexually-oriented material,” including “any topic involving gender identity, gender dysphoria, transgenderism, sexual orientation, or related topics.”

In a July hearing, Johnson — who serves as the chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, said that parents don’t have the right to provide their children with access to gender-affirming healthcare, something he falsely called a form of “abuse and physical harm,” even though every major American medical association has endorsed it as safe, effective, and essential to the well-being of trans youth.

I expect Jeremy Corbyn is well-rested and ready to help restore sanity after the chaos of the loony extremist Starmer years. Just saying.

The Labour party was plunged into crisis over Keir Starmer’s stance on the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, with the Labour leader under mounting pressure to call for a ceasefire.

As Rishi Sunak joined calls for a “pause” in the Israel-Hamas conflict to allow aid into Gaza, and hostages and British nationals out - Sir Keir continued to grapple with the fallout of his own approach to the crisis.

The Labour leader is facing growing upset among backbench MPs, with dozens having signed a motion urging the British government to call for an immediate ceasefire.

And more than 150 Muslim Labour councillors signed a joint letter to Sir Keir and his deputy Angela Rayner urging him to back an immediate ceasefire.

Perhaps you're a Flygskam (Flight Shaming) devotee, though we prefer the slightly more statesmanlike #Trainbragging (or as the Swedes say #tågskryt ). But, whatever your motivation, and whatever you call it, here are eight innovative options for train and bus travel between Australia's two largest cities.

Some options get you there same day, some let you break your journey and stay overnight. Some are train all the way, some are a mixture of trains and buses. But no matter which you choose, you'll get to see the real Australia.

Most contracts these days also include all sorts of bits and bobs accounting for streaming, podcast content, and so on. In 1963, when the first episodes of Doctor Who aired, though, streaming was more likely to refer to a small river than anything blaring out of one of those new-fangled telly-boxes.

As a result (and we’re not lawyers), it looks like at least some of the rights – or at least a potentially valid claim to them – for the first few episodes of Doctor Who belongs to the estate of the original writer, Anthony Coburn. The BBC hasn’t admitted so much specifically, issuing the simple acknowledgement to the Radio Times. Just imagine the meetings that took place to get to that stage. There’s enough of a worry, clearly, to exclude An Unearthly Child from the line-up.

The contract Coburn signed in the 1960s won’t have given any provisions for reusing the show in a different context, certainly not this one, and their descendants – specifically in this case, Coburn’s son – are under no obligation to let the BBC do anything with the show other than broadcast on terrestrial TV.

Stef Coburn, the son in question, has been very active on his Twitter/X/whatever-it’s-called-this-week account.