Dr Patrick O'Brien
Senior Lecturer in Public Law at Oxford Brookes. Research: judges, judging, and public law.
Also @patrickcobrien@mastodon.ie; patrickcobrien@twitter.com
- One problem I haven't seen canvassed much in this context is an analogue of the uncanny valley problem. When someone is detectably using AI to send emails or something, I emotionally disengage. I'm a human and I have no interest in talking to software. I think this is innate bsky.app/profile/link...
- Missed the bit of Putnam's fairly gentle book about social change where he started foaming at the mouth about foreigners.
- Why Starmer’s “island of strangers” remark owed more to Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone than Enoch Powell. www.newstatesman.com/politics/lab...
- Look, no one seriously thinks that Starmer believes any of this. So what it tells us is that a Labour Prime Minister and his advisors are so lacking in political judgment, and feel so pressed by the the far-right, that they miss obviously racist dog whistles even in planned speeches and papers.
- "Yesterday's incendiary xenophobic speech was written entirely in Andale Sans MS. You *can't* say it was like that notorious 1968 incendiary xenophobic speech, because 1960s typewriters didn't have sans serif fonts."
- Be under no doubt whatsoever that if you are an immigrant to the UK, no matter what your status or background, this remorseless xenophobia will eventually come for you. Labour are chasing the far-right vote, so the right have to go right-er, more vicious, more openly racist. And so on.
