A sense of urgency

Green candidate in Makerfield by-election wants farming to be 'decolonised' with 'inclusive spaces'

Zack Polanski’s party unveiled 38-year-old Sarah Wakefield as its candidate for the key by-election on Tuesday.

Ms Wakefield, a mother of two, serves as executive director of environmental charity Eating Better...

Last year, the charity shared a report by American activist Caroline J Sumlin discussing “white supremacy culture” within farming and outlining ways to challenge “colonial power and legacies” in the food industry.

The report cited “defensiveness”, “perfectionism” and “a sense of urgency” as examples of so-called white supremacy culture.


A chap is bound to wonder if Ms Wakefield intends to campaign with a sense of urgency, or will she just wander round Makerfield chatting to anyone she meets? 

That would be after the election of course. Campaigning before the election would surely display a distressingly inappropriate sense of urgency.

Come to think of it, she should also avoid defending Green policies or the leadership of Zack Polanski - that would violate the rule against defensiveness.

The Greens may be okay with avoiding perfectionism as there isn't much they get right. They could be in some danger of being perfectly wrong though. 

Strewth - I feel an urgent need for coffee and dark chocolate.

They are all mad.

Ignorance of the disgraceful sort

  

SOCRATES: I suppose that we begin to act when we think that we know what we are doing?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: But when people think that they do not know, they entrust their business to others?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And so there is a class of ignorant persons who do not make mistakes in life, because they trust others about things of which they are ignorant?

ALCIBIADES: True.

SOCRATES: Who, then, are the persons who make mistakes? They cannot, of course, be those who know?

ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: But if neither those who know, nor those who know that they do not know, make mistakes, there remain those only who do not know and think that they know.

ALCIBIADES: Yes, only those.

SOCRATES: Then this is ignorance of the disgraceful sort which is mischievous?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.


Ascribed to Plato - Alcibiades I (Possibly 390s BC)

I don't need any figures

"I don't need any figures" – Klingbeil defends billion-dollar course for renewable energies

In Berlin, Federal Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil defended the government's course on renewable energies in the Bundestag on May 20, 2026. The trigger was a question from AfD MP Rainer Kraft in the government questioning. Kraft demanded a concrete effect of 100 billion euros of taxpayers' money on the global temperature rise. Klingbeil first referred to studies on individual instruments in the Climate and Transformation Fund. But then he said, "I don't need numbers to know it's right." This brought budget control, energy costs and the burden on taxpayers into focus.

It is pretty obvious that this is Ed Miliband's attitude - "I don't need numbers to know it's right." More generally, it is likely to be a widespread attitude among the governing classes, many of whom don't seem keen on numbers anyway. 

There is a certain nervousness wittering its way through the Net Zero nonsense though, a sense that some numbers could mean something, even something important.

"Do those scruffy sceptics know something we don't? Surely not."

Fast Pseuds

The Ferrari Luce Isn’t For You, And That’s Okay

The $640,000Ferrari Luce isn’t for me, either. The greatest automotive experience of my life came at the wheel of a sixty-year-old Ferrari 250 GT. But I think I understand where Ferrari is coming from. Or rather, what the pens of Sir Jony Ive and Marc Newson of design agency LoveFrom have set out to achieve...

Revealed earlier this year, the interior is a celebration of tactility, from its solid metal switchgear and analogue dials, to its simplistic, almost retro steering wheel and plush leather upholstery bathed in ambient lighting. This is a car interior for the newly wealthy who recognize the damage caused by a decade of scrolling. There’s no ghastly passenger touchscreen, no dimwitted haptic touchpads and no infuriating AI assistant. Instead there are beautiful materials that are sure to bring joy with every interaction. They’ll remind the driver of their Leica camera, their Linn turntable and their Rimowa suitcase.

Labour Party: Two Headlines

Baroness Harman: Labour leadership hopefuls must be radical feminists

Women in party should use challenges from Streeting and Burnham to ‘marshal our unreasonable demands’, peer says

'Labour lacks coherent plan,' says Sir Tony Blair in essay critical of government

Sir Tony Blair has warned Labour against forcing out Sir Keir Starmer without having a proper policy agenda to follow him, as he launched a criticism of the Government’s time in office.

Robotic Agentic AGI Prototype

 

Numbers Game

While browsing the internet over coffee this morning, I took a casual gander at some basic information about Angola. This snippet from Wikipedia is interesting as yet another hint that the game of made up numbers still has plenty of life in it.

 

Due to climate change, Angola's annual average temperature has increased by 1.4.°C since 1951, and is expected to keep rising[76] while rainfall is becoming more variable.[77] Angola is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts.

Presumably we are expected to believe that since 1951, Angola has been measuring surface temperatures accurately enough for a claimed 1.4.°C temperature rise to be reliable, although I'm not sure why there is another decimal point after the figure 4.

Alternatively, as the Wikipedia link indicates, the number comes from World Bank Group which of course is linked to the UN. In which case it may be a global UN number rather than a statistical output from accurate and reliable Angolan temperature measurements.

Hmm - made up number seems to be the safest assumption.