A Desperate Man

 

Miliband parades UK clean energy deal with Trump's worst enemy Gavin Newsom

Ed Miliband has ricked [sic] triggering the wrath of Donald Trump by signing a clean energy deal with his arch American enemy.

The desperation of a weak man is, of all desperations, the most unscrupulous and the most unmanageable—when it is once roused.

Wilkie Collins – Poor Miss Finch (1872)

Miliband plots solar farms in space in quest to hit net zero

Solar farms could be deployed in space to help Britain hit net zero targets, according to a new report published by the Energy Department.

Nations, like individuals, cannot become desperate gamblers with impunity. Punishment is sure to overtake them sooner or later.

Charles Mackay - Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841)

This could be how Starmer functions

Not exactly of course, he is more likely to be operated remotely via something such as Bluetooth.

 

Old Bus Routes

It's interesting how well we remember bus services we used to catch in our younger days. Mrs H remembers catching the B1 Nottingham bus quite often in the 1960s, although she only used it for local journeys. We're not sure where this accident was.

The bus service I remember best is the 24 Henley Green from Derby to a stop near to where we lived in the 1950s, close to what is now the Derby ring-road.

Photo sent by Alan H

When Language Fails

 

It’s deliberate

Suppose we come up with 10 words to describe UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. This could be a selection of 10 words from any number, which might include –

Mendacious
Evasive
Wooden
Earnest
And many, many more

Yet if we try to apply 10 words to Starmer and assuming we choose a range of words with somewhat different meanings, then those words are not likely to summarised his political persona in a simple phrase or a single sentence, tempting though the attempt may be.

In other words we cannot sum up Starmer the politician in a way which isn’t diffuse and subject to elaboration. With elaboration it would become longer and eventually end up as a long essay, or after a long grind of unaccountable enthusiasm it could end up as a book.

This summary problem casts a weird fog over political discourse where even the terminology is ambiguous and inexact, where brief summaries never work and other aspects are always available to render political discourse forever unsatisfactory.

It’s deliberate, senior politicians are brokers, but not our brokers.

Tougher than a bacon sandwich

One for Ed.

Climate Change and Energy: World Leaders in Turmoil – ‘There is no evidence that UN Climate COP meetings & more than $10 trillion spent on renewables over the last 30 years have affected the climate’

 

The average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, which is blamed for global warming, has been rising over the last 50 years without any change to the trend.

Lib Dems - not a serious political party

Matthew Bowles has an interesting CAPX take on the Lib Dems. It is familiar in that we know we shouldn't take Lib Dems seriously, but also a worthwhile reminder that the Lib Dem smoke and mirrors approach to reform is standard across the UK political arena.

   

The Liberal Democrats don’t understand growth

• The Lib Dems' hare-brained scheme to abolish the Treasury is style over substance
• Britain has an abundance of pro-growth rhetoric, but an extreme shortage of pro-growth policies
• If their last manifesto is anything to go by, the Liberal Democrats are determined to throttle growth

The Liberal Democrats have announced that they want to abolish the Treasury and replace it with a new ‘Department for Growth’, supported by a separate department for public spending. On the face of it, this sounds radical, even refreshing. Britain’s economy has stagnated for over a decade, productivity has broadly flatlined (especially in the public sector) and living standards have barely recovered since the 2007/08 financial crisis. If the Treasury really is part of the problem, why not scrap it?

But as with so many Lib Dem policy announcements, the ambition dissolves on contact with detail. Strip away the rhetoric and the proposal looks less like a serious growth strategy and more like a rebranding exercise, which leaves the party’s underlying policy instincts firmly intact. Simply having a department for something doesn’t make it so.

The whole piece is well worth reading because so many political proposals are merely rebranding wheezes like this one, a standard way to evade reform rather than (clutch those pearls!) actually carry it out. 


The truth is that Britain does not suffer from a lack of growth rhetoric, but from an excess of anti-growth policies. High marginal tax rates, a labyrinthine planning system and endless red tape have combined to suppress economic dynamism for years. Addressing that would require political choices that governing parties of all stripes have shied away from in recent years.

None of this precludes reforming the Treasury. But reform must follow strategy, not substitute for it. Otherwise, the overarching risk is that Britain ends up yet again with the same policies, and the same stagnation, just administered by a shinier department with a more fashionable name.