Ed cracks another joke

Ed Miliband calls for fairness in business energy contracts amid Iran crisis

Energy firms have been warned not to rip off businesses as the Middle East crisis forces prices up.

Regulator Ofgem and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband have written to business suppliers to demand “maximum flexibility” in contracts for small firms.

Mr Miliband said pricing needs to be “fair, transparent and fully justifiable”.

Mad as a box of frogs.

Residential mining

 

Driving standards

This morning found Mrs H and I tootling down our road having set off on a car trip to a local garden centre. At the junction with the main road into town, we had a very restricted view of traffic coming from the right due to parked cars. Many drivers approach the junction at excessive speed too, but we're used to coping with that. 

About fifty yards down the road into town we had to slow right down for a car coming towards us on our side of the road. He'd been parked on our side of the road facing oncoming traffic but when driving off he had hopelessly misjudged his attempt to join the traffic flow away from town.

Coming back from the garden centre on the A38 we watched a queue of traffic build up in the right hand lane as one lorry spent ages trying to overtake another on the dual carriageway. Eventually he gave up but tried again on the next hill. We're used to seeing that though.

It's just an impression and maybe it's an aspect of old age, but driving standards don't seem to be improving.

Taking a joke seriously

Ed Miliband branded 'a joke' after 'waffling' TV appearance on The Martin Lewis Money Show

The Martin Lewis Money Show viewers were left fuming over Ed Miliband's 'waffling' TV appearance last night, branding the politician 'a joke' and fuming 'he has no idea what he's doing'.

The Secretary of State for Energy joined Martin, 53, live via video link on Tuesday (March 17) to face questions submitted by the public about heating oil and energy.

It's an uncomfortable situation. Ed Miliband is a joke, but a joke that UK big media have to take seriously because he is still the UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. Does he have anything worthwhile to say? No he doesn't.

The damage he's doing isn't a joke though.

Running out of time

Rayner warns Starmer’s Labour running out of time to win back voters

Angela Rayner has issued her clearest challenge to Sir Keir Starmer yet, warning that Labour is “running out of time” to deliver change and cannot “go through the motions in the face of decline”.

In a speech at an event by left-wing campaign group Mainstream, the former deputy prime minister said the party had come to be seen to represent “the Establishment, not working people” and called for a change of course.

For anyone hoping for some slight improvement in the UK political outlook in 2026, current leadership betting extracted via Copilot AI merely reminds us that we are all running out of time -

Political betting markets currently indicate Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting as the front-runners to replace Keir Starmer, with 2026 being the most likely year for a leadership change.

The latest betting markets show a strong consensus that Keir Starmer may step down as Prime Minister during 2026. William Hill lists 2026 as the favourite exit year at odds of 1/5 , while other bookmakers place the probability of his departure by September 2026 at around 58%–80% .

In terms of potential successors:

• Angela Rayner: Former Deputy Prime Minister and prominent figure on Labour's left, consistently leads the betting. Odds across multiple bookmakers range from 11/4 to 14/5, implying a 26-27% probability .
• Wes Streeting: Health Secretary and a noted reformist, is closely behind Rayner. He is listed at odds around 9/2 to 11/2, translating to roughly an 18% chance in current betting markets .
• Ed Miliband: Former Labour leader, maintains a notable chance with odds of 6/1 to 7/1 .
• Andy Burnham: Popular in the North West and former mayor, features at longer odds of 12/1 to 3/1 in different reports .
• Other candidates: Include Shabana Mahmood, Nigel Farage (in disruption scenarios), Yvette Cooper, and Kemi Badenoch, with odds ranging higher, reflecting lower market expectations .

These betting odds reflect public and political sentiment as perceived by punters, and are subject to change based on events such as elections, media developments, and internal party dynamics. They do not guarantee actual leadership outcomes.

Overall, Rayner and Streeting are the primary focus in 2026 succession markets, while Starmer’s position remains under intense debate, making this a highly monitored political landscape.

Boutique poverty measures

Ryan Bourne has a topical CAPX piece on invented forms of poverty. Interesting and worth reading as another example of campaigners shifting goalposts and inventing new bits of language to obscure the shift and also obscure pragmatic solutions which don't require campaigners. 

Invented bits of language are also used to obscure the totalitarian narrative in the political background, but we already knew that.


Why are the Greens campaigning against invented forms of poverty?

• Green MP Hannah Spencer is backing a campaign to end 'furniture poverty'
• Households do not receive neat little envelopes marked ‘for beds’
• Slicing poverty into ever more theatrical subcategories won't help struggling families

Amid some brief research about the new MP for Gorton and Denton, Hannah Spencer, I came across her campaign against a boutique poverty measure I hadn’t previously been aware of: ‘furniture poverty’...

This methodology is now standard fare among anti-poverty charities. You take the old workhouse noun ‘poverty’, bolt a spending category in front of it, and declare a new affliction which society (read: taxpayers through government) must deal with. We’ve seen ‘food poverty’, ‘fuel poverty’, and now ‘furniture poverty’. But why stop there? One could imagine ‘car poverty’, ‘clothes poverty’ and ‘cutlery poverty’ if we want to explore a new first letter. Or what about sub-components of furniture? Perhaps ‘futon poverty’, ‘ottoman insecurity’ or ‘coffee-table precarity’.

I, Me, Myself

The other day found Mrs H and I chatting about people who seem to be the only significant character in their personal world. For such people, everyone else seems to have no background worth discovering and little in the way of an independent personality.

The simplest examples are people who may be chatty, pleasant and affable but never quite manage to talk about anything but themselves and their own circumstances. Their conversation always veers towards their own lives and it soon becomes obvious that they aren’t genuinely interested in anyone else and never will be.

For example, Mrs H and I once knew two people on a walking group who would always chat quite pleasantly for hours, but seemed incapable of chatting about anything but themselves and their own lives. We weren’t the only ones who noticed it.

Both of these pleasantly self-centred people were socially active and willingly gave their time for worthy causes, but in a curious way they seemed to do it for themselves, not for others. Yet it would be too cynical to point this out except privately to people who notice these things. People do notice though, it’s not uncommon to come across such people.

The behaviour of professional politicians seems to be much the same. We tend to assume there is a furtive schemer behind the politician, but what we see, the engagement with noble causes coupled with indifference to real people – there are similarities.