If you had to be governed by 100 plumbers or 100 sneering, elitist, broken-brained, know-nothing, hack liberal comedians in Hollywood, what would you choose? I know what I would choose. I'd take the plumbers, the working class, every single time.
On Sunday, a passenger might glance at the driver in the rear view mirror and ask the usual: "Good weekend, mate? Get up to much?" For 37-year-old Bilal Fawaz, the answer could be a little different than the usual traffic complaints or remarks about the drizzle. "I became a British champion. And then I drove this Uber," he plans to say, using the same casual tone he might use to discuss a bottleneck on the North Circular.
This year is a big election year in Germany: Five of the 16 federal states are set to elect new parliaments. But the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), once one of the country's most successful and biggest parties, is struggling to muster any optimism at all: According to the latest opinion polls, it could be voted out of power in two of those states, after governing them for decades. In two of the other states, the Social Democrats are currently garnering meager single-digit results.
Growing up outside Manchester, I thought everyone kept their tea bags to use twice. It wasn't until I was at university, sitting in a friend's kitchen in London, that I realized this wasn't normal. My friend watched in horror as I carefully squeezed out my used tea bag and placed it on a saucer for later. "What are you doing?" he asked, genuinely confused.
Growing up outside Manchester, Sunday dinners at our house were an event. Not because we had fancy food-it was usually whatever Mum could stretch from the weekly shop-but because that's when everything stopped. Dad would turn off the telly, my sister would put down her magazine, and we'd all squeeze around our small kitchen table. Those conversations over shepherd's pie taught me more about life than any expensive holiday ever could.
Growing up, I remember my father coming home from the factory, his hands stained with machine oil that never quite washed off. He'd sit at our kitchen table, carefully counting out bills for the week ahead. Years later, when I asked him about those days, he just smiled and said, "You kids had everything you needed."
That is not a slight against Craig, whose '90s-boy-band bangs and Foghorn Leghorn accent make private detective Benoit Blanc a delightful iconoclast. It's praise for the way this latest Knives Out shakes off the franchise's winking timeliness and instead embraces a timeless foe: asshole Christians - those who use their pulpits to attack all whose faith doesn't quite align with their own;
"Running establishment candidates who are chosen or supported by the powers that be in D.C. - in Maine specifically - has been a total failure, certainly in attempts to unseat Susan Collins. It is time for us to try something new."
The Democrats' estrangement from the working class was decades in the making due to their embrace of trade and globalization, which led to factory closures and job losses.
John Mac points out that the local industrial landscape has seen a significant decline, expressing concern over the loss of jobs in areas affected by deindustrialisation.
