On being part of the Labour team or the Labour family

Minister Miatta Fahnbulleh defends sending children to private school

Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh has defended sending her children to private school despite backing removing the VAT exemption on fees for the independent sector.

The Peckham MP stressed that the VAT move was the “right policy” for a Government as it struggles to balance the books.

Ms Fahnbulleh, who soared into the Cabinet just two years after becoming an MP, also said that sending children to private school does not preclude people from “being part of the Labour team or the Labour family”.


There is nothing wrong with sending your children to private schools, obviously not, but here of course we have yet another example the hoary old champagne socialist story. 

State education is good enough for your kids but not for mine.

Or

Absurdly high fuel bills for you, jetting off to climate conferences for me. 

It's much the same.

In our moral reviews of ourselves we practise optical delusions even upon our own self-scrutiny, and paint and mask our motives, and fill our ears with excuses and with downright lies. So inveterate is the habit of deceiving, and even in the dark we form our features by hypocrisy, and scarcely know all this.

Sheridan Le Fanu - The Wyvern Mystery (1869)

But not cowboy politics

Burnham takes aim at 'cowboy builders' with new crackdown

• Andy Burnham has unveiled new plans to tackle rogue tradespeople known as “cowboy builders” to protect consumers from unfair practices by private bailiffs.
• A government-backed register launching in September will help householders find trusted builders, while a milestone-linked payment system next week will prevent upfront costs.
• The Prime Minister stated that the measures aim to protect families from stress and financial losses while stopping dishonest builders from damaging the reputation of reliable traders.

Meanwhile, in the land of cowboy politics...

HS2, Net Zero, mass immigration, creeping mass surveillance, constant health hectoring, useless university degrees, mountains of official twaddle, worthless promises, absurd levels of taxation, waste, incompetence, endless fiddling around the edges of decline....

and the BBC.

Tea Bags and Brussels

Brussels now even regulates the disposal of used tea bags and coffee capsules

Since 12 August 2026, the new EU Packaging Regulation has been in force in all member states. Brussels is now explicitly regulating what should happen to used tea bags, coffee pods and certain coffee capsules. It is legally considered packaging and therefore falls under European requirements for disposal, recycling and labelling. The background is incorrectly separated waste, which can contaminate compost and recycling material. Disposal rules are therefore changing for consumers, while companies have to comply with other requirements. After all, Europe has major tasks to cope with – and apparently their solution begins with the moist tea bag.

Tea bags are finally getting attention from Brussels

For decades, handling a tea bag was surprisingly uncomplicated. Tea was brewed, drank and then the bag was thrown away. But this phase of largely unregulated freedom is now over. The EU explicitly assigns tea and coffee portions to packaging law. This means that even the used tea bag finally has the European legal status that it has apparently been sorely lacking so far.

Layers and layers of bizarre dysfunction

A Matter of Emphasis

Growing proportion of deaths associated with hottest days, figures suggest

There were an estimated 4,652 heat-related deaths in England and Wales in 2022, the highest figure for any year from 1988 to 2025.

A growing proportion of deaths in England and Wales are associated with days that have the hottest temperatures, new analysis suggests.

While cold weather has historically led to higher levels of mortality than conditions of extreme heat, the gap between the two is likely to have narrowed in recent years.


More numbers and two graphs follow before we come across this -


The ONS figures are modelled estimates of mortality associated with the coldest 2.5% and hottest 2.5% of days each year, not actual counts of deaths directly caused by extreme weather.


After more numbers and another graph we come across the politics with some broad hints about future funding -


Climate transition minister Katie White said: “These shocking figures represent thousands of families who have lost someone they love.

“We’re not waiting for climate change to arrive, we’re living in the middle of it, and this summer’s record-breaking heat has brought that home.

“That’s why we’re taking some of the biggest action in a generation, preparing hospitals for extreme heat, rolling out air-to-air heat pumps to cool as well as heat homes, and accelerating clean homegrown power to tackle the root causes of climate change.

“But we won’t stop there, bringing together our best minds, backing bold new ideas and pushing forward solutions that protect the people and places we love.”

The Great British meal deal

Juno Chowla-Song has an interesting CAPX piece on British supermarket meal deals. We've never bought one and don't intend to, but the whole piece is well worth reading. 

It's another example of Labour politicians attacking traditional political targets and a useful angle on the heavily touted 'cost of living crisis'.

The Great British meal deal should make you proud

• More than a third of Britons buy at least one meal deal weekly
• Suppliers became 4% more productive in the last year thanks to supermarkets' pressure
• In Britain, it takes just 10 minutes of work to earn enough to buy a meal deal – in Tokyo, it takes almost twice as long

I moved from New York to Britain and I keep getting asked when I’m going back.

Not by my family, or my friends back home, but by British people. They tell me about flat wages, looming youth unemployment and an air of decline throughout the country. But no one talks about lunch, because everyone here takes it for granted.

I used to work in retail in Manhattan, and I would bring my own sad sandwich for lunch every day. Sometimes I would splash out on a slice of pizza. After tax, a deli sandwich cost almost as much as my hourly wage. Buying that was out of the question.

John Healey has found the wrong scapegoat for the cost-of-living crisis. Squeezing supermarkets harder won’t make lunch cheaper

In a bid to quell her restless backbenchers

Kemi Badenoch tipped to reshuffle shadow cabinet in just days in bid to quell restless backbench MPs

Kemi Badenoch has been tipped to reshuffle her Shadow Cabinet in just days in a bid to quell her restless backbenchers.

MPs are due to return to Parliament for a brief stint in Westminster on September 1, which is when the Conservative leader is believed to be eyeing up an overhaul of her top team.

Claire Coutinho, the Shadow Energy Secretary who has been dubbed a rising star within the party, is expected to step down before she takes maternity leave later on in the year.

Meanwhile, Shadow Solicitor General Helen Grant, the MP for Maidstone and Malling, is also said to be bidding adieu to the Conservative frontbench.


There is a problem with making political sense of any Shadow Cabinet reshuffle, particularly this one. To my mind there are three questions to answer first –

• Does a chap try to recall who is in the current Shadow Cabinet before reading political messages into the reshuffle?
• Or does a chap admit that he can't possibly recall who is in the current Shadow Cabinet so may as well forget all that and take a gander at the new Shadow Cabinet after the reshuffle?
• Or does a chap watch a YouTube video instead?