Novara Media

Lol that's a really good point.

his whole argument about how they're forced to have a communist on to maintain their license as well, like that's a good thing rather than he is in fact helping them to stay on air.

— jan (@janhopi) June 28, 2023

In his video Farage said he was offered a personal account but not a business one by another bank in same group.

There's also allegedly other banks refusing him. This is a serious civil liberties issue if true, shouldn't be an opportunity to go "haha" at someone you dislike. https://t.co/xyf2XU7gBl

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) July 4, 2023

the bruised ego of a rich fascist prick has got nothing to do with civil liberties, haha-ing at bigoted people you don't like is good, actually. I heard Coutts don't comment on matters like this so he's taking the words of Farage at face value, is he new at this game or something?

Coutts have a minimum balance of something like £3 million or you can’t play. He’s obviously skint in their eyes.

Fuck you.

I’d pay to end the 2 child benefit cap by reforming ‘foreign aid’, personally.

That might sound controversial - but I don’t think it should. The costs of keeping 250k kids in poverty are way bigger than £1.3B a year.

More here: https://t.co/CwL6MlqJfZ https://t.co/8fAZJzl0ao

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) July 19, 2023

I can’t quite believe what happened a few hours ago, but on my way to the train station, to head into the @novaramedia office, a man I’ve never seen before screamed my name while passing by and assaulted me. I was punched multiple times. (1/5)

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) July 25, 2023

Dreadful.

I have worried for quite a long time about the danger to public figures, such as socialist journalists and pundits, with the current state of society and public discourse.

Brutal attack on Owen Jones a few years ago was a prominent example. OJ is better known than most and more likely to be targeted. But clearly others are not safe.

Saw a couple of "left-wingers" not giving a shit, not knowing that they won't discriminate.

Conscription (which is what "national service" refers to) is obviously a right wing tool against the poor & young to provide a begrudging and prone to abuse "care" to the poor & disabled/old.

You couldn't even come up with a more right wing "solution" for care https://t.co/sejEX3mRY2

— Decorum in the Discoteca (@TKispeter) August 10, 2023

social care needs more funding and better fucking wages for specialised background checked workers you fucking insipid moron. Dragooning people into work they might be ill suited to in a hardcore austerity period where the UK govt will pay minimum wage at best or well below is a stupid fucking dangerous idea that could only lead to bad outcomes like abuse of vulnerable people and deaths.

I really fucking hate this cunt now

Basic pay for a private soldier was 28 shillings (£1.40) a week in 1948. This compared poorly with the average weekly wage in 1951, which was eight pounds, eight shillings and six pence. Those on a Short Service Commission would get extra pay.

Pay for conscripts rose to 38 shillings in 1960. However, the average weekly wage for men in 1961 was 15 pounds, 10 shillings.

Sometimes the low wages were reduced by deductions for lost or damaged kit and equipment. National Servicemen often had little money left for social activities beyond a visit to the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes

the og national service also paid people a pittance for abusing vulnerable people and committing murder

I imagine that in AB's national service, there would be a lot of bullying.

I suspect that AB doesn't perceive this problem because he is a former body-builder who was not afraid of bullies.

Bastani says he has been "attacked" for coming with such opinions, but he gets thoughtful responses like the above, for which he ignores as he has no answers to them.

In AB's national service there would be a very sophisticated screening process to protect the vulnerable and ensure social care conscripts are appropriately allocated: are you a dodgy af ? yes/no

it's bad enough when local authorities go to agencies for social care workers to save on doing any proper recruitment and training. Last year an agency sent a transport escort who was turned away by son's SEN college because he was staggeringly drunk and being inappropriately chatty with female staff. I'd imagine AB knows a lot more about body building supplements than he does about the social care crisis. He's a fucking clown with right-wing brain worms.

I think AB's idea makes a kind of socialist sense - getting people to contribute to community. I imagine that they have had such things in China or Cuba, say, in the past. Or that many socialist utopias have had them.

On the other hand, the UK is not a socialist society, so you'd be forcing people to contribute to a society that is actually geared to profit, inequality, exploitation, etc. This may be contradictory.

Socialists like AB are always saying that young people now have a raw deal - eg on housing, jobs, pay, rent. OK. Wouldn't national service for the young just punish them further? Why should they take the burden of a society they haven't made?

Maybe the national service would be better aimed at the 'boomers' that AB often seems to despise?

it me:

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dadsarmy/images/8/8f/Private_Godfrey.jpg

High inflation means below inflation pay rises and above inflation price increases.

It’s true for countless companies, and in countless industries. See how it works? pic.twitter.com/nlv5ejToFF

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) August 17, 2023

AB seems to be on GB News at least once a week. He gets on well with their presenter.

I don't know whether this is a good or bad thing, but it's true.

FWIW I think the things he says when on the channel are often persuasive.

I reflect that the only time I see GB News is when AB, or indeed Walker, talk about it and appear on it.

So whatever else they are doing, for good or ill, they are certainly increasing its exposure.

"gets on well with their presenter."

I'm sure they do.

this country is terminally fucked when the left wing panelist on GB news is the bring back national service guy.

they might get into trouble with ofcom when their left panellist has fully opened his mind to the marketplace of ideas.

I've just watched an episode of Novara Live and one of the items is Michael Walker screening and discussing ... his own contribution to GB News.

It literally is true that for most people on the political Left, the only time they ever see GB News or have an idea what its presenters look like is when they're re-transmitted on Novara Media.

I don't think that can be true - Nigel Farage is one of the presenters.

OK. GB News features a few (?) famous right-wing politicians whom people would recognise.

Otherwise, few people watch it, and nobody on the Left would choose to watch it (if they can even find it*), so they would have little idea what it really is or looks like, unless AB and MW kept re-screening clips of themselves on it.

*I was going through obscure channels on my TV recently and found that it receives GB News!

I don't think that AB or MW going on GB News is consequential. It doesn't make real political difference. But I can understand why it annoys some, and I find it just intriguing and entertaining to consider.

One of the odd things about it is that unlike Sarkar and OJ, they don't get invited on BBC and mainstream channels. So they can't say, as AS and OJ can reasonably say, "I'm a socialist who is taking my message to the mainstream and broadcasting it to millions, at the risk of being compromised and attacked". GB News is not mainstream! It is - as far as I can tell - an eccentric, opinionated space for rather cranky right-wing ideas. So it's hard to claim great political efficacy in going on it.

It creates an impression of Left and Right collaborating against a centrist mainstream that excludes them. Probably that's not how AB & MW would want to view it.

I audibly said ‘what a load of fucking nonsense, they must think we’re daft’. People around me thought I was being an idiot. If only.

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) August 17, 2023

the prescience of Aaron Bastani, he knew Starmer Labour was going to be bad while the rest of us applauded like mindless clapping seals!

I think it is of consequence for GB News getting a broadcast license that these wankers make appearances on their shows. I'm not clear on how it works but don't they have to meet some political balance criteria with their guests or they face the wrath of ofcom?

don't think it's at all "painful" for you to agree w/ the regressive "colourblindness" of bigots. this is just ur normal shtick. now the electoral wave you sailed to prominence on has collapsed you need new ways to stay "current" so you tack further right & discipline the "wokes"

— michael richmond (@Sisyphusa) August 22, 2023

A v gd qn:

The entire point of developing a left media outlet with associated figures prominent enough to get invited onto mainstream shows is to challenge right and far-right domination of the media space. Why promote and elevate right and far-right talking points?

— Ben Miller (@benwritesthings) August 23, 2023

Grifter recognise grifter

Was annoying to see some people on the left automatically shit on this guy and presume he’s a conservative. Seems a thoughtful enough sort from this. https://t.co/tFLiRvBY5h

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) August 25, 2023

I have managed to avoid any of the bearded bear discourse, he looks like one of the Murdaugh family!

A serious person at the bad place.

"Ah, but won't your children feel happier that it's a fiscally prudent, Labour-governed ceiling falling in on their heads?"

— James B (@piercepenniless) September 5, 2023

Bad tweet.

Broke: London is never going to recover from Covid & Work From Home shift.

Woke: We need to turn SE England into mega-London, creating a city on the scale of Tokyo.

Bespoke: We need to turn Oxford-Cambridge into Waitrosegrad, with a higher GDP per capita than the capital. pic.twitter.com/EjbOS7D3zD

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) September 5, 2023

I know it's just a frivolous post by an excitable teenager thinking about cool dystopic sci-fi fantasies, but I think having a MORE and BIGGER THAN TOKYO ambition in urban planning realised is only going to make millions of people's quality of living even worse.

Actually really not quite sure what AB is saying here, or if he is serious about any of it.

I don't get how it squares with his professed love of natural spaces and traditional architecture.

even though I don't even know what the definition of a "mega city" is - the most horribly giant cities don't ever seem to have expanded so grotesquely because they planned to be in the big club and love their occupants to choke to death. They seem to grow over decades of chaotic piecemeal development and seem more to be a symptom of things getting out of control rather than something you aim for. Like as if London isn't already a big enough city - no we need Mega-London. Even as a frivolous throway post it's really dumb.

It's a much-abused format, but my read is that it's "Here's a problem" - "Here's a stupid solution" - "Here's an even more stupid solution"

I have had some engagements with what appear like blood and thunder characters but in person they are shambolic figures incapable of doing things like basic hygiene (this is a specific reference to a journalist). I just thought "why did I ever take what this guy says seriously?"

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) September 12, 2023

Sometimes scruffiness and bad hygiene can be symptoms of someone having a mental health crisis, but either way it isn't a reason to invalidate people, that would be a very arch-tory Thatcher attitude to take. If he's talking about centrist journalists - you don't need to find superficial reasons to invalidate them. This dickhead might be the best turned out useful idiot on GB News, but the Left will never take him seriously again. His luxury communism book - I'd be embarrassed to have that in my house.

Michael js Walker rn pic.twitter.com/KlDIJWJ8k5

— Y (@tinscognito__) September 15, 2023

Once they were defeated by the EU it was only a matter of time.

I suppose ending up being run by a shipping executive marks Syriza’s real absorption into the Greek political establishment. Very bleak that a left-wing party should elect a leader whose primary argument is that they should turn themselves into the DNC. https://t.co/jKmT1D6gIP

— James B (@piercepenniless) September 25, 2023

oof! that is grim.

syriza was always already an uneasy coalition of left and very-much-not-left (something butler used to know and vociferously say!)

(i've actually grown to like butler, who i found insufferable back in the occupy days -- but i like him primarily because he's a haven of high-cultural reflection, which is only a good reason when nearly no one else takes on this role any more)

vault boy just seems so dreadful

I met him the other week at a friend’s book launch. Liked him based on that brief interaction.

just for some clarity in case it's needed. I meant mr thumbs up shipping exec in the pic there, not James B!

anyone else think PASOK are owed a bit of an apology here

Very funny disagreements

You are misreading the tweet if you think it's an objection to periodising capitalism in any sense, rather than bad writing from people wanting to appear sophisticated by using muddy and vague jargon.

— James B (@piercepenniless) September 26, 2023

would he prefer "very naughty laissez-faire economics" or something. Seeing as though it is driving the end of human civilisation through climate catastrophe "late-period" sounds about right because it is used in the epochs and usually describes a period before a mass extinction event.

Please save GB news (so I can go on it)

https://twiyter.com/AaronBastani/status/1707164509448618256?s=20