A new tool for the versatility of madness

Corporations claim their fossil fuel emissions are a drop in the ocean. But what if we could count the real cost?

The biggest coal project before authorities in New South Wales, the Hunter Valley Operations mine, will emit the equivalent of about 809m tonnes of climate-warming carbon dioxide if it wins approval.

That number, for most people, will carry little meaning, as might the calculation that adding that amount of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere will cause an extra 0.00036C of global heating.

But what if the public was instead told that that amount of carbon dioxide would expose almost half a million people to unprecedented heat, or kill nearly 15 million coral colonies on the Great Barrier Reef every time it bleaches, or lead to more than 100 additional deaths from heatwaves in Europe to the end of this century.

All those statistics come from a new tool that translates the emissions from burning fossil fuels into estimated real-world climate effects taken from peer-reviewed climate studies.

But the brilliance, the versatility of madness is akin to the resourcefulness of water seeping through, over and around a dike.

F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tender is the Night (1934)

The greatest orator of our time

Is she entirely sober? Maybe a Democrat voter would know. 

Puppet speech crackdown

A longish but interesting Daily NK piece on remarkably obsessive North Korean government efforts to prevent the spread of popular South Korean slang. 

It's an interesting example of a totalitarian government understanding the power of language and how difficult even the most extreme efforts at official control can be.


Puppet speech crackdown gains new legal weight from North Korea’s constitution

Years of harsh punishment failed to stamp out South Korean-influenced speech, so authorities turned to the constitution itself

North Korea’s 2026 constitutional amendment protecting Pyongyang Cultural Language has fueled a renewed puppet speech crackdown. Schools, workplaces and neighborhood organizations have stepped up enforcement.

South Korean-influenced expressions such as “jagiya” (honey), “oppa” and “jjokpalrida” (embarrassing) are not treated as harmless slang. “Oppa” is a term South Korean women traditionally use for an older brother or close male friend, popularized abroad through K-dramas. North Korean authorities view all three as a political and class threat to the socialist system.

Daily NK examined the situation in Pyongyang and Sinuiju through sources in Pyongyang and North Pyongan province. Both cities held lectures and study sessions in late July through party organizations, workers’ groups and schools. The sessions stressed use of Pyongyang Cultural Language and elimination of what officials call puppet speech, a derogatory term the regime applies to South Korean-style expressions.

Conspicuous Imitation

When UK Prime Minister Andrew Burnham met US President Donald Trump recently, the contrast between the two men was stark.

Burham comes across as a professional politician with little to mark him out as a distinct individual behind the obscuring veils of ambition, party politics and his place as the government machine’s regimental mascot. A shadowy shell of a man compared to Trump who certainly is an individual.

Apart from his presentational style, Burnham imitates Keir Starmer. He leads the same party and fronts the same government machine. In private he may project himself as a Fabian sophisticate, but that’s imitation too.

As for his presentation style, Burham could be any bland presenter familiar with public speaking. Perhaps he tries to imitate Tony Blair, yet imitation is one those aspects of life which becomes problematic if we follow it too far. 

We all imitate because we have to imitate whatever isn’t inbuilt from birth, including roles such as Mayor of Greater Manchester or UK Prime Minister. We know it too, we see children doing it and we see ourselves doing it throughout our lives - imitating. 

We imitate language from a very young age because we have to, but it never stops. Life offers so many advantages if we continue to adopt useful new words, phrases, expressions, arguments, explanations, information and insights. Even facial expressions and hand movements. Via language we imitate thoughts and beliefs too – social, political or professional viewpoints, attitudes, religions, biases. We even imitate emotions.

We imitate styles and trends – in clothing, hairstyles, music, entertainment, food, drink, interior décor, cars, motor cycles, bicycles, holiday destinations, sports, games, literature, arts, cinema, TV, online entertainment, travel, shopping, health, nutrition, clubs, societies, politics. Even careers, ambitions, bucket lists. Even body shape - until we look in the mirror.

The reason why imitation becomes problematic is obvious to all, the problem of locating a unique individual buried in the impossibly complex maze of imitation. Yet a curious aspect of imitation occurs where people over-imitate to become followers, fans, acolytes, believers or merely fashionable. It’s one of life’s oddities where conspicuous or even wildly conspicuous imitation is used to assert individuality.

At a basic level we have the imitation of important criteria such as true and false, good and bad, real and unreal, fact and fantasy. Natural sceptics tend to pull back from conspicuous imitation when it clashes with basic criteria and this seems to be a route to individuality.

People who know how to value their individuality seem to develop and enhance good/bad, true/false criteria throughout their lives, partly by avoiding conspicuous imitation. Andrew Murray Burnham hasn't done that.

A Ministry of Truth is coming

Adam James Pollock has a very interesting Critic piece on the latest UK government attempt to establish a Ministry of Truth, recently announced by Andy Burnham (real name Andrew Murray Burnham).


A Ministry of Truth is coming

BBC Verify shows why Burnham’s Ministry of Truth won’t work

This week, the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, told the United Nations that his Government would create a new National Centre for Information Defence to counter the threat of disinformation online. Burnham argued that this new body would allow “stem the poisonous tide” of disinformation that arose largely from Russia, claiming that the United Kingdom’s government could act as an “honest broker” of such arrangements, protecting the truth.

This new Ministry of Truth — as it may as well be named — would do no such thing, which has already been proven by numerous prior failed attempts at regulating information. To achieve similar ends, the Government already runs the National Security Online Information Team; the Government Communication Service; the Cabinet Office’s Media Monitoring Unit; the Home Office’s Research, Information and Communications Unit; the Foreign Office’s Hybrid Threats Directorate; and the Joint Election Security and Preparedness Unit. Not to mention whatever goes on within the intelligence services, the British Army’s intelligence units, and the National Cyber Force.


The whole piece is well worth reading as Pollock offers repeated failures as an interesting angle on the issue, particularly the ludicrous BBC Verify.

The limitations of such a vehicle’s aims can be summarised most coherently by none other than the most famous of all failed attempts at countering “misinformation”: BBC Verify.

Launched in 2023 with a team of sixty taxpayer-funded zealots, BBC Verify sought to bring “radical transparency” to, er, the news, by “pulling back the curtain” on its own staff’s journalism. What it revealed, more than dedicated and documentable disinformation campaigns, was a failure of both the BBC and BBC Verify to accurately report the truth.

Stand and Deliver

‘I can deliver’: Burnham pledges radical change on eve of Labour conference

Exclusive: UK prime minister says delivering fiscal stability would be ‘crucial’ to be able to fix bigger problems

Andy Burnham has said he can deliver on his promise of radical change for the country despite severe economic headwinds, telling the Guardian: “There’s always things you can do; it’s just whether you’re prepared to do them.”


More low grade twaddle, particularly low when we consider the level of confidence which must have induced Makerfield voters to go skipping off to the polling station or faithfully fill in their postal vote(s). 

Nothing about bus fares in there, but Burnham makes an unusually good point when he says -

“There’s always things you can do; it’s just whether you’re prepared to do them.”

Two good points in one really, there are always things he can do, but it is a question of whether a leader with his party background and remarkably modest abilities would be prepared to do them. 

The answer is 'no'.

Strewth, this is poor stuff

Andy Burnham pledges to set UK on ‘new course’ a decade on from Brexit vote

Andy Burnham promised to set the UK on a new course because the decade since the Brexit vote had resulted in “drift and division”.

The Prime Minister vowed to set out how he will deliver “good growth in every postcode, hope in every heart” as he arrived in Liverpool for his first Labour Party conference as leader.

Mr Burnham said: “We’re going to make this a really important week where we set out a new direction for the country.


Let us rummage through the twaddle. Ah, here we are -

Bridget Phillipson manages to come across as even worse than Burnham, she speaks of 'taking things to the next level'. Perhaps in a sense they are, but it's not a level up. 


Speaking to the Press Association on Saturday, Ms Phillipson said Labour recognised it had “a massive fight on our hands with Reform, with the Tories”.

She expressed caution about the latest polling, “because the only poll that will matter is the one that happens on election day in 2029”.

The Labour chair added: “But what we have seen with Andy Burnham is a real sense of connection with the public, taking things to the next level. That hope, that optimism, that sense that Britain’s best days lie ahead of us.