Mind you, I do chuckle when people act like Punta is some 'elitist' paradise. It's really not.
One part of it - Jose Ignacio, where the rich and famous tend to flock - is. The rest of it's actually pretty inclusive.
So much so that if someone lives here between March and December, rents are extraordinarily low. Essentially because the winter weather sucks.
But if you're lucky enough to be a digital nomad - able to work from anywhere with a good internet connection - it is the perfect place. Safe, clean, full of beautiful beaches and affordable (within Uruguay's admittedly expensive context).
In the summer, unlike say the south of France, it's full of families and very warm and friendly. There's nothing elitist about it other than for a few super-rich types.
Uruguay is like Argentina - without all the craziness and constant chaos. Punta is the ultimate example.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
When I was a kid, such was the sheer quality of the news coverage on British television, I thought journalists told the truth. And were motivated by exactly that: holding truth to power, essential to any flourishing democracy.
I watched Newsnight and Channel 4 News avidly. I read the Sunday Times news review every weekend.
And the BBC's coverage of conflict in the Middle East, through fearless reporters like Jeremy Bowen, Orla Guerin and John Simpson, was consistently outstanding.
Back then, there were next to no fears on British journalism's part of being denounced as 'antisemitic' for telling the truth about Israel's conduct.
Media whitewashing went on all the time quite disgracefully in the US - but not in the UK or across Europe.
THREAD: The Supreme Court, trans rights, and the left.
Many times over the last 4 or 5 years, I've warned again and again about the ludicrous rabbit hole of its own making which the contemporary left was disappearing down over trans rights and women's rights.
A rabbit hole which would inevitably be exploited by the far right for its own appalling ends. As is currently happening, to the horror of so many looking on, in the United States and elsewhere.
I had hoped the Supreme Court's clarification would help the UK left see sense.
The Labour Party, thankfully, gradually has: bit by bit.
But the online left, very left wing Labour MPs, the Greens, large swathes of the SNP and of the US Democrats haven't at all. It's all too plain that hardly any of them have learnt anything.
That's not to say I'm in any way oblivious to the insane levels of inequality and unfairness now. I told her it was harder to buy a house now than at any time since the nineteenth century.
But very many boomers DIDN'T "have it easy". Not at all. Especially single ones.
- If someone failed the utterly appalling, disgraceful 11 plus, that consigned them to a massively harder life than the few who didn't
- Yes, university was free. But most people DIDN'T GO TO UNIVERSITY
- Wages were pathetic and there was NO minimum wage at all
There's already been plenty of complaints on here that the Prime Minister is 'sucking up to Trump'.
No folks. He's trying to maintain the most incredibly fine balancing act. And so is Macron by the way.
Both of them have to do that.
Macron has more leeway for several reasons.
1. He's known Trump for much, much longer. He's one of very few world leaders who's been in office almost as long as when Trump first became President.
2. He has no more elections to fight, so can be a little freer in what he says.
3. The long, long tradition of Gaullism in French foreign policy means that France usually sides with the US - but is more independent and critical in how it conducts itself.
Yet despite that, and the images yesterday of Macron challenging Trump, he also did the following.
UNPOPULAR OPINION (among the left and probably many of my followers): the modern liberal left, of whom I've always been a card carrying member, got it VERY wrong on mass immigration.
And all because it didn't try to remake society after Thatcher wrecked it and the working class.
What the UK has been crying out for for many decades now has been huge investment across the country.
When Johnson spoke of 'levelling up', he was more than onto something. He'd hit the nail on the head. But because the Tories are a bunch of shysters and crooks, nothing happened
Britain's has been a quite ludicrously unbalanced, unsustainable economy for as long as I can remember now.
Skewed completely towards property, financial services, speculators and billionaire leeches. And quite unbelievably skewed towards south-east England too.