When did 20C become heat?

Warmer weather is finally on its way, with parts of Britain set to bask in 20C heat

It has been a "month of two halves", the Met Office says - initially quite warm and then cool. But it's about to warm up again.

Highs of 20C (68F) are expected in parts of the UK this week, the Met Office has said, following a spell of cold, wet and windy weather.


When did 20C become heat? 

It's one of the effects of climate change on editorial policy.

Frad

The other day I went for a bike ride along the Monsal Trail with my old pal Dr Baz Broxtowe of Fradley University. Dr Baz heads a team developing a conversational AI system called Frad. It’s part of his research into machine learning applied to social nuances. 

There have been problems with Frad though, as I found out after we pulled up for a drink of water and a short break.

You could easily do another couple of miles tubby.

The voice came from Dr Baz’s phone almost as soon was we climbed off our bikes by one of the trail picnic tables.

“What was that? Was it Frad?” I asked the obvious question.

“Yes it was and it’s one of our problems,“ Dr Baz replied as he unwrapped a bar of chocolate. We can’t get the tone of Frad’s responses right. We’re looking to develop a rounded personality but can’t find the ideal mean between dull know-it-all and acerbic.”

“And at the moment it’s tuned to acerbic?”

“That’s right, I have to say that Frad is pretty good at telling it as it is when tuned towards acerbic, but obviously we can’t go public with it however good the results. There would be uproar.”

“You mean it could be worse that calling you tubby?”

He is tubby.

“Shut up Frad. We’ve had a few other problems with it,” Dr Baz went on to explain. For example an overweight staff member asked Frad about diet and losing weight. It suggest she should buy three pizzas, stack one on top of the other and scoff the lot as a pizza sandwich. Then it said –

You know you want to, so be true to yourself.

“Oh - I bet that didn’t go down well.”

“It did not go well at all, we had to make modifications. The trouble is, we seem to have a fundamental problem with conversational AI. There is not much conversational space between dull know-it-all on the one hand and acerbic but interesting on the other. ”

“It’s a real headache,” added Dr Baz as we climbed back onto our bikes.

I assume we are not going back already. said his phone.

The centenarian bug

Woman, 101, is mistaken for a BABY because American Airlines' computer system can't accept that she was born in 1922 and not 2022 - as she jokes 'they thought I was a child and I'm an old lady!'

• A 101-year-old woman flying from Chicago to Marquette was mistaken for a baby
• Cabin crew expected her to be an infant due to an error with the booking system

I've sometimes wondered about this. If I'm unlucky enough to become a centenarian, will the problem be sorted out? I can't say it preys on my mind, but it flits across it when writing down my birth date. 

Fortunately we have the NHS to reduce still further the chances of it becoming a problem.

Exciting discovery

'Exciting' discovery of material that can store greenhouse gases faster than trees

The findings were hailed by researchers who said the material could help "solve society's biggest challenges".

Dr Mark Little, who jointly led the research at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, said the discovery has the potential to "help solve society's biggest challenges".

"Direct air capture of carbon dioxide is increasingly important because even when we stop emitting carbon dioxide, there's still going to be a huge need to capture previous emissions that are already in the environment.


More funding please.

Presumably this notion doesn't envisage a gargantuan scaling up to capture carbon dioxide emissions from China and the rest of the world. In which case, apart from the less dramatic value of the science itself and possibilities such as gas purification on a smaller scale, it's a waste of time.

The capture of carbon dioxide isn't worth doing anyway, unless the captured gas is going to be used for something of value.

It's remarkable how brazen scientists can be when they use the media to pump up the value of their research.

Counting Bears

 

No argument taken to a finish

The affair was at an end. Nothing interesting had been said in the general talk, and little that was sincere. No topic had been explored, no argument taken to a finish. No wit worth mentioning had glinted. But everybody had behaved very well, and had demonstrated that he or she was familiar with the usages of society and with aspects of existence with which it was proper to be familiar.

Arnold Bennett - The Roll-Call (1918)


A tediously familiar issue this one, but why do so many political actors make such extensive use of dishonest language? An obvious answer is there can be favourable political consequences from dishonest speeches and dishonest arguments. They appeal to tribal voters and allow vested interests to flourish.

The point to be made is that political policies rooted in dishonesty cannot be resolved by honest argument taken to a finish. For many educated people, a dishonest or even absurd standpoint with major practical defects may still have politically favourable consequences. It’s a no-brainer we might say.

It’s a problem which cannot be resolved by argument until unfavourable consequences arrive in force. Possibly not even then.

Let us guess the prescription

'The only cure is a Labour government': Tory MP and doctor Dan Poulter defects over NHS 'chaos'

Former health minister Dan Poulter said "chaos" in the NHS has led him to defect to Labour from the Conservative Party. The part-time GP said the Conservatives had become "a nationalist party of the right".

"Working on the frontline of a health service under great strain left me at times, as an MP, struggling to look my NHS colleagues, my patients and my constituents in the eye," he said.

Reeds tottering in the wind

Scottish Greens MSP bursts into tears over Humza Yousaf ending Bute House agreement

A Scottish Green Party MSP has broken down in tears on BBC Radio Scotland following the First Minister’s decision to end the Bute House Agreement.

Gillian Mackay, MSP for Central Scotland, spoke on the 5.10pm BBC Scotland Drivetime Radio show on Friday with host John Beattie, where she said Humza Yousaf’s reason to end the two-and-a-half year agreement was “as clear as mud”.

She told the host the First Minister was “essentially saying you’re dumped but can we still be friends” and that she does not know “that this holds water, especially for someone who is supposed to be leading the country”.

She added: “Humza has done this to himself in removing us from government… There is a lot of hurt and upset around.”


Reserve, restraint, self-possession, were swept away ... And now we are frankly emotional; reeds tottering in the wind, our boast is that we are not even reeds that think; we cry out for idols. Who is there that will set up a golden ass that we may fall down and worship? We glory in our shame, in our swelling hearts, in our eyes heavy with tears. We want sympathy at all costs; we run about showing our bleeding vitals, asking one another whether they are not indeed a horrible sight.

W. Somerset Maugham – The Hero (1901)

The Government Behind the Government

 

While the coin is palmed

Two familiar points –

Firstly, arguments hardly persuade anyone. Some kind of advantage is what persuades. There has to be some advantage to any standpoint in any argument even if the advantage is an illusion, which in the political arena it usually is.

Secondly, things go on behind public narratives, not because of them.

These two points are linked of course. Politicians don’t emit all that yaketty-yak in the hope of persuading us. They know we are not persuaded by argument. They certainly aren’t persuaded by anything other than personal advantage so why should they think we are any different? They don’t. The yaketty-yak is designed to prevent us from understanding what is happening until it happens.

Elites have never told us what is going on, so why should they start now? They have always known about carrots and sticks too. All they ever do is update the language to fit whatever new imposition is being concocted and add a spoonful of illusory sugar to help the medicine go down.

It’s all conjurer’s patter – the misdirection while the coin is palmed.

Fudge is in the air

You can ‘fly off on holidays and eat steak’ under net zero, says top climate adviser

Speaking as he leaves the role after six years, Chris Stark, the chief executive of the climate change committee, suggested he and others in the green sector had pushed too hard the idea that the shift required a radical transformation.

Instead people’s lives would not be that different in 2050, the target date for ending the UK’s contribution to climate change by cutting emissions to zero overall...

But he also said: “I’m not handing criticism out to any one party, I think there is a general retreat from owning this stuff on net zero.”

Another indication that fudge is in the air. No great surprise as the whole Net Zero narrative is compiled by fudge experts, but still interesting. When the music stops, who will be left without a chair?

A whiff of something unwholesome

Rishi Sunak is nicer to me than Sir Keir Starmer, says Labour MP Rosie Duffield, claiming her party has an 'issue with women'

The Labour Party has an “issue with women”, Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield has said, adding that MPs on her side sometimes tried to sabotage her speeches in the House of Commons.

A well-known issue, but add this to the photo of "Sir" Keir Starmer's ostentatious kneeling with Angela Rayner and there is a whiff of something unwholesome surrounding the Labour leader. Flexibility is fine, but this is unprincipled flexibility with veracity being the principle. 

Let's repeat the HS2 success story

Labour denies railways will be given 'lower priority' under renationalisation plans - as Tories warn of 'wildcat strikes'

Shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh promised to deliver the biggest shake-up to rail "in a generation" by establishing the long-delayed Great British Railways (GBR) organisation and bringing routes back into public ownership, if Labour forms the next government...

Sam Coates, Sky News' deputy political editor, asked Ms Haigh how she was going to avoid the "trap" of British Railways - the former national railway system that was privatised in the 1990s - which was forced to compete for central government cash.

"How are you going to make sure that you don't end up falling into the same old trap as British Railways, where effectively, to get train upgrades, you are competing for cash with schools and hospitals, and given money is going to be very tight, aren't the trains actually going to be a lower priority?" he asked.


Labour knows it isn't going to work, GBR cannot compete successfully with the budgetary demands of the NHS, education and other loud voices on the political stage. It isn't going to work and Labour knows it. We may as well assume that there is an internal calculation suggesting that enough voters don't know it, particularly younger voters.

Luxury Crackpottery

Tony Thomas has a useful Climate Depot reminder of the sayings of Naomi Oreskes.


Harvard Professor Naomi Oreskes dubbed ‘The Queen of Climate Crackpottery’

Trigger warning: if your household companions include a cat, dog, canary, goldfish or turtle, this article is not a safe space. I’m writing about Harvard’s distinguished agnatologist Professor Naomi Oreskes (above) and her 2014 warning that global warming would kill your pets in 2023. The warning is in her acclaimed but glum book The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future. Given margins of error in climate science, the pet die-off might be this year instead. Oreskes wrote,

The loss of pet cats and dogs garnered particular attention among wealthy Westerners , but what was anomalous in 2023 soon became the new normal . … A shadow of ignorance and denial had fallen over people who considered themselves children of the Enlightenment (p9).


The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of something we've known for decades - it is possible to be a successful professional crackpot if you take care to promote what are clearly luxury beliefs. It helps to have a strong totalitarian theme too, but we already know that.


The Collapse book is about Western civilisation’s ruin while China saves the planet with its enlightened anti-CO2 measures. She is writing from the future in 2393 when she will be aged 435. Oreskes (as at 2393) is cross because we have refused to build enough windmills to stop at 11degC warming (p32) and eight-metre sea rises (p30). We should not have eaten so many fillet steaks and, personally, I should not have tooled around in my reasonably priced, petrol-powered Hyundai i30 when Teslas were available at $80,000.

Online Dentist

 

Classy

Angela Rayner aims ‘pint-sized loser’ jibe at Rishi Sunak during PMQs

Angela Rayner labelled Rishi Sunak a “pint-sized loser” after urging the Conservatives to stop “obsessing” about her living arrangements.

Labour’s deputy leader also accused Oliver Dowden of having “stabbed” the Tories’ “biggest election winner” Boris Johnson in the back in order to get his “mate into No 10”.

Prestigious

Artist who covered a car with a doily up for Turner Prize

The shortlist for 2024’s Turner Prize has been announced and includes Scottish artist Jasleen Kaur who covered a red sports car with an ornamental doily mat.

Manilla-born Pio Abad, Manchester-born Claudette Johnson, Glasgow-born Kaur and Worthing-born Delaine Le Bas have been nominated in the prize’s 40th anniversary as the prestigious art event returns to London’s Tate Britain for the first time in six years.

The artists are competing for £25,000, while those shortlisted will be awarded £10,000.

It's an extremely large doily, so maybe that makes a statement. 

It's still mildly surprising that anyone enters this competition. Being artistically naïve I'd expect other artists to snigger at the winner to such an extent that it would be a significant career setback. Something to miss off the CV perhaps, but apparently not.

Must be the moolah.

Ban, mandate, tax, subsidise or give a speech

Robert Colvile has a useful CAPX piece on the dead hand of regulation.


Why Britain needs a regulation revolution

There have been many academic theses written about the powers and role of government. But perhaps the neatest summary comes from an anonymous minister, quoted by former civil servant Tim Leunig.

They would explain to stakeholders begging for intervention that ultimately, there were five things they could do: ban something, mandate something, tax something, subsidise something, or give a speech about something. And of those, only the first four actually did anything.


The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder that when it comes to cutting stifling regulations the Conservatives have achieved nothing and a Labour government is virtually certain to achieve less than that. Starmer believes in regulation, his party knows nothing else. 


Getting a handle on regulation isn’t a party-political issue. You can believe that some new regulations, or even many new regulations, are good and necessary. But even then, you should surely also want to know how much they cost, and whether they are actually working as you intended.

Regulation is arguably the least scrutinised part of government. But it may well be the most important. At the moment, Government too often sees imposing costs on business as a pain-free solution. Unless that changes, we can kiss goodbye to any hope of growth.

Once I dipt into the future

Weather maps reveal when four-day 'mini-heatwave' to bring balmy 19C highs to UK

A four-day spell of hot weather is set to bring balmy highs of 19C to the UK next week. Brits will soon enjoy warmer weather, with the mercury anticipated to rise across many parts of the country.

Weather maps from WX Charts indicate it will start to heat up as we approach the early May bank holiday. It comes after heavy downpours and harsh winds have been sweeping Britain lately.

There will be highs of 17C on Thursday, May 2. The Midlands is predicted to see between 15C and 16C, while the south of the country could feel the warmest of the weather.


There seems to be a widespread editorial policy of slipping in words such as 'hot', 'heat' or 'heating' into UK weather stories where the weather isn't undeniably cold. Those huge fans we see all over the countryside must be something to do with official cooling policy.

Weather
Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be--
Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
With a record of unreason seldome paralleled on earth.
While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth.
He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote--
For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
"Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."
Ambrose Bierce

It's Pudding Lane again - and big iguanas

How climate change will transform London: a guide to the city in 10, 50 and 100 years

One summer day two years ago, a compost heap in Wennington, East London, spontaneously caught fire. It was July 19, 2022, the hottest day since British records began, with temperatures pushing 40°C across the capital, the flames spreading quickly along a garden fence. Firefighters struggled to keep up: one told LBC: “It felt apocalyptic… we had no chance of stopping it”, as the blaze reached homes nearby. One resident said her house burned down within two minutes. Locals took shelter in nearby St Mary and St Peter's Church, which became filled with smoke. Luckily, no one died, but 19 houses were destroyed...

Climate change author Jeff Goodell...

A century is a long time off – so there are all sorts of things we can’t predict. What we do know is that almost everything is likely to change, from politics to pets. Goodell says it’s likely that “cuddly” animals, like cats and dogs, will struggle in the heat, and wonders if there could be a change in our favourite animals. “I think everybody will have big iguanas,” he says.

Reality way behind target

Heat pumps way behind target as experts say high prices put people off

Heat pump installations have failed to meet Government targets for the second year in a row, with critics saying high prices are still putting consumers off.

The Government's Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) gives grants of up to £7,500 to households for fitting a heat pump to their property.

The latest figures show that the scheme paid out £88.8million in 2023/24, against a budget of £150million. Last year the BUS paid out £51million.

It's experts again. What does a chap say about statements such as "experts say high prices put people off"? 

As loons drag us over the cliff which was supposedly reserved for lemmings, this blogging lark becomes more and more difficult. It's no good merely describing the behaviour of loons as loony.

'If this case stands we're all in danger'

Anyone paying attention will know that Trump's current legal entanglements are political, but Alan Dershowitz gives a good summary of the  'hush money' trial with a few hints about the UK situation.

Unignorable

Just Stop Oil eco-protesters plot campaign of airport disruption in threat to summer holidays

Just Stop Oil’s Phoebe Plummer reportedly warned of “disruption on a scale that has never been seen before” at a meeting attended by an undercover journalist. The group has been critical of the airline industry over its carbon footprint.

She said: “The most exciting part of this plan is that [it’s] going to be part of an international effort. Flights operate on such a tight schedule to control air traffic that with action being caused in cities all around the world we’re talking about radical, unignorable disruption.”


Of course the two revealing words here are 'exciting' and 'unignorable'. The rest of it is merely remembered language.

Consider human behaviour over the past thirty years.

Including the comfortable lives of activists.

Including the comfortable lives of journalists.

Including the comfortable lives of scientists.

Including the comfortable lives of politicians. 

Nobody believes the orthodox climate doom narrative.

Nobody ever did.

Oh come off it old chap

Tories no longer a patriotic party, says Starmer

The Conservatives are no longer a patriotic party, Sir Keir Starmer has said.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, the Labour leader accused the Tories of denigrating “some of our proudest national institutions” and lacking faith in the strength of British identity to “withstand discussion”, as he laid claim to the mantle of “the patriotic party”.

In an opinion piece published in the run-up to St George’s Day on Tuesday, Sir Keir spoke of his “pride and gratitude” at being English, saying Labour was “at its best when it has celebrated, defended and served the values of our country and its people” and promised to “always put country above party”.

Oh come off it old chap, this won't do, yours is a globalist party. We know you can't tell the plebs that, but it still creates a certain aura of wanting to jet off to Davos at the first opportunity. And Brussels. Anywhere but here really.

Even deceit has practical limits.

Only Truth can give true reputation: only reality can be of real profit. One deceit needs many others, and so the whole house is built in the air and must soon come to the ground. Unfounded things never reach old age. They promise too much to be much trusted, just as that cannot be true which proves too much.

Baltasar Gracián - The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)


Our digital world has made veracity much more democratic in that much of the time we may pursue it ourselves to probe official narrative, media stories or merely popular assumptions. Only potentially democratic of course, because pursuing veracity is not an overwhelmingly powerful human trait.

Yet anyone with a web browser usually has access to narratives more plausible than official or popular narratives if they choose to look. Not always possible of course, the fog or war is an example of that. Perhaps more significantly, anyone with a web browser has access to scepticism - pointers to what are uncertain, improbable, misleading, deceitful, even absurd narratives about the real world.

This seems to raise an interesting question. Has government resorted to promoting deceitful narratives in order to preserve its moral ascendency over scepticism? Or was it always like this, has government deceit merely become more transparent?

It is necessary for any hierarchy to preserve some kind of edge from the top downwards, some kind of authority over important narratives even if it isn’t moral authority. General self-interest in any medium to large organisation will often do to provide that edge. Keeping a job, staying in line for promotion, that kind of thing.

If we return to government deceit then self-interest is also a key way to promote acceptance. Put crudely it goes something like – accept the official narrative or you are a bad, dubious or deluded person, an outsider. Promote the official narrative and you are at least socially secure. Two more key ways to promote acceptance are policing and the law.

A problem has arisen with our digital world in that governments have no way to establish narrative ascendency without some level of deceit, with or without enforcement. Deceit may be lying by omission, distortion or outright falsehood. Combine this with the suppression of scepticism and governments have their tools for maintaining narrative ascendency over the general population.

Humiliation seems to be another tool – official narratives which are so ludicrous that acceptance is a measure of loyalty. This one seems to be relatively new and likely to be disastrous. Even deceit has practical limits.

More than gestures

Jean Hatchet has an interesting Critic piece which reminds us yet again that many people expect far too much integrity from established political parties. 


A Labour of unrequited love

It will take more than vague apologetic gestures to redeem the Labour Party

For many years now, women have appealed to the Labour Party to try to understand the fundamental clash between women’s rights and the unfair demands of the trans activist movement, which would erode those rights. They have done it as individuals, in organised groups such as Labour Women’s Declaration, and as Labour MPs in the case of Rosie Duffield or Tonia Antonazzi. All of these women have been ignored by Labour at best — and allegedly bullied at worst.

The piece is well worth reading as a reminder of what Keir Starmer's Labour party is and how absurd it is to expect his leadership to provide worthwhile political oversight of government. His party is entirely incapable of doing that and there is no indication whatever that it can be reformed.


Standing up to bullies makes bullies fearful, and some in Labour must be feeling very, very uncomfortable just now. Let’s hope at least some of them are somewhere in the House of Commons corridors, scribbling out their unreserved apologies to deliver to the press and that Keir Starmer’s scrap of paper says:

Look at me

'Robin Hood' vigilantes 'steal from Marks and Spencer to give to food banks'

Robin Hoods and their merrymen posted pictures on social media while bragging about stealing from the M&S Foodhall in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester.

Robin Hoods and their merrymen from the campaign group Everybody Eats which calls for direct action on food poverty in the UK posted pictures on social media while bragging about stealing from the M&S Foodhall in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester last weekend.

And it has warned this is just the first raid adding the group would “keep replicating this all across the country” until the government answered its demands on food security.

Another 'look at me' fad, maybe Friar Tuck is down to his last half dozen pies. 

It's a headache for food bank organisers, they can't very well cut out the poseurs and steal the stuff for themselves. It's not so much a problem of being associated with petty criminality as the embarrassment of being linked to performing plonkers.

Big Green Bills

 

We don't need no stinkin' objectivity

Health charities and unions lead strong criticism of Sunak’s welfare reforms

Leading mental health and poverty charities and unions have strongly criticised Rishi Sunak’s planned welfare reforms as “deeply damaging” and an “irresponsible war of words”.

The Prime Minister announced a series of major changes to the system on Friday and warned against “over-medicalising the everyday challenges and worries of life”.

Among the proposed changes was a consultation on a “more objective and rigorous approach” in the benefits system, and having so-called specialist work and health professionals charged with responsibility for issuing fit notes instead of GPs in a bid to end the “sick note culture”.

This is an irresponsible war of words on people who already aren’t getting enough support, which the Government would rather not talk about.

It is worth adding the well understood caveat that government isn't usually guided by  a “more objective and rigorous approach” to any of its favoured policies. 

We could begin by measuring what "enough support" might mean, but such questions might be “deeply damaging” and an “irresponsible war of words”.

Sioux chef

16th century cafe wins 'best fry-up in Derbyshire' award in recent poll

The cafe uses Derbyshire-sourced ingredients across the menu

A fantastic kitchen team consisting of Perry, head chef Simon Earl and Sioux chef Oliver Gillott operate out of the new kitchen.


I wonder if that's an AI spell checker spicing up the story a little? Or maybe wild buffalo sausage is on the menu.

A grim document

This grim document popped through the door today. Strange how there are only two official answers to bureaucratic incompetence -

   

1.     More bureaucracy.   
2.     More money.

It's usually both, as in this case. 

Fear of scams

Millions of older people live in fear of scams and a huge number worry about answering the phone or front door

One in five older people fear picking up the phone and one in 10 worry about opening the front door in case it is a scammer, new research reveals.

Although anyone can be scammed, older people are at greater risk of becoming victims of certain kinds of fraud, particularly those who live alone or are cognitively impaired or recently bereaved, says Age UK.

I'm particularly afraid of that scam where unsuspecting folk are persuaded go to "polling stations" and give votes to people who shoved glossy leaflets through the door then don't deliver what they promised. That one has been going on for a long time and it's about time it was dealt with. 

Then there's that Net Zero scam where we are persuaded to pay a lot of money for electricity generation that doesn't work properly. 

And don't get me started on that GP business - what are they supposed to be?

A Masterclass In Sarcasm

Patrick Boyle takes apart Neom - The Line. Quite long but a most entertaining and remarkable insight into the many predictable failures of this vast project. It leaves some obvious but fascinating questions hanging in the air too.

Fake philanthropy

Smoking ban UK: What does the new bill do as MPs vote to ban tobacco for generation alpha?

MPs have voted to pass a landmark smoking bill which the government says will create the UK’s first “smokefree generation”.

First announced in the King’s speech last November, the controversial bill passed through Commons on Tuesday (April 16) as Labour threw their weight behind it. It was not without opposition.

56 Tory MPs voted against Rishi Sunak’s bill, while a further to 106 either abstained or were absent. However, members had been given a free vote by the government, meaning they have not been told which way to vote. This softens the blow for Mr Sunak in against this backbench rebellion.


Yet another step away from conservative politics. Ban lying to children about climate change and gender would give them a better start in life. Apparently Sunak prefers fake philanthropy.


The philanthropy was what he most hated: all these expensive plans for moral forcible feeding, for compelling everybody to be cleaner, stronger, healthier and happier than they would have been by the unaided light of Nature. The longing to get away into a world where men and women sinned and begot, lived and died, as they chose, without the perpetual intervention of optimistic millionaires, had become so strong that he sometimes felt the chain of habit would snap with his first jerk.

Edith Wharton – Twilight Sleep (1927)

Marmite Jar

 

I’ve enjoyed a slice of toast and Marmite for as long as I can remember and Marmite fans will know this already, but there is an oddity about the standard jar.

Because Marmite is spread thinly and because of shape of the jar and the way Marmite clings to the inside, there is a technical issue with finishing the jar. However empty the jar seems to be, there is always the possibility that with a little dexterity, enough Marmite may be retrieved on the end of the knife to be worth smearing one more slice of buttered toast. Even half a slice.

Right to the end of the jar, Marmite jars are never quite empty. It’s more human than that, a reluctant realisation that however dextrous the knife-work it is finally time to buy another jar. Yesterday we acquired another jar and it’s time for another slice.

Spread thinly of course.

Male Talkers

I may have mentioned this before, but Mrs H and I often nip into a café for coffee. We’re retired and it’s one of the things we like to do when we’re out and about.

Something we’ve often noticed about cafés is the number of times we hear a man at another table who talks constantly, droning on and on for the entire time we are there. We’ve heard women talking at each other with barely a pause, but there are men whose talk is an incessant drone which seems to monopolise the conversation.

We came across an example today, a chap who seemed to be chatting away with a work colleague because he went on about such things as “pushing the boundaries” and other jargon we’re pleased to have left behind. His colleague, if she was a colleague, said something every now and then, but he hardly stopped talking at all.

The oddity of it is that neither Mrs H nor I can recall meeting such people during our working lives, not even at meetings. Men who never shut up weren’t part of our working environment.

Jammy

Meghan Markle unveils first product from her new American Riviera Orchard brand

The Duchess of Sussex has launched her new lifestyle brand with its first product – strawberry jam.

Meghan’s American Riviera Orchard firm sent out 50 jars to influencers around the world as part of the promotional effort with fashion designer Tracy Robbins and Argentine socialite Delfina Balquier among those receiving them.

That's a new one on me, I didn't know there are strawberry jam influencers out there. I wonder if Harry took time off from suing people so he could lend a hand making the stuff? 

Presumably he isn't the right kind of influencer, so a spot of stirring might be more his line .

The eternal generality

I was born tired — but with the quality of mother wit, the gift of women like Gloria — to that, for all my talking and listening, my waiting in vain for the eternal generality that seems to lie just beyond every argument and every speculation, to that I have added not one jot.

F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Beautiful and Damned (1922)


Taking the easier route, eternally adjustable generalities appear to be what educated midwits are after. Leak-proof simplifications midwittingly imbibed with their education. All of which is yet another generalisation, but fortunately not an eternal one. I hope not anyway.

Another aspect of eternally adjustably generalities is that they allow us to be superstitious without being traditionally superstitious. They facilitate secular mystique and the hunger for socially agreeable simplification. Without this, traditional political parties would go nowhere, which unfortunately for us is the only suitable place for them.

The search for eternal generalities is easy to understand though. Something like a solid scientific law, without the dry rigour of science, but politically, academically and socially useful. That’s another generality, but this one isn’t eternal either. 

And yet many sceptics must sometimes find themselves at one time or another waiting in vain for the eternal generality that seems to lie just beyond every argument and every speculation. 

The Lib Dem discount.

Liz Truss refuses to rule out running for Tory leader again

Liz Truss's tenure in Downing Street lasted just 49 days after her £45bn package of unfunded tax cuts triggered mass market turmoil. The former prime minister has since doubled down on what she was trying to achieve, and is touring the media ahead of the publication of a book...

The Lib Dems branded her a "national embarrassment" following the comments, while Labour said the prospect of her returning to office "will send shivers down the spine of working people".

Ah - it's the Lib Dems. They aren't at all embarrassing, apart from leader Ed Davey who may just conceivably be embarrassed by the Post Office scandal after being knighted in the 2016 new year honours for “political and public service”. 

But that doesn't count because there are many things Lib Dems have to discount. It's part of being a Lib Dem.

Headline emphasis

Department for Transport urged to put hard shoulders on smart motorways

Plea from RAC comes a year after plans for new smart motorway projects were cancelled amid longstanding safety concerns


RAC urges ministers to scrap all smart motorways over poor safety record

The RAC is calling on ministers to scrap smart motorways amid concerns over their safety and reinstate hard shoulders.

No mention of sacking anyone or scrapping the Department for Transport and starting again.

Hypocrisy - it just evolves

Mr. Airlie, picking daintily at his food, continued his stories: of philanthropists who paid starvation wages: of feminists who were a holy terror to their women folk: of socialists who travelled first-class and spent their winters in Egypt or Monaco: of stern critics of public morals who preferred the society of youthful affinities to the continued company of elderly wives: of poets who wrote divinely about babies' feet and whose children hated them.

Jerome K. Jerome - All Roads Lead to Calvary (1919)

Lots and lots of clowns

Ofcom chair Michael Grade says TV has become ‘exploitative, patronising and cruel’

Michael Grade, the chair of broadcasting regulator Ofcom, has said TV has become “exploitative and cruel”.

In a new interview, the peer and former chair of the BBC board said: “The exploitation dial has been switched up more and more for ratings. It makes me mad. I really don’t like it or enjoy it.

“Television has also become patronising in the sense of: ‘This will do for the audience.’ No mind at work behind it. No real craft thrown in. Just bread and circuses.”

The BBC has always been patronising, but I'm not so sure about bread and circuses. Bread and circuses without the bread perhaps, but lots and lots of clowns.    

Why do people prefer others to run their lives?

Thomas Sowell interviewed thirty years ago. His message is even more relevant today.

The boundaries of ordinary life

And, true enough, there was a look of gloom, as the twilight fell silently and sadly out of the sky, its gray or sable flakes intermingling themselves with the fast-descending snow. The storm, in its evening aspect, was decidedly dreary. It seemed to have arisen for our especial behoof, — a symbol of the cold, desolate, distrustful phantoms that invariably haunt the mind, on the eve of adventurous enterprises, to warn us back within the boundaries of ordinary life.

Nathaniel Hawthorne - The Blithedale Romance (1852)


After the forthcoming general election, Keir Starmer will go back within the boundaries of his ordinary life. His social class, friends, Labour party workers, Parliamentary colleagues, circle of contacts and the ordinary life of a prime minister as an annexe to all that. 

But after the electoral battle, Starmer will not venture back within the boundaries his voters’ ordinary lives because he was never there in the first place. He may ignore the boundaries of their ordinary lives for at least five years and that’s what he’ll do without ever needing to acknowledge that he’s doing it.

Yet Labour voters will still vote for a party leader who is not and cannot ever live within their world, because their boundaries are not his. Keir Starmer’s boundaries are Tony Blair's boundaries.

Of course this is merely a roundabout way of saying the world of governing elites isn’t ours, but the point to be made is that this claim is far more than the rhetoric of disenchantment. Their world isn’t ours and they intend to keep it that way.

Certain Afternoons

In England, in London, there are certain afternoons in winter when the clouds hang heavy and low and the light is so bleak that your heart sinks, but then you can look out of your window, and you see the coconut trees crowded upon the beach of a coral island. The strand is silvery and when you walk along in the sunshine it is so dazzling that you can hardly bear to look at it. Overhead the mynah birds are making a great to–do, and the surf beats ceaselessly against the reef. Those are the best journeys, the journeys that you take at your own fireside, for then you lose none of your illusions.

W. Somerset Maugham - The Trembling of a Leaf (1921)


Not only London, these afternoons occur in Derbyshire too, although I don't recall any mynah birds in my winter afternoon illusions.

Whopping

Mercedes upgrades its electric EQS to give the EV a huge 511 mile-range

Buyers of the updated EQS will get an extra 51 miles of range - now a whopping 511 miles in total - thanks to a new bigger battery.

The price is yet to be revealed but starting price will be at least what the current model costs, which is an eye-watering £112,000.


A little less than the range of our diesel with a full tank which we can fill in minutes. If anything, stories such as this make an EV even less appealing by associating an extremely high price with a respectable range. 

It's also a hint to we plebs that a car with a useful range may be out of our reach. Assuming this "whopping" range is genuinely achievable by customers of course.

When the right thing is the only thing

Angela Rayner says she will 'step down' if she is found to have committed a crime

The deputy Labour leader says she is "completely confident" she has followed all the rules as Greater Manchester Police reopens its investigation into her living arrangements before she became an MP.

Angela Rayner has said she will "do the right thing and step down" if she is found to have committed a crime in the police investigation into her former living arrangements.

It would be no surprise if she merely misunderstood the capital gains tax issue, but in a party of tax fetishists which has promised to enjoy a crackdown on legal tax avoidance, the "right thing" is the only thing.

There is another issue which will probably be ignored by the Metropolitan Language Police, but what does "step down" mean is a world of "levelling up"? Surely she means she'll step aside. Or even step up into real life.

Just Call Ed

 

We may assume that Net Zero envisages a vast increase in this type of recycling activity. Maybe "Sir" Ed Davey knows how it is going to work. Or Ed Miliband. Or some other Ed. 

  

All the agreeable camouflage

The quotes below are segments of a larger quote from John Galsworthy’s Castles in Spain collection published in 1928. He says that human nature doesn’t change, but the impact of accidental discoveries moulds our collective direction of travel.


The march of mankind is directed neither by his will, nor by his superstitions, but by the effect of his great and, as it were, accidental discoveries on his average nature. The discovery and exploitation of language, of fire, of corn, of ships, of metals, of gunpowder, of printing, of coal, steam, electricity, of flying machines (atomic energy has still to be exploited), acting on a human nature which is, practically speaking, constant, moulds the real shape of human life, under all the agreeable camouflage of religions, principles, policies, personages, and ideas.


Galsworthy was born into the upper middle class which ran the country and still does. He novels reflect his origins and the way he saw events sweeping his social class along with the irresistible evolution of change just as it does with every class. A humane pragmatist, he thought we could make the best of things without all the agreeable camouflage of religions, principles, policies, personages, and ideas.

If we return to the present day, it is easy enough to see that Galsworthy was presenting a useful aspect of what we encounter in our digital world. In spite of political claims to the contrary, there is a strange sense that nobody is really in control. Global communication, vastly more information than we could ever absorb and a far greater ability to select, check and reject any information has eroded the professional ascendency of elites.


After the discovery and exploitation of gunpowder and printing, the centuries stood somewhat still, until, with coal, steam, and modern machinery, a swift industrialism set in, which has brought the world to its recent state. In comparison with the effect of these discoveries and their unconscious influence on human life, the effect of political ideas is seen to be inconsiderable.


We see glimpses of this too. Political leaders and their ideas have become banal, little more than chatter on social media. Impersonal influences have side-lined the political arena and its futile debates. As if governments are partly running on autopilot, the levers of power no longer work as they did and few people want to know why.


For theories arise from and follow material states of being, rather than precede and cause them. British Liberalism, for example, did not give birth to that hard-headed child Free Trade (by Wealth out of Short Sight); it did not even inaugurate the “live and let live” theory; it followed on and crowned with a misty halo a state of long-acknowledged industrial ascendancy

Prussian “will to power” did not cause, it followed and crowned with thorns, the rising wave of German industry and wealth. And outstanding personalities such as Gladstone and Bismarck are rather made outstanding by the times they live in, than make those times outstanding.


The times we live in appear to be moulding themselves into a shape where the main human ingredient is not the political arena but human nature and whatever remains of human cultures.


This is one of two sober truths with which one has to reckon in forecasting the future of civilisation; the other is the aforesaid constancy of human nature. The fact that modern human nature is much more subtle, ambitious, and humane than the nature of primitive man, is not greatly important to creatures who live but three-score years and ten, and who in their mental and spiritual stature are on the whole no higher, and in physical development probably lower, than the Greeks and Romans.


Perhaps those cultures which successfully set aside all the agreeable camouflage are the only ones likely to survive.

Take back control

Labour pledges to ‘take back control’ of bus services and accelerate franchising

Labour has pledged to end the “postcode lottery” of bus services by speeding up the franchising process.

Since de-regulation in 1985, the party said services outside of London have “collapsed”.

Shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh said the plan would kickstart a revival of bus services across England.

The plan aims to create 250 million more passenger journeys per year and allow local transport authorities to “take back control”.

The key word is obvious - it's "control". Based on financial year 2022/2023, 250 million more passenger journeys per year in England would be an increase of approximately 7.4%. They probably don't expect Labour voters to check that. 


In the financial year 2022/23, the number of passenger journeys on local bus services in Great Britain amounted to 3.7 billion trips, a year-on-year increase of around twenty percent. During the same period, nearly 3.4 billion bus passenger journeys were reported in England.

Bet it's not empty by Monday

We’ve had a full diary this week. Grocery deliveries, arranging a walk with former colleagues, dentist check-up, helping Grandson with maths and chemistry GCSE revision, off out to lunch with relatives later today, Granddaughter is with us tomorrow and I have a hospital visit on Saturday. Probably a few other bits and bobs I’ve forgotten.

We have a diary in the kitchen to keep tabs on these things and I've just checked next week. We’ll have the school run but that’s done by 9am - nothing else in the diary. One week has diary entries every day and the following week is clear - that’s how it goes. Events don’t arrange themselves in an orderly manner.

Blimey - an empty week coming, maybe we’ll whizz off somewhere. Bet it's not empty by Monday.

What's the opposite of product placement?

Rishi Sunak offers 'fulsome apology' to Adidas Samba fans

The prime minister has been accused of "ruining" Adidas Sambas after being pictured wearing a pair at Downing Street - but he has a message for devotees of the classic trainer.

This isn't the first time the prime minister has made headlines because of his shoes.

In 2023, he was mocked for wearing Timbaland boots during a speech about the government's drive to "stop the boats", with people pointing out they were disproportionately large...

The year before that, he was criticised for wearing a £490 pair of suede Prada shoes to a building site.

And in 2021, people were quick to point out his £95 sliders as he prepared to deliver the budget.


I've no idea what an Adidas Samba is, or Timbaland boots, suede Prada shoes or £95 sliders. I now know they are types or brands of footwear though, so that's one benefit of keeping tabs on the news of the day. 

Countries must protect citizens from unicorn droppings

Europe's highest court rules countries must 'protect citizens from climate change' after legal action by 2,000 Swiss women - paving the way for British eco mobs to force the government to implement green policies

The case could open the door for more legal challenges from eco activists across the continent, including in the UK, where campaigners have been to court in recent months to fight the government on its climate policies.

Greta Thunberg was in the courtroom as the The European Court of Human Rights ruling was announced. 'These rulings are a call to action. They underscore the importance of taking our national governments to court,' the 21-year-old Swede said.


Oh well, apparently the lunacy and racketeering are to continue, but legal bods know best. 

IPCC 2001 Assessment Report. 

The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.

Small Spaces

People struggling to get out of cars parked in bays due to increasing size of vehicles

Drivers are struggling to get in and out of parked cars because of the increasing size of their vehicles, according to a new study.

Many manufacturers have increased the width of vehicles despite the size of most UK car park spaces being based on guidelines dating back to the 1970s, research by Churchill Motor Insurance found.

It isn't only the size of parking spaces of course, but the problem is something we've noticed. We don't park in our local Sainsbury's car park for that reason, the spaces are too narrow, the chances of some monster pickup parking next to us are too high. Plus the problem of shopping trolley scrapes of course.

A Fraternity

Many people will have seen these results of a recent Rasmussen poll on political attitudes within US elites, but with a UK general election looming, it is worth a reminder. Our elites are not likely to be much different. 

From the video -
For those who are wondering who are the elite 1% because Rasmussen doesn’t spell it out in these clips. It was people who make more than $150,000 a year, have advanced degrees, and live in densely populated cities. And this group gives Biden an 80% approval rating.

Other people will pay

Labour to launch £5bn crackdown on tax avoiders to close gap in spending plans

Rachel Reeves has said an incoming Labour government would launch a £5bn crackdown on tax avoiders to close a gap in its spending plans exposed by Jeremy Hunt scrapping the non-dom regime to finance tax cuts.

Warning households and businesses that Labour was prepared to adopt tough measures to tackle tax fraud and non-compliance, Reeves said the funding would be used to pay for free school breakfast clubs and additional NHS appointments.

It is remarkable how certain adults nurture within themselves such a dismal collection of futilities as represented by this commonplace but abjectly typical example. The ability doesn't appear to demand much training either.  

Yet there is not the smallest, most minute nano-possibility that this magical £5bn will behave itself and do two things -

1. Turn up as planned. 
2. Fail to disappear without trace into the gaping maw of the public sector.

Every adult in the room knows this, even those who have trained themselves to stand up on their hind legs and claim otherwise. Every adult in the room knows it is merely an opportunity to emit certain words and phrases thought to suggest that other people will pay. 

They won't. 

Scoop

 

Nothing

It’s odd how the notion of sustainability has been appropriated for an unsustainable political meaning. Yet a basic and stable idea of sustainability would be a continuation of what works for any culture. 

At its most basic level this is the stable and sustainable nurturing of reproduction. Without it there is nothing else worth sustaining and within a few generations there is nothing to sustain. At this level, sustainability is that simple.

Here in the UK and the developed world generally, the ideal of a culture which generally works, a sustainable culture has been undermined in a number of familiar ways. Take this Elizabeth Skilton poster used in an earlier post.

 

From one perspective it is an idealised image of nineteen fifties family life. From a more basic perspective it is an image of what can make a sustainable culture sustainable. It depicts family life as one of the principal ways to nurture and sustain the most basic cultural necessity – sustainable reproduction.

Attacks on this ideal were always likely to be destructive, especially as there are clearly other factors at work apart from ideological political meddling. In which case perhaps it is better to stop the ideological meddling and treat sustainable family life as more than an ideal. Culturally we may perish anyway, but without an adequate replacement for this crucial ideal we have little chance of avoiding it.

What else is there beyond the sustainability of reproduction?

What have progressives proposed as a substitute for family life?

Nothing.

What an odd thing to do

Ofcom launches investigation into alleged rule breach by Labour's David Lammy

A radio show hosted by shadow foreign secretary David Lammy is being investigated by Ofcom after it received more than 50 complaints.

The MPs' register of financial interests shows Mr Lammy earns around £1,000 per episode, with his latest entry seeing him paid £5,460 for five shows in January.

And alongside a number of other speaking commitments, he is often cited as the highest-paid Labour MP for his work outside of parliament.

I can't imagine turning on the radio to listen to David Lammy. What an odd thing to do. However - 

This morning we popped into a Costa coffee shop after visiting a garden centre and negotiating the third world roads around Eastwood. It was probably something to do with kids still being off school because of the Easter holidays, but Costa was certainly very busy. 

For the staff it was non-stop, pushing out the orders, clearing the tables and still the queue was no shorter. They hardly had any respite while were there and no doubt weren't paid much above the minimum wage.  

MPs are extremely well paid compared to Costa Baristas because... 

Well - it's an interesting question.

It's hard not to snigger

Angela Rayner 'played by the rules' over tax affairs, claims Labour's David Lammy

The shadow foreign secretary defends his party's deputy leader, telling Sky News he is "confident" she has "done nothing wrong" after fresh reports about her living

But challenged over why she would not publish her tax returns, having called on Rishi Sunak to do so, Mr Lammy said: "I think there's a different arrangement and expectation for the prime minister than there is in this context and we are not yet in government."

Assuming this is the best he can do, support from David Lammy certainly has a chucked under a bus feel to it. I wouldn't want him supporting me. 

"We are not yet in government," he says. Doesn't quite sound like an HMRC consideration. 

But not disillusioned enough

Adam Boulton: Keir Starmer should expect to come under vicious assault from day one if Labour wins landslide


I hope so, we need some entertainment as decline is almost certainly set to continue unless "Sir" Keir's lot are hiding their collective lights under some remarkably opaque bushels.


There is nothing like the enthusiasm there was for the charismatic Tony Blair in 1997 - Keir Starmer has negative personal ratings, only much better than Rishi Sunak.

Voters are more disillusioned by politicians of any kind than they were then but a landslide would be a landslide and there are some comparisons to be drawn.

But not disillusioned enough to stop playing games on their phones and take the time to work out what might be going wrong. 

Alternative view of AI

 

Devolution has been a disaster

Sam Bidwell has a timely and useful Critic piece on Tony Blair's devolution disaster.


Devolution has been a disaster

SNP incompetence is a feature of the system and not a bug

Another week, another terrible Scottish law — this time, it’s the SNP’s Hate Crime and Public Order Act that’s in the spotlight. The new legislation has drawn criticism from the likes of JK Rowling and Elon Musk, who have rightly condemned the Act’s vague and expansive definition of “hate crime”.

So far, so standard — the Hate Crime Act isn’t the first dodgy bit of law-making to ooze its way out of Holyrood. Last year, it was the Scottish Government’s proposed reforms to gender recognition rules which provoked outrage from gender-critical feminists and unionists alike; before that, it was their heavy-handed Covid response, and the murky investigation into former First Minister Alex Salmond. Like clockwork, conservative commentators in London take to their columns to crusade against whatever the SNP is up to, each new infraction lending credence to their narratives about the madness of separatism.


The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of how damagingly incompetent the Blair government was. Also how useless tribal voting can be when it comes to dealing with hopelessly incompetent political parties.


In fact, there is no reason to believe that devolution has produced better outcomes for Scotland. At the same time, the competing mandates of Westminster and Holyrood make it increasingly difficult for our national government to govern the whole nation. Scotland’s educational outcomes lag far behind those in England, mismanagement of public contracts has seen the cost of major infrastructure projects rise rapidly, and according to Ipsos Scotland, just a quarter of Scots think that the SNP has done a good job of managing the economy...

It’s partly a human capital problem. Scotland’s best and brightest — whether in politics, administration, or journalism — are often drawn down to England, leaving the devolved government up in Edinburgh to be staffed, managed, and scrutinised by glorified local officials. Scotland’s native media infrastructure is woefully ill-suited to probing the activities of a Parliament that exercises real power over complex areas of policy — and at the end of the day, if things go wrong, the Scottish Government can always blame Westminster. After all, it is still the man in London who — theoretically — holds the purse strings.

The zero carbon off switch is the tech to go for

Mini LED vs OLED: which TV screen technology is better?

The world of TVs can be a confusing place. OLED, QLED, LED, LCD, Mini LED, MicroLED... the list goes on. We're here to demystify these terms, and explain what they actually mean for you, the viewer.

This time it's the turn of OLED and Mini LED. We'll explain both screen technologies and see how they compare so that when it comes time to buy a new TV, you'll know which is best for you.

A pint at bedtime

By this time the pot-boy of the Sol's Arms appearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs. Piper accepts that tankard and retires indoors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs. Perkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever since it was fetched from the same hostelry by young Perkins before he was sent to bed.

Charles Dickens – The Old Curiosity Shop (1841)


Or better still –

Nodding his approval of this decisive and manly course of procedure, the landlord retired to draw the beer, and presently returning with it, applied himself to warm the same in a small tin vessel shaped funnel-wise, for the convenience of sticking it far down in the fire and getting at the bright places. This was soon done, and he handed it over to Mr Codlin with that creamy froth upon the surface which is one of the happy circumstances attendant on mulled malt.

Charles Dickens – The Old Curiosity Shop (1841)

It is impossible that you should be sincere

‘I am sincere!’ she broke in, with more passion than he had ever imagined her capable of uttering.

‘I cannot call it sincerity. It is impossible that you should be sincere; you live in the latter end of the nineteenth century; the conditions of your birth and education forbid sincerity of this kind.’

George Gissing - A Life's Morning (1888)


An interesting passage where Gissing’s character says that it is not possible for people of a certain social class and education to be sincere in certain circumstances. Today we tend to call this hypocrisy, but it is useful to see it as a selective failure to acknowledge the real world, a failure to be sincere. 

Insincerity is one of the roots of woke culture, accounting for that strange ability to blend ersatz sincerity with blatant virtue-signalling. To outsiders, woke rhetoric seems insincere because it is. It is not rooted in the real world, but in a politically ersatz world where ersatz sincerity is correspondingly necessary. 

Today it is one of the problems faced by sceptics in a world where professional insincerity is no obstacle to advancement. It never was an obstacle of course. Yet although such cultural shifts are nebulous and diffuse, perhaps the value of sincerity has been eroded. It certainly seems like it.

A major problem faced by sceptics is that virtue-signalling is a widespread substitute for public sincerity, as are emotional outbursts, high-profile stunts, appeals to authority, arm waving and so on. But for sceptics there is a reliable guide through the swamp –

As for me, I will believe in no belief that does not make itself manifest by outward signs. I will think no preaching sincere that is not recommended by the practice of the preacher.

Anthony Trollope - Barchester Towers (1857)

This of course is the guide to sincerity which is not ersatz - outward signs. It is the guide in our day just as it was in Trollope’s. 

Today we know all about outward signs which point unerringly towards insincerity. The rich climate activist who travels by private jet, the celebrity with multiple houses, the journalist with a villa in a warmer climate, the callow young activist with wealthy parents.

It is impossible that you should be sincere...

BBC bias ten years on

Back in March, David Keighley wrote a News-watch piece about his ten years spent attacking BBC bias.


TEN YEARS ON, BBC BIAS IS WORSE THAN EVER

ASTONISHINGLY, it is almost ten years since I first wrote my first blog for The Conservative Woman website. By that time, I had been friends with and worked with Kathy Gyngell – whose brainchild it was – for almost 30 years, 14 of them in trying to hold the BBC in check over its outrageously pro-EU coverage, through News-watch.

The springboard to that blog a decade ago? The BBC’s incestuous, self-serving infatuation with Glastonbury. I noted that the Corporation was sending its usual hundreds-strong army to mount disproportionately lavish coverage of the event.

And why? I argued that in the BBC’s warped events diary, this was a ‘woke’ happening par excellence – because at its heart was support for a galaxy of right-on causes such as climate alarmism, led that year by Greenpeace.


Anyone paying attention will know this, but the whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder that no major political party and no government is ever likely to do anything constructive about BBC bias. The political risk isn't worth it. 

Many MPs appear to rationalise this persistent failure by learning to see voters in much the same way that the BBC sees viewers - as the audience. 

We seem to have an inward-looking Parliamentary culture where viewers are voters and voters are viewers and neither guise makes them into decision-makers.    


A decade on has anything changed at the BBC, and is it likely to any time soon? Sadly, no. In late January, Lucy Frazer, the useless Tories’ Culture Secretary, very belatedly released the BBC’s Mid-Term Review (MTR)...

The MTR supposedly beefed up the complaints process by suggesting that Ofcom should become more rigorous about BBC bias. The reality is that since 2017 Ofcom has seen fit to investigate only a handful of BBC complaints. Most of its Content Board have strong BBC connections and instead focus their energies on attacking GB News.

Thus, nothing is happening to halt the ‘progressive’ agenda embraced by everyone at the BBC from the Director General downwards. All anyone can now do to resist BBC bias is to stop watching.

Restricted to everyone

Jill Biden privately pleas with Joe to stop Gaza’s suffering, report says

First Lady Dr Jill Biden is reportedly one of the strongest voices calling for the end of civilian deaths in Gaza in the White House and has been urging her husband, President Joe Biden, to help cease the violence.

Earlier this week, Mr Biden met with Muslim community members – something the first lady allegedly said she disapproved of because of Mr Biden’s support of Israel in the conflict with Hamas, according to a New York Times report.

One meeting attendee, Salima Suswell, the founder of the Black Muslim Leadership Council, said that Mr Biden recounted that Dr Biden had been urging him to, “Stop it, stop it now.”

Do they read as they write, or do modern journalists just skip the reading part altogether? The word 'private' doesn't usually include the whole world.

More likely is that the story comes via Joe's handlers who want to send a political signal, a signal so private it has to be restricted to the rest of the world.

The Seat Reservation

 

Let's go to Mam Tor

 

Easter weekend traffic to Mam Tor in Derbyshire. Notoriously busy anyway, but we never go there to find out for ourselves.

Vanity Mirrors

Huge row as giant 2,000-acre solar farm to be built overlooking King Charles's Highgrove

James Gray, the Conservative MP for North Wiltshire, opposes the plans.

On his website he said: "Of the ten largest solar parks in England, eight are in our beloved county...We have 42 operational solar farms with a further 12 under planning or construction, nearly all in the north of the county.

"They cover 3,000 acres, which is more than any other county in England...

"And now we have an absolutely outrageous application for vast new solar parks under the misleadingly rustic title 'Lime Down Solar Park'.

"It will be 2,000 acres of vanity mirrors stretching from Luckington to Malmesbury, from Sherston to Hullavington, from the M4 to Corston.

They aren't mirrors of course, and they aren't being planned out of vanity, but it's an excellent way to describe them. 

Mr Gray seems to have a solid record of voting against this kind of nonsense, but it doesn't appear to have had any effect on stopping the rot. I'd have voted for him, but it would have ended up as a Conservative vote, not a conservative vote.

Apart from the vanity mirrors issue, this story does highlight a conservative voter's dilemma. Do I still vote for a decent individual who is a member of a failed party? 

A cascade of cans already kicked down the road

Sir Keir Starmer needs to level with voters - concrete change may only come in a second Labour term

While the Labour leader will look towards the local elections as an important staging post on his path to power, he may also be trying to manage expectations of what a future Labour government can do...

But beyond the drama of the Conservative fortunes and the prime minister's fate, what is also emerging in this election campaign is the secondary strap of Sir Keir's 'change' message.

When he says change, what he really means is patience, and that is perhaps the national conversation we are going to be having much more in the run-up to this general election.


If concrete change is only scheduled for a second Labour government, then it isn't easy to see what that "national conversation" would be about. A list of things Sir Keir's regime isn't going to achieve could be compiled now, which seems to leave a significant shortage of conversational material for the next five years.

A list of things Sir Keir's regime isn't going to talk about could also be compiled now, so that won't help the "national conversation" either. I suppose football is one possibility.

The exciting world of Net Zero apartments

Why are North Koreans avoiding the upper floors of newly built apartments?

People living on upper floors have to carry everything they need to their homes, including water drawn from wells and firewood, a source told Daily NK

According to the source, the province began building high-rise apartments in Chongjin five or six years ago on the orders of the central government. But because the apartments have no elevators, residents on the upper floors have a hard time getting up and down. They also lack reliable electricity and water, making them unpopular with locals.

With no elevators, no running water, no central heating and unreliable electricity, it sounds as if North Korea has already ventured into the exciting world of Net Zero apartments. 

Our lot must be watching with great interest.   

April Fool's Day has become invisible

Trump and Republicans unite in fury at Biden after Trans Visibility Day falls on Easter Sunday by chance

Republicans, led by Donald Trump, are sounding off on Joe Biden after he issued a statement recognising Trans Visibility Day becasue [sic] it happened to coincide with Easter Sunday this year.

Hmm - the most visible group in the developed world needs a visibility day.

It's rank incompetence

 

Let us count the number of people who are surprised

A&E waits: Hundreds of patients a week in England may have died unnecessarily

A study found there was likely an excess death for every 72 patients who spent eight to 12 hours in A&E. Nurses say the "crisis" is "taking lives".

More than 250 patients a week in England may have died unnecessarily last year due to very long waits for a bed in A&E, new estimates suggest.

A study by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) suggests patients are put at risk by spending hours in A&E, particularly after a decision has been made to admit them.

Media Dowsing

I’ve been probing the media via what's called media dowsing. It’s a plausible idea where you imagine you are holding two dowsing rods, but these are mental dowsing rods. 

To dowse headlines and general media guff, first relax in a quiet room. Remove all distractions and with those mental dowsing rods ready, quietly scan headlines, articles and advertisements with as little interest as possible. Not too difficult I imagine.

While mentally dowsing the media, make a quiet note of any word or phrase which, in a sense twitches those dowsing rods. For example, here are three sentences I came up with during a recent media dowsing session. Do they offer clues about what lies beneath?

 

1. Rishi Starmer may Rayner his poll lead say Donkey Sanctuary foresight experts during luxury sustainable housing crisis luncheon.

Okay - my first attempt almost makes sense, so there could be hidden depths in there.


2. Exotic mobile astrology jobs up for grabs in a sustainable world of AI teaching beta politicians about the dramatic solar eclipse of human experience.

No.2 is a little better because it seems to mean more than the first attempt, but in chasing that ephemeral meaning it loses something too.


3. Millions of households behind existential battle for record pizza deliveries after maps turn purple when filming begins with optimistic doom.

Could possibly be something in there, but I’m not totally convinced by the whole idea. Yet our media do have a level of shallowness which could still be worth dowsing in search of something deeper.