The clues are in the questions

Westminster council offers staff chance to take ‘privilege’ quiz

A flagship Labour council offered staff the option to take a “privilege test” in a move to combat unconscious bias against ethnic minorities.

Westminster Council workers are asked to take an online quiz which gives a privilege score based on answers to statements like “I am a white male” or “I have an illness or disability”, according to the Daily Telegraph.

The council said the questions appeared on a Powerpoint presentation from 2021 and do not form “any part of formal policy, training or recruitment process.”


The clues are in the questions so we may as well extend them into the realms of deranged absurdity where they belong -

I frequently travel by private jet +100

I am given free tickets to expensive shows +50

I travel in an armoured limousine +100

I feel oppressed by privilege tests -10

I can't afford to run the central heating in winter -20

I have dandruff -10

I work for Westminster Council -1000

Missing Highs

Highs and lows of Five-Year Keir: The PM's journey from Doughty Street to Downing Street

Sir Keir Starmer's first five years as Labour Party leader have seen dramatic highs and lows - but the next five will perhaps be even more challenging.

To win the backing of left-wing Labour activists, he backed a wealth tax on the top 5% of earners, abolishing university tuition fees, nationalising water and energy and restoring freedom of movement between the UK and EU countries. Whatever happened to those promises?

Presumably that's where some of the highs are, lying to the rabble, but it's a bit of a stretch. There are attempts to paint Starmer as a capable international statesman, but it's all very thin and mainly based on his attempts to sidle past Brexit, in his freebie trousers perhaps? 


Though the UK is no longer in the EU, Sir Keir has forged strong alliances with European leaders - particularly France's President Macron - as he attempts to build a "coalition of the willing" to defend Ukraine. And he has won the trust of Ukraine's President Zelenskyy.

The stupidification

Malcolm Clark has a useful Critic piece on Scottish education. It is not complimentary.


The stupidification of Scottish schools

Scottish education is being dumbed down in the name of diversity

At the end of last year, Scotland’s education chiefs announced a new list of approved texts for pupils taking English exams at secondary schools. It represents everything that is wrong with Scottish education and the country’s cultural Establishment.

Ten years ago the SNP government decided there would be only one compulsory question asked in Scotland’s equivalent of GCSEs and A levels in English, and it would be about Scottish authors. It was claimed this would encourage pupils to study the great writers Scotland has produced, from Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson to Burns and Lewis Grassic Gibbon.

There was nothing to stop a teacher teaching other great writers like Jane Austen, but this compulsory question would highlight Scotland’s proud literary tradition. Now, with this latest revision of the list of approved texts, it is clear the country’s education chiefs are on a mission to dumb down. The list, we are told, is all about “increased diversity”.


The whole piece is depressing but well worth reading as an indicator of how far down the rabbit hole progressives can go. Even further than this presumably.


That’s why this list perfectly embodies Scotland’s new national culture after 25 wasted years of devolution. It’s no accident the bulk of the list is made up of short texts with simple, sometimes even infantile language that require the least possible effort from pupils. Kids are even reassured they only have to study the first section of Duck Feet. Perish the thought they might have to deal with a whole novel!

There is of course one other terrifying possible explanation for the cultural vandalism this list represents. Might many of Scotland’s teachers now be so lazy and so thick this is all they are capable of teaching?

Buckle

Trump will buckle under pressure from Europe, says German economy minister

BERLIN (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will buckle under pressure from Germany and Europe in an escalating trade war, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck said on Thursday.

"That is what I see, that Donald Trump buckles under pressure, corrects his announcements under pressure, but the logical consequence is that he must also feel the pressure, and this pressure must now be exerted from Germany, from Europe," Habeck said in a news conference.


That's an odd one, there is quite a widespread impression that Europe is buckling under pressure from its own incompetence. Europe buckling under pressure from Europe we might say.

Trump may move on trade because that's what he does, how he makes deals. His first move was to get the issue on the table and he's done that. As for his next move, we'll have to wait and see. 

Meghan's keepsake packaging

This morning Mrs H and I were chatting about the celebrity antics of Meghan and Harry, particularly the entertaining attempts by Meghan to create a lifestyle brand. She isn't the only one playing this tawdry game of course, but she is remarkably unconvincing even by celebrity standards.

Mrs H was particularly amused by this advice from Meghan -

Her raspberry jam - which is made in a factory - will be 'presented in keepsake packaging,' and she advised fans to 'repurpose' the jars 'to tuck away love notes or special treasures, and to remember this pivotal moment with me', adding: 'Think of it as our time capsule'.

Meghan, 43, continued: 'And by the way, once you've enjoyed every spoonful of this fruit spread, you may want to do what I do: rinse the jar and use it as a small bud vase for flowers on your nightstand, or to hold your pens on your desk.'


The entertaining aspect is its transparent shallowness, the idea that any sensible adult could go along with such crudely tacky marketing. Some will go along with it presumably, just as some adults accept free tickets to Taylor Swift and Sabrina Carpenter shows.

Yet is anyone seriously interested in the Meghan Markle show, except as a casually entertaining demonstration of just how vacuous celebrity marketing can be?

But were they cheaper than Amazon?

  

N. Korean state security agency orders thousands of spy camera glasses from China

The ministry's control over smuggling and distribution channels enables it to import spy cameras despite sanctions violations and their use in illegal activities

North Korean traders have ordered a large shipment of spy camera glasses from China, Daily NK has learned. The cameras will likely be used for undercover investigations by the country’s state security apparatus.

A source in China told Daily NK recently that North Korean traders ordered thousands of spy camera glasses in early March.

Legal plunder

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Frédéric Bastiat - The Law (1850)

 
Among the husbands was Shalikov, the tax-collector—a narrow, spiteful soul, given to drink, with a big, closely cropped head, and thick, protruding lips. He had had a university education; there had been a time when he used to read progressive literature and sing students' songs, but now, as he said of himself, he was a tax-collector and nothing more.

Anton Chekhov - The Husband (1886)

In the prosperous year of 1856, incomes of between a hundred and a hundred and fifty pounds were chargeable with a tax of elevenpence halfpenny in the pound: persons who enjoyed a revenue of a hundred and fifty or more had the honour of paying one and fourpence. Abatements there were none, and families supporting life on two pounds a week might in some cases, perchance, be reconciled to the mulct by considering how equitably its incidence was graduated.

George Gissing - Born in Exile (1892)

Boost

My workers’ rights Bill will boost the economy, insists Rayner

Angela Rayner insisted her workers’ rights package would boost the economy after a Cabinet colleague suggested it could be watered down...

Businesses have also warned that the unintended consequences of the reforms risk strangling entrepreneurs in red tape and undermining Sir Keir Starmer’s drive to get people back to work.

But in a rebuke to her critics, the Deputy Prime Minister insisted that both her legislation and the 6.7 per cent minimum wage rise this week would drive economic growth.

Well 'boost' is a change from 'turbocharge', but maybe 'boost' is more suitably modest for measures which aren't likely to boost anything much, although we shouldn't exclude the possibility of unemployment receiving a boost. 

Angela's colleagues are likely to be happy enough that she refers to it a "my" workers' rights Bill though. They'll vote for it but don't necessarily want ownership.

Strangely Wealthy

 

Not an April fools' jape

Met Office warns of sunburn risk as temperatures soar to 22C across UK

The Met Office has urged Britons to put protect themselves from the sun this week, as the UK prepares to bask in temperatures as high as 22C.

The mercury is set to climb gradually this week and could peak at 22C on Thursday in the south of England, the Met Office said.

This means the UK could be enjoying sunny weather with temperatures even higher than Athens or Barcelona on Thursday, where highs of 17C and 16C are forecast respectively.

A Night Shift For Solar Panels?

Net Zero here we come: Boffins work out how to power solar panels with moonshine. 

Jaw dropping potential: British solar panels which work at night

As we all know, solar panels work best when it’s sunny and don’t work quite so well overnight, but a British start-up called MoonPwr has developed a patented nano-film coating composed of certain novel molecular structures based on selenium which are particularly sensitive to moonshine.

Encouraging laboratory pilot studies suggest how more funding could turbocharge the project to fruition and thereby pave the way for solar panels which work fairly normally by day and generate a certain amount of moonshine electricity at night.

“Obviously our new coating doesn’t provide a night output which is strictly comparable to that generated during the day,” said an AI spokesthing, “but we have been working on the principle that some output is better than none.”