At the Railway Station, Upway

Thomas Hardy

"There is not much that I can do,
For I've no money that's quite my own!"
Spoke up the pitying child –
A little boy with a violin
At the station before the train came in, -
"But I can play my fiddle to you,
And a nice one 'tis, and good in tone!"


The man in the handcuffs smiled;
The constable looked, and he smiled, too,
As the fiddle began to twang;
And the man in the handcuffs suddenly sang
Uproariously:
"This life so free
Is the thing for me!"
And the constable smiled, and said no word,
As if unconscious of what he heard;
And so they went on till the train came in –
The convict, and boy with the violin.

They walk among us

It's sad too. Another way to look at propaganda is the damage it does to the susceptible, those people it tips over the edge. They aren't all useful idiots.

A striking lack of focus

Tory leadership contest shows striking lack of focus on issues that cost party the election

This conference does not feel like a gathering of a party that just suffered an existential election defeat less than 100 days ago.

There's a similar perhaps delusionally bullish vibe among MPs and defeated candidates, who are lapping up the short term tempest faced by Sir Keir Starmer's government and display a belief the gap back to power may not be as big as they feared mere weeks ago.

It would be odd if that lost focus suddenly returned thanks to Starmer's antics. When one of the Tory hopefuls draws the leadership short straw, a bunch of safe seat survivors isn't the best basis to reinvigorate the party. 

Maybe they think Labour could turn out to be even worse than anyone now expects, which is certainly possible with people like Mad Ed Miliband around.  

Other people’s ideas

Voters gave up on Tory ‘bickering’, says party leadership hopeful

Voters gave up on the Conservatives’ “bickering”, James Cleverly has said during his campaign to become the party’s leader.

The shadow home secretary, who first became a minister during Theresa May’s premiership, claimed as soon as his party had named a new prime minister, “there were people within the party who set about removing them”.

Asked about his past defence of former Conservative Party policies, the shadow home secretary said: “I have been a team player, which has meant I have had to promote other people’s ideas. I was happy to do so, it’s what you do as part of a team.”


Other people’s ideas eh? A pity they weren't conservative ideas or even common sense ideas, true ideas, insightful ideas, scientific ideas, ideas about integrity and veracity, pragmatic ideas about genuine problems such as a ridiculously excessive pandemic response, or knife crime, useless university courses, idiot academics, idiot media, the failings of state education and the NHS, our inability to complete major projects on time or within budget, or ideas about crumbling roads, the insanity of Net Zero or the crucial importance of free speech or even liberal ideas where 'liberal' is not a code word for illiberal. 

A pity they weren't ideas about resisting trends to describe anyone concerned about immigration,  excessive taxation, the iniquity of the BBC or anyone to the right of Stalin as "far right".  

Short but entertaining

"Titania McGrath" has a short but entertaining Critic piece on free speech.


Free speech is fascist

Words must be controlled to ensure that Starmer’s subjects behave themselves

What did Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Ivan the Terrible, Genghis Khan, Idi Amin and Caligula have in common? That’s right: they were all able to speak.

This quite obviously proves that free speech is a tyrannical concept, one that can lead directly to murder, terrorism, genocide and — worst of all — misgendering.

And so it is a relief to see that one of Keir Starmer’s key priorities as prime minister is to crack down on online speech. Already he has ingenuously granted early release from prison for drug dealers, sex offenders and violent criminals to free up space for bigots who have said nasty things on social media.


Worth reading - making fun of the creeps is both satisfying and probably more effective than we know.

Katie Hopkins: Phillip Schofield gossip

We don't watch TV and I don't know much about Phillip Schofield, but this entertaining Katie Hopkins video is worth watching as a commentary on how his relaunch is being handled. 

The how is interesting, the why is obvious - money.

Levelling up

Canterbury MP Rosie Duffield quits Labour - criticising Sir Keir Starmer in resignation letter

In her letter she accused the prime minister and his top team of "sleaze, nepotism and apparent avarice" which are "off the scale".


With Rosie Duffield gone, Labour MPs are collectively less principled than they were before, so here's a possible solution to that.

The idea is to get rid of one of Labour's more ghastly and unprincipled MPs as a kind of positive trade-off for losing Ms Duffield. Make it two or more MPs and idea could be called "Levelling Up".

There are numerous examples of MPs worth losing, beginning with Keir Starmer, but there are many more.

'Broken' news industry

'Broken' news industry faces uncertain future

From disinformation campaigns to soaring scepticism, plummeting trust and economic slumps, the global media landscape has been hit with blow after blow.

World News Day, taking place on Saturday with the support of hundreds of organisations including AFP, aims to raise awareness about the challenges endangering the hard-pressed industry.

- 'Broken business model' -

In 2022, UNESCO warned that "the business model of the news media is broken".

I suppose it's possible that trivia, misinformation, distortion, bias, propaganda, obvious lies, clickbait, ignorance, celebrity obsession, arrogance, and supercilious demonising of ordinary people might get up the nose of ordinary people. 

Just a thought.

Fool’s errand

Marc Sidwell has a useful CAPX piece on what he calls Starmer’s quest for control. Useful because Sidwell refers to Starmer's quest as a fool's errand which it is and it is worth repeating.


Starmer’s quest for control is a fool’s errand

If you want to understand Keir Starmer’s approach to government – and why his new administration already seems to be struggling – there was an important clue in his conference speech this week.

In what must have struck his speechwriter as a dazzling rhetorical trick, the Prime Minister attempted to hijack the Brexit slogan ‘Take back control’. Starmer blasted the Conservatives for being committed to an ‘uncontrolled market’, and contrasted that to his vision for a more powerful state, saying: ‘if you want a country with more control… that is a Labour argument’. Shortly afterwards, of course, he confused sausages with hostages – an apt illustration that control is harder than it looks, even over your own vocal cords.

Rachel Reeves sounded a variation on the same theme in her conference speech as well, stating: ‘government cannot just get out of the way and leave markets to their own devices.’ Yet before the end of the week it emerged that her effort to squeeze billions out of Britain’s non-doms looks set to lose money and will have to be rethought. Letting government take charge turns out to be unexpectedly challenging after all.


The whole piece is well worth reading as a quiet reminder of how miserably ill-equipped the Starmer cabinet is. Another reminder that we have a government of careerist dolts who reached this position without having paid anywhere near enough attention to what works as opposed to what doesn't. A good word for them is 'fools', but there are many others equally apt, as we are finding out.

Starmer has been seduced by the glamour of control. It is, no doubt, thrilling for those who find themselves in charge: you can see it in the faces of Labour’s new front bench. Yet as accusations of cronyism and special favours for the chosen few fill the front pages, and as the levers of state start to rattle ineffectively in his hands, the Prime Minister should reflect on whether taking control away from everyone else is really such a promising political strategy. When things go wrong, there is, after all, no one else left to blame.

Open House

Wes Streeting risks fury after 'using Lord Alli’s penthouse for £20k fundraiser'

Wes Streeting co-hosted the event, held in March 2022 and featuring other guests including former EastEnders actor Lord Cashman, with fellow Labour MP Kim Leadbeater.

It seems clear enough that Lord Alli doesn't spend much time there, it's always taken up by Labour bigwigs. I hope they invite him round occasionally.

The rise and rise of amoral careerists

These are voices which you ought to shun just as Ulysses did; he would not sail past them until he was lashed to the mast. They are no less potent; they lure men from country, parents, friends, and virtuous ways; and by a hope that, if not base, is ill-starred, they wreck them upon a life of baseness. How much better to follow a straight course and attain a goal where the words "pleasant" and "honourable" have the same meaning!

Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD 


As we know too well, modern politicians may be described in all kinds of ways which match their dishonourable behaviour. As a general perspective, the things they say and do are probably best seen as the outcome of what politics has become over recent decades, a dishonourable career for dishonourable people. A career for amoral careerists. 

UK political parties are politically similar because they generally attract the same kind of people for the same reason and that reason isn't altruistic political conviction. Politics at a national and international level offers a career suited to amoral careerists, not altruists. It is much the same at senior levels of major bureaucracies, quangos, NGOs and so on.

National politicians do not necessarily expect to become rich via a career in politics because they are not unusually talented. They do expect to become wealthy enough to be secure while making useful contacts for a a lucrative career if they lose their seat. They may lack the talent to succeed on their own merits outside a taxpayer supported environment, but once acquired, their inside experience of power has significant value.

National politics is a career which attracts people suited to it, generally those who expect to do well out of it. Not all of them are amoral careerists, but the system selects those most suited to its functions, not honourable people.

The declowning begins

Keir Starmer UN speech - live: PM to meet Donald Trump before tonight’s address amid Middle East conflict

Sir Keir Starmer is set to meet Donald Trump in New York before delivering a speech to world leaders at the UN General Assembly.

As part of a raft of bilateral meetings, he will discuss ongoing conflicts between Israel, Lebanon and Palestine with world leaders and US presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

The prime minister will use tonight’s address to say that the UK is returning to “responsible global leadership” because it is in British interests to address problems around the world.

An attempt to declown "Sir" Keir Starmer which may or may not be successful, it depends how his speech goes. 

Obviously “responsible global leadership” is the latest wheeze of Team Starmer, probably dreamed up while on the way there. Maybe he could try responsible national leadership first though - just a suggestion.

Only fifty-eight

Above all, they were afraid of catching cold, and so put on thick clothes even in the summer and warmed themselves at the stove. Granny was fond of being doctored, and often went to the hospital, where she used to say she was not seventy, but fifty-eight; she supposed that if the doctor knew her real age he would not treat her, but would say it was time she died instead of taking medicine.

Anton Chekhov – Peasants (1897)


One of those attitudes not quite admitted among the chattering classes is the fate of those they consider to be too old, too useless or both. It’s an old attitude which every now and then bubbles to the surface in various covert and sometimes not so covert guises.

One of the covert guises is fiction. Writers of fiction are able to slip it into situations and conversations as part of the social ambience their writing aims to create. Fictional situations and fictional characters, but probably not unfamiliar to many readers. The most famously explicit example must be Charles Dickens –


“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned—they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.”

“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides—excuse me—I don’t know that.”

Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol (1843)


Sometimes it goes further –

 
In any case he did not like old men. The War had carried him with the rest upon the swing of that popular cry “Every one over seventy to the lethal chamber.”

Hugh Walpole – The Young Enchanted (1921)

Not invited

UK consumer confidence hit by budget gloom; Elon Musk ‘not invited to UK investment summit’ – business live

Elon Musk’s comments about this summer’s UK riots have cost him a place at next month’s International Investment Summit, the BBC reports.

The Summit is part of the Labour government’s push to stimulate economic growth, by attracting more spending to the UK, and is expected to take place at a central London location.

The goal is to show that the UK is “open for business” under a new government.


Oh dear, Musk's comments 'cost him a place' so from the off it's political sensibilities before business. No doubt the goal also depends on how much bureaucratic activity the business ushers in. 

Meanwhile, Musk seems to be enjoying himself in New York where Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni described him as a "precious genius". That's not Starmer's style at all.

Elon Musk denies 'romantic relationship' with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni

He said she was "even more beautiful inside than outside", and she hailed him as a "precious genius" - but Elon Musk has denied rumours of a 'romantic relationship' with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

That went well

Labour conference votes to reverse cut to winter fuel allowance

A motion calling for Labour to reverse its cut to the winter fuel allowance has been backed by party conference members, in an embarrassing blow to Sir Keir Starmer.

While there is nothing binding about the vote, it puts further pressure on the Labour leadership over its controversial decision to take away the benefit from millions of pensioners.

The motion was put forward by the trade union Unite, which has accused the government of embarking on "austerity mark two".

As has been foreseen by everyone but two members of the Starmer cabinet, this mess was easily predictable and it won't get any better as winter looms. All Starmer has left to get him through it while remaining politically intact is leadership and charisma or an enormous dollop of luck. 

Luck it is then. Maybe Lord Alli has some.

Rough Going

The other day Mrs H and I were perambulating around town when we found ourselves walking behind a chap on an electric mobility scooter. He was faster than we were, but had to keep slowing down because of rough stretches of pavement.

Eventually on a particularly rough section he noticed that we were behind him and waved us past. It’s not something I’d noticed before but some of our pavements are in such a poor state that they aren’t suited to mobility scooters.

I’d noticed the pavements of course, we walk on them all the time, wearing them out many years before the council is quite ready to patch them up again. I’m surprised it’s not a bigger issue, because the chap we saw couldn’t even maintain our walking pace. Admittedly that pace is fairly brisk, but electric mobility scooters are usually quicker.

The empty road to serfdom

Alex Klaushofer has an interesting Critic reminder about Vision Zero.


The empty road to serfdom

“Vision Zero” is a tyrannical anti-driving dream

Those of us who appreciate the ability of vehicles to get us from one place to another will have noticed a strange phenomenon besetting Britain’s roads.

First came the planters, the wooden roadblocks deposited by some of our councils in the hope that closing roads might halt the spread of Covid. The measures were part of central government’s Active Travel programme, which morphed into environment-based road closures enforced by cameras and fines. Since then, the reasons have changed, varying from pollution and congestion to health and safety. But restrictions on driving have continued apace.

Few people know this, but many of these policies are underpinned by a new ideology called Vision Zero. Like Zero Covid, it offers a seductive blend of idealism and virtue, “a fundamentally different way to approach traffic safety” aimed at eliminating the number of serious accidents on the roads. The idea, originating in Sweden and promoted by organisations such as Vision Zero Network, is being embraced by authorities around the UK. Witness Transport for London’s Vision Zero statement: “The Vision Zero approach is based on the fundamental conviction that loss of life and serious injuries are neither acceptable nor inevitable”.


The whole piece is well worth reading, although I suspect many people do know about Vision Zero because it was a minor but interesting news item when adopted by Sweden in 1997. To the surprise of nobody who pays attention to these matters, it has evolved into a miserable bureaucratic dream of complete control over anything to do with travel. 

It’s not just local government taking this autocratic approach. Without any public debate, the UK government has signed up to “the Safe System”, a generic term for approaches such as Vision Zero advocated by the World Health Organisation and other supra-national bodies based on the idea that “human beings’ lives and health should never be compromised by their need to travel”.

Starmer as Scrooge

 

Plus ça change…

There is a handsome legislative chamber attached to the premises from which — so the antiquarians tell us — the House of Commons took its name. But it is not usual now for the members to sit in the legislative chamber as the legislation is now all done outside, either at the home of Mr. Lloyd George, or at the National Liberal Club, or at one or other of the newspaper offices. The House, however, is called together at very frequent intervals to give it an opportunity of hearing the latest legislation and allowing the members to indulge in cheers, sighs, groans, votes and other expressions of vitality.

Stephen Leacock - My Discovery of England (1922)

Simple

Rayner attempts to deflect attention from Labour donations row with partygate reminder

Angela Rayner has attempted to deflect attention away from Labour’s donations row by telling delegates at the party’s conference to remind voters of partygate.

The Deputy Prime Minister has denied she broke any rules over the donated use of a New York apartment owned by Lord Alli, the Labour peer who has also donated thousands of pounds towards clothes for Sir Keir Starmer.

It's simple, we need better, this isn't better, these aren't the people.

The dead hand of fake optimism

Reeves to promise investment to 'rebuild Britain' in Labour Party conference speech

The Government’s autumn Budget statement will be used to “rebuild Britain” and deliver on the change Labour offered at the election, Rachel Reeves is to pledge.

The Chancellor will make her speech at the Labour Party conference on Monday as ministers seek to move out from under the shadow of a row about donations.

After weeks of warning about a poor economic legacy left by the Conservative government, Ms Reeves is also expected to signal a path towards further public investment, which she will claim is the “solution” to the UK’s growth problem.

Oh dear - further public investment, I hope it's better than that. Let's take a gander at one of the comments to cheer us up on this dull Monday morning:-

Continuing the Blair project, to rebuild Britain as an over populated over urbanised global colony & 3rd World hole with mass migration. For an oligarch & peasant society. In contempt of democracy, with only about 20% Public support.

Worth saying again

'Evil' plan to reduce access to winter fuel allowance leaves pensioners feeling 'ashamed'

"I'm deeply concerned about the winter," 81-year-old Kevin McGrath tells me when I meet him at his home in Corby, Northamptonshire.

He is recovering from a major eye operation when we sit down to chat, but he cannot contain his frustration.

The former Roman Catholic monk turned social worker said he has spent all of his life trying to help people and described Labour's plan to take the winter fuel allowance away from millions of pensioners as "evil".

"Of all the wealth in Britain, they target the ones who have very little in life," he said.

Won't make any discernible difference to us and receiving the allowance was always vaguely embarrassing, but as has already been said many times, interfering with it for a trivial saving was politically incompetent. 

Worse than incompetent, because it told us we have elected a worthless bunch of dim, hypocritical ideologues with a leader who seems to be even worse than that. All of which is worth saying again, because as winter approaches this one won't go away.   

Kevin McGrath describes it as evil and it's easy to agree with him, because there is something evil about this level of dull-witted intransigence. Especially from people who are by Kevin's standards wealthy.

Iffy Sculpture

Artist behind 'disturbing' sculpture says it's not intended to cause upset

The artist who created a sculpture which has been called "disturbing" and "shocking" says he's been "surprised" at the backlash but welcomes difficult conversations it might inspire.

The Alluvia - which is made from recycled glass and steel and features LEDs which light up at night - was installed in the River Stour, in Taylor's hometown of Canterbury in Kent around a week ago.

Reminds me quite strongly of a corpse I once saw floating down the canal in Nottingham. I'm not surprised people find it a bit iffy.

Myths and Metaphors

In what sense can myths and metaphors be true or false? In the sense that, in terms drawn from moral predicaments or from literary psychology, they may report the general movement and the pertinent issue of material facts, and may inspire us with a wise sentiment in their presence. In this sense I should say that Greek mythology was true and Calvinist theology was false.

George Santayana - Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy: Five Essays (1933)


An interesting quote where Santayana says that Greek mythology, the conflicts, quests, battles, heroics, successes, failures, rewards and punishment, magic and mysteries can guide us towards wisdom in the real world. Calvinist theology does not guide us in this way and in this sense is false.

A fascinating distinction because reasoning isn’t about sticking with what we think we know. We may usefully spread our wings via myth and metaphor. We could go on to rephrase Santayana’s quote and make a similar contrast between ancient Greek mythology and our political Calvinists –


In what sense can myths and metaphors be true or false? In the sense that, in terms drawn from moral predicaments or from literary psychology, they may report the general movement and the pertinent issue of material facts, and may inspire us with a wise sentiment in their presence. In this sense I should say that Greek mythology was true and Marxist doctrine is false.

But is it a Banksy?

Investigation launched into 'Jail Starmer' graffiti at MP's office

 

The starting point for any investigation should surely be the artistic integrity of the work. It is worth recalling that the Labour party is the party of the urban slogan, urban chant and pithy placard. Not the  effete culture of reason, argument and trade-offs. 

Inconceivable

Then a strange fit of brooding came over him. Escaping from the influences of personality, his imagination wrought back through eras of geologic time, held him in a vision of the infinitely remote, shrivelled into insignificance all but the one fact of inconceivable duration.

George Gissing - Born in Exile (1892)


It’s part of the fascination of trying to cope with even a casual grasp of geological periods where a million years is the smallest unit of time and even this is both inconceivably long and too short to be useful. The perspective problem is not dissimilar to the inconceivable distances we have to cope with in the universe, or within our own galaxy or even our own solar system.

We could take it further. The propagation of light is inconceivably fast, atoms are inconceivably small, gravity is inconceivably weird and human activity and even our technology are becoming inconceivably complex.

Sometimes it is worth dwelling on these things, the pitfalls of trying to approximate the inconceivable within language, within generalisations, hypotheses and theories.

Yet as we know, with care and much trial and error, we often manage to approximate the inconceivable within language. It could be said that this is one of our greatest achievement. Degrading the achievement is the great moral crime of charlatans - and one of their tools.

A special kind of sensible

Lisa Nandy says Sir Keir Starmer 'very sensible' to accept football tickets worth thousands

The minister for culture, media and sport also said she had never accepted free clothes, joking: "I think you can probably see that I choose my own clothes sadly".

Lisa Nandy has said Sir Keir Starmer's decision to accept thousands of pounds worth of football tickets was "very sensible".

It goes on and on. Clearly "very sensible" is a version of sensible not available to the rest of us. It is "very sensible" to accept gifts worth thousands even when it isn't sensible.

We'll buy our own clothes

We’ll stop taking free clothes, say Starmer and Rayner

Sir Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves will not accept free clothing in the future.

No 10 sources have confirmed that the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Chancellor will make the change.

Good grief, they are well out of their depth now, not even treading water. Maybe they will try to make a virtue of it by telling pensioners to buy their own blankets this winter. 

A sarcastic take on it perhaps, but nothing is off the table with this lot, apart from intelligence and integrity. 

Starmer’s headlong rush

David Craig has an interesting TCW piece on Starmer's ridiculous claim to be pursuing a policy of economic growth. Craig links this claim to the Cloward-Piven Strategy  of welfare collapse.


Starmer’s headlong rush to make us all poorer

SOMETHING very strange seems to be happening under Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour. The former Director of Public Prosecutions blethers on endlessly about generating economic growth. But at least four key members of his government, including the Prime Minister himself, are enthusiastically pursuing policies which will inevitably lead to Britain’s economic decline and the impoverishment of the majority of British citizens.

Crazed eco-fanatic Ed Miliband’s attack on cheap reliable fossil fuels with such stupidities as closing down our North Sea oil and gas industry, possibly cancelling the building of nuclear power stations, and making us reliant on expensive and unreliable supposed ‘renewables’, will increase what are already some of the world’s highest energy prices, making British companies uncompetitive and driving even more manufacturing out of Britain while further impoverishing households. Angela Rayner’s new employee- and union-friendly labour laws will dissuade companies from employing people in Britain and probably massively increase joblessness. Rachel Reeves’s coming Grim-Reaper tax increases on wealth creators will suffocate British business, driving many entrepreneurs out of the country and dissuading those who remain from creating wealth if it is at risk of being appropriated by a tax-hungry government. And Starmer’s active commitment to open-borders, bring-in-the-third-world immigration free-for-all will collapse our welfare system while leading to ever more intercommunity violence and social breakdown.


The whole piece is well worth reading, not because Starmer's government is pursuing a policy of welfare collapse, but because his brand of authoritarian bureaucracy is likely to take us at least part way there. Accident or design, the outcome could be much the same.

I’m not suggesting that Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour are deliberately trying to destroy our country. But I suspect that deep within the DNA of the former chief prosecutor’s government is a belief that, rather than letting us decide how to run our own lives, the country would be better if ruled by an authoritarian bureaucracy which will decide who can come to our country, how much each of us can earn and spend, how much we can travel, how much energy we should be permitted to use, what we may eat, what media should be approved or banned by those in power and what opinions should be allowed.

I’m still in control says caretaker

I’m still in control, insists Starmer, as civil war breaks out over Sue Gray pay

Sir Keir Starmer has denied he has lost control of Downing Street despite civil war breaking out at the centre of his government.

The Prime Minister was forced to defend his authority amid growing questions over Sue Gray’s salary, which at £170,000 exceeds his own and was leaked in an apparent deliberate attempt to damage her politically.

A hunt has been launched to find the source of the leak, which appeared to come from inside Whitehall.

One aspect of all this is how it spins a covert expectation or merely a hope that those behind the scenes will keep the show on the road. It quietly suggests that in the end, spats between the actors don't matter as long as the faceless ones in the wood-panelled offices are in control and life goes on.

It's almost like propaganda for the bureaucratic way of doing things, behind the scenes, away from media clamour. Almost like propaganda for the Machine in which Starmer appears to believe and wishes to be part of. But not the bit that fell off.

He's right of course

PM says it would 'cost the taxpayer a fortune' if he didn't accept free Arsenal tickets

Asked about his relationship with Arsenal Football Club, Sir Keir said he has attended matches as a season ticketholder for years.

But now he is prime minister, Sir Keir told ITV London the "security advice is that I can't go to the stands".

The prime minister added that if he did, it would "cost the taxpayer a fortune" on "additional security".


Football is the only thing that can bring together an entire country, regardless of political or religious differences.
Zinedine Zidane

Sir Keir soon messed up that quote, but he's right about security of course. Enraged pensioners would soon track him down, even outside the ground. Especially when winter sets in.

Abolish the NHS demands institute

Abolish the NHS to save lives, institute demands

The NHS should be abolished to save lives, a paper by the Institute of Economic Affairs, said on Thursday.

The report called for the health service to be replaced with a system of social insurance, showing that countries that have such models have far superior outcomes.

The think tank’s study revealed that Britain has almost the highest levels of deaths that could have been avoided with the right treatment, second only to Greece.

An idle question - I wonder how many people in the UK didn't know about superior health outcomes elsewhere? Presumably there are a large number who didn't know or don't want to know. Otherwise the demand for fundamental change would be politically deafening by now. 

It seems to be one of those social divisions - people who wish to be reasonably well-informed about important issues such as this and people who aren't comfortable with knowing how bad things are. Comfort zones have much to answer for - avoidable deaths in this case.

Pressure job

PM is in a 'pressure job' and should be allowed freebies, says minister

Sky News's Westminster Accounts project has revealed Sir Keir Starmer has been gifted more freebies and hospitality than any other MP since 2019.

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said anyone who is a PM "spends pretty much every bit of their waking life working on it" and if they are able to do something important to them "I don't think that's a problem".

Blimey, this chap is no better than David Lammy when it comes to explaining Freebiegate. I suppose explaining these things also counts as a pressure job  - it certainly will when winter looms a little closer. 

Diktat and wads of cash

Ian Williams has an interesting CAPX piece on China’s faltering economy


Xi Jinping’s coercion is destroying his own economy

Football provides a useful way to understand the dead end into which Xi Jinping is leading the Chinese economy. This month, a 7-0 loss by China’s men’s team to Japan in an Asian Cup qualifier marked the colossal failure of a decade-long multi-billion dollar project to turn China into a footballing superpower. When Xi launched his masterplan in 2015, China was 81st in the world; now they are 87th. Dozens of top officials and players have been suspended or jailed for corruption, and much like Xi’s dream of creating a tech-driven ‘innovation economy’, the plan to capture the heights of world football was a top-down project driven by diktat and wads of cash, with rigid plans and targets so beloved of Communist Party bureaucrats.


The piece is short but well worth reading because of what it says about a familiar problem here in the UK and the developed world generally. Politically-driven top-down coercion doesn't work - we know about that too.


Xi’s longer term goal is to build a world-beating ‘innovation’ economy driven by domestic tech, but the most effective way of achieving this – giving more sway to the market and to private companies – runs counter to everything he stands for. He has hobbled China’s most innovative technology companies, which have faced tightening restrictions. Last year, China led the world in the number of millionaires leaving the country, according to the Henley Wealth Management Report.

The demise of Tupperware

Fans mourn popular kitchen brand famous for its parties after cheap copycats - beloved by Gen-Z - fuel its demise

The news that cult kitchen brand Tupperware might be heading for the great storage container in the sky has sparked a wave of nostalgia-tinged mourning on social media.

The iconic American brand known the world over for its plastic food containers, is on the brink of bankruptcy, with spiralling debts of more than $700 million, according to Bloomberg.


Fans mourn? Cult? Iconic? 

Nope, just headline writers. I remember a Tupperware cruet set my parents acquired in the sixties - I think it was the sixties but it may have been the fifties. That cruet set never looked right even to my young eye. 

I always thought Tupperware had an amazing knack of looking grubby as soon as it had been used a few times. Especially sandwich boxes - and cruets. The grubby look was permanent too, no amount of washing would clean it up so that it actually looked pristine.

Apple v Innovation

We have a number of Apple gadgets and quite like them, but I still found this entertaining. I wouldn't buy a folding phone though.

Luxury Malice

As an obvious follow-on from the Luxury Mendacity post, we also have luxury malice. It is not easy to explain Net Zero by technical ignorance, money and fashionable mendacity. Social malice is in there too. If ruling elites attract our contempt, it would be foolish to think it isn’t reciprocated.

We have a governing elite which defines itself by absurd luxury beliefs, but an important factor within those beliefs is fashionable malice one social class exhibits towards another. The word ‘exhibits’ is not chosen lightly, the glinting threads of malice within our UK ruling elites are not hidden.

As in the earlier post, it is worth remembering those well-educated, ambitious people streaming through a university education. There is social ambition in there, and for the amoral among them, the advantages of quietly fashionable, unobtrusive social malice may have its attractions. People do raise themselves from a bed of envy and ambition towards the vastly more nourishing culture of superior social malice. Always have.


The drab street was everywhere; and at the street-corners mean-faced men preached lies, envy and malice.
Arthur Morrison – Fiddle O’Dreams (1913)


Until the glittering possibility of social promotion beckons and –


I am filled by the holy malice of chastisement.
Victor Hugo - The Man Who Laughs (1869)


Now we have career paths for well educated, ambitious but untalented and remarkably unpleasant people. People with the social skills to join a governing elite under the shelter of a fat thumb on the scales of justice plus that little extra - luxury malice.

The dog ate my excuses

Starmer defiant over taking gifts from Lord Alli

Sir Keir Starmer has defended accepting gifts from a millionaire Labour donor who was later given a pass to access No 10 Downing Street.

The Prime Minister suggested he would continue to take gifts from Lord Alli, despite a row over some of his donations not being declared in line with parliamentary rules...

It came a day after it emerged that Sir Keir had initially failed to declare the £5,000 of donations covering the cost of his wife’s personal shopper, clothes and alterations.


By gum, he isn't very good at excuses. Just carry on with the freebies and wave away the raised eyebrows seems to be his intention. 

"Sir" Keir really isn't very good at the international statesman lark, he should try something else such as zooming around on a jet ski.

Luxury Mendacity

As so many of us know, a problem of our time is a governing elite which defines itself by absurd luxury beliefs. Absurd because they make no practical or economic sense or even because they make no sense whatever, because they are simply false. Yet still we create career pathways for the luxury mendacity of our governing elites.

For a number of decades we have created a stream of intelligent, well educated, ambitious, socially competent but untalented people by expanding university education. How does this stream of people fulfil their ambitions without taxing the talents they don’t have? For the amoral among them, a career in mendacity may beckon.

For a number of decades we have also created a complex network of taxpayer-dependent semi-sinecures within an equally complex network of taxpayer dependent organisations. Quangos, NGOs, regulatory bodies, think tanks, charitable foundations, research institutes and pressure groups are just some of them. How do they find people to fill their executive positions? By attracting well-qualified, socially adroit people looking for a congenial career in taxpayer dependent bodies. If mendacity is part of the culture – no problem.

These two broad features of modern life have left us with career pathways we would never have planned. Pathways for a governing class based on mendacity, but not accidental or planned mendacity. A chicken and egg mendacity where people attracted to elite career paths are temperamentally suited to the useless organisations which hatched those same career paths.

Career paths for intelligent, well educated, ambitious but untalented people. Not careers promising enormous wealth, but easily enough to be secure, unaffected by the wider consequences of mendacious incompetence. People with the social skills to join a governing elite under the shelter and congenial protection of luxury mendacity.

Blueberry bandits

Blueberry bandits: Crime spikes as North Koreans forage for survival

"People say this is a world that will gouge your eyes out if you're not careful," a source told The Daily NK

On Aug. 31, two girls from a middle school in Samjiyon went to a blueberry patch in the Mubong area early in the morning and spent the day picking blueberries. While on their way to the blueberry picking area, they ran into robbers. Fortunately, the two girls were not hurt, but the robbers took their buckets of blueberries and their outer clothes.

This quote is particularly poignant -

The source quoted a melancholy local as saying the following while observing the night scene: “The parents’ generation picked blueberries to make ends meet, and now the children’s generation is wandering the blueberry patches for the same reason. It’s said that poverty is inherited. Struggle as much as you want, but life will never get better.”

It's fundamental isn't it? this need to work towards a life which is better than it was in the past. It's the underlying threat posed by our elites, their Net Zero ideology effectively insists that this kind of progress must be taken away from ordinary people, from mere consumers.

A Prediction

 

The nurseryfication of culture

Nina Welsch has a fine Critic piece on what she calls the nurseryfication of culture.


The nurseryfication of culture

Alienation has encouraged the normalisation of childishness

An “educational” video released by the Manchester Museum went semi-viral recently. I’ll give you the highlights to get it over with it. In it, a young female employee introduces herself as “using they/them pronouns” (sigh) and that “today, we’re finding Pride in our collection” (sigh). Their focus is the museum’s collection of taxidermic birds from the Victorian era. The Victoria era, they explain, was run by “cis, white, straight men” (sigh) and that is why there are more male birds than female ones in the collection. The way the birds are positioned, with the handsome males standing over the more submissive-seeming, plain-plumaged females is indicative of these patriarchal norms (sigh). They then point out the way bird families are grouped together with their chicks and how this reflects the implicitly oppressive “nuclear family” (are you drinking yet?).

There’s too much wrong with it to highlight everything — from the cynical anthropomorphising of non-human animals to the fact that the “nuclear family” wasn’t really coined until the 1950s and in the USA, nothing to do with Victorian Britain. It is just one of countless examples of ideological dumbed-down, virtue-signalling historical revisionism that leaves us all culturally poorer.


The whole piece is well worth reading as another aspect of the wider infantilisation of adulthood, particularly this point in the final paragraph.


When nursery children adorn badges, it is a way of grounding themselves in their surroundings and place in it, making sense of their little story in a vast picture interweaving countless. With adults who work in the heritage sector who cover themselves in pins and badges, it seems to be the opposite — a way of standing out from the history, artefacts or knowledge their workplace is steeped in. At a push, I’d call it almost disrespectful. What is missing in the cultural soul of so many people that they can play a privileged part in maintaining the legacies of such valuable institutions and still feel the need to signal to all that enter: Look At Me?

Lavish

Clothes donations help Starmers ‘look their best’ for the UK – Lammy

Sir Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria accepted donations of clothing so they could “look their best” to represent the UK, David Lammy said.

The Foreign Secretary said other countries allowed lavish, taxpayer-funded budgets for clothing for their leaders.

The Prime Minister is alleged to have broken parliamentary rules by failing to declare donations of clothing for his wife within the designated time limit.

The gifts, from prominent Labour donor Lord Alli, were not initially declared in the register of MPs’ interests.

Good to see the gilded wardrobe hasn't fallen out of use. Is that David Lammy's job now, making lavish excuses for this kind of troughing? I though he was Foreign Secretary and apparently he did too. 

Oh well, lessons learned as they say.

This all-knowing entity

There are numerous things we could say about the digital world and one of them seems to be its impact on education. The internet doesn’t “know” everything, but apart from the intricacies of specialisms, it “knows” vastly more than any human could ever know. Including government ministers – well we already knew about that – but also teachers.

As we know, this all-knowing entity has entered the home via computers, phones and various “intelligent” devices. One effect of this is that children above a certain age must now be aware that their school teachers don’t know everything, not even about their own subject. We may assume this awareness is permanent.

It’s something I’ve noticed with our grandkids, this heightened awareness of both the adult world and adult limitations. We adults see much the same thing in those who would rule our lives – in a political sense they aren’t masters of their subject either. They aren’t even masters of themselves – not that they ever were.

As if the University of Life and the Universal Expert have both entered schools and as yet there seems to be no coherent response apart from trying to keep the lid on it. They have entered politics and the wider public arena too. Political elites are trying to keep the lid on that as well.

There is a genie out of the bottle aspect to the digital world. Not that this genie is likely to grant any wishes, but as with any technical advance, we can’t go back. Kings, queens, presidents, political elites and religious leaders have become fallible humans who only very rarely live up to their exalted authority.

It is not so much that the digital genie will tell us what we didn’t know about the world of elites. It is more a case of the genie being there in the public domain as an inhumanly knowledgeable authority. It has the potential to undermine elites because it offers a form of oversight available to all. Far from complete oversight, but it is there, available to all, available anywhere at any time.

The problem now is predicting any kind of digital future because this all-knowing entity is a product of both human ingenuity, human effort and human fallibility coupled with inhuman speed, extent and depth. It is also censored.

It’s a very odd genie indeed, but even the censored version is out of the bottle and an encouraging feature is that elites don’t know what to do about it. A discouraging feature is the number of voters who merely play with it.

We don't know what this strange genie will do, but the inept nature of Keir Starmer's government became obvious with remarkable speed. No long newspaper editorials, no tediously tame TV interviews, no months and years of political pontification about learning lessons, debating policies and doing more to win over voters. The digital genie was much quicker than all that - ruthlessly quick.

There are numerous similar examples of this strange genie at work. It kept a close eye on Joe Biden's decline, there was no chance of escaping that embarrassment apart from a willing ignorance. It is equally aware of Kamala Harris and her inadequacies, it knew pandemic lockdown was stupid, knows Ed Miliband is a buffoon and knows Net Zero won't work.

Of course there are deficiencies, too many people just play with it and in the end may well be satisfied with a heavily censored version. Yet it is also possible that the genie really is out of the bottle and elites will have to find better ways of adapting because... maybe because it is smarter than they are.  

Jet Ski Ed

Sir Ed Davey jet skis into ‘very excited’ Lib Dem conference

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has said people are “absolutely ecstatic” as the party’s autumn conference began in Brighton on Saturday.

At its first conference since the party won 72 MPs in July’s general election, Sir Ed described the mood as “very excited”...

As the conference opened on Saturday lunch time, Sir Ed rode a jet ski in Brighton, before speaking to the press.

Sir Ed became known during the general election campaign for stunts, which included bungee jumping and paddleboarding.


One thing Ed and the Lib Dems have not been afraid to admit by their behaviour is that Disraeli's Great Game is indeed a game, a show not to be taken seriously. A way to hide how futile it all is, at least from those who don't look too closely.

Otherwise it's not easy to make sense of Ed and the Lib Dems, because in spite of their MP numbers, they aren't going to achieve anything worthwhile. They don't attract talent, don't appear to value talent and zooming around on a jet ski doesn't exhibit talent, not even the talent of a natural showman.

SAE

This morning, Mrs H and I were chatting about how easy it has become to find and book a holiday. Click, click, check the price and location, check the reviews, click, click goes the credit card and the job’s done.

We went on to chat about older forms of communication such as letters and sending off for holiday brochures with an SAE for the reply. Which reminded us of something else - who now knows what an SAE, a stamped addressed envelope was?

An "honest discussion"

Government 'will not carpet countryside with windfarms and pylons', new clean power chief promises

However, Chris Stark - the new head of Mission Control, the centre responsible for greening UK power by 2030 - pledged an "honest discussion" with the public about the new infrastructure communities will have to get used to in return for cleaner, more secure power.

An "honest discussion" with the public eh? That's new.

Group forms to fight 60km Derbyshire pylon plan

A campaign group has formed to oppose plans to run a 60km (37 mile) corridor of electricity pylons through Derbyshire.

Residents in Amber Valley say the National Grid’s plans will ruin their landscape by running power lines held aloft by 50m high pylons between substations in Chesterfield and Willington in South Derbyshire.

National Grid said existing power lines did not have capacity to cope with the increased power flows from offshore wind turbines.

The NHS - it really isn’t rocket science

Neil Record has a useful CAPX reminder of why Labour isn't going to fix the NHS.


At this rate, Labour will never fix the NHS

Lord Darzi’s report on the state of the NHS, released today, is damning. His review found that waiting times have worsened, very little progress has been made on early cancer diagnoses and the health service has been starved of capital investment.

For a while, it looked like Wes Streeting was the man to come in and fix this. To many, the Labour Health Secretary feels like a breath of fresh air in his observations on the NHS. He basically thinks it’s broken, and had said as much. Many, many people agree, and all of us wish it weren’t.


The whole piece is quite short, what it says is well known among those paying attention, but it is still worth reading as a reminder of the solution Labour cannot tolerate.


It is simple. At the moment, money comes into the NHS from the top. For it to perform better, much, much better, money has to come in at the bottom. No ‘privatisation’ is needed (although it might be welcome in some areas); no more money is needed (at least not at the moment); no new ‘targets’ are needed. No new layers; no new ‘Trusts’ or confederations. All that has to happen is the money comes in at the bottom.

What do I mean by this? It really isn’t rocket science. Where does the money come into Tesco? Or Amazon? Or Netflix? Or indeed, any one of the millions of companies worldwide, large and small, that do the best they can with the resources they have, and which have over the last few decades, indeed the last century, enormously improved our lives in every possible way.

Angela Rayner Breaks Silence

I've posted an Intel Lady parody of Angela Rayner before, but Ms Rayner is such a deserving target that I've posted another.

Dumbing down the weather

James Dent has an interesting TCW piece on weather, climate and the replacement of broad historical perspectives by what he calls 'Presentism'.


The dumbing down of the weather

FOR MANY years media presentations of weather conditions were summarised in a simple map, showing isobars and main weather fronts, accompanied by a concise description on a regional basis, with a forecast statement for the near future. This information was well understood by a range of people with a modicum of education in everyday life. Regular watching of TV and reading newspaper forecasts provided me with the ambition of pursuing a career where I was involved in meteorology. But some time ago both media and printed format presentations switched to using the now universal hieroglyphic weather symbols, which when scattered over a small-scale map can give only a vague impression of actual and forecast conditions.

The main driver for this change came after the serious flood events of 1998-2002 when the Government decided that there was a need to improve awareness. This has led to the present glut of forecast apps giving weather predictions for several days ahead, summarised into a single hieroglyph, which are widely regarded as being nothing more than guesses.


The whole piece is well worth reading, both for what Dent says about dumbing down weather forecasts, but also the more general trend of ignoring the complexities of the past in favour of a distorted but politically convenient present.


Within this time frame of the last 12,000 years, there have been numerous exceptional events. There is indisputable geological and geomorphological evidence of major sea-level changes, inundations and major changes to river courses. Because nature is non-stationary, such events have occurred in recent decades as well as in the far past. For instance the North Sea flooding of January 1953 was just one of a series of similar catastrophic events, such as the storm that brought about the near-destruction of Dunwich, Suffolk, in the 14th century. According to documentary evidence, there were several major floods throughout the Mediaeval period causing thousands of deaths in the Low Countries.

Ed sets his sights on doing even better

 

Sir Ed Davey rallies his Liberal Democrat army to 'finish the job' in crushing the Tory Party

Ahead of the Lib-Dem annual rally in Brighton, he set his sights on his party doing even better than its historic 72-seats General Election result in July when it tore into the previously Conservative “Blue Wall” in southern England...

“We made a massive demolition job on the Blue Wall,” Sir Ed told The Standard.

“But there is more to go.

Arctic to be ice free by 2014

Scary stuff, but fortunately we have Ed Miliband to sort out global climate change here in the UK. 

A placemaking solution

Sidmouth Rockfish one step closer with signing of toilet lease

East Devon District Council (EDDC) and Rockfish have signed a lease agreement for the public toilet site at Port Royal on Sidmouth seafront.

Planning Permission was granted in June this year for Rockfish to open a new restaurant on the site of the old Drill Hall and adjacent public toilets.

Cllr Paul Hayward, East Devon District Council’s deputy leader and portfolio holder for Economy and Assets, said: "I’m excited to see progress towards a new restaurant for Rockfish and welcome their investment in Sidmouth that will create local jobs. It will help to revitalise the east end of Sidmouth’s historic seafront esplanade providing a placemaking solution for this neglected area of the town.


It's a new one for me - a placemaking solution. Mrs H said she could imagine a councillor standing up to waffle about placemaking solutions. Maybe I should be positive and think of it as a postmaking solution for blogs.

Rachel could ask Ed where the electricity comes from

Amazon Web Services ‘to invest £8bn in UK over next five years’

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is to invest £8 billion over the next five years building, operating and maintaining data centres in the UK, the company has announced.

Tanuja Randery, AWS
Many of the world’s largest companies use AWS data centres, and in the UK includes Deliveroo, easyJet, EDF, Just Eat, Monzo, NatWest, Sainsbury’s and others, as well as government agencies, educational institutions and public sector firms.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “I am under no illusion to the scale of the challenge facing our economy, and I will be honest with the British people that change will not happen overnight.

Blimey

Disney’s secretive Club 33 – and a couple’s $400k battle to get back in

Scott and Diana Anderson, both 60, spent 30 years trying to get into the elite £33,000-a-year club, which allowed them to rub shoulders with VIP guests in wood-panelled lounges.

Since gaining access in 2012, the pair had forked out around $124,000 a year to visit the Disney theme parks in Anaheim, California, up to 80 times annually.

But the couple’s fairytale lifestyle was brought to an abrupt end after they were banned from the members’ club in 2017 amid claims Mr Anderson had been drunk in public.

Determined to appeal against the decision, Mrs Anderson said: “I’ll sell a kidney.”


Well there we are, another story where I'm at a loss for something to say. Although I do appear to come across an increasing number of tales about baffling behaviour, it's possibly worth adding that.

I wonder how much she expects to get for the kidney? Avoid eBay is the only advice I can think of.

Just stop doing stupid things

Andrew Lilico has a CAPX piece on the futility of tax rises to control UK government debt.


Borrowing is out of control – and tax rises are not the answer

• UK government debt, currently running at just under 100% of GDP, risks rising uncontrollably
• Even the UK's current tax plans may not be achievable – there's no room to raise them further
• If we just stop doing stupid things, there is scope for the UK to catch up on growth

Meanwhile -


Supporting the move to electric vehicles

In a pan-Defence collaboration, trials of hydrogen fuelled charging facilities to power the electric vehicle fleet have concluded.

This marks a significant step forward in the use of sustainable energy sources in Defence.

Generating enough electricity to power roughly 120,000 miles of travel, the trial provided learning on the use of hydrogen as a source of fuel in Defence’s future energy mix.

This green wheeze aims to generate hydrogen via electrolysis using electricity from wind and solar, then generate electricity from the hydrogen.

From 1972

 

Mad or Bad

Staying with the theme of a recent post, antiques dealers are an interesting lot. Years ago I’d often chat with Nic, an elderly bookseller from Nottingham who once gave me an unbound three volume set of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary from the 1820s. Published long after old Sam’s death of course, but his dictionary was reprinted and used for decades afterwards. When bound it was a handsome set.

A few decades ago, Mrs H and I were wandering around an antiques fair when we came across a dealer selling what looked like rather ordinary aneroid barometers. Antique, but not particularly old and still very common barometers supposedly acquired from stately homes such as Chatsworth. It seemed rather odd, but dealers can be a rum lot.

Later I had a chat with Nic at the same antiques fair when he suddenly asked me if I’d seen the barometer dealer. I said I had. “He’d mad you know,” Nic said, “quite mad. Says his barometers have come from stately homes – have you read the labels on them? He’s quite mad.”

Mad or bad, it’s often difficult to decide, but Nic preferred mad.

They’d make the banks blush

Martin Lewis launches attack on local councils: ‘Like loan sharks’

He also highlighted the fact that UK households can face a bill of around £1,600 for missing a £140 payment by three weeks.

The Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, a charity founded by Mr Lewis, said processes are driving unacceptable harms that disproportionately affect people with mental health problems.

Mr Lewis said: “Council tax collection practices are so aggressive they’d make the banks blush. The grotesque process couldn’t have been designed better to accelerate distress for people in council tax debt, especially those with mental health problems.

Presumably this is what 'levelling up" leads to - equality of outcome.  

Not an issue we've come across, but local councils seem to be very keen on sucking up the cash these days. Naturally they will blame central government for any negative effect on those who can't cope with council enthusiasm.

Kim's Forbidden Pants

Forbidden fashion: N. Korean youth punished for mimicking Kim Jong Un’s pants

Some people find it "very confusing" that "even following what the supreme leader does is a problem," a source told The Daily NK

As North Korean authorities intensify a crackdown on youth fashion, they’ve begun targeting young people who imitate Kim Jong Un’s clothing and hairstyle, particularly those who wear baggy pants similar to the leader’s. The unexpected crackdown, which began in early August in Chongjin, is being enforced by the Socialist Patriotic Youth League.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a source in North Hamgyong province told The Daily NK on Wednesday that North Korean youths call the baggy pants, which have far more legroom than other pants, “supreme leader pants.”


Meanwhile we await a crackdown on young people imitating Keir Starmer's hairstyle and suits, Angela Rayner's individualistic fashion sense and Pixie's surely-not-the-Home-Secretary look. 

The details are still unclear

Labour backs new 'respect orders' to fight anti-social behaviour - but isn't yet sure how they will work

Dame Diana Johnson admits many who suffer from anti-social behaviour are still being let down by police and councils.

Labour has defended the concept of new 'respect orders' for fighting anti-social behaviour - but admitted the details are still unclear.


respect
/rɪˈspɛkt/

1. a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something elicited by their abilities, qualities, or achievements.
"the director had a lot of respect for Douglas as an actor"

2. due regard for the feelings, wishes, or rights of others.
"young people's lack of respect for their parents"

It's a problem when politicians and political activists support their fantasies by meddling with the meaning of words. 'Respect' is just another example and not a new one. In activist parlance, 'respect' seems to be something imposed, either politically, legally or by coercion of some kind, essentially the unearned respect the powerless must show towards the powerful.

A futile word to have adopted in this case. Or maybe slightly chilling when we consider official reactions to recent disturbances. The details are still unclear.

The Threat of Degrowth

 

When things just work

Vague and speculative this one, but the other day Mrs H and I were chatting with relatives about how younger generations seem to assume that things will generally work out okay.

Cars just work, online orders arrive on time, if the younger generation forgets to buy food there is always the phone and a takeaway, or the supermarket will have something, illness is a nuisance which can usually be sorted and so on. Daily life is clearly not perfect, but in recent decades, aspects of it have become slick enough for a degree of confidence to become habitual.

It's not that younger generations are unaware of risks and the possibility of things going wrong, but they seem to be less aware of it than older generations. Perceptions have changed as technology knits things together in previously impossible ways. Raised expectations are bound to follow and may spread beyond the next online delivery.

WWII is history, many serious and fairly common diseases are less threatening, houses are warmer and drier, cars more reliable, communication far easier, computers handle the paperwork, goods and services are easily located online - from a broad brush perspective, much of our world just works.

This is not to say that we have freed ourselves from problems, difficulties, failures, emergencies and so on. Neither have we freed ourselves from the problems of excess, growing old, ennui or mental problems. It is more of a raised expectation that many things ought to work, usually do work and although failure has not been banished, remedies are more accessible. 

The recent low vote for Keir Starmer’s Labour party may be an example of a shift in general expectations. As we know, the party has a huge majority based on a lower total vote than Jeremy Corbyn achieved. This will be an outcome of various factors, but one of them may be a lower confidence that political promises are deliverable in any meaningful sense. The marked contrast between rhetoric and daily life has become impossible to miss. 

There is nothing specific to be grasped here, more of a general awareness that political rhetoric is clearly not one of those many aspects of daily life which just work, which deliver what they are supposed to deliver. Keir Starmer’s political hill may be a much steeper climb than he imagines.

He even thinks in clichés

NHS 'broken' says Starmer as report warns children's health facing deadly crisis

Sir Keir Starmer is blaming the Conservatives for a "broken NHS" and claims the Tories' NHS reforms are "unforgivable and "hopelessly misconceived".

The shocking findings on the deteriorating health of the nation's children are revealed in a study by leading cancer surgeon and former health minister Lord Darzi.

It is obvious enough that Labour's political policy is to blame the Tories for everything they know they can't improve. Not necessarily a smart policy because it restricts them to things they can't improve, but that's a vast political arena.

A blame the Tories strategy does have one big plus for Labour, as it allows the party to include climate change at some point. Eventually Ed Miliband may justify putting back the Net Zero 2030 target by claiming the Tories didn't do enough. Then Starmer will speak about "broken Net Zero".

And the decline continues.

Tomb

Diane Abbott says Jeremy Corbyn's idea of a hot date was a trip to see Karl Marx's tomb

 
Diane Abbott has revealed Jeremy Corbyn's idea of taking her on a hot date was a trip to see Karl Marx's tomb - as she tells all about their love affair...

But in her new autobiography the MP has derided the future Leader of the Opposition for his complete dearth of romance - which seems to have sent her spiraling into complete boredom.

The Mother of the House describes the young leftie as '99 per cent absorbed in party politics', with the only interesting thing she remembers the dull youth doing being growing vegetables in his garden.

I'm not sure what to say about that, so I'll finish there and carry on making the evening meal.

It's fish.

Savvy

Starmer to visit US for second time as prime minister - but will he meet Harris and Trump?

A meeting between Sir Keir and Mr Trump would be a significant moment which would be seen as diplomatically savvy, especially if a meeting with Ms Harris materialises.

Savvy in the sense that it keeps the focus on Starmer and away from the rabble, or the Cabinet as it is sometimes called. This focus on Starmer seems to be the main aim of Labour spin doctors at the moment, which is understandable. We are also informed that -

"They will also discuss opportunities to strengthen US-UK cooperation to secure supply chains and increase climate resilience."

Which isn't at all savvy, although it does keep the focus off Ed Miliband. Unless he's also included in the high-carbon jolly of course.

Can we put the glass on it, John?

Some decades ago, Mrs H and I were browsing round a small and rather uninteresting local antiques fair. A dealer was showing an old chamber pot to a potential customer who had presumably asked about a maker’s mark on the base.

It was possible to tell from a distance that the chamber pot wasn’t anything special. For obvious reasons they were churned out in huge numbers and tend to be a little – er – functional. Anyway, in a loud voice the dealer called out to her husband – “can we put the glass on it, John?”

She meant the magnifying glass of course, to examine the maker’s mark as if it might possibly be George Jones or Royal Doulton and not some second division pot works which is what it clearly was, even without looking at the mark.

Ever since, Mrs H and I have often responded to anything pretentious with – “can we put the glass on it John?”

One of those people

By natural temperament, brother, and by social position I’m one of those people who can do nothing sensible themselves, but can read sermons to other people.

Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Insulted and Injured (1861)

Green co-leader opens party conference with scathing attack on Labour U-turns

Green co-leader Adrian Ramsay has opened the party’s conference with an attack on the “lacklustre offers and U-turns” of Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.

Kicking off the left-wing party’s campaign against Labour for next year’s local elections, Mr Ramsay painted the Greens as “an inspiring alternative to business as usual”.

Bankrupt

‘Authoritarian’ Green Party could go bankrupt for ‘discrimination’ against women

The Green Party's conference in Manchester began on Friday when protesters gathered outside to voice their anger at the Party's views on gender...

Protesters outside of the party’s Manchester conference today said the alleged “ongoing discrimination” may lead to court cases with the potential to bankrupt the Greens.


There is nothing wrong with bankrupting the Greens, the quicker the better, but the Green soul is solidly authoritarian. May as well accuse them of being obsessives or mad.

Police Officers Describe UFO Encounter (1967)

 

The hard sell

New wind projects a good first step for government - but big challenges remain

Securing more renewable generation is only part of the challenge - the variable nature of wind and solar means Britain needs the ability to store that excess power.

A puff piece for wind projects, but there is no need to read beyond the admission of intermittency and storage problems - it can't work as claimed and it won't. 

The nature of the problem is repeated further down, but the lethal nature of intermittency remains vague, which of course it has to - this is a puff piece. Something people need doesn't have to be sold this hard. Something they certainly don't need has to be sold good and hard. 

Really, the hard sell is the big clue.

I'm sorry the leeches didn't work...

GPs using AI to apologise to patients, investigation finds

British doctors are using AI to respond to patient complaints to make their job easier, according to a medical group.

A report by the Medical Defence Union (MDU), who offer doctors legal advice, warns 'some doctors are turning to artificial intelligence programs like ChatGPT to draft complaint responses for them'.

The body says doctors have been 'allured' by the opportunity to 'make everyday tasks easier'.


I'm sure Ed Miliband is looking at this wheeze as a way to send automated apologies to victims of Net Zero. This quote seems generally appropriate -

"Say what you have to say without apologizing, please," said Gwendolen, with the air she might have bestowed on a dog-stealer come to claim a reward for finding the dog he had stolen.

George Eliot – Daniel Deronda (1876)

Part Delivery

 

A low bridge in Derby, we know it well. 

A spokesperson for Ocado said: " We are aware of the incident and can confirm there were no injuries sustained to the driver or to other road users, which is always our first priority."

Sounds Ambitious

 

Sussex families urged to 'Give Up Clothes for Good'

They are being urged to donate any pre-loved quality fashion and homeware to TK Maxx’s Give Up Clothes for Good campaign, in support of Cancer Research UK for Children & Young People.

Give Up Clothes for Good sounds ambitious, even for climate zealots. Ed Miliband should jump in here and warn the people of Sussex about the hazards of winter naturism.

Over in Ireland