Quite philosophically dense (or rich according to taste) in places but C. Thi Nguyen's 'Games: Agency as Art' is fantastic and captures what is enjoyable about all sorts of different games from big crunchers to more expressive or vibesy ones. Gave me a language for how I think about games and art

I don't think the distinction is so clear. Would PM have made the same judgement on appointment if mandelson was not close to his political operation? Judgement is the primary question but hard to see PM parking serious ethical concerns like this if another individual involved in the case.

Shows the lefts unshakeable commitment to New Labour Clause IV

Not just wrong musically, but with the amount of joy the song brings to many you have to wonder if you are wrong morally.

I'm not against using AI to support policy making. This is really only half a half-baked thought about being sceptical. I think the actual potential to use AI in this kind of work is pretty huge but we should be careful about that.

For most the bureaucratic policy process is mechanistic and opaque and the human part only comes in on the 'political' elected side. Nonetheless bureaucracy is made of people moved by and responsive to reasons. AI, as far as I understand it, doesn't work that way. It doesn't believe things.

I say it leads to a worse overall position because it seems the aim is basically to say we shouldn't teach about race and gender injustice. I also don't think that many white working class boys would actually feel that they are being told that they are privileged but you can spin it that way

I think the generous interpretation which actually leads to a worse overall position is that this is what students take away from learning about race and gender based injustice. I think addressing questions of how privilege works and specifically who oppresses is an interesting challenge.

I meant to ask about this in an email when the report came out but good at least to query now. I also wrote in response to the Maude report but I think this came out around or just before your report. constitution-unit.com/2024/04/02/t...

As seen during Gove's time I think the hard yards of CS reform are difficult when you don't have sustained engagement from a senior minister for whom it's their primary focus, even if they care about it. Hard for one minister to do both with sufficient focus and use of political capital.

This could be wrong but I thought the Maude as minister model seems a more effective model for reform than JM as CEO period. Recognise there is a lot of other stuff going on at both times and you can't separate priorities from CS reform.

On recommendation 3 is it too big a job to lead on both government priorities and some of the quite technical work of civil service reform? Agree that they both need ministerial leadership but this seems to push against the logic of needing dedicated leadership on CS reform (also part of rec 6)

What's interesting for both is in both views which conservative ideas they think you should validate and which you should try and play down.

to put it somewhat unfairly to both the imagined target voter for New Labour is middle class and has some socially conservative tendencies and the imagined Blue Labour voter is working class with some socially conservative tendencies.

I think its right in that blue labour has to be understood as anti-blair but blairism has its own socially conservative wing too.

For that reason I haven't come back to it. It was interesting to see how it was done but it involves a level of manipulation and emotions that I found quite off putting to watch and you don't (or at least shouldn't) get in a 45 min game

I've only watched Series 1 but I think the sociality of it makes it a completely different thing. The fun of werewolves is that you can bamboozle/suss out your friends for 45 mins and it doesn't matter. An environment where you have to make new friends but also lie to them has different stakes