It's a pity pigeons aren't included

More than 500 bird species face EXTINCTION in the next 100 years due to climate change, experts say

From the bare-necked umbrellabird to the helmeted hornbill, birds come in all sorts of weird and wonderful shapes and sizes.

But hundreds of species could go extinct in the next 100 years, researchers have found.

A new study predicts that climate change and habitat loss could cause more than 500 bird species to disappear in the next century.


Presumably at least one of the researchers aims to check this finding in the year 2125. Or maybe the responsibility is passed down the generations like an heirloom. Or heirloon perhaps. 

It's a pity pigeons aren't included though. I'm thinking of those which crap on our brand new garage roof while making a survey of the garden.

Huge investment in shopping

Amazon to invest £40bn in UK - with more warehouses and thousands of new jobs

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the investment into Amazon's third-biggest market after the US and Germany was a "massive vote of confidence in the UK as the best place to do business".

"It means thousands of new jobs - real opportunities for people in every corner of the country to build careers, learn new skills, and support their families," said Sir Keir.

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said it was a "powerful endorsement of Britain's economic strengths".

We use Amazon regularly for all kinds of bits and pieces where we prefer to avoid trawling around shops. The shop window has been replaced by the laptop or phone screen we might say. 

Nearly 150 years ago, Emile Zola saw a shopping revolution caused by ticketed prices clearly visible through the shop window. He saw success depending solely on what he called the orderly working of a sale. 

He then went on to sing the praises of the plain figure system. The great revolution in the business sprung from this fortunate inspiration. If the old-fashioned small shops were dying out it was because they could not struggle against the low prices guaranteed by the tickets. The competition was now going on under the very eyes of the public; a look into the windows enabled them to contrast the prices; every shop was lowering its rates, contenting itself with the smallest possible profit; no cheating, no stroke of fortune prepared long beforehand on an article sold at double its value, but current operations, a regular percentage on all goods, success depending solely on the orderly working of a sale all the larger from the fact of its being carried on in broad daylight.

Emile Zola - Au Bonheur des Dames (1883)

What we see with Amazon is that orderly working of a sale taken to an extreme Zola could not have foreseen, although he clearly saw some strong hints of it. 


He had put his elbows on the table, and was staring at her so hard that she felt uneasy. “But look here,” resumed he; “you who know the business, do you think it right that a simple draper’s shop should sell everything? Formerly, when trade was trade, drapers sold nothing but drapery. Now they are doing their best to snap up every branch and ruin their neighbors. The whole neighborhood complains of it, for every small tradesman is beginning to suffer terribly. This Mouret is ruining them. Bédoré and his sister, who keep the hosiery shop in the Rue Gaillon, have already lost half their customers; Mademoiselle Tatin, at the under-linen warehouse in the Passage Choiseul, has been obliged to lower her prices, to be able to sell at all. And the effects of this scourge, this pest, are felt as far as the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, where I hear that Vanpouille Brothers, the furriers, cannot hold out much longer. Drapers selling fur goods — what a farce! another of Mouret’s ideas!” “And gloves,” added Madame Baudu; “isn’t it monstrous? He has even dared to add a glove department! Yesterday, as I was going along the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin, I saw Quinette, the glover, at his door, looking so downcast that I hadn’t the heart to ask him how business was going.” “And umbrellas,” resumed Baudu; “that’s the climax! Bourras feels sure that Mouret simply wants to ruin him; for, in short, where’s the rhyme between umbrellas and drapery? But Bourras is firm on his legs, and won’t allow himself to be beggared. We shall see some fun one of these days.”

Emile Zola - Au Bonheur des Dames (1883)

The Vicky Whatsit Resignation

Alexander McKibbin has a delightful TCW piece on the resignation of Vicky Foxcroft as government whip. The whole piece is well worth reading for the way it skewers the notion of political principles.

Vicky Foxcroft, gone but not remembered

A political tsunami engulfed Westminster yesterday when high profile Labour MP for Lewisham North Vicky Foxcroft resigned her influential post as government whip. Politicians from all sides were unanimous in comparing this seismic act as being on a par with Eden’s resignation in 1957.

Media commentators were taken by surprise by the unexpected resignation and were quick to interpret what this devastating act meant for Sir Keir Starmer and his tottering administration. Many were predicting that this single act could spell the end of Labour and usher in a general election.

Quietly yet diligently going about her demanding job, she has attracted admirers from across the political spectrum.

Scams, Scams and Scams

One in seven people ‘have lost money to fraud in past year’

Some 14% of people surveyed in February said they had lost money to fraud in the past 12 months, financial insights company TransUnion found.

New £300 winter fuel payment triggers wave of scam texts - 'contact bank immediately'

Pensioners have been warned of a surge in scam texts targeting older people. Fraudsters are exploiting confusion around the newly expanded winter fuel payment scheme, which will see millions more pensioners across England and Wales receive up to £300 this year.

Avoiding scams has become a feature of life, so much so that that the second headline is a reminder that political claims have to be treated as an offshoot of the same sorry state of affairs. We don't trust political promises because past experience tells us we shouldn't, much like the dodgy phone calls, emails or text messages.

Government is so ludicrously expensive that we know a substantial part of tax revenue is wasted, and what is that waste if it isn't tax revenue ending up in pockets we would never approve of? Yet this loss isn't one where we can ignore the phone calls or delete the texts and emails. The wasters just take the money.

One of the first Tesla Robotaxis

Redneck's Dream Lawnmower

Impress the neighbours with a lawnmower just like Ginger Billy's

The malign reach of the EU

John Rosenthal has a very interesting free speech piece in the Claremont Review of Books.

Make Speech Free Again

How the U.S. can defeat E.U. censorship.

On January 20, 2025, the first day of his second presidential term, Donald Trump signed an executive order: “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.” The bad old days of the “censorship-industrial complex,” allegedly responsible for suppressing online speech under President Joe Biden, were over.

Except they weren’t. The driving force behind online censorship had never been the U.S. government, which meant that freedom of speech could not be restored by the stroke of a president’s pen. Rather, the European Union has wielded its Digital Services Act (DSA) to restrict the speech not just of Europeans but especially of Americans and other English-speakers. The E.U. has not violated the free-speech rights of Americans, since it has no obligations under the U.S. Constitution. But it has vitiated those rights, essentially nullifying the First Amendment in cyberspace.

The whole piece is quite long but well worth reading for the detail it provides about the widespread effects of EU censorship. Here in the UK, we did not escape that via Brexit.

Some supporters of President Trump might find this hard to believe. After all, the president’s most prominent ally and advisor is Elon Musk, whose purchase of Twitter in 2022 was said to be motivated by a desire to restore free speech to the platform. But Musk has always insisted that “freedom of speech is not freedom of reach,” and there’s the rub. Using platform algorithms to restrict reach artificially is a form of censorship, one that is not only compatible with the DSA but even encouraged by the E.U.