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Hi folks, reading through some of the threads in here there's a lot of folk who seem to be very well read (queue chortles from the rest of the forum) and I'm struck that I'm decently well-read on history and political history, but I don't know where to start with modern politics beyond the papers which obviously can be problematic.

So I thought I'd create a thread for folk to share the books, blogs, news sites etc which they have found particularly informative in how they shape their political beliefs, as this could be more insightful for others rather than sharing specific articles in the heat of an argument. Fill your boots

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11 minutes ago, ICTJohnboy said:

Read the Guardian and listen to James O'Brien on LBC.

Aye see that's my go to at the moment, the guardian's reportage is pretty good to be fair but there's a bit of a smug centrist consensus to a lot of their columnists and opinion

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The New Statesman takes a bit of a slagging, and sometimes deservedly so, but Stephen Bush is usually excellent - well-informed and even-handed. I also listen fairly often to his podcast, which I used to avoid because it almost always featured the insufferable Helen Lewis, but she has since moved on and it is now very listenable. 

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38 minutes ago, fatshaft said:

I really don't want to turn this thread into an argument but I've not read wings or the canary for years as, in my view, they went off the deep end a long time ago. To open wings to see the top headline "Our enemies among us" is a pretty clear indicator that was a sensible decision 

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1 hour ago, Genuine Hibs Fan said:

Aye see that's my go to at the moment, the guardian's reportage is pretty good to be fair but there's a bit of a smug centrist consensus to a lot of their columnists and opinion

The Guardian's foreign coverage is a horror show.

The Intercept is always an interesting read. LRB is excellent apart from the Remain hysteria, Ian McEawn published one of the most ridiculous articles I've ever read there.

 

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Just now, Detournement said:

The Guardian's foreign coverage is a horror show.

The Intercept is always an interesting read. LRB is excellent apart from the Remain hysteria, Ian McEawn published one of the most ridiculous articles I've ever read there.

 

Aye agreed about the guardian's foreign coverage, they seem to rely a lot on agencies. I remember being flabbergasted around the Catalonia kerfuffle, as it was barely recognisable from what I saw and the people I spoke to

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I come from a Left persuasion and I suppose you need to firstly understand where you sit on things politically before knowing what to read.

If Left reading is something of an interest then I would say The Guardian & Morning Star are good reads, in both you will read plenty that the main stream media don’t report. I buy both ever day and the are expensive but I like to support them and I tend to read them all over the week. From a more Scottish political perspective I occasionally buy The National on a Sunday to keep my finger on what is happening in Hollyrood. I’m not a huge fan of the paper but their articles can be interesting.

As for books, I can highly recommended Richie Venton’s Break The Chains, it’s about 6 years old but is still relevant.

Weekly wise, The Socialist Worker is good for my union role but again is very English dominated and Private Eye is also good for a giggle and a bit of Tory bashing.

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First thing I'd say is that the world is much too big and much too complicated to understand more than a small fraction of it. People who have a solid opinion on everything generally start with a belief - left, right, liberal, authoritarian, whatever - and then interpret reality to fit. It's a stupid way of doing things but it's how the vast majority of political coverage is done. In my opinion the most important thing is to know how we got here rather than get caught up in the rammy of the day. That means knowing the history and the structures - electoral, financial, property, media, planning etc. Sounds like you've already being doing that.

I used to think I was into politics and I thought I would like to work in it. I came to realise that it's government that I love, and I really hate politics. I can't be doing with the tribalism, the short-termism, the dogma. I'm interested in how we bring up kids, how we become sustainable, how we create the systems that let people live the lives they want. Some of that has been stuff I didn't want to hear but reality doesn't care about opinions. 

On newspapers, as NotThePars said above, the Financial Times. It's literally the only national newspaper in Britain (UK or Scotland) worthy of being described as a newspaper. I've got a theory that the proper money guys don't want to have the prejudices pandered to, they want to know what's going on so they can decide whereto put their money. The only downside is that it's a bit thin on news and it will only tell you about the world as it is now, rather than consider what might be better. Its journalists are worth following on Twitter too. It did an outstanding job during indyref. Irish newspapers are the best in the English-speaking world and I read a lot of them online.

Of the rest, The Guardian has the greatest commitment to accuracy but the stories it chooses to cover are very skewed to the left. Its coverage of stuff like farming and the food supply chain is laughably bad. Its columnists are also piss-boilingly metropolitan, under-informed and conceited.

Coverage of political and social issues in Scotland is really poor, and economic issues ever worse. There is a tiny number of journalists doing it well - Dani Garavelli, mostly in the Scotsman or the Sundays and Philip Sim for the BBC. Holyrood magazine regularly does deep-dives into areas of social policy and is generally very good. The reporting on Scottish economics is very middle class, it's stuff you'd expect to hear in a snooty golf clubhouse. If that view of economics was correct then Finland wouldn't exist.

I'm old enough to remember the pre-internet era and the time when journalism was good - for example, The Herald was a must-read every day through the 90s but it's utter dogshit now. The big opportunity in the internet provides is you can read primary sources. It takes much more time but I'd rather understand something about a few issues than effectively nothing about everything.

 

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1 hour ago, GordonS said:

On newspapers, as NotThePars said above, the Financial Times. It's literally the only national newspaper in Britain (UK or Scotland) worthy of being described as a newspaper. I've got a theory that the proper money guys don't want to have the prejudices pandered to, they want to know what's going on so they can decide whereto put their money. The only downside is that it's a bit thin on news and it will only tell you about the world as it is now, rather than consider what might be better. Its journalists are worth following on Twitter too. It did an outstanding job during indyref. Irish newspapers are the best in the English-speaking world and I read a lot of them online

 

I always see it lumped in with The Economist but it's far better, more dispassionate, and also less reactive.

I can't stand the majority of the Guardian's columnists and its news coverage has went downhill but it's capable of publishing some tremendous pieces from some usually independent commentators. The thing I'd recommend @Genuine Hibs Fan do these days is finding specific commentators, either on Twitter or in the press, and follow them rather than specific papers. Adam Tooze is a freebie and I'm recommending them before @yoda reads the thread.

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1 hour ago, oaksoft said:

You see endless examples of both echo chambers and cognitive bias everywhere online. I have no intention of being a sheep, my political views are a hybrid and I'm not an extremist.

The other advantage of forming your own views in private is that nobody can pigeon-hole you. For example, there's no conflict in disliking the way Universal Credit is run on the ground but supporting the Tories regarding furlough payments and efforts to help disabled people into work if they want it.

What a *great* example of your point 🤦‍♂️

 

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36 minutes ago, MixuFixit said:

A general recommendation on twitter that the most perceptive analysis of what is going on won't come from a blue tick journalist, it'll come from people with usernames like Hadley Freeman-on-the-land, Chairman Lmao, ACAB Rees Mogg, Tuskan Fridge Raider, Hans Mollman & so on. They shall inherit the earth one of these days.

 

wariotifo's ability to go over a decade without being doxxed is impressive. We were at uni at the same time and I still have no clue who they are.

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I always see it lumped in with The Economist but it's far better, more dispassionate, and also less reactive.
I can't stand the majority of the Guardian's columnists and its news coverage has went downhill but it's capable of publishing some tremendous pieces from some usually independent commentators. The thing I'd recommend [mention=76392]Genuine Hibs Fan[/mention] do these days is finding specific commentators, either on Twitter or in the press, and follow them rather than specific papers. Adam Tooze is a freebie and I'm recommending them before [mention=7081]yoda[/mention] reads the thread.
Adam Tooze had a brilliant article in last Saturday's Review section of The Guardian.
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35 minutes ago, O'Kelly Isley III said:
2 hours ago, NotThePars said:
I always see it lumped in with The Economist but it's far better, more dispassionate, and also less reactive.
I can't stand the majority of the Guardian's columnists and its news coverage has went downhill but it's capable of publishing some tremendous pieces from some usually independent commentators. The thing I'd recommend [mention=76392]Genuine Hibs Fan[/mention] do these days is finding specific commentators, either on Twitter or in the press, and follow them rather than specific papers. Adam Tooze is a freebie and I'm recommending them before [mention=7081]yoda[/mention] reads the thread.

Adam Tooze had a brilliant article in last Saturday's Review section of The Guardian.

I think Yoda shared it on here? I bought Crashed, his book on the financial crash of '08, and it's a mammoth book but remarkably in-depth and well-researched as a result. I've read his book, The Deluge, on how WW1 primed the ground for America's conscious emergence as the dominant power of the world and just got sent his other history book, Wages of Destruction, about the economic logic behind Nazi Germany invading the Soviet Union and both are highly-rated. Would recommend.

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Grace Blakeley and Owen Hatherley are good people to follow on Twitter. Blakeley writes about economics which is overlooked by far too many people. She was also about the only high profile left wing commentator not to get flipped by People's Vote. This article sums up her positions pretty well

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/09/financialization-capitalism-debt-globalization-crisis

Hatherely writes about architecture in a very political way and edits the culture section of Tribune magazine which publishes lots of good stuff but lacks the depth of LRB.

Another person I like on Twitter is Louis Allday who is an anti imperialist academic. I've learned a lot about anti imperialism and anti racism from his feed, links and book recommendations. 

I'm the opposite of Oaksoft in that I'm aware that I'm influenced by lots of people. I think reading fiction has been the strongest influence on me and Thomas Pynchon, James Kelman, Alasdair Gray, John Berger, Gunter Grass, Don Delillo, Victor Serge and Michael Ondaatje all combine literature and politics well. The best thing to do is read with an open mind then read criticism of the works afterwards which leads you to the writers and ideas that influenced them. The end result is your TBR pile is basically infinite. That's the process that sparked my interest in Marxism and theories of modernity/post modernism. That stuff obviously isn't the easiest to read but for me personally it's helped a lot in dealing mentally with the many shittier aspects of our society. 

Going a bit more low brow Chapo Trap House is a good laugh and I generally listen to it when I'm cleaning which makes it a productive 90 minutes even if they are talking pish about video games.  When it's good it's very good though and they balance the juvenile stuff with some excellent interviews. I'm not sure if there are any decent British (or even European in English) political podcasts. 

 

Edited by Detournement
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20 hours ago, NotThePars said:

Adam Tooze is a freebie and I'm recommending them before @yoda reads the thread.

+1 for the preemptive Adam Tooze shout. His Twitter is a gold mine for interesting articles and charts. His writing is unusually accessible for someone who focuses on economics.

I like The Economist, particularly their columnists - Free Exchange is always good - but I don't always agree with how they report things. I'd agree that the FT is more objective though. Martin Sandbu is usually excellent.

Edited by yoda
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