One step at a time

Digital driving licence ‘ready for rollout’

An annual report published by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency claims that, following initial early tests, the new virtual document is primed to deploy to millions of people

Some 18 months after first being promised, a new digital driving licence is “ready for rollout”, according to government documents.

As part of a wider suite of virtual credentials being created by various Whitehall agencies – including a new digital veterans’ card, and planned electronic versions of the likes of National Insurance cards and marriage and death certificates – ministers stated in January 2025 that an initial version of a digital driving licence would be available by the end of that year. Government intends that citizens will be able to store all these formal documents in a newly created GOV.UK Wallet – that will operate in much the same way as similar platforms from Apple and Google...

Other new online services created in FY26 include “a new digital portal with the ability, for the first time, to deal with over 1,000 medical conditions” that need to be declared by drivers.

I'm incompetent, Beth, is the actual answer

Jess Phillips: I hated being in government

The former minister spoke to Sky's Electoral Dysfunction about what it was like being inside government and why it's not on track to hit one of its key targets.

Asked by Sky's political editor, Beth Rigby, whether she would ever go back into government, Ms Phillips said she wouldn't.

"I don't think I'm suited to it, Beth, is the actual answer... I won't go back in and do more of the same. So no is the answer," she said.

If you lie on your CV, do you have to give your wages back?

 

I wouldn’t like to fall into your clutches

French Greens leader calls for ban on X during elections

Marine Tondelier, national secretary of the French Greens and 2027 presidential candidate, has called for the possibility of banning the social network X during election periods if foreign interference is detected.

In an interview with Libération, Tondelier described X as a “source of fake news” with a “rigged algorithm” that exerts a more structural and daily impact on disinformation than discrete foreign influence operations.

She argued that the platform, owned by Elon Musk, should be treated as a content editor rather than a neutral intermediary.


I wouldn’t like to fall into your clutches, my friend, altogether: or to give your benevolence a chance to condemn me.

D. H. Lawrence - Kangaroo (1923)

Ed on peculiar relationships

Ed Miliband blanks reporter asking him about previous comments calling Trump ‘racist’

In 2016, Miliband had been searing in his criticism of Trump during his first term as president.

He said: “The idea that we share values with a racist, misogynistic, self-confessed groper beggars belief.”

In following years, Miliband also said Trump had “lowered the bar for idiocy” and called out his “peculiar relationship with Russia and most of all with the truth.”

As Matthews asked Miliband about these comments, the foreign secretary gave the journalist no response.


As it's Ed Miliband we must expect some peculiar relationships with language, particularly his own words. He's an ambitious professional politician who may yet have his eye on No.10, but this was the language of progressive media with clicks to harvest. He may well wallow in the language privately, but airing it in public certainly "lowered the bar for idiocy".


In this stupid world most people never consider that a thing is good to be done unless it is done by their own set.

George Eliot - Middlemarch (1871-72)

Ed has never offered us any reason to think he is aware of a world beyond the narrow language of his his own set, yet we are invited to suppose he is a professional politician, currently filling the role of UK Foreign Secretary, one of the Great Offices of State.

He could try politics, but which party?

University of Cambridge professor resigns amid plagiarism allegations

• Professor Jason Arday has resigned as a professor of sociology at the University of Cambridge following an investigation into his qualifications and honorary appointments.
• The university's inquiry began after 'new information' emerged, with media reports alleging plagiarism in his PhD thesis and other research.
• Questions were also raised about other claims made by Professor Arday, including running 600 miles in six days and raising £5.5m for charity.
• In a letter to colleagues, Professor Arday stated that the 'relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary' had taken a profound toll on him, leading him to step away.
• Both the University of Cambridge and Jesus College are conducting separate, ongoing investigations into the matters surrounding Professor Arday.

COP33 hits an iceberg

 

India to Climate Cartel: Count Us Out! – ‘Explicit rejection of global net zero movement…has walked away from its bid to host UN’s COP33’

The narrative of a rapidly degrading Indian environment due to energy consumption is demonstrably false.

By Vijay Jayaraj

Excerpt: Sometimes a story gets buried not because editors conspire against it, but because the news cycle has room for only one crisis at a time. This year the big news has been the Iran war. But even accounting for competing headlines, the silence around a genuinely consequential development is telling.

And that is the story of India’s explicit rejection of the global net zero movement. India has walked away from its bid to host the COP33 UN climate conference, and the world’s climate press has treated it as a footnote rather than the signal it is.