Stupidity v Malice

  

Miss Boler sniffed. “Looks to me more like deliberate malice,” said she.

“Mischievous acts usually do,” I rejoined; “but yet they are mostly the outcome of stupidity that is indifferent to consequences.”

R. Austin Freeman - The D'Arblay Mystery (1926)


Leaping lightly back to the previous post, what we directly observe with people such as Ed Miliband is his public behaviour, especially his language. What we often assume but don’t directly observe is his thinking behind the behaviour.

With Ed Miliband we can be said to observe the stupidity that is indifferent to consequences, but we don’t directly observe the deliberate malice. We may as well call it malice though – it fits the likely outcomes of his policies.

Deranged

 

Signal

Anne-Laure Dufeal has a Brussels Signal piece on the UK move to implement the technical and regulatory framework of a mass surveillance system under the guise of child safety. 

We've known about this for some time of course, but the point is worth making over and over again until we can't make it.

Signal accuses UK of creating a mass surveillance system under the guise of child safety

The company criticised the proposals, warning that they could have far-reaching implications for privacy and civil liberties.

Following UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s call for tech companies to introduce device-level controls, the messaging platform Signal has accused the UK government of laying the groundwork for a “mass surveillance system” under the guise of child protection...

“The UK government’s demand that all content on all devices sold or used in the UK be scanned on the presumption of nudity, using a dystopian combination of age verification and content scanning, will not safeguard children”, Signal warned in a statement.

“It endangers us all, whilst strengthening Apple, Google, and Microsoft’s market dominance and their control over our most personal information”, the company added.


The UK government will probably be comfortable with strengthening Apple, Google, and Microsoft’s market dominance. It only has to hold "discussions" with those three.

That is not a sign of a healthy system

Zack Polanski: 'Food is too cheap'

Zack Polanski has said food is too cheap and called for new rules to force supermarkets to pay suppliers more.

The Green Party leader claimed vegetables selling for as little as 7p was evidence that somebody was being exploited in Britain’s food supply chain.

Mr Polanski accused supermarket executives in a speech on Monday of making record profits on the back of underpaid workers.

Speaking to the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union on Monday, he said: “That is not a sign of a healthy system. Someone is being exploited somewhere, and if you’re paying 7p for vegetables, then something is not right.


Zack Polanski is busy chasing the incoherent politics market.

That is not a sign of a healthy system. Someone is being exploited somewhere, and if you’re exploiting turnip voters, then something is not right.

The Curse of Awareness

 

Another one goes up

Huge recycling centre fire by railway near London Bridge sparks travel chaos

Huge plumes of smoke can be seen for miles over south London after a waste dump fire brought rush hour to a standstill.

Thick black smoke pours out of a recycling centre between London Bridge and Dartford shutting all lines between the stations on Monday evening.

A train driver told passengers the fire erupted at a factory around 5.30pm.

Commuters stuck at London Bridge reported a ‘strong smell of burning around the station’.

A cynical chap is bound to wonder if recycling centres are sustainable.

Dodgy EV Fire Data

Filed under "One born every minute"

Two thirds of our customers’ fraud cases start on Meta, Lloyds says

More than two thirds of fraud cases reported to Lloyds first targeted customers on Meta platforms, the bank’s head of fraud prevention has said.

Data from the banking giant shows those in their late twenties and early thirties are being reeled into scams on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, which are all owned by Meta.

Common scams included ticket fraud, particularly for concerts and sporting events such as Taylor Swift’s Eras tour and Premier League football matches.

Writing in the Sunday Times, Lloyds’ fraud prevention director Liz Ziegler said 68 per cent of fraud reports from their customers started on a Meta platform.

Werner Herzog on Chickens

 

Hols

Yesterday we whizzed off down the M5 in the rain - won't rush to do that again but we're on holiday now so blogging may be even more erratic than usual. 

Not that there is much going on in the world apart from wars, division, conflict and the looming reality of totalitarian politics.

Let's have an Edith Wharton quote instead.  

In spite of illness, in spite even of the arch-enemy sorrow, one CAN remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small

Edith Wharton’s 1934 autobiography 'A Backward Glance'

Filed under "What could possibly go wrong?"

New proposals to cut bills with community batteries

• Families and businesses could benefit from cheaper energy through the use of community batteries.Families could save on bills by storing cheaper renewable able electricity and using it when demand is highest
• Call for evidence launched to explore how community batteries can be rolled out at to support working people, including renters or those living in flats, to save money
• Part of the biggest investment in community energy in UK history, giving people a stake in local clean power projects and reducing reliance on volatile fossil fuels

A call for evidence launched today (Thursday 4 June) will seek to unlock barriers so shared battery storage can be rolled out across the UK, helping communities store locally generated renewable energy and pass on the savings to households.

Pumping heat into the debate

This $1,000,000,000 AI data centre could dump 23 nuclear bombs worth of energy per day

What could be one of the world’s largest data centres – the warehouses that power AI – could dump 23 atomic bombs’ worth of energy per day.

The 40,000-acre Stratos Project Area, which would be kept ticking by a gas power plant, was approved by Box Elder County in Utah this month.

It will eventually gobble up about 9GW of power every single day – the UK generated 22.7GW of power yesterday, according to the National Grid...

If you need more analogies, it’s the equivalent of: ‘40,000 Walmart Supercenters, 2-3 New York Cities and 13 Back To The Future DeLorean time machines.’

According to... er... AI -

Location and Size

The Stratos Project Area spans approximately 40,000 acres in western Box Elder County, Utah, primarily in Hansel Valley and Locomotive Valley, divided by a small mountain range. The site is remote, about 15–20 miles from the nearest town, and includes unincorporated land, private property, and areas near Hill Air Force Base and Utah National Guard facilities

Not everyone can do monotasking

Scientists have long said we can’t multitask. A new study says we can

Researchers have long said that the human brain is not set up to multitask — but new research is challenging that understanding.

Experts previously explained that when we believe we’re multitasking, we’re actually just quickly switching between tasks. That’s because the area of the brain that manages thinking, the prefrontal cortex, can only really handle one thing at a time.

But another region of the brain involved in memory lends a helping hand over time, new research has shown. When people needed to perform image sorting tests over the course of weeks, the tests initially activated the prefrontal cortex and later activated the temporal cortex.

Over time, the brain is remodeled, Maximilian Riesenhuber, a professor of neuroscience at Georgetown University School of Medicine, explained in a statement. The prefrontal cortex passes responsibility to the temporal cortex and is free for “whatever else you want to do, increasing your capacity.”

 

Ed demonstrates monotasking

Lammy supports Starmer until he doesn't support Starmer

David Lammy defends Keir Starmer after Andy Burnham vows leadership challenge

Sir Keir Starmer will stand up to attempts to oust him, David Lammy has said, after Andy Burnham became the latest rival to publicly confirm he would challenge the Prime Minister in any leadership contest.

The Prime Minister’s deputy was the latest among Sir Keir’s senior allies to row behind him, as he faces increasing pressure from influential figures within Labour seeking to replace him...

“I’ve supported every leader of the Labour Party. They’ve had my full loyalty.

“Keir Starmer has got my loyalty, full loyalty, until the day he no longer wishes to serve.”

We may translate until the day he no longer wishes to serve as until he is ousted, but what the blue blazes does a chap say about UK politics? Should we be grateful that there are no more motorhome rascalities?

No, I'm not betting on it either.

Well, then, do not be angry with them; for are they not as good as a play, trying their hand at paltry reforms such as I was describing; they are always fancying that by legislation they will make an end of frauds in contracts, and the other rascalities which I was mentioning, not knowing that they are in reality cutting off the heads of a hydra?

Plato quoting Socrates in Republic (about 375 BC)

Do you want chips with that?

New AI-designed vaccine could prevent pandemics and save millions of lives, scientists say

The "super-antigen" known as a "universal vaccine" was developed using machine learning at the University of Cambridge - designed to combat a range of viruses as they mutate.

New vaccine technology created with the help of artificial intelligence could provide immunity against entire families of viruses and protect people from any future mutations in a single jab, scientists say.

The method could stop pandemics before they start, saving millions of lives and helping nations avoid lockdowns, according to researchers.


A tongue-in-cheek post title of course, but many of us have become wary of mass medication. Wary in a cynical what could possibly go wrong sense.

Moving Targets

 

Types

 

One of my casual interests is crime novels of the 1920s and 1930s. They were of course written by people who lived through the Great War, often by people who had seen active service or had been engaged in war work of one form or another.

Writers of this era knew the world where my parents, aunts, uncles and many school teachers grew up and in numerous ways their lives were not like ours. For this reader, that is where the main fascination lies, a fascination which is even to be found in cheap second-rate novels sold in railway station bookstalls to alleviate the tedium of long train journeys.

For example, many crime novels of the interwar years relied heavily on stereotypes. There wasn’t much exploration of the nuances of more complex characters, but the stereotypes are still interesting because they had to be recognisable in their era and are still recognisable today.

In novels of the 20s and 30s, middle class characters might refer to certain people as ‘types’, rather than stereotypes. Examples are numerous, such as the well-dressed chancer, the bumbling official, the sturdy down to earth tradesman, the showgirl with a kind heart, the maternal wife, the waspish academic, the bluestocking, the ineffectual vicar, the local drunk and so on.

There are dozens of them and many are still used today. My father once described one of my uncles as 'a local government type’ and I knew just what he meant, why he’d said it and why it was a mild criticism.

The striking aspect of stereotypes both past and present is how they are used to make sense of society. They reinforce social boundaries and thereby knit together an entire culture. Yet at some point, the use of old social stereotypes came under sustained attack by media outfits such as the BBC. Many socially cohesive stereotypes were reclassified as bigotry and those who still used them became stereotypes themselves.

The result has been a gradual shift towards more divisive, politically approved stereotypes as opposed to socially cohesive ones which were largely beyond the reach of government and politics. When this began is impossible to define, but maybe 1960 is a useful marker.

A measure of how far things have deteriorated is that stereotypes now have to be used with care and some can become a matter for the police.

His vanity was of the calm, settled sort

Wilkie Collins on Honoré de Balzac. 


His vanity was of the calm, settled sort; and his own conviction that his business in life was simply to be a famous man, proved too strong to be shaken by anybody...

"I will give up being a great dramatist," he told his parents at parting, "and I will be a great novelist instead." The vanity of the man expressed itself with this sublime disregard of ridicule all through his life...

He appears to have possessed in the highest degree those powers of fascination which are quite independent of mere beauty of face and form, and which are perversely and inexplicably bestowed in the most lavish abundance on the most unprincipled of mankind.

Wilkie Collins – My Miscellanies (1863)

Balzac had the talent and a vast capacity for hard work, but today we see monstrous vanity and a sublime disregard of ridicule in too many public figures with little obvious talent and only a limited inclination to understand what they should understand. 

Perhaps 'vanity' is a more useful word than 'narcissistic' when trying to make sense of mediocre public figures, especially when they display an unshakeable belief that their rightful place is the top of the greasy pole. 

This level of vanity tends to go with a lack of principle too, but in the political arena we rarely see the powers of fascination bestowed in the most lavish abundance. The only fascination is to be found in wondering what on earth they will say or do next.

Blame the phones

The irreversible smart phones and world’s dropping birth rates

By Gwynne Dyer - Smart phones seem to be directly linked to a worldwide crash in the birth rate. It is “quite plausible that the modern digital media environment has had profound effects on society that have led to a decline in romantic coupling,” according to Melissa Kearney, professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame.

It's not news and clearly there are other factors where phones are a symptom rather than a cause, a symptom of having nothing better to do perhaps. Whatever the cause, as a global issue it's a far more serious than climate change, but compared to climate change it lacks funding, drama and political appeal. 


There are many other factors in play, of course: the unavailability/unaffordability of housing that forces many people in their 20s to live with their parents, the unrealistic expectations promoted by online influencers, and even the growing scarcity of entry-level jobs.

But the most persuasive (and irreversible) is phones, phones, phones.

If your brain doesn't register this as absurd

Yet more antics from the worlds of fashion and the performing arts, but a comment on those involved by video presenter Joey Toonz gets to the crux of it - 

Look, if your brain doesn't register this as absurd, just imagine the other things they don't see as absurd.

It raises questions about our ability to register things as absurd and whether it can be blunted by too much exposure to it, at least for some. 

Jeremy still flogging that dead horse

Jeremy Corbyn to address islanders by video link at launch of Your Party branch

A new political party branch is set to launch on the Isle of Wight, with an address from a prominent MP.

Your Party will open its first Isle of Wight branch on Saturday, June 6, at Quay Arts in Newport, at 5.30pm.

Jeremy Corbyn MP will address guests via video link, and the event will include a Community Assembly where residents can discuss issues and explore how collective action could create change.

Meanwhile -

The latest YouGov voting intention poll for The Times and Sky News shows Reform UK leading on 27% of the vote, up three points relative to last week’s poll and nine points ahead of any other party.

• Reform UK: 27% (+3 from 25-26 May)
• Conservatives: 18% (-1)
• Labour: 18% (+1)
• Greens: 15% (-1)
• Lib Dems: 13% (-1)
• Restore Britain: 3% (=)
• SNP: 3% (=)
• PC: 1% (-1)
• Your Party: 0% (=)
• Others: 1% (-1)

EU Commissioners annoyed by e-cars

EU Commissioners annoyed by e-cars: Charging break slows down journey from Brussels to Strasbourg

In Brussels, the EU Commission's electric company car fleet is causing trouble because the available e-cars cannot make the approximately 440-kilometer route from Brussels to the EU Parliament in Strasbourg without a charging break. The vehicles are part of the authority's green fleet conversion, which started in 2022, but the regular business trips between the two EU locations put a strain on range, scheduling and confidential workflows. In particular, the charging stop in Luxembourg extends the journey, while some EU commissioners only want to use the train to a limited extent due to sensitive phone calls.

EU Commissioners experience range problem on business trips

The EU Commission wants to make its own fleet completely emission-free by 2027. That is why many top officials and commissioners already drive electric company cars. However, the case shows that political climate goals can fail in everyday government work due to range, charging time and route profile.

Doubly ironic because an EU Commissioner's time is of so little practical value. They must think their time is valuable of course, but that is not likely to be a widely shared opinion.

Maybe they could try to rewrite the laws of physics and chemistry via an EU directive. 

Ed Miliband has announced.

Government commits to 87% cut in UK’s climate emissions by 2040

The Government has signed up to a legal target to cut the UK’s planet-heating emissions by 87% by 2040, Ed Miliband has announced.

The commitment will see heat pumps, electric cars and renewables rolled out across the country in a move the Government says will bring down bills and “upgrade lifestyles”.

The reduction in greenhouse gases on 1990 levels – on the way to cutting climate pollution to zero overall by 2050, known as “net zero” – is in line with official advice from the independent Climate Change Committee (CCC) on deliverable and cost-effective cuts.

But the Government’s commitment to the “seventh carbon budget” emissions target for the period 2038-2042 comes amid increasing political division over climate action, with Reform UK and the Tories promising to ditch net zero policies and back oil and gas drilling.


It's made up numbers time again, but it would be interesting to know what "climate pollution" is supposed to be. Presumably it is not the pollution of science and rational debate by political twaddle, because on the face of it there is a firm intention to increase that kind of pollution.

As even Ed Miliband knows, nobody will remember this twaddle by 2040 anyway. By then we will have lots of different twaddle to contend with and probably some real problems which turn out to be rather more serious than Ed's fantasies.

Said with tiers in their eyes

Cooper says UK and China have 'shared interest' in rules-based order

The rules-based international order is in Britain and China’s “shared interest”, Yvette Cooper said as she met the country’s vice-president Han Zheng for talks on global security as part of a three-day visit to Asia.

The Foreign Secretary acknowledged “areas of disagreement” between London and Beijing but insisted that approaching discussions with “candour and respect” would help to increase mutual understanding of one another.

Greeting the minister in the capital’s Great Hall of the People on Tuesday, Mr Han hailed a “new chapter in bilateral ties” which he said had been opened during Sir Keir Starmer’s visit to the country in January.


You British have sold your souls for something less than the conventional mess of pottage. You are ruled in the first place by money-bags, and the faddists whom they support to blind your eyes.

John Buchan - The Half-Hearted (1900)

The Sound of Silencers

From "Les Tontons flingueurs", a crime comedy.

Time is running out for managed decline

Damian Pudner has a useful CAPX piece on why so many people from Tony Blair upwards know why the UK political status quo is running aground.


Time is running out for the political status quo

Even Tony Blair – the man who built managerial Britain – recognises the state has grown too large

For 30 years, the state has expanded on the misguided assumption that someone else would always pay

We are stuck in a slow, painful managed decline

This week I was fortunate enough to sit down with the Rt Hon Liz Truss. We discussed the usual things you expect. The state of the UK economy, the Bank of England, the Civil Service, and to quote Truss, how ‘Power was taken from the elected and given to progressive bureaucrats and judges’. I must admit I found our conversation refreshing.

So let me be just as direct. British politics has reached a point where the old arguments no longer work and the old settlement is visibly falling apart.

For 30 years, the British state has expanded on the misguided assumption that someone else would always pay. Taxpayers. Bond markets. The next generation. That growth was always just around the corner. That all we needed was more spending, more regulation, more quangos, more debt, more promises. And that the productive part of the economy – the private sector – would simply absorb it, that bond markets would keep lending to us, that the public would keep accepting the situation.

Well, they won’t. And deep down, everyone in Westminster knows it.

The whole piece is well worth reading, especially now, with old-style political huckster Andy Burnham in hot pursuit of Keir Starmer's position. Burnham doesn't have the nous nor the answers, but neither do far too many voters.


Time is running out for the political status quo. And the public, I suspect, is far ahead of Westminster on this.

Behave as rationally as possible

Peter Murrell bought 108 loo rolls using money stolen from SNP as panic-buy alert loomed

Peter Murrell snapped up more than 100 toilet rolls using money he had stolen from the SNP - just as Nicola Sturgeon prepared to urge the Scottish public not to panic-buy at the start of the Covid pandemic.

Court documents from his embezzlement trial reveal that on March 7, 2020, with lockdown looming as infection cases soared and supermarkets battled chronic shortages of essential items, the then First Minister's husband spent £55.98 on 108 luxury Andrex toilet rolls.

Just 48 hours later, Ms Sturgeon appeared at a press conference instructing the public to 'apply common sense' by not bulk-buying in shops and to 'behave as rationally as possible'.

There is an interesting point here. All those toilet rolls are a reminder that politicians can't behave as rationally as possible, not when they are doing politics. 

If they were to do that, then politics as we know it would fade away to be replaced by something which isn't easy to envisage because we've never had it. 

AI perhaps.

We’re really important says WHO

About two weeks ago, Kit Knightly had an entertaining off-guardian piece about the World Health Assembly. We all know about that lot, but the whole piece is well worth reading.


WHO in “panic mode” as World Health Assembly kicks off

Today is first day of the World Health Organization’s 79th annual World Health Assembly, where delegates come together to set policies and priorities for global health.

Essentially, it’s a week-long exercise in saying, as loud and long possible, “We’re really important.”

And thank goodness it came along when it did, because…wow.

The hantavirus outbreak is tearing through the world at the unstoppably terrifying rate of five whole deaths every two months.

That’s about 30 deaths in a year or about 0.25% of the number of people who’ll died from falling down stairs.

At least it's not Derbyshire

Sturgeon moves to London - as she defends record over husband's crimes

Nicola Sturgeon has moved to London following the fallout over her estranged husband’s conviction for embezzlement.

The former Scottish First Minister is renting a luxury property in the capital as she looks to start a career in the literary industry, the Mail reported.

She hinted she might move to London while promoting her memoir last year, adding that she felt she could not “breathe freely” at home.

The literary industry eh? There are quite a few obvious jibes we could bung in here, but if she intends to write books, there are numerous subjects she should avoid to head off even more jibes.

For example, a novel where the feisty heroine auditor arrives at a ferry port in her motorhome to carry out an audit on behalf of the government. That won't do.

Scapegoats Needed

Just 7% of London housing target started in first three months of 2026

Just 6,325 private sector homes broke ground in London in the first three months of 2026, new data has revealed – equivalent to seven per cent of the Mayor’s 88,000 overall annual target.

Research from Real Estate consultants JLL suggests that developers are hesitant to build in the current market due to a proliferation of unsold stock.

New data shows that 22,000 properties across the capital sit unsold or under construction, with all types of buyers unwilling to invest in the present circumstances.

As we know, this is merely one symptom of a much wider shambles. A chap is bound to wonder why Andy Burnham thinks he can improve any of it, armed only with his teenage ideology and what appears to be a ludicrous dollop of self-confidence.

He joined the Labour Party at the age of 15, so we already know he hasn't learned much about the limitations of his ideology. Maybe he has been putting some serious effort into lining up a collection of scapegoats, there aren't many other options open to him if we are landed with him as Prime Minister.


Know how to put off Ills on Others. To have a shield against ill-will is a great piece of skill in a ruler. It is not the resort of incapacity, as ill-wishers imagine, but is due to the higher policy of having some one to receive the censure of the disaffected and the punishment of universal detestation. Everything cannot turn out well, nor can every one be satisfied: it is well therefore, even at the cost of our pride, to have such a scapegoat, such a target for unlucky undertakings.

Baltasar Gracián - The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

Two viewpoints - but one is Ed's

Britain continues to break clean power records

Households across the UK continue to embrace solar power as the government accelerates its clean power mission.

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said:

"As we face a second fossil fuel crisis in 5 years, Britain is taking back control of their energy by generating more clean power than ever before. Record-breaking solar growth means greater energy security, lower exposure to volatile fossil fuel markets which we can’t control.

This is what our clean power mission looks like: backing homegrown energy, giving people more control over their bills, and building a stronger, more resilient energy system for the future."


Wind and solar are parasites on the grid

The unpopular truth about electricity and the future of energy

It seems that wind and solar power can only survive as parasites on the more efficient conventional generators. Lars Schernikau and William Smith have explained this unpopular truth in a slim and elegant book that demolishes some of the most cherished beliefs of the climate and energy warriors in the alternative universe.

It is a scholarly tour de force, combining the depth and detail of a doctoral thesis with crystal clear writing. This is a rare combination. People who don’t need the full story can get what they need to know from the beautifully illustrated 24-minute video produced to promote the revised edition.

Stooge Trip

  

Burnham allies plan cross-party council to stop a Reform UK government

Senior figures from the progressive parties will form a new group to discuss how the "progressive majority" can stop Reform winning the next election, including discussing electoral pacts.

Allies of Andy Burnham will form a new "council" of cross-party figures to discuss working together to stop a Reform UK government.

The "council for the progressive majority" is being instigated by Compass, a centre-left thinktank whose founder Neal Lawson is an influential supporter of the Greater Manchester mayor.

The council will be comprised of two leading figures from each of the progressive parties in the UK - Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru.

Blimey. Establishment stooges on a power trip, aiming to slam the door on plebs who might prefer the type of democracy where voting makes a difference.

Sorry chaps, stick your mark on the voting paper and clear off.

The never-ending game

Mani Basharzad has a very interesting CAPX piece on what he calls distributionalism, the political dead-end which has killed long-term thinking.


How ‘distributionalism’ killed long-term thinking

• Modern governments are in endless debates about which group deserves what share of the economic pie
• Social justice activists can never seem to decide when a sufficient level of equality has been reached
• Distributionalism attempts to engineer growth toward preferred social outcomes

One can trace this mentality, in its modern form, to the rise of distributional analysis pioneered by organisations such as the Resolution Foundation. The underlying assumption is that every policy should primarily be judged by how it affects different income and wealth groups. Want to evaluate tax reform? Examine its impact across income deciles. Welfare reform? Measure how different social classes are affected.


The whole piece is well worth reading as distributionalism is a major obstacle to longer term political thinking in the UK. We can call it socialism, but as with so much political terminology, 'socialism' has become too vague and politically threadbare to be as useful as it could be.


Modern governments have become trapped in endless debates about which group deserves what share of the economic pie, rather than concentrating on how to expand the pie itself. At this point, the knowledge problem becomes unavoidable. What exactly is the ideal distribution of wealth? Who decides which groups should possess which share of resources? The truth is that nobody knows. Even among advocates of social justice, there is no agreement about what a perfectly just distribution would look like.

The usual answer is simply ‘more equal than now’. But when is equality sufficient? Where does the process end? As Robert Nozick wrote, ‘There is no central distribution, no person or group entitled to control all resources, jointly deciding how they are to be doled out’.

That is why distributionalist politics becomes a never-ending game: it has no natural endpoint. Yet the economic distortions it creates are very real. If governments genuinely want to tackle short-termism, they should begin by abandoning distributionalism as the central framework of policymaking.

Ferrari Luce VS Nissan Leaf

Low IQ Missiles

North Korea tests AI-guided missiles for the first time

State media said that Kim was satisfied with the tests, with the North Korean leader saying the weapons "suit the proper conditions of ⁠modern warfare".

Kim Jong Un supervised the launches, and it is claimed he was satisfied with the results.

Blimey, the North Korean regime is remarkably keen on presenting itself as bang up to date with military hardware.

Imagine a spoof story about the latest, most destructive missile warheads being composed of explosive blancmange.

Extremely unlikely of course, but suppose the spoof goes global and a few months later we see official photos of Kim Jong Un inspecting the a new North Korean missile equipped with the very latest blancmange warhead.

The background noise of public life

Keir Starmer defends policy choices in rebuttal of Blair’s criticism

Keir Starmer has dismissed Tony’s Blair’s argument that his government is on the wrong track, saying he is implementing the policies needed for today, not the very different situation faced by the former prime minister in 1997.

“You won’t be surprised to know that I don’t agree with much that Tony says about what the government is doing,” Starmer said during a visit to an apprentice training centre in west London.

It came as Andy Burnham, who was also criticised by Blair, responded by saying the ex-PM’s analysis was undermined by the “gaping omission” of acknowledging the impact of falling living standards.


Meanwhile -

One million lives.

Nearly one million young people aged 16 to 24 in the United Kingdom are not in education, employment or training. One in 8 young people. And rising. Behind the statistics lie individual lives: aspirations thwarted, opportunities lost, futures placed on hold.

Numbers on that scale should command national attention in their own right. Too often they haven’t. The NEET rate has barely crept below 10% in 25 years. What should have been treated as an urgent national crisis has been absorbed into the background noise of public life.

That tolerance is no longer acceptable...

Time and again the system from education through health to welfare fails to enable labour market participation. Instead, all too often it ends up putting young people on a path to a life on benefits. These faultlines are limiting the opportunities for too many young people to learn or earn.

A sense of urgency

Green candidate in Makerfield by-election wants farming to be 'decolonised' with 'inclusive spaces'

Zack Polanski’s party unveiled 38-year-old Sarah Wakefield as its candidate for the key by-election on Tuesday.

Ms Wakefield, a mother of two, serves as executive director of environmental charity Eating Better...

Last year, the charity shared a report by American activist Caroline J Sumlin discussing “white supremacy culture” within farming and outlining ways to challenge “colonial power and legacies” in the food industry.

The report cited “defensiveness”, “perfectionism” and “a sense of urgency” as examples of so-called white supremacy culture.


A chap is bound to wonder if Ms Wakefield intends to campaign with a sense of urgency, or will she just wander round Makerfield chatting to anyone she meets? 

That would be after the election of course. Campaigning before the election would surely display a distressingly inappropriate sense of urgency.

Come to think of it, she should also avoid defending Green policies or the leadership of Zack Polanski - that would violate the rule against defensiveness.

The Greens may be okay with avoiding perfectionism as there isn't much they get right. They could be in some danger of being perfectly wrong though. 

Strewth - I feel an urgent need for coffee and dark chocolate.

They are all mad.

Ignorance of the disgraceful sort

  

SOCRATES: I suppose that we begin to act when we think that we know what we are doing?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: But when people think that they do not know, they entrust their business to others?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

SOCRATES: And so there is a class of ignorant persons who do not make mistakes in life, because they trust others about things of which they are ignorant?

ALCIBIADES: True.

SOCRATES: Who, then, are the persons who make mistakes? They cannot, of course, be those who know?

ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.

SOCRATES: But if neither those who know, nor those who know that they do not know, make mistakes, there remain those only who do not know and think that they know.

ALCIBIADES: Yes, only those.

SOCRATES: Then this is ignorance of the disgraceful sort which is mischievous?

ALCIBIADES: Yes.


Ascribed to Plato - Alcibiades I (Possibly 390s BC)

I don't need any figures

"I don't need any figures" – Klingbeil defends billion-dollar course for renewable energies

In Berlin, Federal Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil defended the government's course on renewable energies in the Bundestag on May 20, 2026. The trigger was a question from AfD MP Rainer Kraft in the government questioning. Kraft demanded a concrete effect of 100 billion euros of taxpayers' money on the global temperature rise. Klingbeil first referred to studies on individual instruments in the Climate and Transformation Fund. But then he said, "I don't need numbers to know it's right." This brought budget control, energy costs and the burden on taxpayers into focus.

It is pretty obvious that this is Ed Miliband's attitude - "I don't need numbers to know it's right." More generally, it is likely to be a widespread attitude among the governing classes, many of whom don't seem keen on numbers anyway. 

There is a certain nervousness wittering its way through the Net Zero nonsense though, a sense that some numbers could mean something, even something important.

"Do those scruffy sceptics know something we don't? Surely not."

Fast Pseuds

The Ferrari Luce Isn’t For You, And That’s Okay

The $640,000Ferrari Luce isn’t for me, either. The greatest automotive experience of my life came at the wheel of a sixty-year-old Ferrari 250 GT. But I think I understand where Ferrari is coming from. Or rather, what the pens of Sir Jony Ive and Marc Newson of design agency LoveFrom have set out to achieve...

Revealed earlier this year, the interior is a celebration of tactility, from its solid metal switchgear and analogue dials, to its simplistic, almost retro steering wheel and plush leather upholstery bathed in ambient lighting. This is a car interior for the newly wealthy who recognize the damage caused by a decade of scrolling. There’s no ghastly passenger touchscreen, no dimwitted haptic touchpads and no infuriating AI assistant. Instead there are beautiful materials that are sure to bring joy with every interaction. They’ll remind the driver of their Leica camera, their Linn turntable and their Rimowa suitcase.

Labour Party: Two Headlines

Baroness Harman: Labour leadership hopefuls must be radical feminists

Women in party should use challenges from Streeting and Burnham to ‘marshal our unreasonable demands’, peer says

'Labour lacks coherent plan,' says Sir Tony Blair in essay critical of government

Sir Tony Blair has warned Labour against forcing out Sir Keir Starmer without having a proper policy agenda to follow him, as he launched a criticism of the Government’s time in office.

Robotic Agentic AGI Prototype

 

Numbers Game

While browsing the internet over coffee this morning, I took a casual gander at some basic information about Angola. This snippet from Wikipedia is interesting as yet another hint that the game of made up numbers still has plenty of life in it.

 

Due to climate change, Angola's annual average temperature has increased by 1.4.°C since 1951, and is expected to keep rising[76] while rainfall is becoming more variable.[77] Angola is highly vulnerable to climate change impacts.

Presumably we are expected to believe that since 1951, Angola has been measuring surface temperatures accurately enough for a claimed 1.4.°C temperature rise to be reliable, although I'm not sure why there is another decimal point after the figure 4.

Alternatively, as the Wikipedia link indicates, the number comes from World Bank Group which of course is linked to the UN. In which case it may be a global UN number rather than a statistical output from accurate and reliable Angolan temperature measurements.

Hmm - made up number seems to be the safest assumption.

At least sometimes or often

I’m a psychologist. Here’s why 40 per cent of the world avoids reading the news

What’s the solution to news fatigue? Well, it’s not avoidance. A democracy depends on informed citizens

During several recent conversations, people have told me that they’ve stopped checking their phones in the morning. Not because nothing was happening, but because everything was. They described the feeling as standing under a waterfall of perpetual bad news.

This experience is far from an isolated one. According to the Reuters Institute’s 2025 Digital News Report, 69 per cent of Canadians at least occasionally avoid the news now.

Globally, 40 per cent report they at least sometimes or often do the same, the highest figure ever recorded. People shared consistent reasons for this: the news put them in a bad mood, they felt overwhelmed and powerless to act.


This story from an outfit which peddles climate doom as one of its doom staples. Don't they realise that at least sometimes or often many of us find it entertaining? Some of us couldn't enjoy our morning coffee without it.

I'm not a psychologist, but at least sometimes or often I check the Independent for a morning lift. It's a confirmation that all is as it was, nonsense hasn't been supplanted from its global throne and the world of mainstream media isn't likely to become disturbingly rational.

Lavish Lifestyle

Police: Peter Murrell abused position to bankroll lavish lifestyle he craved

Peter Murrell abused his privileged position to bankroll a lavish lifestyle “he craved but could not afford”, Police Scotland has said.

The former SNP chief executive has been remanded into custody at the High Court in Edinburgh after pleading guilty to embezzling £400,310.65 from the SNP.

He admitted the charges when he appeared at the court on Monday morning.

Media phrases eh? "Lavish lifestyle" is a popular one for stories where a wrong 'un takes money which isn't theirs and spends on what the media consider to be luxuries such as posh cars, exotic holidays, fancy tattoos and so on.

On the other hand, when a government spends many billions propping up a failing but politically important project such as HS2, we don't usually describe it as lavish politics.  

Maybe that's because we need new words such as hyperlavish for government largesse. This would give us Ed Miliband, Net Zero and the hyperlavish funding which keeps it tottering along. 

Green Data Centres Go AWOL

 

Government slammed for failure on hyperscale data centre emissions

The Scottish Government faces urgent calls to address "major shortcomings" in its data centre policy, as Action to Protect Rural Scotland (APRS) alleges a critical failure to account for the emissions of hyperscale AI facilities in assessments of "green data centres" and their contribution to climate targets.

Kat Jones, director of APRS, branded the situation "pretty shocking". The government’s NPF4 national planning framework states that "green data centres" will have an "overall negligible impact" on Scotland’s emissions reduction goals.


A chap is bound to wonder what a "green data centre" might look like within the strange, mysterious and eerily mystical minds of Green folk.  

  

Use of an abacus, as illustrated in
Margarita philosophica (1503)
Source

Remember this?

A few years ago there was some publicity about the Highway Code and various changes related to its hierarchy of road users. One change was Rule H2, giving way to pedestrians crossing or waiting to cross at a road junction

Rule H2 - Rule for drivers, motorcyclists, horse drawn vehicles, horse riders and cyclists

At a junction you should give way to pedestrians crossing or waiting to cross a road into which or from which you are turning.

At the time, Rule H2 was often illustrated like this -

 

Mrs H and I reckon the situation is now worse than it was before the change. Vehicles turning into a junction like this virtually never give way to waiting pedestrians. It would be suicidal for pedestrians to assume otherwise.

We encountered yet another example this morning while walking back from town. A chap driving with his mouth open didn't appear to see us at all. I'm not sure why it is necessary for pedestrians to be wary of people who drive with their mouths open, but it is.

Our plan is working

Keir Starmer insists 'our plan is working' and says he will 'keep pushing forward'

The Prime Minister has defended his government's plan, as he battles to remain in his position. Sir Keir Starmer said efforts to cut costs, reduce net migration and boost growth showed 'our plan is working'.

Sir Keir - who has insisted he will not walk away from number 10 if Andy Burnham wins the Makerfield by-election, triggering a leadership contest - has sought to highlight his own record.

European Union rejects Keir Starmer's Brexit reset demand in major setback

Brussels is said to have rejected Sir Keir Starmer's proposal to establish a single market for goods between the UK and EU in a major setback for Government's goal of improved relations.

The Cabinet Office's most senior official handling European relations, Michael Ellam, put forward the ambitious plan during recent trips to the Belgian capital as part of efforts to strengthen economic ties with the bloc.

To avoid or not to avoid, that is the question

We navigate through life by avoiding surprises, it a basic survival trait. The instinct to avoid threats or harm still dominates our lives, it is essential to what we are - obviously. 

As we should expect, there are numerous examples of how this essential instinct has moulded itself into modern life. We live in a world of avoidance, as we must.

Ideology seeks to avoid the messy unpredictability of life.

Political parties offer voters the opportunity to avoid their democratic responsibilities by passing it all on to a party.

The EU avoids many of the responsibilities of national government, that’s mostly what it is for.

Bureaucracy is a way of avoiding responsibility by diffusing it within the foggy realms of process and procedure.

The climate change narrative seeks to avoid the insoluble problem that the natural world never can be natural.

Gender politics even seeks to avoid the facts of human reproduction in what must be one of the most extreme avoidance ideologies ever concocted.

   

It's a long list because avoidance is part of life. Sceptics try to avoid irrational avoidance, but it is not the popular approach. Just avoid and have done with the messy responsibilities of analysis, that’s the popular way. As a philosophy of life, avoidance has a very long history. We can’t avoid avoidance.

To avoid a blog post which would go on forever, I'll finish with an old quote which points out that many things are well worth avoiding. Sceptics know that too.  

Do not make a Business of what is no Business. As some make gossip out of everything, so others business. They always talk big, take everything in earnest, and turn it into a dispute or a secret. Troublesome things must not be taken too seriously if they can be avoided. It is preposterous to take to heart that which you should throw over your shoulders. Much that would be something has become nothing by being left alone, and what was nothing has become of consequence by being made much of. At the outset things can be easily settled, but not afterwards. Often the remedy causes the disease. ’Tis by no means the least of life's rules: to let things alone.

Baltasar Gracian - The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

Not exactly the political equivalent of splitting the atom

A couple of weeks ago Karl Pfefferkorn wrote an interesting Brussels Signal piece on the unpopularity of Chancellor Merz of Germany and President Macron of France. Interesting because it highlights a common problem with limited, technocrat leaders who isolate themselves from the populations they supposedly serve.


Emperors lost in their Labyrinths, unwilling to listen to the common people

If one factor links the dire unpopularity of Chancellor Merz and President Macron, it is their political insularity. Neither engages freely with their disaffected voters, and neither has a close cadre of advisors willing to present unwelcome news. Macron is a creature of the French elite and has never “pressed the flesh” with the commoners in anything but carefully staged events. Merz retains the grandiose hubris of private capital, but has not cultivated a circle of seasoned confidants to keep him politically grounded. Every leader needs aides willing to dispute the boss and suggest better political alternatives. Merz and Macron prefer to remain cocooned within the trappings of high office, wilfully deaf to the angry complaints of the commoners.

Compare them to Indian PM Narendra Modi. After his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost its parliamentary majority in 2024, it roared back last week with a landslide victory in the West Bengal heartland of the previously dominant Trinamool Congress party. How did Modi engineer this dramatic turnaround? According to the Financial Times, Modi has a “relentless focus on grassroots issues … [and a] determination to stay close to voter concerns.” The Eurasia Group’s Pramit Pal Chaudhuri tells us, “Modi will often bring in people with differing views and have them argue … He is very focused on ensuring he gets dissenting opinions [and] multiple sources of information.” A brilliant innovation: Respond to popular discontent by … soliciting dissenting opinions and staying close to voter concerns. Not exactly the political equivalent of splitting the atom, but apparently far beyond the political skills of Macron or Merz.


The whole piece is well worth reading as we in the UK wait with weary resignation to see if Prime Minister Keir Starmer is ousted by someone cast in the same sequestered mould.

Disaffected voters look for reason to believe in their homeland and a candidate offering their country a claim on the future. Policies without patriotism fail these tests. One suspects that any populist successors to Macron and Merz will not.

Voters Don’t Matter

 From the US, but the UK is no better.

Blotted Out

Starmer's achievements 'blotted out' by political instability, says Harriet Harman

Despite the government turmoil, Baroness Harman says, "the irony is that there are quite a few good things" that have been happening.


Good old Hattie, always ready to say something batty. There seems to be a lot of blotting out going on though, 100 Morrisons convenience shops being blotted out for example.


Morrisons ‘set to close 100 lossmaking convenience shops’

Reports come after supermarket giant launched consultation over job cuts at its Bradford head office

Supermarket giant Morrisons is reportedly planning to shut 100 of its loss-making convenience stores, attributing the decision to mounting cost pressures caused by "government policy".

People can shade themselves in a number of ways

UK-wide NHS 11am 'rule' reminder as 33C hot weather forecast

People are being reminded of an NHS-backed 'rule' to follow as temperatures rise across the UK. The reminder comes as the bank holiday weekend brings heat that could reach around 33C in parts of the country.

With high heat, Brits are being reminded to consider an 11am 'rule' to keep themselves and others safe during hot spell of weather. The NHS says: "Spend time in the shade when the sun is strongest. In the UK, this is between 11am and 3pm from March to October."

People can shade themselves in a number of ways, including spending some time indoors when the heat gets too intense. The home can stay cooler during hot weather by closing curtains, despite that sounding counterintuitive.


A standard fine weather filler but the notion that people need reminding where shade comes from - that raised a wry smile.

It's almost surprising that we weren't treated to a picture of shade. Maybe there was a risk that the media AI system might come up with something like this -

 

Dear Leader

There is a Korean saying that if you tell a lie one hundred times, even the person who made up the lie will eventually come to believe it.

Jang Jin-Sung

Dear Leader is Jang Jin-Sung's fascinating account of his defection from North Korea. Disturbing of course, but well worth reading.

Jang Jin-sung is the pseudonym of a North Korean defector and former elite propagandist who served as a state poet under Kim Jong-il before escaping to South Korea in 2004.[1][2]Employed in the United Front Department of the Workers' Party of Korea, Jang composed officially sanctioned poetry extolling the Kim regime, which granted him privileged access to Pyongyang's inner circles and the moniker of poet laureate.[1][3] His defection followed a personal crisis involving unauthorized possession of South Korean media, prompting a clandestine border crossing via China that exposed him to risks of recapture and execution.

The book primarily covers the Kim Jong-il regime, describing the bizarre nature of the regime and Jang's defection with a friend across the frozen Tumen River to China. It's an interesting account because in spite of his young age, Jang was an elite propagandist, in North Korean terms life was good. 

What seems to have pushed him into defecting was partly his unauthorised use of South Korean literature, but also a fascination with the outside world. As a propagandist he came to know the outside world in a way which was strictly forbidden to North Korean citizens. Another motive for defecting was the fanatically restrictive nature of all North Korean art, literature and music, his main interests in life.

Anyone who composes a work that has not been assigned to the writer through this chain of command is by definition guilty of treason. All written works in North Korea must be initiated in response to a specific request from the Workers’ Party.

Jang gives Byron's poetry as an example of his access to literature beyond North Korea, part of a policy of disguising the source of North Korean propaganda covertly circulated in the outside world.

The book was the Collected Works of Lord Byron. As part of North Korea’s ‘Hundred-Copy Collection’, the print run of this book was restricted to one hundred copies. In North Korea, the circulation of foreign books is restricted in this way so that only the ruling Kim and his family, his closest associates and select members of North Korea’s elite have access to them. Each of the books in a hundred-copy set has a stamped number on the first page to show which of the hundred copies it is.

Before encountering Byron’s poetry, I had thought that adjectives such as ‘Dear’ and ‘Respected’ were a special form of pronoun in the Korean language reserved for Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. Along with ‘Great’, which is always seen in one of the terms referring to Kim Il-sung as ‘Great Leader’, I had assumed that these adjectives were names just like Kim and therefore etymologically and purely Korean.

Britain has no sense of its own interests

 

Wes Tries Noble Spite

Wes Streeting pledges wealth tax as he prepares for Labour leadership bid

Former health secretary Wes Streeting has set out plans for a wealth tax that would see capital gains tax equalised with income tax.

Mr Streeting, who had made clear he intends to stand in any leadership contest to replace Sir Keir Starmer, said the current system is not fair and penalises work...

Mr Streeting said: “A member of my family is a cleaner in Lancashire. She pays a higher tax rate on her salary than her landlord pays for the growing value of the home she lives in.

“She slogs her guts out, he puts in far less effort, yet the state rewards him more than her.

“And we wonder why people are angry.

Wes comes across as being just as unreliable as Starmer but more creepy. That took some doing, even for an ambitious politician.

They pay us some money

Not personal experience, just something I heard the other day.

GP Nurse to patient: We have government targets for cholesterol, if we put a person on statins they pay us some money.

But we already knew that.

Sentiment analysis

DWP signs £100k deal for AI ‘sentiment analysis’ tech tool

Government’s benefits department has renewed an arrangement with a specialist firm that delivers a tech system designed to use artificial intelligence to turn ‘siloed, messy, verbatim’ information into data dashboards

On 1 April, the DWP entered into a two-year contract with specialist tech firm Wordnerds. The deal, which is valued at £100,800, covers the provision of technology which supports “text analytics and sentiment analysis”, according to a newly published commercial notice.

A chap is bound to wonder if sentiment analysis is intended to form a barrier between DWP staff and the more robust public comments about the work they do. 

Credibility in Government is at stake

Healey warns Labour must get serious as leadership row puts credibility at stake

John Healey warned Labour’s “credibility in Government is at stake” in an apparent rebuke of leadership jockeying among rivals looking to oust Sir Keir Starmer.

The Defence Secretary urged colleagues to “get serious” and put Britain’s security before politics in a speech in Westminster on Tuesday after more than a week of turmoil following the party’s May elections mauling.

Speculation has mounted over who might run in any challenge for No 10 after a path opened up for leadership hopeful Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham to return to Westminster via the Makerfield by-election.

It's an embarrassing thing for Mr Healy to say as credibility in Government went AWOL some time ago. Maybe he is reminding us that Andy Burnham won't restore it, but neither would any of the other people touted as replacements for Keir Starmer.

That's the problem of course, Labour doesn't produce credible political leaders and in that restricted sense Healey may be right - what's the point?

Okay we've done appalling - what comes after that?

World's 'most expensive' high-speed rail line to be slower and cost more

A high-speed train line between London and Birmingham will be more expensive, take longer to make and go slower than previously announced.

The HS2 project will cost between £87.7bn and £102.7bn (in 2025 prices), with the first train services not starting until at least May 2036 and possibly not until October 2039, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told the Commons on Tuesday.

Mrs H and I are off out for coffee and breakfast this morning. 

We'll walk.

Masterpiece

Collector Jennifer Gilbert Is Selling Masterpieces at Sotheby’s to Fund a New Arts Nonprofit in Detroit

The Detroit patron and philanthropist is parting with major works by Joan Mitchell, Kenneth Noland, George Rickey and Harry Bertoia to fund Lumana, an arts hub opening in Little Village in 2027.

One of the masterpieces -

 

Kenneth Noland’s Rare Circle,
which has a $4-6 million estimate

The dirty tricks campaigns

The dirty tricks campaigns trying to stop Burnham in race for No 10

A meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) on Monday evening has inadvertently confirmed that the underhand tricks and backstabbing by MPs has got out of hand.

At the meeting, both foreign secretary Yvette Cooper and chief whip Jonathan Reynolds did their best primary school teacher impressions and gave their colleagues a dressing down for all their briefings against the prime minister and various leadership candidates.

It was apparently meant to be an appeal for unity. But one MP suggested it was the 21st-century equivalent of King Cnut shouting at the sea to stop the tide coming in. It was seen as both a complete waste of energy – and a little hypocritical on a day it was revealed that Sir Keir Starmer’s allies are briefing against Andy Burnham, claiming he would bring back Jeremy Corbyn if he became prime minister.

Imagine a headline - 

The clean tricks campaigns trying to stop Burnham in race for No 10

Goes against everything we know doesn't it? May as well leave out "dirty tricks" in the original headline - it's political squabbling among people nobody should ever have voted for.

Timeless History Invented Yesterday

Robert Hill has a very interesting Quadrant piece on the wildly exaggerated modern histories of Aboriginal Australia. 

Not something I'm familiar with apart from picking up hints on the periphery, but well worth reading even for someone with such threadbare knowledge as mine. A familiar political theme of course.

Timeless History Invented Yesterday

I have never read the “First Knowledges” box set and, after a decade spent immersed in this field, probably never will. That is not intellectual laziness. It is recognition of a relentless and deceitful genre. The first box set of six books was released in 2023 and in June this year we are told we will be privileged to have a box set of 10 books for $195.

This article is not a review of the 10 books but rather a consideration of a cultural moment: one in which Aboriginal Australia has been steadily transformed from a small-scale hunter-gatherer society into a profound ‘civilisation’ of extraordinary sophistication retrospectively credited with astronomy, engineering, politics, mathematics, economics, architecture, agriculture and environmental science in forms supposedly hidden from every serious observer until the present age.

What may have begun as an attempt to elevate awareness of Aboriginal culture has metastasised into something else entirely: a sprawling house of cards in which every human achievement must now be retrospectively rediscovered in pre-contact Australia.

Moonlight

Sir Edward Elgar : In Moonlight. John Atkinson Grimshaw : Paintings.

Dud v Dud

Labour civil war: Andy Burnham supporters 'furious' with Wes Streeting over 'Brexit reverse' comments

Andy Burnham says there is a ‘long-term case’ for advocating to join the EU - but insists he is not campaigning on that issue in the by-election...

Wes Streeting, who resigned as health secretary last week, signalled he wanted to see Britain return to the EU as he announced on Saturday he would stand in any Labour leadership contest.

Supporters of Mr Burnham are angry with Mr Streeting, according to the Times, as they believe it is a deliberate attempt to raise the issue of Brexit in the leave-voting constituency of Makerfield, where the Greater Manchester Mayor hopes to stand as a parliamentary candidate.

Mr Burnham sought to play down his own support for rejoining the trade bloc as he took part in a media blitz across the weekend.


By gum this is unedifying, two duds trying to do each other down in their squabble over a role for which neither is suited. 

But they think otherwise which won't help them either.

Seems like a fairly basic check

Strict new checks to stop a 'dead dog' from registering as a waste carrier

Legislation will be put forward this week requiring waste handlers to prove they are qualified to transport rubbish - with those granted a new-style permit obliged to display it in their vehicles and on advertising.

Speaking to Sky News last week, Baroness Sheehan, chair of the House of Lords Environment and Climate Change committee, believes reforms are vital.

"We hope very much that they [EA] will carry out the things that they're doing, particularly making sure that the... reforms are brought in, because at the moment that regime is totally broken, where you can register anyone, even a dead dog, as a carrier," she said.

Twenty years ago inspectors would visit registered waste carriers. I don't know if things have changed, but I'm pretty sure a dead dog registration would have been picked up.