The age of un-natural selection

Andy Myers has a serious/entertaining FSB piece on the future of human evolution. Well worth reading and while reading it is useful to remember a few of the strange people pretending to be UK political leaders, celebrity 'experts' or media 'personalities'.  


The Domestication of Humanity

How AI and technology are quietly rewriting evolution

We bred wolves into pugs. At some point, someone looked at a majestic predator and thought, “What if it had a snub nose, a wheeze, and couldn’t survive a gentle breeze?” Fast-forward a few generations and voilà—a creature designed purely to delight, not to endure.

And now, having reshaped the animal kingdom in our image, we turn the lens inward. What happens when we begin to breed ourselves—not with scissors and genes only, but with the quiet, persistent selection pressures of convenience, code, and comfort?

Welcome to the age of un-natural selection.

Premium content

Free TV licences for benefits claimants under Labour plans

The prospect of the potential handout comes as Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, faces criticism for failing to get more Britons off benefits and into work, with spending on benefits on course to hit £378bn by 2029-30.

Elsewhere in the consultation report, which comes at a time of crisis for the broadcaster, it was suggested the corporation could raise money with a “top-up subscription service” offering premium content, including repeats on iPlayer.


Anyone with even a few molecules of scepticism in their constitution is bound to wonder if 'premium content' includes Panorama. 

It probably won't include 'BBC Parliament' though. The average daily viewing time for that programme as logged by Barb for July was three seconds. Even BBC Scotland managed ten seconds.

Check Every Word

Another Fine Mess

Another fine example of the lunatic complexities of UK taxation. Maybe Rachel from Accounts will spend it wisely. Ho Ho Ho.

Morrisons on brink of £17m bill after losing court battle over rotisserie chickens

Morrisons could be hit with a £17m bill after losing a lengthy legal battle over its rotisserie chickens. The UK supermarket chain has been fighting a 13-year dispute in court to prevent value added tax (VAT) from being added to the chickens. However, the UK High Court ruled on Thursday that the product should be subject to the charge of 20%, as it falls under the category of hot food.

Morrisons argued that its rotisserie chickens should be exempt from VAT because the product is typically eaten cold or reheated later in the day. But, the ruling on December 11 said that the supermarket chain sold the items in packaging for hot food with a label which reads: "Caution: Hot Product".

A chap is bound to wonder

A chap is bound to wonder which randomised double-blind trial with a placebo control this advice was based on. 

Well okay - a chap inclined to be sarcastic might rhetorically wonder -

Super flu: Get jab to protect grandparents, urges London chief nurse

Londoners were urged to get the flu jab to protect grandparents from catching the virus during the Christmas period.

The plea came from London’s Chief Nurse Karen Bonner who warned that the super flu was still sweeping throught [sic] the capital.

The downhill push continues

There is little sign of the EU learning anything worth learning - this downhill move seems certain to cause yet more loss, pain and friction. 

From Blackout News - AI translation of the original German.

EU plans its own corporate taxes to cover increased spending

The EU Commission is directing its course towards new corporate taxes to cover rising expenses. The step follows because several states are rejecting higher contributions. In addition, Brussels is striving for more EU own resources and is relying on structural reforms in the financial framework. Defence financing is also coming into focus as geopolitical risks increase. In addition, the Commission is planning stronger group levies in order to broaden the revenue base and reduce dependence on national budgets

Corporate taxes at the core of the EU's new financial strategy

The Commission defines large companies as the central source of future revenue. New corporate taxes are intended to enable more reliable financing and close the gap created by the rejection of additional contributions. In addition, other instruments are coming into focus: higher costs in emissions trading, stricter CO₂ offsetting and stronger corporate levies. These measures are intended to stabilise the financial framework without placing a greater burden on national budgets. However, representatives of energy-intensive industries warn of considerable risks and point to a weak construction economy. Companies speak of rising corporate levies, which are hardly sustainable in a recession.

The Hobbyist

 

Do We Need Government?

A couple of months ago, Tom Armstrong wrote a very interesting FSB piece on government and whether we still need it. As Armstrong says, it's a question which is rarely asked. 

A rarely asked question perhaps, but not that rare. It has probably crossed the minds of many people concerned about the strikingly ineffectual yet repressive nature of recent UK governments. During the covid debacle for example.

Do We Need Government?

For most of human history, political power was a matter of geography. The Crown or Parliament in Westminster was, to all intents and purposes, remote to the majority of the people. Decisions handed down from London might take weeks to arrive in Yorkshire, Cornwall, or the Highlands, and still longer to make their effects felt. Government was not simply remote in spirit, but remote in fact.

So is it not strange that in an age when a message can travel the globe in less than a second, we still cling to a centuries-old model of centralised power? Why, in an era of instant communication, decentralised finance, instant communication and artificial intelligence, do we persist in allowing a handful of ministers - career politicians – and an army of arrogant mandarins in Whitehall to run the lives of seventy million people, often in ways the vast majority of those millions disapprove of?

So here I ask a question hardly never asked: Do we still need “government” as we know it? Is the centralised State, with democracy heavily qualified by the inaccurate word ‘representative’, its archaic practices, bloated bureaucracy and self-perpetuating ‘elite’ anything more than an anachronism, a hangover from horse-and-carriage times? And could we, the people, using modern technology, do a better job without it?

The whole piece is well worth reading, not because anything is likely to be done in this direction, but because the question is fascinatingly useful as a way to skirt well-worn paths. An idea to drop into conversations at Christmas perhaps.


So, do we still need government? Not in the form we inherited from the days when a journey from London to York consumed a week. Not in the form that treats free citizens as subjects, and a handful of politicians as monarchs in all but name. We need rules, yes. We need order, yes. But we do not need rulers. We do not need a permanent, parasitic class of officials to run our lives. The tools of liberty are already in our hands: digital platforms, decentralised systems, AI safeguards. The only missing ingredient is courage. Courage to say: the age of government is over. The age of citizen rule has begun.

And here we are

Woman becomes first person in the UK to win legal battle using AI law firm

A woman has become the first person in the UK to win a legal battle using an AI "law firm."

The healthcare worker, who had a stellar performance record, felt helpless when bosses placed her on a Performance Improvement Plan. Unable to afford a solicitor, she turned to Grapple Law – the UK’s only legal practice for individuals fully operated by bots. In just a few weeks, her case was resolved and she won £30,000 – without a tribunal or human lawyer in sight.


In the 1960s my father worked in what is now called IT when computers were huge machines tended by engineers permanently on site. Decades ago he predicted that computers would one day do the work of lawyers.

And here we are.

My, how times have changed....

 

It's the carnival of mediocrity and ineptitude again

Greens plan to punish male members who correct women

Men who correct women could face disciplinary action under plans being considered by the Green Party.

Party bosses are considering a proposal to broaden the Greens’ definition of misogyny to the point that “any disagreement” between the sexes could lead to the man facing a sanction.

The revelation is included in an internal 53-page report on legal and reputational risk to the party, which has been leaked to the Telegraph.

"I may be guilty in my own eyes...I like being guilty in my own eyes...Kraft, forgive me for talking nonsense. Tell me, surely you don't belong to that circle? That's what I wanted to ask."

"They are no sillier than other people and no wiser; they are mad like every one else..."

"Why, is every one mad?" I asked, turning towards him with involuntary curiosity.

"All the best people are mad nowadays; it's the carnival of mediocrity and ineptitude and nothing else...But it's not worth talking about."

Fyodor Dostoevsky - A Raw Youth (1875)

Green Spat Spending

Green's splash out '£190,000 on legal battles' as leaked dossier exposes huge internal trans row

The Green Party has been spending huge sums of money on legal battles and disciplinary investigations, as a leaked 53-page dossier has exposed deep internal divisions over transgender ideology.

The confidential report was compiled by the party's own legal advisers and warns of significant legal and financial dangers facing leader Zack Polanski's movement.


Surely a spot of hypnotherapy would be much Greener and more sustainable than spending all that Green money on legal wrangles.

Keir should stand up to 'unreliable ally' says unreliable Ed

Keir Starmer should stand up to 'unreliable ally' Donald Trump, Ed Davey says

Sir Keir Starmer should be prepared to have a Love Actually moment and stand up to Donald Trump, the leader of the Liberal Democrats has suggested.

Sir Ed Davey said the Prime Minister should take a more robust stance against the US president who has proven himself to be a “totally unreliable” ally.

Strange chaps, Ed and Keir. Ed Davey seems to have no intention of ever venturing beyond the politics of stunts and playground rhetoric. It's jet skis and falling off paddle boards every time with Ed, but maybe the real puzzle is that people vote for him. 

Or maybe it isn't a puzzle. Perhaps Lib Dem voters are ahead of the game and already know that political leaders are actors and merely part of the show, not people anyone should take seriously. 

Ed delivers that quite well, the 'don't take me seriously folks' act.

Even Wronger Growth

Revealed: Economy shrank 0.1% in October amid budget leaks chaos

The latest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures, released on Friday morning, show that the economy unexpectedly contracted in the month leading up to Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ November budget.

That period saw a flurry of leaks over potential tax cuts being eyed up by the Chancellor.

Ms Reeves has admitted the leaks were "very damaging".

The GDP figure for October falls below the 0.1% growth that analysts had been expecting.


Time to run the figures through the Reeves-Starmer Adjusteramer™

When certainty requires ignorance

Alex Story has a fine Critic piece on the deliberate promotion of ahistorical politics by the UK Labour party as a way to evade responsibility for past damage caused by its totalitarian ideology.


Taking down the past

The ahistoricism of Labour’s leaders is worse than ignorant. It is deliberate

As Goldfinger observed: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action”. It is a good observational rule, not least to judge our political rulers by what they do rather than what they say.

Early in October 2024, Keir Starmer removed the portraits of Queen Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh from 10 Downing Street. Both were painted in the late sixteenth century, a handful of years after the defeat of Spain’s Philip II and his Great Armada.

Both were old hat. After all, fighting for England’s religious and cultural survival is rather reactionary and potentially “far right” now that hoisting your country’s flag on a pole in your own country could earn you a police visit.


The whole piece is quite short and well worth reading, if only because Labour Party ignorance is so easily dismissed as stupidity rather than a cover for yet another dose of totalitarian failure.


Knowledge, truth and their pursuit require cautious discernment and love of the subject; their absence demands revolution. We are faced by the latter, while yearning for the former. Being ahistorical means never taking responsibility for the devastation your ideology and its many permutations have left and will leave behind. Such certainty requires ignorance. It is a totalitarian shield, enabling politicians to bray mendacious and accusatory slogans without shame and to which to acknowledge popular sentiments to “turn the clocks back” is anti-progressive and anathema.

Our Greatest Shortcoming

 

The Wrong Growth

'A generation's future is at risk': PwC warns on youth unemployment

Jake Finney, an economist at PwC, said: ‘The UK youth jobs market has deteriorated sharply, the steepest decline in the G7.

'Young people account for over half the rise in unemployment since mid-2022, despite making up under a fifth of the working-age population. Young workers have inevitably felt the squeeze.

‘They are concentrated in entry -level roles, leaving them more exposed than colleagues with longer tenure.’

It is not easy to say something new about a UK Prime Minister and his Chancellor of the Exchequer who slithered into their wholly undeserved roles loudly promoting economic growth as their primary economic goal before stifling with policies obviously inimical to growth. 

'Stupid' doesn't work as a complete description even though it is stupid. It has been clear from the Tony Blair years that UK governments do not see their role as being wholly defined by UK interests and the interests of UK voters. For them, that's history book stuff.

Soft skills

Defra agency seeks software to help improve ‘communication and soft skills’ of farm inspectors

Animal and Plant Health Agency, whose responsibilities include monitoring wellbeing of livestock and ensuring standards are met, is interested in software that could help prepare for encounters with angry farmers

The government body responsible for regulating and enforcing animal welfare laws has unveiled plans to invest in software that could help frontline inspectors improve their people skills.

An outsider is bound to wonder why the public sector is so fond of referring to its staff as 'frontline'. It's not likely that anyone believes it, although Defra inspectors probably believe it when confronted with angry farmers. Even so, the farmers are 'frontline' if anyone is.

The same outsider is also bound to wonder if anyone is seeking software to help improve Keir Starmer's people skills. He's frontline too - for now.

David Cameron sounds alarm

David Cameron sounds alarm over British brain drain

Former Prime Minister Lord David Cameron has expressed concern about the exodus of British entrepreneurs and talent, warning that the UK government needs to set aside ‘other goals’ and prioritise business growth.


We don't need no stinkin' talent.
 

Weak and decaying

'Weak' and 'decaying': Donald Trump gives withering verdict on European allies

The US president gave his bruising assessment of Europe's leadership, criticising them for immigration and failing to end the war in Ukraine.

Donald Trump's bruising assessment of Europe as "weak" and "decaying" is a bitter blow to nations already reeling from the release of his national security strategy.


Oh dear, 'a bitter blow' suggests they didn't know what has been obvious for years, Europe is weak and decaying. An aspect of it is that European elites won't admit and get to grips with it, but the first step is acquiring the moral strength to admit it. Won't happen though.


Life was a dark, insoluble mystery, but whatever it was, strength and weakness were its two constituents. Strength would win--weakness lose.

Theodore Dreiser - The Financier (1912)

Mr Starmer the Steward

As Keir Starme grinds through his temporary stint of pretending to be UK Prime Minister, it must seem to him as if he is involved in the operations of Something Globally Important, even though he isn’t important enough for that - it operates him. 

The satisfaction of being Prime Minister today cannot reach the same level of satisfaction of a Gladstone or a Disraeli as they played the Great Game.

Today, Keir Starmer’s role is more akin to a senior servant’s position over a century ago, such as head steward managing the estate of a Great House towards the end of the nineteenth century. 

He has his own desk by the fireplace in the steward's office, a good quality coat passed on to him by the previous lord of the manor and the use of a horse from the stables.

Mr Starmer the Steward is his position. He rides around the estate on his horse, tells peasants why their rents have gone up, why their fences can’t be mended this year and why they can’t collect any more wood from the estate because the trees are to be felled. Times are hard for the Great House.

What the head steward doesn’t tell the peasants is that the best days of the Great House ended years ago and the place is to be sold and turned into an international hotel and leisure facility. 

But the peasants have suspected this for a long time.

It's TTTTK

Now PM joins TikTok ahead of China trip - despite platform being barred from government devices

Keir Starmer has joined TikTok as he prepares for a crucial trip to China - despite the site still being restricted on government devices.

The PM has launched an account on the fast-growing social media platform with a video of himself and wife Victoria in Downing Street.

It shows Sir Keir awkwardly urging people to 'follow me' as he goes out of the famous black door to turn on the Christmas lights.

Sir Keir 'awkwardly urging people'? He does everything awkwardly... as far as we know.

On a more serious note, China does seem to be the Establishment's government model. Not in detail but in terms of a determined focus on comprehensive control by a more formally defined upper echelon.

Labour Together... except Keir

Labour group asks members who they would back in leadership challenge

The think tank that ran Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership campaign is canvassing party members on candidates to replace him, in yet another sign of trouble for the beleaguered prime minister.

Labour Together, a think tank previously run by Sir Keir’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, asked activists this weekend for their opinions on Labour leadership contenders amid growing concern over the direction of the government and devastating approval ratings...

Alongside Sir Keir, eight Labour politicians were named, including cabinet ministers Wes Streeting, Shabana Mahmood, Bridget Phillipson, Ed Miliband and Darren Jones.

Also listed were former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham and deputy Labour leader Lucy Powell.

Makes grim reading, dredging a worthwhile leader up out of that lot seems unlikely. Yet maybe there are one or two who think Labour has something to prove because Keir Starmer doesn't appear to accept even that. 

Oh well, at least it should be entertaining.

Yellow Lines

 

Source

Silly

A problem with the UK Net Zero policy is that the whole policy is silly. There are many other words, but one of the apt words for Net Zero is 'silly'. AI says this about the word ‘silly’.

Silly is primarily an adjective used to indicate a lack of common sense, awareness, or judgment. It can describe actions, ideas, or behavior that are considered foolish, weak-minded, nonsense, or trivial in nature .

In summary, silly is a versatile English word used to describe foolishness, triviality, childishness, or playful behavior, with a long historical evolution from meanings of happiness and innocence to modern-day uses in everyday speech .


The silliness of Net Zero leaves sceptics with the tedious problem of having to go further than the obvious scientific, technical and economic deficiencies of the whole policy. Because it is an official UK government policy with its own senior cabinet minister it is necessary to reiterate the practical futilities over and over again, year after year. That's the silliness being silly.

Yet Net Zero is still silly, bone deep, down to the marrow silly.

Looping back to various meanings of the word ‘silly’, the policy lacks common sense, awareness and judgment. It exhibits ideas, and behaviour which are foolish, weak-minded, nonsense and trivial in nature. Net Zero is silly, but we can’t leave it at that.

The Great Green Grab

Tom Armstrong has a good, solid FSB piece on what he calls The Great Green Grab.

The Great Green Grab: How £28 Billion of Your Money is Being Spent on a Fairy Tale

A lesson in lunacy: Picture the scene. It is a grey December morning in 2025, and the energy regulator Ofgem has just delivered the nation its latest Christmas present: permission for the electricity and gas companies to spend £28 billion of our money upgrading gas pipes and power pylons over the next five years. The press release is thick, of course, with the usual cant; “future-proofing,” “resilient,” “net zero by 2030”. The accompanying photographs show smiling ministers, wearing wholly unnecessary hard hats, standing in front of turbines the size of Big Ben. The average voter, already paying some of the highest electricity bills in the world, is supposed to cheer.

Do not cheer. What has just been announced is one of the largest acts of state sanctioned larceny in British history, dressed up as salvation. And it rests, from first brick to last, on a fantasy we are invited to accept without question: that the climate ‘emergency’ is so pressing that we must bankrupt ourselves to appease it. Suppose, just for a moment, that the emergency is a mirage – and it certainly is – and compound of hysterical computer models, grant-hungry academics, and politicians in search of a noble purpose and good jobs when they retire or get kicked out. From that vantage point, the £28 billion looks less like an investment and more like the greatest confidence trick ever played on a developed nation.

The whole piece covers familiar ground but is well worth reading. Sooner or later the lunacy has to be nailed as lunacy even if those responsible slink off into another lucrative scam. As they probably will.

One day, perhaps sooner than the modellers think, the public will ask the question that should have been asked years ago: if the climate is truly in peril, why are we the only ones prepared to freeze in the dark to save it? When that day comes, the £28 billion will stand as a monument not to foresight, but to one of the most expensive outbreaks of collective delusion in our island story.

Until then, keep an eye on your direct debits. They are about to go up again. And rebel.

I miss her

Starmer: Rayner will return to cabinet – I miss her

In a wide-ranging interview, Sir Keir also insisted that he had no intention of stepping aside before the next election.

He said: “When I took over the Labour Party, everyone said to me, ‘you’re not going to be able to change the party’. We ignored that and carried on.

“Then they said to me, ‘you’re not going to be able to win an election’. We got a landslide Labour victory. Now, 17 months into a five-year Labour term, they say ‘you’re not able to change the country’.

“Every time we’ve been in this position, we’ve defied them. And that’s what I intend to do.”

Team Starmer must think it's safer to have Seaside Ange on the inside rather than the outside, especially as she is seen as a fan of trade unions and Unite is threatening disaffiliation from the Labour Party. 

Apart from this we seem to have the maniacally intransigent twaddle Starmer usually emits during interviews. There is no point in sifting through it for some kind of worthwhile meaning, he doesn't shape his twaddle like that.

It leaves a question hanging in the political air though - who shapes Starmer's twaddle? Why would the man wish to come across as more than a little bonkers, so much so that it tends to obscure the Fabian backdrop? Perhaps because he really is bonkers.

Police Cars

 

Adrenaline Crumble

Tower of London closed after protesters damage Crown Jewels display

Four protesters have been arrested after custard and apple crumble was thrown at a display case containing the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London.

Take Back Power, which describes itself as a new non-violent civil resistance group, claimed it was behind the act as it called for a citizen-led assembly that has the power to tax the rich.

Footage shared by the group showed one demonstrator removing the large foil tray of crumble from a bag and then slamming it against the glass protecting the Imperial State Crown.


There isn't much point trying to make sense of what these 'demonstrators' say as it is almost certain to be nonsense, but maybe what they do is a clue to an adrenaline hit they are seeking. 

There does seem to be an increasing trend towards engineering situations which generate a surge of adrenaline and this is certainly one of those. Crumble and custard are merely props. 

In a wider sense it's not uncommon either, we see similar behaviour in all kinds of social situations at many different levels. One explanation for habitual lateness is that some people get an adrenaline hit from rushing around while still failing to get to work or a meeting on time.

The crumble and custard stunt is perhaps nothing more than a reminder that some need a bigger adrenaline hit than others. In this case, a day in court should provide another one.

Riven with irrationality

Tony Blair ‘planning major intervention’ over Labour’s future

Sir Tony Blair’s think tank is said to be pulling together a policy plan to “save the Labour party” amid frustrations over Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership.

The former prime minister is reportedly looking carefully at a number of candidates for leadership campaigns as reports in The Times suggest he is dissatisfied by the direction of Sir Keir’s government.

Sources said November’s Budget had “killed any idea this is a Blairite or New Labour-like government”, adding Sir Tony had all but “given up” on attempting to influence Starmer over recent months.


So Tony Blair expects to have his clammy hand on the Labour tiller but Starmer isn't responding. Not a huge surprise, but it is interesting if Blair has all but “given up” on attempting to influence Starmer over recent months. It reinforces something we've seen for quite a while - Starmer is absurdly intransigent.

Also interesting is that Blair has chosen to point out what sane folk have always known, the supposed basis of Ed Miliband's energy policy is "riven with irrationality". It's worse than that, but it's a start.

Sir Tony said in a TBI report: “People know that the current state of debate over climate change is riven with irrationality … any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail.”

Silly games

Revealed: Streeting’s pact with Rayner to gain keys to No 10

Wes Streeting’s allies are pressing Angela Rayner to sign up to a “joint ticket” for the Labour leadership, The Telegraph can reveal...

A source close to Ms Rayner said: “There is no vacancy and there is no pact.

“Amidst all the stirring and silly games, Angela is focused on representing her constituents and ensuring that this Government delivers. Angela is made of tough stuff and she will not be played like a pawn.”

We know those silly games will have been fermenting away for a while now, it's an inevitable outcome of the situation. A useless, charmless and unpopular prime minister with no leadership skills and a poisoned chalice as the glittering prize for the schemer who replaces him.

Oh well, it's grey and drizzly here in our corner of Derbyshire. Seems about right.

Labour’s chaos again

Steven Mulholland has a very interesting CAPX piece on the way UK Labour party chaos is disrupting the building industry, particularly in relation to plant hire.


Labour’s chaos is holding back Britain’s builders

• The Government's infrastructure ambitions are drifting further from reality
• Construction activity has seen its steepest fall since the pandemic
• Labour have left builders guessing on tax, skills policy and investment rules

Today’s S&P UK construction data should set alarm bells ringing in Number 10.

Construction activity across housing, commercial and civil engineering has seen its steepest fall since the pandemic, with new orders nosediving and employment declining for eleven consecutive months.

This is not a natural cooling of the market. It is the predictable consequence of a policy environment that has become more expensive, more uncertain and harder for businesses to navigate. Instead of giving firms the stability to invest, recent decisions have weakened confidence across the construction supply chain at exactly the moment Britain needs it to be firing on all cylinders.

The whole piece is well worth reading as yet another example of severe problems with a lack of relevant experience within government decision-making circles. Or, as so often seems to be the case, a complete absence of relevant experience.

This combination of rising costs and tax uncertainty has created a perfect storm. When firms cannot predict future liabilities or trust the stability of the policy environment, they pause. And that hesitation is exactly what the S&P construction data captures: falling output, shrinking order books and a sharp drop in optimism – now at its lowest point since 2022.

1 in 4 Canadians are now Bureaucrats

I haven't checked the numbers quoted here, but a country which saddles itself with Mark Carney as Prime Minister after a spell of Justin Trudeau's posturing may well be headed in the basket case direction. 

Twaddle(1.0) Revised to Twaddle(1.1)

Major study on catastrophic cost of climate change retracted - but revised figures remain alarming

The study originally predicted that climate change would trigger a decrease in global income of 19 per cent by 2050. Revised analysis now puts the figure at 17 per cent.

Authors of the study also found that there was a 99 per cent chance that by midcentury it would cost more to fix damage from climate change than it would to build resilience. However, the new analysis, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, lowered that figure to 91 per cent.


Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves seem to be well on track to reduce UK incomes by 19 per cent much earlier than 2050. A substantial UK overshoot seems more likely by 2050, or would that be a substantial undershoot?

Keeping it simple

Desperate 'Rural Red' Labour MPs vow to 'get Reeves out before Christmas'

Fraud And Liberal Myths

Christopher F. Rufo has an interesting City Journal piece on the Minnesota welfare fraud story, showing how high the media bar can be for anyone attempting to expose welfare fraud and those who allow it to happen. Worth reading.


The Somali Fraud Story Busts Liberal Myths

Mass immigration, antiracism, and the welfare state lead inexorably to fraud.

There is a moment when every news story either achieves lift-off or tumbles back to the earth. Having covered a few that drove national headlines, I’ve discovered there is no universal formula for which ones hit the stratosphere, and which do not.

Our recent story detailing Minnesota’s Somali fraud rings has been one of the lucky ones, achieving liftoff in record time. City Journal reporter Ryan Thorpe and I summarized a decade of Somali fraud schemes that stole billions of taxpayer dollars, some of which ended up with Al-Shabaab terrorists back in Somalia. These were sophisticated criminal enterprises that exploited Minnesota’s generous welfare state, deployed accusations of racism to deter scrutiny, and looted the public treasury until local prosecutors did the hard work to bring them down.

Your Party is a far left farce

Ben Sixsmith has an entertaining Critic piece on the farce that is Your Party.


Your Party is a far left farce

Radical socialists are a compelling argument against their own ideas

Well, thank God Your Party is not our party.

I should eat some humble pie. “It is easy to write off Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s political party,” I wrote in August. I should have stopped there. For all my musings about how Corbyn “upended British politics once and … has the power to do it again”, it has become very, very easy to write off the party now officially called Your Party.

Comically so.


The whole piece is well worth reading as we need some entertainment to worm its way into UK politics, even if it is only provided by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. As Ben Sixsmith says, radical socialists are a compelling argument against their own ideas. 

We could go further and strike a more sombre note though - radical socialists are a compelling argument that far too many voters are absurdly gullible.


“We need to nationalise the entire economy,” Sultana was saying in interviews. Well, of course! Who wouldn’t want to give the people who have built an organisation as functional as Your Party massive amounts of power? It makes all the sound good sense of investing in Enron in November 2001.

These people are the most compelling argument for libertarianism. I would not go that far myself, perhaps, but the hubris of people who think that they could organise an economy when they could not even organise a football match on a field next to a ball factory makes it tempting.

Lineker says

Lineker says BBC has 'tied itself up in knots' over impartiality rules

Asked whether he sympathised with the BBC over its handling of the Trump saga, Lineker told the London Standard: “The BBC is still the most trusted and respected media organisation on the planet.

“I don’t know what led them to do what they did. They didn’t even need to. I suspect it was just some kind of error. I can’t imagine anyone thinking, ‘If we put that there it makes him look worse.’”


Members of the jury, this is not a complex case, it may be summed up via two comparatively simple lines of evidence.

You have heard the defence prove without a shadow of doubt that the prosecution evidence was fabricated and the defendant Mr Donald Trump did not say the words the prosecution alleges he said. This falsified evidence is the whole basis of prosecution case, without that it falls to the ground.

You, members of the jury may think this conclusive and the defendant has no case to answer. However, the prosecution has received a late claim by Mr Gary Lineker, a former footballer and for may years a sporting celebrity employed by the prosecution to give his opinions on football matches.

This additional prosecution evidence is that Mr Lineker does not like Mr Trump.

Therefore members of the jury, it is clear that you must weigh the balance of evidence. On the one hand the incontrovertible evidence that the prosecution case rests on falsified evidence, on the other hand the equally incontrovertible evidence that Mr Gary Lineker does not like Mr Trump the defendant.

Members of the jury, it is for you to weigh that evidence

Starmer and his "chaotic world"

Britain must not shrink back from ‘chaotic world’, says Starmer

Britain must not shrink back from a “chaotic world”, Sir Keir Starmer has said as he underlined his commitment to internationalism.

In his annual Guildhall speech on foreign policy, the Prime Minister accused opposition politicians of offering a “corrosive, inward-looking attitude” on international affairs.

Taking aim at those who advocate leaving the European Convention on Human Rights or Nato, he said they offered “grievance rather than hope” and “a declinist vision of a lesser Britain”.


Oh come on man, have a go at making sense for once, it isn't that difficult. If we don't shrink back from that "chaotic world" are we supposed to join in? Would staying out of the international chaos count as a “corrosive, inward-looking attitude” on international affairs?

Oh and doesn't your party base its entire political philosophy around “grievance rather than hope”? Hasn't it pursued this outlook from its inglorious Fabian beginnings?

As for “a declinist vision of a lesser Britain” - that's your personal political philosophy isn't it Sir Keir? That's your globalist, Trotskyite outlook on view again.

Misconduct in a Public Office

Interesting video by barrister Steven Barrett. He mansplains, as he puts it, the crime of misconduct in a public office.

COP17

Claire Lemaire has a useful Brussels Signal piece on COP17. 

EU wants money from ‘oil-rich countries’ for biodiversity ahead of COP17

The European Union is aiming for “financial commitments from oil-rich countries” to support global biodiversity efforts ahead of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP17), scheduled in Armenia in 2026...

Analysts say the EU’s push reflects recognition that relying solely on traditional donors will not meet the targets of the Global Biodiversity Framework.

COP17 in Armenia will test the international community’s ability to bridge political divides and unlock finance from unconventional sources.


Of course this is not the other COP17 to be held in 2026 in Ulaanbaatar the capital city of Mongolia, although coincidentally they want money as well.

COP17, set for 2026 during the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP) — declared by the United Nations General Assembly and championed by Mongolia — will build on efforts to promote the sustainable management, restoration and conservation of rangelands.

Wrong oaks from little acorns grow

When bureaucratic planting schemes go wrong, an entertaining story from Blackout News - AI translation of the original German.


False oaks planted - compensation forest for A14 to be cut down again

A large-scale mixed forest near Gardelegen is on the verge of closure - and only six years after its planting. The reason: The oaks planted there do not come from the legally prescribed zones of origin. Although the young trees look healthy and have grown well, their clearing is now threatened. This compensation area, created because of the expansion of the A14, was actually a symbol of ecological responsibility. But now this is developing into a bureaucratic dilemma, growing citizen protest, rising costs and massive criticism of forestry policy...

In the affected mixed forest, there are hardly any problems. The oaks have taken root deep into the dry Altmark soil. Other species such as the European beech, a close relative of the oak, are also developing positively. So far, the area has fulfilled its function as a near-natural compensation area for the infrastructure project.

According to forestry authorities, however, the planting does not meet the legal requirements – a classic case of incorrectly delivered seeds. The question of guilt is therefore directed against the contracted company. In case of doubt, this must not only pay for the damage, but also provide replacement areas.

A picture paints...

 

Source

Tiny black holes

Blimey - does the story below suggest that tiny black holes could lodge themselves in a susceptible person's head? Or are the black holes entirely imaginary?

Scientists explore whether tiny black holes could pass through the human body

A new scientific paper has stirred public curiosity — and a bit of anxiety — by suggesting that miniature “primordial” black holes might theoretically pass through a human without warning.

Silly

Your Party co-founder Zarah Sultana refuses to enter group's conference hall

Your Party's "historic" founding conference has descended into chaos on day one as one of its co-founders stages a boycott over claims of a "purge".

There was a row on the eve of conference after it emerged members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) had been expelled from Your Party, as its rules do not permit dual membership.

However, a spokesperson for Ms Sultana branded this a "witch hunt" and said she won't be returning until her speech tomorrow.

Liar Lies Shock Horror

No 10 denies Reeves 'lied about £21bn black hole' before budget

Rachel Reeves has been accused of “lying” to the public about the state of the country’s finances to justify £26 billion in tax hikes announced in her Autumn Budget...

But it has since emerged that Ms Reeves made those comments just days after receiving a letter from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) stating that the economic outlook had improved and that, rather than a deficit, she in fact had a £4.2 billion surplus.

Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the letter showed Ms Reeves had "lied to the public" and was “bribing Labour MPs to save her own skin”, as she called for her to be sacked.


Does it matter? This is Rachel from Accounts being criticised here. Nobody with even a modest degree of acumen is likely to pay attention to her tedious mendacity.

She emits economic numbers no moderately alert person would ever believe. She concocts facile strings of reasoning which aren't likely to convince a single MP, journalist, grounded observer or even a BBC presenter.

Nobody paying attention is surprised, shocked or even particularly interested. Rachel from Accounts is widely known to be habitually dishonest, so nobody who knows anything is listening to her within the framework of mendacity she erected. Her verbiage is reported because stories still have to be churned out, but that's it.

When the BBC Might as Well be Replaced With AI

A short piece in Climate Skeptic where Chris Morrison makes an interesting point about the BBC and Net Zero. Interesting because the point made won't stop there. 


If the BBC Never Questions Net Zero it Might as Well be Replaced With Cheaper AI

What's the point of employing so many journalists just to regurgitate the official line?...

Opinions may differ, but suitably prompted AI could easily replicate much of the climate output of the BBC over the last two decades.

Satisfaction Almost Guaranteed

As Keir Starmer clings onto power with regular cascades of mendacious drivel, there must be some satisfaction for him, something to outweigh the unpleasant aspects of being widely despised as an absurdly dishonest bungler.

The cardboard knighthood, the office, chauffer-driven cars, security, international trips, photo opportunities, they must inject some satisfaction into the willing veins of certain people and Keir Starmer must be one of those people.

The role of a modern UK Prime Minister may be as fake as a nine pound note but the satisfaction must be enough to convince Starmer that he has achieved something worthwhile. 

He hasn't achieved anything worthwhile at all, but the State chooses to wrap him in a Prime Ministerial cocoon which tells him otherwise and he goes along with it.

For now.

It's a weird world

Government ‘not in favour’ of controversial efforts to dim the sun

Ministers have expressed their opposition to efforts to reflect more of the sun’s rays back into space, noting they are “not in favour”.

Commons Leader Sir Alan Campbell warned that solar radiation modification could expose the climate and environment to "risks", after a Labour MP called for a debate on geoengineering experiment rules.


It's a weird world where shamelessly useless fund-hunting can be upgraded to 'controversial'.

We sometimes choose absolute nonsense

Starmer insists Labour 'kept to our manifesto' despite record-breaking tax rises

He said it was "not true" his government has misled the public after promising not to raise taxes again after last year's budget.

And he refused multiple times to say he had broken his manifesto promise not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT "on working people".

"We kept to our manifesto in terms of what we've promised," he said.

"But I accept the challenge that we've asked everybody to contribute. I want to be really clear on why we've done that," Sir Keir continued.

"That is because we need to protect our NHS, to make sure that it's there for people when they need it and their families when they need it.

"Secondly, to make sure we've got the money to put into our schools. So every single child can go as far as their talent will take them," the prime minister added.


He knows it's nonsense, but having painted himself into a corner he is willing to make use of nonsense as a simple enough way to deny that he has any knowledge of corners or painting. 

Yet it leads directly to Starmer coming across as ever more foolish, both for painting himself into a corner and for denying it with ludicrously obvious dollops of nonsense. 

As a political tool, even nonsense has its limits, the point where no advantages are gained from using more of it. 

 

Our choice is usually mistaken from a false view of our advantage. We sometimes choose absolute nonsense because in our foolishness we see in that nonsense the easiest means for attaining a supposed advantage.

Fyodor Dostoevsky - Notes from Underground (1864)

Clickbait headlines are everywhere

NASA Scientists Discover DNA & RNA in Asteroid Bennu

In a remarkable scientific breakthrough, NASA has confirmed that samples returned from asteroid Bennu contain all five nucleobases used to build DNA and RNA, alongside 14 amino acids essential for life as we know it...

The building blocks of life, specifically adenine, guanine, cytosine, uracil, and thymine, were identified inside briny mineral deposits in the asteroid’s dust and rocks. This suggests Bennu, or its ancient parent body, once hosted small bodies of water.

It's a most interesting finding and the whole article is well worth reading, but why bung such an obvious exaggeration into the headline? DNA and RNA haven't been discovered in samples returned from asteroid Bennu, but clickbait rules presumably.

Clickbait headlines are everywhere, degrading everything they touch, even worthwhile articles and stories.

A great question indeed.

Climate Depot’s Marc Morano’s statement on COP30’s ending:

“Thank You, Mr. President! Trump’s masterclass move not to send U.S. delegation, blamed for failure of UN climate summit!” – (See: POLITICO: ‘The U.S. absence allowed’ BRICS nations & petro-states to team up to derail COP30)

“I have attended in-person 21 out of the past 23 international UN climate/environmental summits. I can declare that after spending a week in Brazil at COP30, it was the biggest UN climate sh*t-show ever! Thank God, President Trump chose not to send an official U.S. delegation to the UN climate summit for the first time in its history! (I was part of CFACT’s self-declared ‘unofficial’ U.S. delegation in Belém, Brazil) America’s absence helped speed along the total irrelevance of this 30th annual UN climate summit.)

The UN COP30 failure was so spectacular that even the mainstream media could not paper over it. POLITICO cited a European government official asking: ‘What the f*ck are we even doing here?’ A great question indeed.

Musk's 5-step algorithm for running companies

 

Make money from recycled twaddle

Reeves to hammer London in Budget tax grab on homeowners and workers

Ahead of delivering her Budget speech in the Commons on Wednesday, Ms Reeves said: “Today I will take the fair and necessary choices to deliver on our promise of change.

“I will not return Britain back to austerity, nor will I lose control of public spending with reckless borrowing.

“I will take action to help families with the cost of living, cut hospital waiting lists, cut the national debt.

“And I will push ahead with the biggest drive for growth in a generation.”

I've just remembered that today is the Big Day for Rachel from Accounts.

Let us hope it's her last.

And Starmer's.

Slow Learners

BBC cuts Trump criticism after bias row

The BBC has been forced to cut a line from its Reith Lectures calling Donald Trump “the most openly corrupt president in American history”.

Rutger Bregman, a Dutch Left-wing historian and philosopher, was invited to give the BBC lecture at Broadcasting House last month.

But when his speech was broadcast on Radio 4 on Tuesday morning, his description of the US president was edited out following legal advice.


By gum, I bet that lesson took some swallowing by BBC sloths. It's not only the bias, it's a bland refusal to adapt which ought to seal the fate of the BBC.


Bregman previously made an appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2019, berating the attendees for refusing to address “the real issue of tax avoidance by the rich”.

His 2017 book, Utopia for Realists, advocated for open borders and a 15-hour working week.

Unbearably vain and destructive

Dame Joanna Lumley describes humans as ‘unbearably vain and destructive’

Dame Joanna Lumley has bemoaned humans for being “unbearably vain and destructive”.

The actress, who stars in the upcoming A Ghost Story For Christmas: The Room In The Tower, said she loves “frightening stories”.

“I do believe that there are ghosts,” she told the Radio Times.


Two of the most persistently destructive aspects of social and political life are virtue-signalling and the vanity which encourages it.

I didn't realise she's a Dame, nothing vain about accepting that of course.

But Foma has control of our media and publishing

James Martin Charlton has a topical Critic piece on Dostoyevsky’s depiction of what has become a pervasive modern pest - the virtue-signalling activist.


How Dostoyevsky dissected activistic hypocrites

Dostoyevsky’s outrageous grotesque now runs riot in our institutions

Over the past decade or so, a very particular type of character has made its presence known in many of our offices and institutions, veritably tyrannising our lives. Countless numbers of us have suffered this type in silence or experienced humiliations — or worse — at their hands. Only now are they being acknowledged, as articles appear on activist capture, notably at the BBC. Yet readers of one of Dostoyevsky’s lesser-known novels will recognise the type, epitomised by the compellingly awful Foma Fomich Opiskin in the early novel The Village of Stepanchikovo...

We recognise Foma immediately as the pattern of the office and institutional activist. For Foma advertises his virtuous capacity for seeing past stale conventions to create a more egalitarian society. It is this self-proclamation as an avatar of a better world which has impressed his host’s mother and others, and even seems to have drawn in the colonel. For Foma turns the colonel’s instinct towards fairness against him, guilt-tripping his host for perceived slights.


The whole piece is well worth reading, even for those who haven't read the book. Worth reading not only as a reminder that virtue-signalling activists aren't a new problem, but also a reminder that we probably have even more of the pernicious pests. The BBC is full of them.


Foma is a character on a par with Shakespeare’s portraits of overweening rogues; he has something of Malvolio’s Puritan scornfulness, Iago’s manipulative genius and Parolles’ bravado and cowardice. He also bears a strong resemblance to Molière’s Tartuffe. Contemporary stages, sitcoms and novels should be full of Foma’s likenesses, mirroring and mocking our encounters with them in reality. But Foma has control of our media and publishing just as he did the colonel’s household. We must on no account allow him to become the fixture Dostoyevsky pictures him becoming in the Stepanchikovo estate. For if we cannot resist this mere popinjay, how will we resist the Demons that Dostoyevsky shows us to be following him?

And more would go if they could

Labour’s taxes are driving people out of Britain, Business Secretary admits

Labour’s tax rises are forcing wealthy people to flee Britain, the Business Secretary has admitted.

Peter Kyle said he was not going to “duck the fact” that individuals of a high net worth had been driven out by Rachel Reeves’s tax raid on non-doms.

He also said entrepreneurs were abandoning the UK “in their droves” because they “haven’t had the funding to succeed”...

Some 257,000 British nationals quit the UK in the year ending December last year – more than three times the previous estimate of 77,000.

The trend is unlikely to be a purely practical matter of taxation and failure to reduce obstacles to economic growth. Mostly that perhaps, but not entirely. 

A visceral desire to escape this absurd Labour government and its contemptible, tin-eared incompetence must be another factor for competent people who can leave.

We don’t need no stinkin’ awareness

Consciousness is inference Karl Friston once wrote. A useful idea which can take us along some strange but strangely familiar paths.

For example, anyone disposed to accept a statement passed on by a social consensus or political party may easily sidestep the need to verify the statement via inference. When inference isn’t needed, neither is a conscious awareness that the statement only relies on consensus.

The consensus says – We don’t need no stinkin’ inference.

If inference is consciousness and consciousness is inference then to control inference is to control consciousness. Those who merely accept a consensus may not be fully conscious of good alternatives.

The consensus says – We don’t need no stinkin’ alternatives.

A slogan or mantra may be crude and inaccurate as a statement about the real world, but simple enough to bypass inference. In bypassing inference, awareness of the crudity and inaccuracy is also likely to be bypassed.

The consensus says – We don’t need no stinkin’ awareness.

What is happening here transcends incompetence.

Countries agree compromise climate deal at COP30 - but omit mention of fossil fuels

The deal would boost finance for poor nations coping with global warming, but it fails to namecheck the fossil fuels driving it.

As the United Nations summit wrapped up in Brazil, applause masked disappointment in the many weak parts of the agreement...

Panama negotiator Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez said: "A climate decision that cannot even say 'fossil fuels' is not neutrality, it is complicity. And what is happening here transcends incompetence."

He added: "Science has been deleted from COP30 because it offends the polluters."

Can't argue with that, COP30 does transcend incompetence, whatever that means. Science hasn't been deleted from COP30 though, it was never there. 

The clue, as Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez probably knows quite well, is that it's all about money, has been from the beginning. 

By gum this racket has been going on for a long time though.

Loser

Keir Starmer would lose to Angela Rayner according to bombshell leadership poll

Sir Keir Starmer would lose a leadership contest to Angela Rayner, polling of Labour members has revealed. More than half of party members surveyed would vote for Ms Rayner as leader if they went head to head.

Only one in three would back Sir Keir. The former deputy leader topped the poll on 52% with the Prime Minister languishing on 33%. The poll also shows that three other potential rivals - Andy Burnham, Ed Miliband and Wes Streeting - would beat Sir Keir in a head-to-head contest.

Not surprising but it isn't easy to know what to say about the possibility of Seaside Ange becoming Prime Minister.

Unfortunately, alternative possibilities offer no reasons to be cheerful. The most remarkable aspect of it all is that there are enough Labour members left to be worth polling.

Starmer addresses G19

Starmer addresses G20 summit - but Trump boycotts talks

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is in Johannesburg for the summit - and he spoke about the bloc's "critical" importance on its first day...

"Growth must be a mission for us all to embrace as the means to improve lives, fund public services and to keep our people secure.

"The G20 has worked together before to fix fundamental problems in the global economy. We need to find ways to play a constructive role again today in the face of the world challenges.

"I'd like to see us come together around a five-point plan for growth that leaves no one behind."


Ah yes, that's Starmer-talk, a five-point plan. Could be turbocharged as well, but we can't have everything.  

Meanwhile a more sensible approach -

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, skipped a foreign ministers meeting in February, and said that he would not waste American taxpayers money on an agenda which was focused on diversity, equity and inclusion and climate change.

Nightmare

 

'COP is a nightmare but best process we've got', says Ed Miliband as climate talks run into overtime

Countries gathered in northern Brazil are still locked in a stand-off over a deal to wean the world off fossil fuels, the main cause of the climate crisis.

Other key sticking points are cash for developing countries to adapt to more extreme weather, like drought in Afghanistan, which they have generally done little to cause.

 

Meanwhile here in the UK, Ed "Windmill" Miliband's energy policy is delivering cheap, clean power to nobody at all, just what saner minds always knew it would  deliver.

Meanwhile, Rachel from Accounts seems to be intent on making sure that the "Miliband Nightmare" is even less affordable and a just a little more scary for many people Labour is supposed to represent - not that it ever did.

I’m just trying to do my best

Rachel Reeves: ‘I’m sick of the mansplaining on how to be Chancellor'

Rachel Reeves has fired back at her critics, saying she’s “sick of people mansplaining how to be Chancellor to me.”...

She explained: “I’m not a public personality. I’m not in show business. I’m the Chancellor. If you want people to enter politics, you have to remember they’re human beings.

“I’m a mum with two kids. I’m a wife and a daughter. I wasn’t born into this, and I’m just trying to do my best.”

Oh dear, if she thinks that's an appropriate excuse for a failing Chancellor of the Exchequer, then she's a fool. 

But we knew that.

Sooner or later Keir Starmer may acquire a small spine and explain to Rachel Reeves why she has to go. Assuming he doesn't go first of course, but if he does she'll probably follow him through the notorious revolving door.

Squabblers Squabble

Sultana accused by Corbyn allies of encouraging 'ultra leftists' to disrupt Your Party conference

A spokesperson for Ms Sultana says she believes Your Party should "unite the entire left" in a row over the influence of far-left groups.

Allies of Jeremy Corbyn fear Zarah Sultana is encouraging members of far-left splinter groups to disrupt Your Party's inaugural conference...

They include the Revolutionary Communist Group, the Socialist Workers' Party (SWP) and the Socialist Party (SP).


That she was “advanced” you could also postulate, but “advanced” in a strange way that would make her all the more dangerous, if only to small circles;. You would know, if you happened to know the type, that she would have “principles” that at odd moments would wreck enterprises, homes, or the lives of friends — always for the purest of motives.

Ford Madox Ford - The Marsden Case (1923)

Run for the exits

Horror fire sparks panic at COP30 as panicked attendees 'run for exits' in frenzied scenes

A huge fire erupting during COP30 in Brazil sparked scene of panic on Thursday. Delegates were seen running for the exits after the blaze broke out in the pavilion area of a venue where UN climate talks are taking place.

UN and security crews rushed to the area to try and put out the fire, as the building was being evacuated. Firefighters also rushed to the scene to quash the flames, with social media footage showing the fire rising from the venue and smoke engulfing one of the corridors. The efforts may be aided by rain starting to fall after the blaze erupted.


It sounds as if all the delegates evacuated. The things they do for us.

Concrete Actions

Pope Leo XIV urges ‘concrete actions’ to stop climate change & says God’s creation is ‘crying out’

BELEM, Brazil (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Monday urged countries at United Nations climate talks to take “concrete actions” to stop climate change that is threatening the planet, telling them humans are failing in their response to global warming and that God’s creation “is crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat.”

In a video message played for religious leaders gathered in Belem, Leo said nations had made progress, “but not enough.”

Not that it matters, but -

CO2 total emissions by region, 2000-2023

Behind the door we don’t open

Starmer announces national summit on challenges facing men and boys

Sir Keir Starmer has announced that his Government will hold a national summit on the challenges facing men and boys next year.

 

Starmeresque Landscape via AI

Do you ever have moments of political indifference where you know political games are simpler, more sordid and much bleaker than we usually admit? I do and I suspect many others do too.

I don’t mean another bout of angst, disillusion or cynical disgust. I'm rather fond of a spot of cynical disgust every now and then. Instead we could be better off making a clean breast of things - in a socially honest kind of way. The political arena is a cold, grey and inhospitable landscape, much bleaker than we care to admit – that kind of honesty.

Suppose we take political rhetoric as an obvious example. Let’s apply a bit of bleak simplicity to it.

Political rhetoric is a loose grouping of language games affecting enough people emotionally to congeal into a few political parties. Social class, taxation, health, welfare and education are enrolled to provide emotional stimuli and induce certain emotional responses. The language games cannot be rational, analytical or investigative or they would lose the emotional crudity they need to congeal and survive.

It is not necessarily productive to pursue this argument as an argument, but as an example of how we could easily and consistently analyse political rhetoric into nothing but language games designed to persuade by inducing emotional responses. The details of how language games gain political traction may be complex, diffuse and fragmented, but once they are established, the analysis is simple. Bleakly uninvolved but simple.

This kind of bleakly uninvolved approach isn’t new and I suspect substantial numbers of people have always teetered on the edge of it from time to time. But most of us don’t quite take the plunge, because to do so would deprive us of interesting, if frustrating political discourse.

Maybe the bleak political landscape lies behind the door we don’t open, the one we are aware of but prefer to leave closed and in many cases locked. Behind the door there are no comfort zones, only bleak reality.

Voting is Weird

Voting for a UK political party is weird. It’s not like getting a plumber to fix the leak under the sink. If the plumber bodges the job, causes a major flood, ruins a carpet and clears off without fixing the leak, we don’t use him again.

If we vote a political party into government and it fails to deliver any of its pre-election promises, squanders vast amounts of taxpayers’ money and makes a shambles of everything it touches, millions of loyal voters will still vote for it again.

That’s weird.

To verify compliance

North Korea launches multi-child family inspection campaign as officials visit homes to renew certificates

Visitation teams are checking whether families have valid certificates and if mothers are actually receiving reduced work hours and doubled vacation days promised by the regime

North Korea’s Central Committee has ordered provincial party committees to pay special attention to families with multiple children, dispatching “visitation teams” to homes to verify compliance with pro-natalist policies and renew family certificates that previously required parents to visit government offices themselves.

So backward, surely it would be much easier to verify compliance with a digital ID system. North Korea should invite Keir Starmer and his team over for a prolonged visit.

Leading the Charge

UK Border Stops £500m Fake Goods Influx — Guess Which Countries Are Leading the Charge?

Over the past three years, UK borders have intercepted counterfeit goods worth over £500 million, mainly from China, Hong Kong, and Turkey. The figures expose a sophisticated shift by criminals towards high-value, less voluminous fakes that pose increasing risks to British consumers and businesses...

Faced with such a vast and borderless threat, it is clear that simply seizing goods at the border is not enough. Officials emphasise that effective action requires strong international partnerships between industry, government, and law enforcement to disrupt criminal supply chains at their source.


Cynical guesswork here, but what we also see is an official incentive structure where failing to solve the counterfeit goods problem is what keeps official career structures in place.

Monitoring, seizures and intelligence gathering will provide what seems to be a vital service and to a significant degree it will be just that. Yet the inevitable incentive structure will ensure that enforcement never goes far enough to endanger the bureaucracy and knock a few rungs out of official career ladders.