Saturday 2nd November 2024
A balancing act in the UK, a viral rash in the US, and a call to harms in Russia
10 UK / Tax and offend 💷
And just like that, the country’s first female chancellor’s budget swapped out low-tax competition for a Europe-style superstate, throwing cash at hospitals at the expense of businesses and the people who work for them: “Wage increases might be slightly less than they otherwise would have been,” Reeves advised. Critics pointed out the flawed logic of trying to promote growth while stymieing wealth creation, to which she replied: yeh but Brexit. The Office for Budget Responsibility was also unimpressed yet recognised that leaving a massive, conveniently situated trading bloc with nice wine and beaches was likely to “reduce the overall trade intensity of the UK economy by 15% in the long term”. So will a £40bn tax increase and a £70bn rise in gov spending allow her to be pro-workers and pro-biz all at once?
09 US / History boys 🎖️
Political punditry ate itself after a glut of polling aggregators led to a dearth of media companies willing to pay for the polls in the first place. But given that big voices like The Washington Post and the LA Times have elected to forgo the time-honoured tradition of endorsing a candidate – for fear of jeopardising their proprietors’ business interests (in effect a limp hand in favour of the tantastic neurocrisis) – does anyone care what old media has to say anymore anyway? These days, it’s all about the viral, Madison Square Garden-style moments that hark back still further: “There’s something about their cursing and fuck-loaded obscenities that is SO Brown Shirt… It’s road rage translated into politics,” celebrity prof Simon Schama said.
08 RUSSIA / Ground down 🪖
The Kremlin continued with its mad take on the world, fining Google $20 DECILLION – more than global GDP and even the value of its leader’s watch collection – for blocking a bunch of jackbooted vloggers. Its pointless war in Ukraine ground on, with a fresh element of tragic farce in the form of troops drafted from North Korea. China bristled at Russia’s newfound BFF, a sitch the US hoped to leverage by getting Beijing to stop the deployment. But given that combat losses are hovering around the 700k mark, will Moscow listen? The need for men is so acute it now allows not only prisoners but literally anyone facing trial to buy their freedom by going to fight.
07 MIDDLE EAST / Barking mad 🗯️
“The response of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the Zionist regime’s aggression will be definitive and painful.” So a senior Iranian official told CNN after Israel’s retaliatory attack. No less grandly, the IDF’s Herzi Halevi warned that his side could “reach Iran with capabilities that we did not even use this time, and hit extremely hard both the capabilities and the places that we spared this time”. As Israel moves to ban UNWRA from Gaza, geopolitical types noted a literal changing of the guard, with Israel increasingly controlling events in the region and the US on second fiddle.
06 JAPAN / Status no 🖕
A usually polite electorate gave its gov a kick up the collective arse, voting against the conservative Liberal Democratic Party that has ruled them for all but four of the last 69 years. The question now is whether they can cobble together a coalition to stay in power. “I would like the LDP to lose a bit, but I’m not quite ready to see a change of government,” pensioner Takahashi Sachio said. PM Shigeru Ishiba, whose bright idea it was to call a snap election, said his party would “try to accept this result”.
05 SPAIN / Wet fart 🤯
As the death toll continues to rise in the aftermath of the flood that swept through the Valencia region, questions mounted concerning the local leadership. Despite repeated warnings from the national weather service, Carlos Mazón instead launched an AI healthcare app and posed for pics until his gov finally sent warnings via text at 8pm on Tuesday – the day of the flood. At that point, it was already too late.
04 CYPRUS / Odds behaviour 💰
Dodgy online bookies 1xBet is using players as young as 14 to take part in amateur back-to-back football games and livestream them on its website. According to Bellingcat, which geolocated the match venues to sports halls in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, knackered players finish one game, swap shirts, then move on to the next.
03 GEORGIA / Poll cracks 🤔
The Putin-friendly Georgian Dream party won re-election but the opposition – it says the vote was “stolen” – isn’t taking the result lying down. “We will not give up our European future,” the United National Movement party’s Tina Bokuchava warned.
02 UK / Primrose hell 🎩
Residents of a posh London neighbourhood – a fair proportion of whom made their money in film – are irked by audiences snapping their houses, which were in a film.
01 US / Beak house🐦⬛
After a man threw a rake at a murder of crows, they stalked him until he moved.
Make-it-into-a-tea-towel of the week: high living 💯
The best and worst places to live in North America, according to Economist Intelligence Unit:
Number of the week: paper fail 🗞️
250,000+
Cancelled Washington Post subscriptions after the paper announced its owner, Jeff “call me craven” Bezos, failed to endorse a presidential candidate.
Quote of note: who said…? 🎤
“Be proud, be sexy and if you’ve got a great pair of tits then why not make the most of them? I might get them out on my next tour.”
(a) Pop star-gardener Kim Wilde on turning 60.
(b) Presidential hopeful Donald Trump at his Madison Square Garden rally.
(c) Audubon Society boss Elizabeth Gray at the bird-watching group’s AGM.
Find the answer here.
Stat of the week: pill behaviour 🖤
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Deaths caused by Oxycontin, which has killed more Americans than those who died at war since WWII.
Image of the week: trunk show 🌳
The Skipinnish Oak in the Scottish Highands, which won UK Tree of the Year:
