Trust the Experts

Many thanks for all the anniversary congratulations - we're just about to whizz off. As I look out through the window before I crank up the jalopy and wait for the sat nav to warm up, I can't help noticing how grey, wet and cold it is outside.

Not entirely what we were led to expect by the climate experts, but we shouldn't confuse weather with climate. Trust the experts - only they know how to confuse weather with climate - plus journalists, politicians, celebrities, activists, the BBC...

...I'm not supposed to be doing this, I'm supposed to be packing the car.

Short Break

Mrs H and I have our 50th wedding anniversary coming up so we're off to the coast for a short break. Blogging is likely to be limited until Sunday.

State-paid functionaries

The working man no longer wishes to remain a working man, or the peasant to continue a peasant, while the most humble members of the middle classes admit of no possible career for their sons except that of State-paid functionaries. Instead of preparing men for life French schools solely prepare them to occupy public functions, in which success can be attained without any necessity for self-direction or the exhibition of the least glimmer of personal initiative.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: a study of the popular mind (1895)


And so it continues to this day. Expand university admissions and we were bound to see an increased demand for careers as State-paid functionaries. It's what our MPs are. Marginal seats may be less secure than a career in the Civil Service, the NHS or the BBC, but State-paid functionary is what many MPs are, especially those who bagged a secure seat years ago. 

Our MPs are advised by more State-paid functionaries, pass laws drafted by State-paid functionaries but supposedly they oversee the activities of millions of State-paid functionaries. It can't work as claimed and it doesn't.

Keir Starmer seems to think it's all a jolly good idea, so much so that we need more of it. From what we see so far, he intends to bring the role of MPs even closer to that of a of a State-paid functionary. 

BBC Professionalism

BBC presenter sparks fury after calling for Donald Trump to be 'murdered' by Joe Biden

David Aaronovitch, who presents Radio 4's Briefing Room show, took to X/Twitter shortly after 5 pm and said: "If I was Biden I'd hurry up and have Trump murdered on the basis that he is a threat to America's security #SCOTUS".

The hashtag suggests his wild opinion was sparked by the ruling from the Supreme Court today, which ruled that former presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for their official acts.

The post from Mr Aaronovitch sparked instant backlash from those who saw it, with many pointing out an egregious breach of the corporation's rules around employee impartiality.

This is just one more BBC lapse from anything resembling professional standards. It doesn't even reach casual blogging standards, but past performance suggests there will be more lapses because it's a feature, not a lapse at all. 

We seem to reached a point where the BBC has collectively decided it may as well stop pretending to know what employee impartiality means.

Fine - if there is a market for crude bias, go for it and get rid of the licence fee.

Kidnapped by Aliens

Did something similar happen to Joe Biden? We should be told.

Sponsored Connections

Lacking hope, desperate for change: the UK towns devastated by Tory rule

There were about 30 people standing outside Birmingham Central Mosque, and they formed as diverse a crowd as the city’s population. It was food bank day: inside a portable building in the car park, a team of four spirited women were efficiently sorting through crates of groceries and handing those who had finally reached the front of the line what they needed.

As they did their work, we had a snatched conversation. “The queues are getting longer,” one of them said.

Polls suggest that voters are likely to vote for even more devastation, this time inflicted by a Labour government. There is no indication to suggest otherwise.

It's tempting to think that anyone voting for Keir Starmer's Labour party must have a long-term vacancy in the top storey, but it's not that. Most people aren't sceptics, if they were, our main political parties wouldn't exist and Keir Starmer wouldn't be a major political leader. Something else leads people to waste their voting opportunities, however flimsy those opportunities may be.

It has been said that too many people don't make connections, abstract connections between different things. An example of that would be a connection between the likely direction of a future Labour government and Keir Starmer's known faith in government by bureaucrat and his inclination to go back on anything he has said previously. 

To ask why people don't make this particular connection is probably too deep, it is simpler to stick with the surface of things. The mainstream media do not pursue the obvious connection between Starmer's fashionable mendacity and his likely behaviour as Prime Minister, so the connection is not prominent in the mainstream media debate. 

Mainstream media connections are sponsored connections, sponsored commercially or politically by staying on-message wherever the money or the power are. Off-message connections just aren't made and many voters are not sceptical enough to make them.