And we’re about to find that out

Will 4chan pay its Ofcom fines?

Message board 4chan is refusing to pay fines issued by Ofcom for breaching online safety duties.

Earlier this year, the communications watchdog launched an investigation into the website over concerns it was hosting potential illegal content. And, in June, Ofcom issued 4chan with a “provisional notice of contravention” – a formal warning by a regulatory body – for failing to comply with two information requests...


As we already know, this didn't go anywhere and nobody outside Ofcom seems to have been surprised. As the former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre suggests, Ofcom will have to realise that it isn't a regulatory superpower. The question remains though - how did it ever think otherwise?

Speaking to PublicTechnology sister publication Holyrood, the former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre, said: “I’d be cautious about moving forward – and some of this is at Ofcom’s discretion but quite a lot of it is actually later legislation from parliament. The country should not get itself known primarily in tech for regulation. We do need to innovate securely. You can’t just legislate your way to security and safety online. There has to be a whole sort of business culture about it… In tech, there’s no such thing as a regulatory superpower, and we’re about to find that out.”

The policy forever scrambling to find a rationale

Tom Jones has an interesting CAPX piece on attempts to build a rationale for mass migration on the back of problems posed by declining birth rates.


Infinite migration will not solve our fertility crisis

• Some policymakers warn that foreign workers will be crucial to offset demographic decline – they're wrong
• Why do we assume that migrants will continue to adopt the fertility patterns of the countries of origin?
• We need productivity improvements, not population increases at all costs

At the annual Jackson Hole symposium in Wyoming this week, central bank leaders from Japan, the Eurozone and the UK warned that their economies need further immigration in order to fuel growth.

According to their warning, ageing populations and declining birth rates threaten long-term economic growth and price stability across advanced economies, and without a significant increase in foreign workers, labour shortages will intensify and inflationary pressures may rise...

When the mass migration project began, policymakers told us it was pure economic rocket fuel. As the huge economics benefits failed to materialise, we began to be told that the benefits were primarily cultural. Now we are told our societies will simply collapse without it. Immigration, as noted Christopher Caldwell, is the policy forever scrambling to find a rationale.


The whole piece is well worth reading, particularly in view of the fertility convergence issue. I recall reading a book about demographics and the impending first world problem of declining birth rates about fifty years ago. Even then, immigration was seen as an ineffective solution because of fertility convergence. It is not new.


The argument that immigration is essential to fix our ageing population works on the assumption that immigrants will not only supplement the working age population, but also increase the fertility rate. But the idea that migrant communities will continue the fertility patterns of their country of origin is not borne out by evidence, which shows that when women find themselves in a different fertility context, they adapt their behaviours accordingly – an effect known as fertility convergence. While the total fertility rate (TFR) of non-UK-born women is higher than UK-born women, that is not the full picture; the fertility of non-UK-born women has been in long-term decline and in 2021 stood at 2.03, below the TFR replacement rate of 2.1. In fact, the TFR rate of non-UK-born women has not reached above 2.1 since 2014.

Ed casts a shadow over the hors d'oeuvres

Ed Davey reveals he has written to King to explain Trump state dinner boycott

The Lib Dem leader said on Wednesday he will be boycotting the dinner next month during the US president's second state visit to the UK because of the situation in Gaza.

He told Sky News on Thursday: "I've written to him [the King] personally explaining my thinking.

"And it's with deep regret that I've had to take the decision, but I feel with what is going on in Gaza, it's the best way I can get my voice heard."


Of course Ed has written to the King, he intends to be the Lib Dem spectre at the banquet, ahead of the Autumn Conference in September. 

Not quite Banquo perhaps, but maybe Ed hopes to eclipse the King and Trump as his righteous shadow flits along the wall when hors d'oeuvres are served.

It's not going well

 

For anyone lucky enough to have missed this visual summary of our government

Angela Rayner dodges £40,000 stamp duty

 

Angela Rayner saved £40,000 in stamp duty on her new seaside flat after telling tax authorities it was her main home, The Telegraph can disclose.

The Deputy Prime Minister is understood to have removed her name from the deeds of her house in Greater Manchester a few weeks before buying an £800,000 seaside flat in Hove, East Sussex.

The changes enabled Ms Rayner to avoid paying £70,000 in stamp duty, which would have been applicable if Hove was her second home. Instead, she is thought to have paid £30,000 in stamp duty, saving her £40,000 in the process.

When even ducking and diving isn't done well

Damian Pudner has a useful CAPX piece on the looming fiscal crisis in France and a comparable situation developing here in the UK.

France’s fiscal crisis is a warning for Rachel Reeves

• Public debt in France has hit 114% of GDP
• The situation in France shows you do not need to default to lose control
• If Reeves refuses to change course, she will discover – as France has now – the brutality of the markets

Across the Channel, France is staring down a full-blown fiscal crisis. Public debt has hit 114% of GDP, with the IMF expecting it to rise beyond 116% in the months ahead. The deficit is on track for 5.4% this year. Investors have finally lost patience with the French state’s long-standing habit of spending like Louis XIV – lavishly and without restraint – while reforming like Louis XVI, reluctantly and far too late. The consequences are plain. Ten-year borrowing costs have risen to 3.5%, the spread over German Bunds is at its widest in a decade, and the CAC 40 – France’s benchmark stock index – has shed more than 3% in just three days, dragged down by the banks...

This is a sovereign debt crisis playing out, in real time, in a G7 economy. Britain should be alarmed.


The whole piece is well worth reading as the umpteenth reminder that voting for spivs and shysters instead of a capable government was never going to be a sound idea.


Which brings us to Rachel Reeves. The chancellor talks endlessly of ’iron discipline’ and ‘stability’. Yet her most striking move has been to elevate Torsten Bell – a man whose career has been devoted to advocating higher taxes and a bigger state – into her inner circle. To investors, this signals not reform but resignation: the expectation that Britain will dodge the hard choices of structural change and instead lean on redistribution, conveniently repackaged as responsibility...

Markets do not price fairness. They price credibility and risk. If they conclude the Treasury is trading reform for redistribution, they will simply demand a higher return. With debt already near 100% of GDP, the arithmetic is unforgiving. Every notch higher in yields diverts billions from schools and hospitals into the pockets of bondholders. Redistribution, yes – but not the kind Reeves imagines.

Spot the Eggcorn

Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip 7 is put through the ringer as a teardown shows its difficulties

I'd have called 'ringer' a malapropism in this context, but apparently it might be better described as an eggcorn. Makes sense, presumably only people of a certain age would be familiar with a wringer.

From Wikipedia -

Eggcorn

An eggcorn is the alteration of a word or phrase through the mishearing or reinterpretation of one or more of its elements,[1] creating a new phrase that is plausible when used in the same context.[2] Thus, an eggcorn is an unexpectedly fitting or creative malapropism. Eggcorns often arise as people attempt to make sense of a stock phrase that uses a term unfamiliar to them.

Sumo and the city

Sumo and the city: Why Londoners are falling for the ancient sport

It’s the calm before the stomp. In just a few weeks, the Royal Albert Hall will be filled with a clay circular ring covered in a layer of sand.

Over 40 Japanese juggernauts, all sporting greased-back topknots, boasting bulging bellies and weighing in at well over 300 pounds, will aim to slam each other to the ground, winning the plaudits of a palpable (and, probably by this point, vibrating) crowd. 

The Grand Sumo Tournament, taking place from Wednesday 15 to Sunday 19 October 2025, is being hosted outside of Japan for the first time in 20 years. This milestone moment marks a bigger trend: sumo is having a moment right now.

We see lots of people who seem to have adopted the sumo look, both male and female. Not sure if the tattoos are supposed to be part of it.

Gadget culture

An interesting Daily NK piece on the use of electronic devices to encourage favourable attitudes towards China within the North Korean population. 

How China uses electronic devices to spread cultural influence in North Korea

The primary motivation is supporting local manufacturers struggling to find buyers in China's domestic market

Chinese local governments are quietly backing large-scale production of electronic devices designed specifically for the North Korean market, according to sources familiar with the operations.

Factories officially registered as electronic parts assembly companies are busy manufacturing small, unlabeled devices that cater to North Korean consumers. The product line includes SD card players, rechargeable video players, and other popular “MP” devices that have become staples across the border...

“There’s a definite strategy in China of progressively increasing influence over North Korea while concealing official involvement. China is currently building pro-Chinese sentiment inside North Korea,” the source concluded.

The Nit-picking Nudge

Another example of the extremely common psyops technique described in the previous post. We might call this the Nit-picking Nudge where a narrative is being implanted in such way that discourages further analysis.

Sounds like another example of pearl-clutching over plebs having access to the power of AI. Those Who Know Best don't seem to like that at all.

 

Google reveals just how much energy each Gemini query uses - but is it being entirely truthful?

A new study from Google claims its Gemini AI model only uses very minimal water and energy for each prompt - with the median usage sitting at around 5 drops (0.26 milliliters) - the equivalent electricity used for 9 seconds of TV watching (roughly 0.24 watt-hours), resulting in around 0.003 grams of CO2 emissions.

Experts have been quick to dispute the claims, however, with The Verge claiming Google omitted key data points in its study, drastically under-reporting the environmental impacts of the model.

One of the authors of a paper cited in the study, Shaolei Ren, associate professor of electrical engineering at the University of California told the publication; “They’re just hiding the critical information. This really spreads the wrong message to the world.”

Let it pass through

Xandra H has an interesting FSB piece on how uncertainty is used to implant certain narratives while avoiding further enquiry. A familiar but broadly effective 'Nudge Unit' type of technique, as the National Lottery example illustrates.

You have to be in it to win it!

This used to be the rallying cry for getting people to participate in the National Lottery. There is a certain logic to that statement, because, taken at face value, it is undeniably true. However, the odds of you actually winning, along with the extremely disruptive effect it will have on your life, seldom influence anyone’s decision about whether to buy a ticket or not. That one phrase instantly conjures up a narrative that imagines the winner will finally be without a care in the world and no financial worries for the rest of their lives, striding said world like a colossus.

It also feeds into the group identity idea. All over the country, people just like me are also risking their money for the grand prize, and we are all in it together. The lucky winner will be instantly elevated above the common herd and be given a free pass out of the garden of earthly woes. What’s not to like?

Why am I talking about the National Lottery? Because, having talked quite a lot about psyops, I have often been asked about how to mitigate the effects. It isn’t easy, but it is possible. The above example shows that the purpose of such phrases is to get the receiver to create the narrative that the sender wishes them to have; thus, compelling them to act on that narrative without further enquiry. In the above case, yearning to make happen what they have just imagined compels them to buy a ticket. After all, you have to be in it to win it! I rest my case.


Or You have to be with us or a denier. 

Or You have to be with us or far right. 

Or... 

The whole piece is well worth reading, even though anyone paying attention will already understand the issue well enough as it is certainly not new. The examples given are worth revisiting though, even for those who are relatively immune, because the technique is so widely used. 

Ed Miliband uses it all the time, not that he has anything better available, given his firm rejection of science, engineering, economics, integrity, veracity and sanity.

When someone makes a statement or suggestion that triggers a narrative based on evoking strong emotions, try letting it pass through with as little attention as you can manage. Then, when you are ready, think about the topic raised and how it would or wouldn’t fit into your own pattern-matrix. Your instincts, if you are in a legal frame of mind, will protect you from immediate damage if there is no actual threat. This is only one of many ways of protecting yourself from psychological threat and damage in the “new world”.

Good Luck

MoD worker sues after colleagues fail to give him 'good luck card' when leaving his job

A Ministry of Defence worker at NATO headquarters sued for harassment after he wasn't given a 'good luck' card when leaving his job.

James Eyles was 'upset' not to have his time on the base formally marked, an employment tribunal heard.

The accommodation stores manager claimed he had been targeted because of his disabilities - which included PTSD, depression, anxiety and paranoia.

However, the panel dismissed his claim, ruling that being given a card by colleagues was 'discretionary' and that he wasn't the only one on his team not to have his departure recognised.


Good luck everyone...


Overall, the tribunal concluded that none of Mr Eyles' claims were well-founded and many of them did not happen at all.

He still works for the MoD.


We'll need it...

Protections needed

Protections needed to stop people believing chatbots are friends – expert

A media expert has warned that new protections are needed for artificial intelligence (AI) services because users can be tricked into believing chatbots are their friends.

Alexander Laffer, a lecturer in media and communications at the University of Winchester, said there needs to be responsible development of AI as systems have been created to respond to the capacity of humans for empathy.

He warned that chatbots should be designed to “augment” social interactions but not replace them following cases where people have become too “fond or reliant” on their AI companions, leaving them open to manipulation.


Protections needed? Blimey, how often do we have to repeat the ancient question posed by Juvenal –

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? also applies to experts.

Government is not our friend either, neither are ambitious politicians and neither are numerous experts. This feels like yet another move in the censorship game.

An interesting aspect of AI is that Those Who Know Best appear to be worried that AI promises to be far too powerful for plebs.

Three Pads

'Three Pads Rayner' is dubbed a hypocrite after splashing out on an £800,000 seaside flat

Labour’s Housing Secretary has been dubbed ‘Three Pads Rayner’ after it emerged that she had shelled out £800,000 on a luxury flat in Hove, East Sussex.

She is said by neighbours to have bought the ‘biggest and nicest flat’ in the Victorian terrace block, with sea views and celebrity neighbours, and has been spotted sipping wine on the beach as well as taking to the water in a kayak.

The 45-year-old Deputy Prime Minister already owns a large family property in her Greater Manchester constituency and has use of a grace-and-favour apartment in historic Admiralty House in Westminster.

Oh dear, a veil falls and unfortunately there aren't many left. Naturally Angela may do as she wishes with her piles of ill-gotten, but the working class credentials have taken a significant knock. 

Even physically attacking an egg-thrower* didn't shelter John Prescott from the 'Two Jags' jibe, so Angela would be unwise to try that route back. 

*See John Prescott Rumble in Rhyl

A public-sector procurement scandal for the ages

John MacLeod has a useful Critic piece on the continuing Scottish ferries malaise.


The calamities of Caledonian MacBrayne Ltd

Scottish ferries are in a ferry bad shape

There was once a MacBrayne skipper called Duncan “Squeaky” Robertson — a master-mariner from Skye, of small stature and formidable personality, of whom many tales are told.

Like about the day in the Twenties he took the steamer Plover — a tough little ship; in 1918, she had seen off a U-boat — on what should have been a routine hop from Tarbert (Harris) to Lochmaddy (North Uist.) This was in conditions locals would have thought a bit fresh, southerners as a gale and your American as a hurricane.

The Plover duly vanished in foam and hail, never reached Lochmaddy and rumours — pre-wireless, pre-HM Coastguard helicopter, pre-satellite — fast circulated of her last seen disappearing between two enormous waves.

Then, after a day or two of fraught silence, she puffed into Kyle of Lochalsh. Ventilators were missing, ladders bent, railings mangled — her funnel heavily caked in salt as the Plover’s whey-faced passengers tottered ashore.

Squeaky leaned over the bridge-wing. “We had a bit of a breeze,” he announced laconically.

A century on, what is now Caledonian MacBrayne Ltd — Scotland’s state-owned ferry operator in the Firth of Clyde and the Hebrides — is in its own perfect storm.

An ageing fleet, incessant breakdowns, crumbling infrastructure, incessantly cancelled sailings, repeated delays and, at the Fergusons yard in Port Glasgow, a public-sector procurement scandal for the ages.

The whole piece is well worth reading as yet another example of political lessons which remain forever unlearned.

Reading Lesson

Nigel Farage to champion Lucy Connolly’s story in US Congress

Nigel Farage will tell Lucy Connolly’s story to key Donald Trump allies when he gives evidence at a free speech hearing in the US next month.

The Reform leader will travel to Washington in early September to testify to members of Congress about threats to freedom of expression in the UK.

He is set to bring up the case of Mrs Connolly, who was released from prison last week after being jailed for 31 months over a social media post.

There is no doubt that Nigel Farage has something Keir Starmer doesn't. Farage can read the mood of the people he needs to read, Starmer can't. Starmer can read speeches of course, but not very well.

Another talent Farage has in abundance is the ability to read and needle his political enemies, Guardian folk and the BBC in this case. Starmer struggles to tell friend from foe, although that should be particularly easy by now. 

No worries

 

The superior advantages of being alive

 

Thus reflecting, I opened the lychgate of Bouldersby Churchyard and entered. I have a strong liking for churchyards. They are quiet and restful places where one can meditate with satisfaction on the superior advantages of being alive.

R. Austin Freeman- The Surprising Experiences of Mr. Shuttlebury Cobb (1927)


It’s an odd business though, being alive. There is no alternative experience to act as a contrast to being alive, nobody we can ask for their experience of not being alive. Apart from various implausible notions of an afterlife of course, but they don’t help folk who have to deal with the world as it is.

During our recent holiday, we strolled past a churchyard every day. Quiet it was, as churchyards should be, with lichen-covered gravestones, many barely legible and ancient yew trees here and there. Peaceful yes, but Freeman was right about the superior advantages of being alive.

Although presumably there is no BBC in the afterlife, no climate change, no scam emails, no mobile phone updates, no having to drive up the M5 after an enjoyable holiday…

An international laughing stock

Andrew Tettenborn has a useful CAPX piece on the absurdly sinister Online Safety Act.


Ofcom is turning the UK into an international laughing stock

• Ofcom has fined US-based 4Chan £20,000 for breaching the absurd Online Safety Act
• The UK is coming across as a would-be bully that wants to control the internet
• When our allies tell us that we have given up on free speech, we should listen to them

We know that the Online Safety Act (OSA) is a disaster. The group it is billed as protecting, children and young people, is not only rebellious: it is precisely the class most adept at using VPNs and other devices to circumvent it. And this is even before you get to the unintended consequences. The more we try to regulate the semi-respectable internet sites out there, the more we push thrill-seeking young people to the darkest and most frightening corners of cyberspace, where they can suffer serious harm. Furthermore, the greater the pressure on the young to sign up to dodgy free VPNs, the greater the likelihood of their later suffering trolling and identity theft. Some protection.


The whole piece is well worth reading, if only as a reminder to watch how this sinister mess evolves and comment on it while we can. As for the laughing stock aspect, we were there already, this is more confirmation than revelation.


This year, Ofcom, which administers the OSA, wrote formally to American online forums Gab, Kiwifarms and 4Chan, demanding that they agree to obey UK law and file vast amounts of OSA-required compliance paperwork with Ofcom to prove it. Since none of these sites have any presence or assets in the UK (although they are popular here), they gently reminded Ofcom of the existence of the First Amendment, and less gently told it to go knit. We don’t know what happened to Gab or Kiwifarms: but Ofcom has now, apparently with a straight face, fined 4Chan £20,000 and threatened further daily fines until it complies. Understandably 4Chan is unamused. It has said that it won’t, and that there’s nothing Ofcom can do. And of course it is right: as its Connecticut lawyers said with nice understatement in their response to Ofcom, ‘American businesses do not surrender their First Amendment rights because a foreign bureaucrat sends them an email’.

To dispute ad infinitum about everything

Corbyn’s new party in chaos as co-leaders squabble over antisemitism remark

Jeremy Corbyn has hit back at Zarah Sultana after she accused him of “capitulating” over antisemitism when he was Labour leader as tensions at the top of their new left-wing party grow.

The Islington MP said it was “not really necessary” for Ms Sultana, with whom he is currently co-leading the as-yet-unnamed party, to “bring all that up”.


We know beforehand that it is possible to dispute ad infinitum about everything—and so we do not dispute.

Mikhail Lermontov - A Hero of Our Time (1840)

With depressing and unceasing predictability

Joseph Dinnage has an topical CAPX piece on the remarkably incompetent state of our UK Labour government.


Labour’s incompetence exposes their election strategy

• This Government has reached levels of unpopularity that it took the Tories all of 14 years to attain
• With depressing predictability, Labour demonstrate their ideological incoherence and political incompetence
• Labour are relying on their party seeming the least incompetent of the bunch by 2029

I don’t want to come over all Shawshank Redemption, but 412 days have passed since Labour were elected last year. A lot can happen in that time. I’m informed by Google’s inbuilt AI system that one could theoretically have run 366 marathons. A child could have been conceived with some months left over to start raising the thing. You could even have mastered intermediate-level Spanish. Yet what Labour have managed to achieve in their first year and a bit in Government eclipses even these admirable pursuits. In just over a year, Keir Starmer’s regime has reached levels of unpopularity that it took the Tories all of 14 years to attain.


The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of just how predictably incompetent Sir Keir Starmer's government has become. 

There is nothing whatever to suggest that Starmer or Labour are capable of turning it round either. We have reached a stage where no sane person expects anything better and deep pessimism has become the rational outlook.


With depressing and unceasing predictability, Labour demonstrate both their deep ideological incoherence and political incompetence. With its approval ratings in the gutter, Reform UK surging ahead in the polls and ‘Jezbollah’ hot on its heels, the Government is relying on one of two outcomes come 2029.

And not at all sinister

Government plans to build AI agent to help citizens with ‘life admin’

Leading firms have been invited to join civil service tech experts to start work on a prototype of a ‘helper’ that ministers hope could be rolled out to the populace

Government has proposed a state-run “AI agent” that citizens could deploy to help with day-to-day administrative tasks.

At the start of this week, government invited representatives of companies specialised in agentic artificial intelligence to “team up with in-house Whitehall experts to test this technology together”. Ministers hope that, over the next six to 12 months, firms will support the creation of a prototype agent by taking steps “to share their expertise and dedicate AI specialists to… a hybrid team” where they will work alongside civil servants.

The ultimate aim is to create a government-run tool that would be available to the public to “take on boring life admin by dealing with public services on your behalf – from filling in forms to completing applications and booking appointments”.

"Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently."

George Orwell - 1984 (1949)

Place your bets

Beach Treks

Growing older is of course a universal experience in spite of efforts to delay the process, but as an oldie, there is an oddly rewarding aspect to old age. The crumbly, wrinkly health aspect may not be rewarding, but the gradual escape from a world of worthless chatter and pointless activity does have its rewards.

Lugging loads of gear to the beach for example, I’d count that as pointless activity.

The other day found us walking behind an oldish chap lugging a load of paraphernalia to the beach. Two folding chairs in green bags, one slung on each shoulder, a bulging bag in one hand and a rolled up parasol in the other. 

Modern times I suppose, people do take an amazing amount of gear to the beach.

Something seems to be unwinding

MP spotted using ChatGPT to respond to constituents on the train

An MP has been spotted on a train using ChatGPT to respond to constituents' correspondence, the Mirror can reveal.

A fellow passenger, who previously worked in Parliament, noticed that Northampton South MP Mike Reader had his laptop open and recognised he was using a software programme called "Caseworker" which is widely used in the House of Commons by MPs and their staff...

The source said: “He was copying the entire constituent email into ChatGPT, and then asking ChatGPT to respond. I couldn’t believe it. ChatGPT to reply to constituents. How lazy is that? You can see ChatGPT giving a response starting with ‘Thank you for raising your deep concerns about the situation in Gaza’.” In the notes on Caseworker, Mr Reader allegedly wrote: "ChatGPT generated. Mike approved."


A formulaic response is a formulaic response, however an MP chooses to compile it. Anyone paying attention will be aware that in numerous comparable situations most responses from any hierarchy will be formulaic. The BBC has been doing it for decades.

An interesting aspect is that constituents may as well ask ChatGPT for the formulaic response and cut out the middleman. They could then forward the ChatGPT response to their MP and ask if the MP agrees with it. 

Hmm...

Something seems to be unwinding.

 

What were the consequences?

 

A tendency to oligarchy

Continually absent Reform UK councillor in Cornwall is asked to attend meetings

The Mayor of Newquay has written to a Reform UK councillor asking her to attend town council meetings after members raised concerns about her "continued absence". Cllr Christine Parsonage was a paper candidate elected to represent St Columb Minor at the Cornwall Council election earlier this year. She lives over 45 miles away in Torpoint.

Since the May 1 election she hasn't attended a single meeting of Newquay Town Council. Her predecessor, Independent councillor John Fitter, provided monthly updates of casework and issues affecting the St Columb Minor and Colan ward in person. Cllr Parsonage's husband, Cllr Rob Parsonage - the leader of the Reform UK group at Cornwall Council - has accused Newquay councillors of trying to score "political points".

Only a single, barely significant story and it is politics, and local media have to hunt around for stories, but there is no obvious reason why Reform won't have a wider problem with the kind of people attracted to politics. It's a systemic party problem which goes all the way to the top. 

Political parties don't work. 

Moving on from an absent Cornwall councillor, some sound people are attracted to politics, but from potholes to immigration to the UK economy, there is a glaringly obvious problem with political parties, a problem which has been obvious for a very long time.

Organization implies a tendency to oligarchy. In every organization, whether it be a political party, a professional union, or any other association of any kind, the aristocratic tendency manifests itself very clearly. As a result of organization, every party or professional union becomes divided into a minority of directors and a majority of directed.

Robert Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (1911)

A thoroughly advertised and conspicuous mediocrity

Scrap two-child benefit cap, Kinnock tells Starmer

Lord Kinnock has urged Sir Keir Starmer to scrap the two-child benefit cap.

The Labour peer and former party leader said the policy, which restricts access to child tax credits and other benefits, was responsible for keeping hundreds of thousands of children in poverty.

Lord Kinnock’s intervention comes weeks after he called on Sir Keir to introduce a new wealth tax and suggested a 2 per cent levy on assets worth more than £10 million.


From which we may conclude that neither mediocrity has assets worth more than £10 million.


Ambition, they say, is the giant passion. But giants are placable and sleep at times. The spirit of emulation — the lust of distinction — hominum volitare per ora — digito monstrarier — in a wider, and still widening sphere — until all the world knows something about you — and so on and on — the same selfish aspiration, and at best, the same barren progress, till at last it has arrived — you are a thoroughly advertised and conspicuous mediocrity, still wishing, and often tired, in the midst of drudgery and importance and éclat, and then — on a sudden, the other thing comes — the first of the days of darkness which are many.

Sheridan Le Fanu - The Tenants of Malory (1867)

Thompsons we have known

Now Thompson, there is reason to believe, tried earnestly for some years to be a man. Alas! he began while he was a boy, and got exhausted before he arrived at maturity. He could make no further effort, and manhood is not acquired without a mighty struggle, nor maintained without untiring industry. So having fatigued himself before reaching the starting-point, Thompson Washington did not re-enter the race for manhood, but contented his simple soul with achieving a modest swinehood.

Ambrose Bierce - The Fiend's Delight (1873)

Counting Thompsons in the political sphere could present a problem, but perhaps Thompsons have always been with us and counting them is impossible. 

 

A very common disease

R. Austin Freeman was a doctor before he took up writing. 

 

To save time, I may as well say that the symptoms pointed to chronic lead-poisoning. Most people nowadays know that this is a very common disease, and a few years ago, when leaden vessels were extensively used, it was even commoner than at present.

R. Austin Freeman - From a Surgeon's Diary (1905)

The history of lead poisoning seems to have faded into the background, but I'm reminded of it whenever we see pewter plates and drinking vessels in antiques centres.

Of course we now have more severe health concerns such as a 1.5C rise in global temperatures. Plus many other invented ailments of course.

Picky

Stone Age humans were picky about which rocks they used for making tools, study finds

Early human ancestors during the Old Stone Age were more picky about the rocks they used for making tools than previously known, according to research published Friday.

Not only did these early people make tools, they had a mental picture of where suitable raw materials were located and planned ahead to use them, traveling long distances.

Interesting, but for some reason this section raised a smile.

“This suggests they’ve got a mental map of where different resources are distributed across the landscape,” said co-author Rick Potts of the Smithsonian's Human Origins Program.

Imagine a Paranthropus conversation along the same lines - "You need a mental map of where different resources are distributed across the landscape" stone chippers say to their apprentices.

Moonshine Wilt

Government will not offer bailout to UK's largest bioethanol plant

Owners Vivergo, a subsidiary of Associated British Foods, had warned that the plant would close without government support, and sources at the company have told Sky News the wind-down process is now likely to begin.

An ABF spokesperson, which also owns Primark, said the government's decision was "deeply regrettable" and it had "chosen not to support a key national asset".

Seems to be a "key national asset" in the sense that Ed Miliband is a key national asset.


Government sources said they had employed external consultants to provide advice, and pointed out that the plant had not been profitable since 2011.

Word Salads

James Gatehouse has an entertaining FSB piece on the lack of nourishment in UK political word salads. Entertaining, but also an aspect of wilful idiocy as in the previous post.

Word Salad and Politics

I’m no great fan of salad, although from time to time you do experience a good one. Anything with celery in it is a no-no as far as I’m concerned, so anything Waldorf-ian is definitely out. People who make tasty salads are in short supply, I guess.

Poor salad recipes are nevertheless much the fashion these days. Take these modern culinary classics as examples. [a Labour government will] kick-start economic growth...make Britain a clean energy superpower...take back our streets...break down barriers to opportunity...build an NHS fit for the future.

Like the limp lettuce infesting some supermarket sandwich packs these appear to have lost any of the savour that a proper chef might have brought to them. These are poor salads designed to sound good on the label, but lack any power to evoke a sense of satisfaction once eaten. For one thing, all of these word salads are at best meaningless without added context. What does it mean. Precisely. to “kick start” an economy, or for that matter to make it “grow”? Was it stopped and has it been kickstarted by now? Is energy dirty? And in what way precisely does it make me or anyone else mucky?

Well worth reading, as word salads are all the UK political menu has to offer. They are hideously expensive and indigestible salads too, but Rachel Reeves seems to think they are still too cheap. 

A kind of wilful idiocy

Sebastian Milbank has an interesting Critic piece on the failure of government by technocrat, where even reliable government statistics may fail to reflect what governments and government supporters assume. Incompetence can be baked into the system.


Things can only get worse

There is a vast epistemic divide between those who experience decline, and those who don’t

Is London a terrifying post-apocalyptic city full of “no-go areas”, patrolled by violent ethnic gangs and raving drug addicts? Or is it a vibrant multicultural success story that is infinitely safer and nicer than the bleak city of the 1980s? This, in microcosm, is the argument playing out across the West over crime, migration and public space. Are things getting better, or are they getting worse?

On the one hand, as this example amply demonstrates, we are not able to have sensible conversations because of the levels of hysteria and ideological distortion involved. On the other, we struggle to articulate realities that can’t be captured by statistics, or haven’t yet been systematically researched.


The whole piece is well worth reading as a contribution to problems we are aware of but consistently fail to articulate within the hopelessly compromised arena of public debate.

The utilitarian experiment of governing society via selective statistics and scientific management has catastrophically failed, and has rendered otherwise intelligent men and women into a kind of wilful idiocy, unable to accept the evidence of their senses unless it can be translated into data. We are all, in a sense, living in a virtual world, having lost the old tools of grammar, logic and rhetoric that gave us a mental and linguistic handle on reality at a human scale. This problem is not academic, but sharply political, as it opens up deadly rifts between the experience of the common person, and an elite rendered complacent by its faith in a social scientific worldview.

When Movies Get Science Wrong

 

Economists who are always wrong

Mani Basharzad has a permanently topical CAPX piece about economists who are always wrong.


Why do we listen to economists who are always wrong?

• 30 so-called 'top economists' have called for a wealth tax in the UK
• Left-wing economists hold free markets to an impossible standard
• Markets are not perfect, but the process of trial and error they encourage moves us closer to efficiency

On July 28, more than 30 so-called ‘top economists’ called for a wealth tax in the UK. Glance at the list of signatories and you’ll see the usual names who oppose almost any market reform: Thomas Piketty, Ha-Joon Chang and Martín Guzmán. Ironically, just over a year ago, many of them signed another letter warning against Javier Milei’s reform programme in Argentina, which they described as ‘potentially harmful’ to the Argentine people.

Fast forward to today, and historian Niall Ferguson calls Argentina’s economic turnaround a ‘man-made miracle’. Milei ended Argentina’s fiscal deficit for the first time in 123 years. Annual inflation plunged from 211.4% in 2023 to 43.5% by mid-2025. UNICEF reports that 1.7 million children have been lifted out of poverty since he took office and according to Econométrica’s EMAE, the economy grew by 8% year-on-year in April.


The piece is short and well worth reading. Apart from economists who are always wrong, it raises a wider question about academics in other fields who are always wrong too.

As we know, we have ended up with a political culture where being wrong can be politically, socially, professionally and financially advantageous. That's a formidable array of benefits. 

Credible reports

Politics latest: US State Department highlights 'significant human rights issues' in the UK

A new US State Department report identifies "significant human rights issues" in the UK, pointing to "credible reports of serious restrictions on freedom of expression" as a key example.

That's because we have a human rights lawyer as Prime Minister. Huge irony, but never mind Sir Keir, face up to the deficiencies of your former profession like a man.

No?

More puling, pusillanimous evasion it is then.

Two Visions

Vision 1

Ford Unveils its 'Next Model T Moment' with $5-Billion EV Gamble and the World's Most Affordable Electric Pickup

Ford announced a historic $5 billion investment in the US on 11 August 2025. The focus is transforming electric vehicle production and introducing a new affordable electric pickup truck.

This move, called the 'next Model T moment' by Ford, aims to reshape the auto industry. The investment centres on innovation, American manufacturing, and cutting costs for customers. Details on how Ford plans to achieve this breakthrough unfold steadily, promising wide-reaching impacts.

Vision 2

HMRC NarkBot

HMRC uses AI to spy on social media posts

HMRC has admitted for the first time that it uses artificial intelligence (AI) to spy on taxpayers’ social media posts.

The tax authority examines workers’ financial records, spending habits and tax returns to look for evidence of cheating – as well as posts on the internet.

Social media posts about a large purchase or expensive holiday could trigger a red flag if the user seems to be spending beyond their means.


Gosh, does this mean my holiday on Mars could be picked up by the all-seeing HMRC NarkBot? I had to abandon the idea of gold-plating the shed roof this year to pay for it though. My pension 'extras' don't yet stretch that far.

Not that NarkBot is likely to scour this shady little corner of the interweb, but it does suggest how lots of social media folk could have fun providing a deluge of even more wildly improbable entertainment.

No more rabbit dung for us

Wonder drugs no more: N. Korea’s health supplement market turns to foreign brands

North Korean officials prefer German company Doppelherz's magnesium, lutein, collagen, and milk thistle products

A health supplement revolution is quietly taking hold among North Korea’s elite. Disillusioned with counterfeit “medicines from Ponghwa” that people mockingly call “rabbit dung,” wealthy officials and the newly rich are abandoning domestic products for foreign-made dietary supplements they can actually trust.

The Latest £50 Billion Disaster

 

Fitted with modern conveniences

Mrs H and I have whizzed off on holiday, so blogging may be light but here is a snippet from my holiday reading. Not sure whodunit yet though - no butler has appeared so far.


The house had not been used as a farm-house for fifteen years, and was falling to ruin when he bought it in 1918. He had had it thoroughly repaired and fitted with modern conveniences—a bath-room, a telephone, and a plant for making acetylene gas to light it.

Edgar Jepson - The Murder in Romney Marsh (1929)

The Most Useless National Treasure is . . .

TCW has been conducting an entertaining competition - The Most Useless National Treasure.


TCW competition result: The Most Useless National Treasure is . . .

WE ASKED you to nominate the Most Useless National Treasure, and we gave you possibilities in the form of Angela Rippon and Sir Grayson Perry.

In response you sent in a range of suggestions from the ranks of the rich and pointless, all of them rating high for lack of merit and/or off-switch levels of ability to irritate.

In a hard field from which to pick a winner, we turned to the Chocolate Teapot Scale, which measures not just prominence and talent to annoy, but takes into account general failure to give an answer to the question: Daddy, what is that man for?

This works against candidates with real talents or achievements.

It's not easy to disagree with any of the suggestions, but read the whole piece as a reminder of how many Useless National Treasures we have. There is a worthy winner though.

He should sit this one out

Trump ally says UK 'would have lost WW2 with Starmer as leader'

Sir Keir Starmer has been brutally savaged by Mike Huckabee, Donald Trump's handpicked Ambassador to Israel, who took to social media to claim the UK "would have lost" World War 2 had the Labour leader been Prime Minister. And the former Governor and US Presidential candidate also suggested Sir Keir "should sit this one out" on Gaza, after UK Government criticism of the Israeli government's plan to take control of Gaza City.


By gum, I do like the blunt diplomacy of Team Trump. 

There are a few more issues where the UK would benefit from "Sir" Keir retreating to the stands. He could take his ghastly Cabinet "colleagues" with him as a bonus move.

The automated MP

Tom Jones has an interesting CAPX piece on the AI automation of a backbench MP's work.


We’ve automated our first MP. Who’s next?

• That our MPs can be automated away speaks to the devaluation of the role
• Mindless busywork for constituents is diverting legislators from their purpose
• We need MPs who can tackle our national decline – or AI may do a better job

When you think of the jobs most likely to be automated away, which do you think of?

Those most at threat are those that are repetitive and rule-based, require minimal social or emotional intelligence – and don’t rely heavily on creativity or complex judgement. Customer service work is often being quoted as at threat, as are routine manual jobs like fast food fry-slingers, routine cognitive jobs like data clerks and entry-level white collar jobs like paralegals.

Perhaps, then, it should come as little surprise that backbench MP is one of the first jobs to be automated away. If the singularity starts by deleting the lowest-value processes first, the redundant political function seems a logical place to start. Many were chatbots already.

Worth reading as an angle on what MPs actually do as opposed to what they should do and the way AI may focus attention on the issue. For some MPs this may not be a change they can handle, for others it could be.

Places that defy explanation

Places On Earth That Scientists Still Don’t Fully Understand

For all our satellites, sonar, and scientific breakthroughs, Earth still has a few spots that leave even the experts a bit flummoxed. These are the places that defy explanation, bend logic, or just won’t give up all their secrets, no matter how many studies are thrown at them. Whether it’s a strange patch of ocean or a mysterious hole in the ground, here are 10 places on our own planet that science still hasn’t totally figured out. Maybe we never will, and that’s kind of crazy to think about!


Let us add one more place to the clickbait - surely this weird structure should be number 11.

 

Electric Boat

 

UN report finds UN reports are not widely read

UN report finds — UN reports are not widely read

A United Nations report seeking ways to improve efficiency and cut costs has revealed: U.N. reports are not widely read.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres briefed countries on Friday on the report, produced by his UN80 reform that focused on how U.N. staff implement thousands of mandates given to them by bodies like the General Assembly or Security Council.

He said last year that the U.N. system supported 27,000 meetings involving 240 bodies, and the U.N. secretariat produced 1,100 reports, a 20% increase since 1990.


An outsider is bound to suspect that UN reports are not compiled to be widely read. The U.N. secretariat doesn't necessarily expect anyone at all to read those 1,100 reports once they have been issued. The function of a bureaucracy is to produce reports, not necessarily reports which are widely read, or even read at all.

Even if they haven't been read, those U.N. reports are available to be referred to in the future, to preload debates should the need arise. 

Nothing to do with athletics

HMRC staff caught holding 'nonsense' 'Guilt of Being British' event during work hours

Staff at HM Revenue and Customs have been slated for holding a seminar on the "Guilt of Being British" during working hours.

The hour-long session, run by "HMRC Race Network" from 11am to midday on Tuesday, was titled "Guilt of Being British: Listening Circle".

It was advertised as "a powerful, interactive, and reflective listening circle exploring the emotional complexity of being South Asian and British" which would cover topics including "the emotional weight of colonial history".


Once upon a time, something called the "HMRC Race Network" could have been an athletics club to encourage a few chair-polishers to get up off their ample backsides for a spot of after hours competitive running.

Today, the notion of an HMRC athletics club would not be the first assumption. Far more likely would be an assumption about some foolish progressive nonsense designed to humiliate anyone subversive enough to think for themselves on matters social and political.

As anyone paying attention knows, and as Orwell described so graphically in 1984, it's a totalitarian tactic, the use of forced nonsense as a way to humiliate and subdue populations. It works on any scale, from lonely Winston Smith to the humiliated saps attending "HMRC Race Network" sessions.

And nobody is surprised

Lisa Nandy: I won’t watch new Gregg Wallace MasterChef series

Lisa Nandy has said she will not watch the new series of MasterChef because she was “absolutely appalled” by the conduct of sacked presenters Gregg Wallace and John Torode.

The Culture Secretary said she “certainly won’t be watching this series” and believed many members of the public would feel the same.

Ah - the Culture Secretary has a TV licence, watches pap and nobody is surprised.

Less than 40 hours

 

What larks

'Stupid and Sneaky!': London Restaurant Slammed for Adding Hidden £1.23 Carbon Charge to Diners' Bills

Diners at a London restaurant have been left fuming after discovering a stealthy charge on their bills.

A new, undisclosed fee, purportedly for carbon offsetting, has sparked outrage, with customers branding the move as both 'stupid and sneaky'.


By gum, this is fun, could even wake up a few believers when such entertaining games come to light. 

Was Ed Miliband gagging because he'd just seen a carbon charge added to his bacon sarnie? 

Could be, could be.

 

Scams, Pap and Clickbait

I received a scam text and a scam email this morning, so nothing unusual from our digital world.

To my mind the main digital world headache isn’t so much the scams, but what seems like an increasing morass of pap and clickbait infesting the media instead of material which might possibly be worth a bit of attention. For example, political pap inserted into mainstream news creates a kind of pap fog where features of Keir Starmer’s long reign…

…hang on - er - he hasn’t been PM for that long has he?

Correction indicated, but that’s the issue with political pap, it becomes more difficult to look back on brighter days. Partly because they weren’t much brighter and partly because of pap fog obscuring the perspective.

But Starmer’s long, long reign must surely end eventually…

Impact

From Wikipedia -

Destruction under the Mongol Empire

The Mongol conquests resulted in widespread and well-documented death and destruction throughout Eurasia, as the Mongol army invaded hundreds of cities and killed millions of people.


But jump to the final paragraph and -

Environmental impact

According to a study by the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Energy, the annihilation of so many human beings and cities under Genghis Khan may have scrubbed as much as 700 million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere by allowing forests to regrow on previously populated and cultivated land.

The planet-wide city

Jorge Álvarez has an interesting LBV piece on those who have imagined the merger of all the world’s major cities into one planet-wide city.


Ecumenopolis, the Future Merger of All the World’s Great Cities into One

Coruscant, the capital of the Republic in the Star Wars films, is an overwhelming planet-wide city, completely urbanized and crisscrossed by millions of flying vehicles. It’s a concept previously used by Isaac Asimov with Trantor, the imperial capital in his famous Foundation literary saga, as well as by other writers and artists in numerous novels, comics, and video games. The idea of global-scale conurbation was named ecumenopolis in 1967 by a Greek architect named Constantinos Doxiadis, who predicted an initial phase involving the merger of London, Paris, Amsterdam, and the Rhine and Ruhr river basins.

In truth, Doxiadis was not the first to imagine planet-sized cities. Strictly speaking—although from a poetic rather than a scientific standpoint—that honor should go to the inimitable Thomas Lake Harris, who included a similar proposal in his verses. Lake, born in England in 1823 but emigrated to New York as a child, was a devout Baptist Calvinist who leaned toward universalism (a philosophical doctrine asserting the existence of a universal, objective, and eternal truth that governs everything), which led him to found the peculiar Spiritualist Community of Mountain Cove.


The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of the kind of ideas which may float through any gathering of globally influential people, or those who aspire to be globally influential. 

It's one of many airy concepts which may be unworkable and probably bonkers but interesting enough to attract the attention of globalist sentiment with too little practical experience.


It is also appropriate to clarify another concept, that of the global city, which differs from that of ecumenopolis in that it acts as a key player in the world economy—not only because of wealth generation but also because of large pockets of poverty—culturally and politically, without needing to spread over the entire planetary surface. The term was coined in her eponymous work by the Dutch sociologist Saskia Sassen (recipient of the 2013 Prince of Asturias Award for Social Sciences), who explicitly distinguishes it from the megalopolis or megacity (one or more united metropolitan areas—another definition speaks of urban agglomerations, i.e., zones of continuous growth—with more than ten million inhabitants and/or a population density exceeding two thousand people per square kilometer).

The danger of being rich in China

A Ken Cao video on the perils of being too successful as an entrepreneur in China.

From Freedom's Whispers

Zhang Yingyue has a powerful FSB piece on growing up in Maoist China and how the BBC and VOA, once the voice of freedom have lost that voice in pursuit of yet another empty totalitarian ideology.

From Freedom's Whispers to Tyrant’s Tools: How the BBC and VOA Lost Their Soul

"The freedom to speak means nothing if you only whisper what you’re told to say."

When I was a teenage girl growing up in the iron grip of Maoist China during the Cultural Revolution, I dreamed of the outside world and risked everything to listen to its voices. While classmates denounced their parents and teachers under red banners and revolutionary slogans, I stayed up into the night, crouched beside a battered shortwave radio, tuning it inch by inch until the static gave way to a foreign miracle: “This is the Voice of America.” Or: “This is London. The BBC World Service.”

To be caught listening to such broadcasts was dangerous. Not merely “frowned upon,” but life-ruining dangerous. A neighbour’s son had disappeared after being overheard repeating a joke he’d heard on the BBC. My father and mother, both CPP members and a senior civil servant in the security department and a university lecturer respectively, were denounced as counterrevolutionaries and sent to labour camps. And yet, I listened. Terrified and in secret, but I listened to those calm, reasoned, and often warm voices—my lifeline to the world beyond claustrophobic, hysterical Beijing.


The whole piece is well worth reading as warning that nothing is forever, including the freedoms we once thought were permanent.

The tragedy is not just what the BBC and VOA have become but what they’ve left behind. In silencing dissent, they have silenced curiosity. In enforcing conformity, they’ve extinguished courage. In replacing inquiry with ideology, they’ve traded journalism for propaganda. To the editors, producers, and journalists within those institutions who still remember what free speech actually means: speak up. Or if you can’t, walk away. The machinery you serve no longer deserves the loyalty of free minds.

To readers across the world, especially in places still fighting for the freedoms the West once championed: don’t be fooled. The loudest voices are not always the bravest. Sometimes, the real dissidents are the ones being deplatformed, not those on the front page.

And to my younger self, crouched beside a radio in the dead of night: I’m sorry. The voices we trusted changed. But the truths they once whispered, that freedom is fragile, that speech matters, that tyranny wears many masks, are still true. Even if you have to say them alone.

Suppose we turn it round

UK has got ‘fat’ on decades of women’s unpaid labour – Jess Phillips

Jess Phillips says that the UK has grown "fat" on the unpaid labour of women, a practice she deems "fundamentally sexist".

The minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls argued that the nation has depended on women’s charitable contributions for decades.

That had led to a reluctance from the government to provide services itself, she said.


Suppose we turn it round. There is paid labour we could do without, both men and women. Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, David Lammy, Bridget Phillipson Ed Miliband and Jess Phillips for example. There are considerable collective advantages to coping without their labour.

Suppose we turn it round a little further and change it into a can of worms simply because it's so easy to turn Labour ideology into cans of worms.


NHS maintained 93% of planned care during resident doctors’ strikes

The NHS maintained care for an estimated 10,000 more patients during the latest doctors’ strike compared with last year’s industrial action.

Early data shows that 93% of planned operations, tests and procedures went ahead during the five-day walkout across England.

Of course you are going to disappoint people

Reeves: Of course you are going to disappoint people as Chancellor

Rachel Reeves admits Labour has “disappointed” people while in government.

The politician said she understood that being Chancellor meant making unpopular decisions.

She told an audience at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival that Labour had got the balance right between tax, spending and borrowing.

But she said that balancing the books meant making tough decisions, even if the are unpopular.

It seems unlikely that the word 'disappoint' is strong enough, but she hasn't disappointed everyone.


Ms Reeves pointed to Labour’s £200 million investment in carbon capture in the north east of Scotland, which she said was welcomed by the industry.


Presumably that 'investment' comes from the Arrangement for Renewable Subsidy Expansion.

Expert issues chilling warning

 

Exact date 'alien probe' could strike Earth revealed as expert issues chilling warning

A Harvard scientist has issued a chilling warning about a mysterious interstellar object hurtling through our solar system, and says it could spell disaster for Earth.

Professor Avi Loeb, who is well-known for pushing bold and often polarizing theories about extraterrestrial life, has been tracking the object, named 3I/ATLAS, since it was first spotted on July 1.

If the object is an alien craft, Loeb warned it could be carrying a probe or even a weapon. He predicted that such an intercept vehicle would reach Earth between November 21 and December 5, 2025.

The timeline is based on calculations that 3I/ATLAS will pass behind the sun from Earth's perspective this October, a time he ominously suggested could be used to prepare the attack.

It's worth adding that experts are supposed to issue chilling warnings or they wouldn't be experts of the calibre required by the media.

Does Harvard offer courses on chilling warnings tailored to media requirements? It should do because demand is high.

‘Fair pay’ is a dangerous fiction

Charles Amos has a useful CAPX reminder that doctors and nurses are demanding higher pay in their own interests, not ours.


‘Fair pay’ is a dangerous fiction

• Doctors and nurses should be honest about their true motive for demanding higher pay
• ‘Fair pay’ across the whole economy would result in both huge labour shortages and unemployment
• Upholding freedom of contract forms the fundamental basis for widespread prosperity

Nurses have now decided to follow the example of resident doctors, and reject the Government’s latest pay offer. The Royal College of Nursing announced this week that 91% of its members voted against accepting a 3.6% pay rise. Resident doctors were offered a 5.4% pay increase but went on strike for a 29% pay increase to ensure ‘full pay restoration’ to 2009 levels.

Both unions are demanding that their members receive ‘fair pay’. Yet as Friedrich Hayek once argued, the only meaningful sense in which we can even debate whether any wage is ‘just’ is by asking if it has been agreed in a free market without deception, fraud or violence. ‘Fair pay’ doesn’t exist; thus, the pleas of doctors and nurses can be rejected outright at the bar of justice.

These medical professionals ought to be honest about their true motive: they want higher pay because it is in their self-interest. Fine, but once this is acknowledged, it’s entirely proper that taxpayers defend their self-interest too and resist their pay increases.

The whole piece is well worth reading as yet another reminder of the misleading way in which the media commonly present these disputes. They give too much credence to the 'fair pay' claim and its many variants and nowhere near enough to human behaviour, and the ancient motive of self-interest.

It is surely reasonable for Wes Streeting to defend taxpayer interests against the claims of medical professionals, our interests against theirs. Unfortunately for Wes, this isn't how it will be presented in the media, hard-nosed realism isn't popular enough for that.

Resident doctors and nurses are ultimately campaigning for their own self-interest – not any empty notions of ‘fair pay’ – and there is nothing wrong with that per se. However, Wes Streeting ought to reject their demands to protect the public’s interests from ever higher taxes and more borrowing. Crucially, resident doctors and nurses must all have their contracts renegotiated, with their right to strike stripped from them, to make sure they can’t hold the taxpayer to ransom once again. Nothing short of that will do.

I never thought I would hear that

‘I never thought I’d see a Labour PM more hated than Thatcher’: Sunderland local’s staggering claim

Keir Starmer is “more hated than Maggie Thatcher in Sunderland”, a local caulker burner has claimed on GB News.

Since his landslide election victory last year, the Labour Prime Minister has faced a tumultuous time in office, and now Gary McDonald has joined the chorus of growing dissatisfaction...

“I never thought in a place like Sunderland a Labour Prime Minister would be more hated than Maggie Thatcher.”

He continued: “I never thought I would hear that in my town. Sunderland is so Labour but he is more disliked than Maggie Thatcher ever was.

The quality of the observation

'There's a lot of knife crime in London,' admits police minister after crackdown on muggers targeting pupils

Police minister Dame Diana Johnson admitted on Friday that “there is a lot of knife crime in London”.

She was highlighting a series of initiatives in knife crime hotspots across the country to reduce the number of offences.

Asked to list the seven key areas, she told LBC Radio: “We have got the Metropolitan Police obviously because there is a lot of knife crime in London.”


But it is in matters beyond the limits of mere rule that the skill of the analyst is evinced. He makes, in silence, a host of observations and inferences. So, perhaps, do his companions; and the difference in the extent of the information obtained, lies not so much in the validity of the inference as in the quality of the observation. The necessary knowledge is that of what to observe.

Edgar Allan Poe - The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)

Modern cars which won't last