Blame the phones

The irreversible smart phones and world’s dropping birth rates

By Gwynne Dyer - Smart phones seem to be directly linked to a worldwide crash in the birth rate. It is “quite plausible that the modern digital media environment has had profound effects on society that have led to a decline in romantic coupling,” according to Melissa Kearney, professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame.

It's not news and clearly there are other factors where phones are a symptom rather than a cause, a symptom of having nothing better to do perhaps. Whatever the cause, as a global issue it's a far more serious than climate change, but compared to climate change it lacks funding, drama and political appeal. 


There are many other factors in play, of course: the unavailability/unaffordability of housing that forces many people in their 20s to live with their parents, the unrealistic expectations promoted by online influencers, and even the growing scarcity of entry-level jobs.

But the most persuasive (and irreversible) is phones, phones, phones.

If your brain doesn't register this as absurd

Yet more antics from the worlds of fashion and the performing arts, but a comment on those involved by video presenter Joey Toonz gets to the crux of it - 

Look, if your brain doesn't register this as absurd, just imagine the other things they don't see as absurd.

It raises questions about our ability to register things as absurd and whether it can be blunted by too much exposure to it, at least for some. 

Jeremy still flogging that dead horse

Jeremy Corbyn to address islanders by video link at launch of Your Party branch

A new political party branch is set to launch on the Isle of Wight, with an address from a prominent MP.

Your Party will open its first Isle of Wight branch on Saturday, June 6, at Quay Arts in Newport, at 5.30pm.

Jeremy Corbyn MP will address guests via video link, and the event will include a Community Assembly where residents can discuss issues and explore how collective action could create change.

Meanwhile -

The latest YouGov voting intention poll for The Times and Sky News shows Reform UK leading on 27% of the vote, up three points relative to last week’s poll and nine points ahead of any other party.

• Reform UK: 27% (+3 from 25-26 May)
• Conservatives: 18% (-1)
• Labour: 18% (+1)
• Greens: 15% (-1)
• Lib Dems: 13% (-1)
• Restore Britain: 3% (=)
• SNP: 3% (=)
• PC: 1% (-1)
• Your Party: 0% (=)
• Others: 1% (-1)

EU Commissioners annoyed by e-cars

EU Commissioners annoyed by e-cars: Charging break slows down journey from Brussels to Strasbourg

In Brussels, the EU Commission's electric company car fleet is causing trouble because the available e-cars cannot make the approximately 440-kilometer route from Brussels to the EU Parliament in Strasbourg without a charging break. The vehicles are part of the authority's green fleet conversion, which started in 2022, but the regular business trips between the two EU locations put a strain on range, scheduling and confidential workflows. In particular, the charging stop in Luxembourg extends the journey, while some EU commissioners only want to use the train to a limited extent due to sensitive phone calls.

EU Commissioners experience range problem on business trips

The EU Commission wants to make its own fleet completely emission-free by 2027. That is why many top officials and commissioners already drive electric company cars. However, the case shows that political climate goals can fail in everyday government work due to range, charging time and route profile.

Doubly ironic because an EU Commissioner's time is of so little practical value. They must think their time is valuable of course, but that is not likely to be a widely shared opinion.

Maybe they could try to rewrite the laws of physics and chemistry via an EU directive. 

Ed Miliband has announced.

Government commits to 87% cut in UK’s climate emissions by 2040

The Government has signed up to a legal target to cut the UK’s planet-heating emissions by 87% by 2040, Ed Miliband has announced.

The commitment will see heat pumps, electric cars and renewables rolled out across the country in a move the Government says will bring down bills and “upgrade lifestyles”.

The reduction in greenhouse gases on 1990 levels – on the way to cutting climate pollution to zero overall by 2050, known as “net zero” – is in line with official advice from the independent Climate Change Committee (CCC) on deliverable and cost-effective cuts.

But the Government’s commitment to the “seventh carbon budget” emissions target for the period 2038-2042 comes amid increasing political division over climate action, with Reform UK and the Tories promising to ditch net zero policies and back oil and gas drilling.


It's made up numbers time again, but it would be interesting to know what "climate pollution" is supposed to be. Presumably it is not the pollution of science and rational debate by political twaddle, because on the face of it there is a firm intention to increase that kind of pollution.

As even Ed Miliband knows, nobody will remember this twaddle by 2040 anyway. By then we will have lots of different twaddle to contend with and probably some real problems which turn out to be rather more serious than Ed's fantasies.

Said with tiers in their eyes

Cooper says UK and China have 'shared interest' in rules-based order

The rules-based international order is in Britain and China’s “shared interest”, Yvette Cooper said as she met the country’s vice-president Han Zheng for talks on global security as part of a three-day visit to Asia.

The Foreign Secretary acknowledged “areas of disagreement” between London and Beijing but insisted that approaching discussions with “candour and respect” would help to increase mutual understanding of one another.

Greeting the minister in the capital’s Great Hall of the People on Tuesday, Mr Han hailed a “new chapter in bilateral ties” which he said had been opened during Sir Keir Starmer’s visit to the country in January.


You British have sold your souls for something less than the conventional mess of pottage. You are ruled in the first place by money-bags, and the faddists whom they support to blind your eyes.

John Buchan - The Half-Hearted (1900)

The Sound of Silencers

From "Les Tontons flingueurs", a crime comedy.