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.

Starmer may be gone by then

Olympic Games could come to north of England under Labour plan

A bid to stage the Olympic and Paralympic Games in the north of England in the 2040s is to enter an initial assessment phase, the government has announced...

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said: “London 2012 showed what the Olympics can do for our country. It inspired a generation through sport, attracted huge investment and showed the best of Britain to the world.


A chap is bound to wonder which new sports will be included in the Olympic Games by the 2040s. 

Robot or bio-engineered cyborg athletics.

Competitive virtual reality games where even couch potatoes take part.

Cloud racing in sentient rocket suits...

Nope, by then it will be all fake.

Wes aims to make voting even more pointless

Streeting’s call for UK to rejoin EU pulls Labour back into Brexit war

Wes Streeting has called for the UK to rejoin the EU as he laid out his bid to No 10 in a much anticipated speech this weekend.

The former health secretary said he will be running for Labour leader after dramatically quitting his role as a Cabinet minister earlier this week.

He said leaving the EU was a “catastrophic mistake” as he stressed it was time for the UK to build a new “special relationship” with the Union, adding that Labour risks risks becoming “handmaidens” to Nigel Farage in the next general election.

Streeting doesn't seem to be suggesting a formal request to become a member of the EU here. It's more of a slogan pandering to the traditional Labour determination to keep a firm lid on the aspirations of working people. The EU does that for them, it curtails the point of voting to an even greater degree than national politics.

If Streeting grabs the top job, there are sound reasons to anticipate someone worse than Starmer.

The reality of the situation has begun to dawn on those who created it

Charlie Napier has a Critic piece on what is now a permanently topical issue, the predictable growth of sectarian politics in the UK. Napier identifies three possible outcomes.

• Management of sectarianism 
• Failure to manage sectarianism
• The victory of one group over the others

The whole piece covers familiar ground but is well worth reading as an issue our political establishment has created and cannot manage.

The disunited kingdom

The establishment must confront the disturbing realities of sectarian politics in the UK

Slowly, and by no means surely, the British political establishment is being forced to acknowledge the divided nature of the country over which it now presides.

This process has not been without significant resistance and self-delusion. Having ignored the doubters when they embarked on a policy of mass migration during the 20th century, the ever-more frequent case studies which proved the folly of this project were, one-by-one, ignored.

The vote-rigging scandal amongst Birmingham’s Muslim community in 2004 was largely written-off as a unique case. George Galloway’s by-election victory in Bradford West, 2011, was written off as well — this time, as an isolated case of public frustration with Western foreign policy in the Middle East.

The Lutfur Rahman case in 2015 was likewise treated as an isolated incident. The fact that a local mayor was able to win elections by exploiting family networks amongst the Bangladeshi community, should have been the canary in the coal mine — but it wasn’t.

On, and on, and on — but slowly, the reality of the situation has begun to dawn on those who created it.

Mendacious, incompetent, evasive and dull

Suppose we invent a Ruritanian character called Erik Merstar who after a successful legal career enters the Ruritanian political arena. Via rapid promotion  he manages to become party leader then after a fortuitous collapse of the governing party he becomes Grand Minister of Ruritania.

Unfortunately for the people of Ruritania, Erik Merstar turns out to be mendacious, incompetent, evasive and dull. Suppose we try to find out why that is by considering his upbringing, beliefs, character and personal circumstances.

We might begin by asking people who know him quite well. They generally say he is intelligent, quite personable away from the political arena and committed to the heavy responsibilities of Grand Minister. Others say he is rather odd and inclined to be cold at times, but nothing out of the ordinary, yet they are part of his social circle with all that this implies.

We might go on to ask a few pundits from various sections of the Ruritanian media and political spectrum. As expected, they give differing views about his ideology and motives, some saying he has no ideology and his motives tend to be swayed by the strongest consensus. Ruritanian pundits prefer to maintain a consistent narrative though, what they say has to bear some relation to what they say more generally and have said in the past.

Other pundits say Erik Merstar is an ideologue with a strongly globalist outlook which doesn’t necessarily put Ruritania at the centre of political debates. They say this ideology is rooted in his days as a student radical while doing his law degree at Ruritania State University. These pundits prefer to maintain a consistent narrative too though.

Yet what Ruritanian people still see is a mendacious, incompetent, evasive and dull Grand Minister. That’s it for Erik, there is nothing deeper, it’s all there on the surface. Apart from what we see, we just have stories about character and influences, but they are just stories which vary significantly depending on the storyteller.

Mendacious, incompetent, evasive and dull – beyond the stories that’s it.

Waymo Jam

 

Wes "backs" Andy

Wes Streeting backs Andy Burnham for Makerfield by-election

Wes Streeting backed Andy Burnham as Labour’s “best chance” of winning the Makerfield by-election, as the former health secretary’s allies said he would still contest any battle for the party leadership.

Mr Burnham declared he would seek permission from Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) to contest the by-election after the current MP, Josh Simons, announced on Thursday he would quit Parliament to make way for the mayor.

If successful, Mr Burnham is widely expected to challenge Sir Keir Starmer for the party leadership.

In a tweet on Friday, Mr Streeting backed his potential rival’s bid to fight the impending by-election, saying Labour needs “our best players on the pitch”.


Imagine three texts from Wes to Andy -

Sorry you lost Makerfield Andy, Reform stole it, you were the best candidate by far. Now you are out of the race I'm prepared to carry the flag for change though.

Sorry Andy, for some reason I posted the last message before the result came in.

Just seen the Makerfield result. Bad luck Andy. Good guess on my part though.

Government AI chatbot

Government AI chatbot goes live across GOV.UK App

Hundreds of thousands of users of mobile program for accessing a comprehensive range of government services will now also be able to interact with automated system powered by Claude LLM...

Having been launched in July last year, as of this week the app has 563,000 registered users. Those signing into the mobile app via their One Login account will now be able to opt in to use the GOV.UK Chat tool. The AI system is designed to enable citizens “to ask questions in plain language and receive instant, clear and reliable answers drawn from official government information”...

Responses provided by GOV.UK Chat – which GDS recently claimed have demonstrated 90% accuracy in tests – are drawn from data contained in the 80,000 pages of government guidance featured across the 700,000 pages of the wider GOV.UK site, according to the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.


Suppose we assume that 90% response accuracy is better than the response accuracy of the average Minister, MP or even government 'experts'. Not an outrageous assumption when we consider how often politicians do not respond to questions, preferring instead to respond to questions which were not asked.

The system will give official government responses of course, not necessarily responses people might look for and rely on in the wider world. At least some users are bound to make comparisons such as comparisons with official data and statistics.

It all sets many hares running, one of which could be comparisons with the veracity of politicians and government 'experts'.

We live in interesting times.

  

Rupert's views on Angela

 

Just the one?

Labour's day of anarchy: Angela Rayner cleared by taxman - as Streeting prepares to challenge

Labour's leadership anarchy took a dramatic twist today as Angela Rayner declared she had been cleared by the taxman - and suggested Keir Starmer could consider quitting.

The former deputy PM effectively threw her hat into the ring by announcing that she has paid £40,000 to settle her wrangling with HMRC over unpaid stamp duty.

Crucially, she insisted that she had not been made to pay any penalty for deliberately or 'carelessly' dodging tax.

The peculiar hard, inelastic touch of incipient decay

Ledging the lid crossways on the coffin, he placed his hand gently upon Camilla’s brow. It was colder than he had expected, and it had the peculiar hard, inelastic touch of incipient decay — that touch which communicates a shudder even to the most impassive.

Arnold Bennett - Hugo: A Fantasia on Modern Themes (1906)

A chap is bound to wonder what else has the peculiar hard, inelastic touch of incipient decay. Something a little less human, a little more abstract perhaps, such as a government.

Our safest bet?

Joseph Dinnage has a depressing CAPX piece on what many people seem resigned to - Keir Starmer as Prime Minister may our safest bet because the alternatives are likely to be worse. Worth reading for those who can stomach the idea.

The King’s Speech confirms that Starmer is our safest bet

• It's depressing, but the bond markets have made their preference clear
• In times of economic and geopolitical uncertainty, we should stick with the devil we know
• Britain could decline even more sharply under a new Labour leader

This was not the King’s Speech Keir Starmer imagined it would be. The crisis engulfing the Prime Minister has become so terminal that Buckingham Palace even questioned whether it would be appropriate for the King to speak at all.

But Starmer hasn’t maneuvered himself to the top job for nothing, and he patently won’t go down without a fight. So the show goes on, and as did the King’s Speech.

Setting out the Government’s agenda, King Charles outlined 35 pieces of legislation that Starmer – if he lasts for long enough – believes will transform Britain’s fortunes.

One of the greatest obstacles to this administration’s success has been its confused approach to the economy. Before the election, we were promised a government hell bent on achieving growth, that would make the tough decisions necessary to achieve it. But what did we get? Job-killing workers’ rights legislation, tax hikes and yet more unproductive public spending.

If the reopening of Parliament was supposed to mark a radical new departure, it certainly did not deliver.

Rachel Reeves could do with one of those

Indian state leader removes personal astrologer from key government role after backlash

Rationalist critics and opposition leaders had argued that such an appointment would promote superstition over scientific thinking

The newly elected chief minister of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu has revoked the appointment of his longtime astrologer to a key government role following backlash.

Joseph Vijay Chandrasekhar, an actor-turned-politician who scored a stunning victory on his electoral debut earlier this month, had picked Rickey Randhan Pandit Vettrivel, an astrologer and numerologist with no administrative experience, to advise him in office.

Rachel Reeves could do with a numerologist... 

Oh hang on, numerology is just superstitious twaddle.

Ed's the man for that.

A hidden order that connects them together.

Scientists discover new way to find aliens

Discovery could allow scientists to find signs of life without relying on particular special instruments, researchers suggest

Scientists might have find a new way of detecting life on other planets.

For years, scientists have been combing the Earth looking for particular molecules on other worlds that might be signs of life. But new research suggests that there might be another, more revealing way of finding them: not by looking for the molecules, but what scientists believe is a hidden order that connects them together.

 

They’re economically illiterate

 

An odd and atypical politician

Eliot Wilson has an interesting CAPX piece on the odd aspect of Keir Starmer's announcement about renationalising British Steel.


Starmer can barely save his career, let alone the steel industry

• The Prime Minister is attempting to save his skin by completely renationalising British Steel
• Does the Government really believe it can run a successful steel business where the private sector has failed?
• Labour's steel strategy is to deploy public expenditure to give the impression they are being productive

The longer he is in office, the more I realise what an odd and atypical politician Keir Starmer is. With his tenancy of 10 Downing Street under genuine threat after last week’s disastrous local and devolved election results, the Prime Minister is pursuing his own internal form of the madman theory: respond to criticism in a way which is so bizarre and disconnected from reality that even your most bitter enemy will be at least perplexed for a while.


The whole piece is well worth reading, both as another story about Labour incompetence and a further reminder of how strange Keir Starmer is beyond the incompetence.


The government has no plan for a competitive steel industry, nor even a rational assessment of whether one is achievable under any circumstances. Instead Starmer is driven by the politician’s syllogism which Sir Humphrey Appleby and Sir Arnold Robinson discuss with dismay in ‘Yes, Prime Minister’:

1. We must do something.
2. This is something.
3. Therefore we must do this.

What will change? What will the Government do differently next year that it has not done this year? How will global circumstances change and how will they be managed? What does a future British steel industry look like? Ministers have no idea, of course, because they have avoided asking the questions. Instead they will deploy public expenditure to make everyone feel like they are being productive.

Maybe British Steel can respond by feeling like it is a successful and profitable enterprise. It is hard to see what more we can expect.

Political parties promote charlatans

Political parties inevitably promote charlatans and what we might generously term borderline charlatans as parliamentary candidates. Charlatans persuade and adapt easily to the latest shifts in party narratives. They play the language games better than most.

For charlatans, ideology is an adaptable narrative, so are principles and moral imperatives are not imperative. Because they must if they hope to be elected, political parties put power before integrity and charlatans offer that.

Even amid the temporary enthusiasm for a new political leader or new political party, there is still no route towards lasting integrity in the political competition for power. If charlatans are not already on board and climbing towards the top of the greasy pole, they soon will be.

But we know that.

Digital Cars

 

Bad weather in Kenya is our fault, nasty tea is too

Warning climate change could threaten Britain’s beloved cup of tea

The familiar comfort of a British cuppa is under threat, with campaigners warning that climate change could soon deliver a more bitter flavour to the nation’s beloved brew.

A new report from aid agency Christian Aid reveals that rising global temperatures and increasingly extreme weather patterns are set to fundamentally alter the taste of tea.

Key tea-producing regions, including Kenya, India, and Sri Lanka, are experiencing conditions that could lead to harsher, less consistent flavours.


Without wishing to suggest that Christian Aid has merely climbed on a bandwagon here, it does have a "climate adaptation and resilience lead". 


Claire Nasike Akello, climate adaptation and resilience lead at Christian Aid, said: “For generations, consumers have taken for granted that a cup of tea will taste the same, day in, day out."

Duds and Superduds

Rayner calls for Burnham's return and warns Starmer needs to 'set out change'

Angela Rayner has called on Sir Keir Starmer to “set out the change our country needs” as she warned Labour is facing its “last chance” after a disastrous set of election results.

The former deputy leader and Ashton-under-Lyne MP, widely seen as a potential successor to the Prime Minister, stopped short of calling for him to quit but set out a series of steps he needed to take to win back working-class voters.

By gum this is all so embarrassing. Not only has our democracy obliged us to treat Starmer's rabble as the government, but now Andy Burnham, a dud from Manchester who isn't even an elected MP is being touted as the chap to put things right.

Meanwhile we have to accept Angela Rayner as some kind of pantomime dame pundit in the thick of it all, 'thick' being a not inappropriate word.

On reflection though, now I have a fresh mug of coffee to hand, it would not be easy to be worse than Starmer. Possible though, Labour still has enough duds for that. Superduds even - like Ed Miliband.

How Experts Use “Calamities”

William M. Briggs has a fine, light-hearted but trenchant piece on how experts use concocted calamities to find concocted victims and gain undeserved power. A familiar issue of course, but very well presented. 

The whole piece is well worth reading.  

How Experts Use “Calamities” to Find Official Victims & Gain Power

Let’s first remind ourselves of The Poor Have Less Money Fallacy. This is most commonly seen when the price of a thing rises (which often happens because of government “solutions”), and we hear from the “media” or academia something like “This price increase hurts the poor!” That is not the fallacy, because that is of course true. The Fallacy comes in intimating (below the headline) this deprivation ought not to be: that the poor ought not to have less money. That, and you saw this coming, Equity ought to reign instead.

The Poor Have Less Money is yet another false theorem derived from one of the greatest errors of our time: 

Equality.

The solution to the Fallacy is not to do do anything straightforward like remove the previous “solutions” which causes prices to rise, but to subsidize the poor. Which, as you know, continues the cycle of solution-inflation-increase-subsidize-solution…etc.

It’s not only price increases where we see the fallacy, but in any supposed calamity that “impacts” the poor hardest. Anything in which Experts can make the poor into Official Victims. And therefore eligible to be wards of Experts. Experts are the highly credentialed well-titled people under the spell of scientism who know just how to bring Utopia about: by the studied application of Theory.

Could be fun for a while

Who is the Labour MP threatening to oust Starmer?

The MP for Hornsey and Friern Barnet has threatened to launch a formal challenge against her party's leader.

Labour MP Catherine West has threatened to launch a leadership challenge against Sir Keir Starmer.

She says she doesn't want the job herself, but after a "disastrous" set of elections for the party, she thinks "new leadership" is required "which understands the urgent and real concerns of people across the UK".

Could be fun for a while, but that may be all we get out of a challenge to Starmer. 

He is a bungling, mendacious, totalitarian globalist, but Labour has ample capacity to come up with someone worse.

Benefit now, consequence later

Logan Lamont has an interesting Quadrant piece on what seems like an inexorable drift to the left in the politics of the developed world. The whole piece is well worth reading.

The Logic of the Leftist Voter

In a recent piece examining why intellectuals are drawn to the Left, I argued that the pattern cannot be explained by idealism alone. Intellectuals may be idealistic, often genuinely so, but they operate at a distance from production and consequence and are drawn to systems that elevate their role and reorder outcomes. That logic does not stop with intellectuals. It extends to voters and, in doing so, answers a more confronting question. Why do voters support a political movement that now stretches well beyond economics into positions that would once have seemed implausible, even self-defeating?

The answer begins simply: benefit.

The modern Left provides immediate, tangible gain. Transfers, subsidies, concessions and publicly funded services deliver outcomes that are visible and personal. The individual voter need not subscribe to a broader ideological framework to understand this. The benefit is real, and it is received. The cost is not. It is dispersed across the economy, deferred into debt, or absorbed by those still operating at the productive edge. It does not arrive as a direct exchange tied to the decision. It accumulates slowly, often invisibly, and rarely in proportion to what is taken. This distinction is central. If the full cost arrived with the benefit, behaviour would change. But when the benefit is immediate and the cost is remote, the voter has every reason to support expansion and little reason to restrain it.

The Global Gravy Train

A recurring impression garnered from even casual internet browsing is that the bureaucratic gravy train is near enough global. North Korea doesn't seem to be involved, but it's an outlier. 

Here for example, we have Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan booking their seats at the global gravy train table.

Opinion: The Regional Ecological Summit and the Making of a Central Asian Voice

On 22–24 April, Astana hosted the Regional Ecological Summit—a gathering of governments, international organizations, financial institutions, and civil society that marked a new level of ambition in Central Asia’s environmental diplomacy. Fifty-eight sessions were held across three days at a moment when Central Asia’s ecological agenda is becoming inseparable from its political and economic future.

The opening ceremony was attended by the presidents of all five Central Asian states. The summit adopted the Astana Declaration on Ecological Solidarity in Central Asia and brought renewed attention to the need to reform the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea (IFAS). Taken together, these developments signal more than procedural diplomacy. They point to growing political momentum.

The region has never lacked shared history or channels of communication. Russian remains a practical language of intergovernmental exchange, and borders, economies, rivers, energy systems, and labor markets have tied these countries together long before contemporary climate diplomacy gave this interdependence a new vocabulary.

Yes - contemporary climate diplomacy does give interdependence a new vocabulary, that's the idea.

Always degenerating into repetition

Labour MP blames Starmer for ‘soul-destroying’ local election results

• Rebecca Long-Bailey criticised Sir Keir Starmer, describing Labour's recent local election results as 'soul-destroying'.
• Speaking to the BBC on Friday, the Salford MP stated that Labour had been 'squeezed' by both Reform and the Greens.
• This squeeze resulted in the loss of several 'really good' councillors and candidates for the party.
• Long-Bailey noted that many residents felt unable to vote for Labour due to the party's national actions.
• She suggested Labour’s recent slogans, rhetoric, and decisions had not resonated well in local communities.

Man’s life consists in a connection with all things in the universe. Whoever can establish, or initiate a new connection between mankind and the circumambient universe is, in his own degree, a saviour. Because mankind is always exhausting its human possibilities, always degenerating into repetition, torpor, ennui, lifelessness. When ennui sets in, it is a sign that human vitality is waning, and the human connection with the universe is gone stale. Then he who comes to make a new revelation, a new connection, whether he be soldier, statesman, poet, philosopher, artist, he is a saviour.

D.H. Lawrence - Reflections on the death of a porcupine and other essays (1925)

Keir Starmer is entirely unable to offer that new revelation, or as Rebecca Long-Bailey puts it, a soul. His eventual replacement won’t be able to offer it either.

But we already know that.

The remarkable decline of British nuclear capability

James Price has a useful if depressing CAPX piece on the need to regenerate British nuclear capability. 


Britain needs to ignore the Blob and go nuclear

• A groundbreaking American nuclear project puts the UK to shame
• Nuclear power should be a British success story, but it isn't
• Time and again, Nimbyism and bureaucracy have got in the way of affordable energy

Three C-17 Globemasters. Eight shipping containers. The first nuclear reactor in history to be moved by air. While it feels like the opening of one of those special-forces slop series on Amazon that I count as one of my guiltiest pleasures, this is the very real Operation Windlord.

The operation, conducted by the US Air Force in February to ferry a five-megawatt unit from California to a desert lab in Utah, is now in its next phase: engineers are racing to switch it on by July 4, the 250th anniversary of American independence. The reactor was built by Valar Atomics, a three-year-old startup that, like Operation Windlord, takes its name from Lord of the Rings.

There was a time when this story would have been Britain’s. When Queen Elizabeth opened Calder Hall in 1956, we became the first nation on earth to feed grid-scale civil nuclear power into a domestic electricity supply. By 1965, the year of Winston Churchill’s funeral, Britain had built more operational reactors than the United States, the Soviet Union and France combined. We commissioned 26 of them between 1956 and 1971, with sites approved in months and reactors connected to the grid in under five years.

Then, thanks to the usual morass of blob mentality and Nimbyism, we stopped. We have not built a single new commercial reactor since Sizewell B in 1995. The one we are currently building, Hinkley Point C, is on track to be the most expensive nuclear station in human history: roughly six times what South Korea spends per megawatt for the same job. There is a fascinating essay explaining this in Works in Progress that reads more like tragedy than history.

The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of how hopelessly adrift we are in the UK. There are moves towards nuclear, but nothing very encouraging. 

The link to Works in Progress is worth following too - it's a complex story.

Civil Servants Faking Office Attendance

 

Sir Keir Plans Slower Train Wreck

PM 'planning major reset in bid to save job - but ministers tell him to plan resignation instead'

Sir Keir Starmer is said to be planning a major "reset" speech in a bid to save his job - just as pressure grows for him to step aside completely.

The Prime Minister is set to make an address on Monday to win back young voters from the Greens - which have already started eating away at Labour councils up and down the country.

But around his Cabinet table, ministers are said to have started suggesting he should set the wheels in motion to stand down.

While multiple Labour MPs went public in the early hours of Friday morning to call for him to go.

He's an incompetent, delusional obsessive, but Ed Miliband isn't any better. 

Ed Miliband was reported to have privately suggested Sir Keir should set out a timeline for his departure.p

What a rabble they are. 

Beneath the façade

David Shipley has a useful Critic piece on organised crime operating from dodgy small businesses on the high street. Useful because it is yet another of those familiar issues the Establishment has chosen to ignore for years. Apparently even the BBC has condescended to notice now though. 

 

The underworld on the high street

Beneath the façade of everyday commerce, organised crime has quietly captured British high streets

Something may be stirring in Britain. After decades in which our institutions turned a blind eye to the reality of mass migration and multiculturalism, it seems reality is dawning on them.

Earlier this month the BBC ran a series of exposes titled “The Immigration Fraudsters”, reporting on what they called a “shadow industry of law firms and advisers” helping people to cheat the asylum system (although Suella Braveman raised the issue three years ago). Now the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) has published a detailed report which reveals the extent to which whole sectors of the economy have become dominated by organised crime. This has also been an open secret for many years — as far back as 2001, the UK’s “Drugs Czar” described how money laundering was taking place in London, often via “legitimate businesses” operated by Turks and Eastern Europeans. Indeed only last May Robert Jenrick made a video in which he spoke about “weird Turkish barber shops”.

Familiar but the whole piece is worth reading if even politicians are required to notice. This is the hot-spot map produced in the Chartered Trading Standards Institute report. No surprises there either.

 

Crucial day

Polling stations open at start of crucial day for Keir Starmer’s premiership

Polling stations across Wales, Scotland and parts of England have opened for millions to cast their vote in crucial elections for Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership.

They are expected to be the toughest test for the Prime Minister since the general election in 2024, with devastating results predicted for the Labour Party.

Some 1,850 Labour seats are expected to be lost in councils across England, according to polling guru Lord Robert Hayward.


A crucial day for voters? A loss of 1850 council seats may sound like a resounding vote of no confidence for Keir Starmer, but further down we have this picture of possible replacements. It's a reminder of how crucial voting is - or isn't.

 

Vote Green, end history

'Vote Green, make history,' says Zack Polanski as he seeks major gains in London local elections

The Green Party leader said he was aiming to break Labour’s ‘stronghold’ grip on the capital

Zack Polanski urged Londoners to “vote Green, make history” as he sought to radically redraw London’s political map...

“People in London are really struggling and they need to know that they have councillors who are out there batting for them every single day, protecting local services, making sure we're investing in the community, that we have council homes, homes that people can actually afford to live in in London.”


Sounds like another terminological inexactitude from Zack. By "batting for them every single day" he probably means every day apart from Saturdays, Sundays and bank holidays. In cases where the "batting" requires an innings from specific council staff members, we have to add annual leave, maternity leave, paternity leave, compassionate leave, lunch breaks, coffee breaks and sickies.

Then we have training courses, established procedures, processes, legal issues, risk assessments, budgetary constraints, consultations, duty of care, social issues, environmental issues, and the cycle of reorganisations.

Plus the debilitating effect of tedium.

EU throws itself under a bus

From Blackout News, AI translation from the original German.

EU pays Senegal 320 million euros for buses – China collects the order from Dakar

In Senegal, an EU-funded transport project is facing a delicate decision. For Dakar, 380 natural gas-powered buses, 14 lines, two depots, around 700 stops, 13 terminals, a ticketing system and road works are to be built. The financing is around 320 million euros. But the Chinese state-owned company CRRC is reportedly considered the favorite. The EU Commission cannot prevent an award to China as long as the tender is formally correct. This would allow European funds to pay Chinese fines. European manufacturers are affected, while China could further expand its influence in Africa.

The project is part of the EU's Global Gateway Strategy. Brussels wants to use it to promote infrastructure in Africa. At the same time, Dakar is to receive cleaner and more reliable local transport.

The financing is provided by several European institutions. These include the EU Commission, the European Investment Bank, KfW and the French AFD. That is why loans and grants are flowing into a project that reaches far beyond Dakar politically.

How not to survive the information crisis

From the Guardian - a journalist's cry for help in a world of easily accessed information, but also an article which inadvertently supports those who say feelings have replaced thinking in the modern world. 

Ideas are in there like currants in a bun, but feelings hold it together, not analysis. Presumably that's not the intention behind the article, but the interest lies in what it doesn't say, not the feelings it attempts to convey.   

How to survive the information crisis: ‘We once talked about fake news – now reality itself feels fake’

In this age of crisis, technology is pulling us apart. At its best, journalism can bring us together again, writes Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner

I have a confession to make. It has taken me years to write this article.

For a long time, I have felt that something was missing in the public conversation about human connection and community and how they are being eroded. And yet I haven’t been able to articulate it. Thinking and writing have become harder. It’s as if the neurons in my brain don’t connect with each other in quite the same way. I go to check a fact and get instantly diverted by a hundred other distractions on my phone. I find myself unable to devote time to thinking and writing like I used to.

It could be the relentless news agenda, but the news has been relentless throughout my 11 years as editor-in-chief of the Guardian. It could be age, but I’m not that old. It could be menopause, but I’m on all the drugs.

No, I think it’s because of something that many of us feel in this moment. That our attention spans have been degraded, our thinking skills blunted. That we somehow can’t concentrate or lose ourselves in a project. Finding myself stuck, as an experiment, I asked an AI tool to write this article for me, just to see what it came up with. The result was insufferably pompous and joyless. A reminder of the limits of this technology, for now at least.

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change

Tony Blair warns Europe risks falling behind without major overhaul - 5 reforms needed

Sir Tony Blair has warned that Europe risks "falling behind" on energy because the continent has treated it as a "climate issue".

His think tank told how power prices are up to three times higher than other nations, with 60% of its energy being dependent on imports...

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) described how Europe must shift from a "climate-first, climate only" approach to energy if it wants to stay on par with the United States and China.

The paper argues that India, China and the US, which together make up more than half of global emissions, have prioritised supply.

It said clean power in those nations is being deployed in systems "designed first and foremost to deliver reliable and low cost power."

Nothing we wouldn't expect from Tony Blair, but it takes a gargantuan level of self-regarding chutzpah to pretend that this problem has recently been uncovered by the Right People.

It shows what voters are up again when charlatans like Blair strut their stuff on the international stage, especially voters who pay attention to the real world. They are not the majority and Blair knows it.

Yet if he thinks the time is finally right for this ridiculously late political 'discovery', then it perhaps it is. We've seen a few clues already.

Starmer's Reputation Spreads

TASS won't be averse to negative Starmer stories, but who is? 

UK prime minister sidelined from election campaign due to 'toxic image' — newspaper

LONDON, May 5. /TASS/. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been forced to step back from the ruling Labor [sic] Party’s election campaign due to his extremely low personal popularity, The Daily Telegraph reported...

According to The Daily Telegraph, due to Starmer’s "toxic image," Labor members have chosen to distance themselves from the prime minister. "He really is toxic. There’s a visceral loathing of him and it’s spread through all the vectors; it’s not just one group. He’s just seen as a completely insincere, two-faced person. Starmer has no followers, he only has enemies - it’s incredible," a high-ranking Labor Party source told the newspaper.

Half Van Race

 

Politics is a rough game

Reform pledges to open migrant detention centres in Green-voting areas

Reform UK’s pledge to build new detention centres for people awaiting deportation in areas that vote for the Green Party has been branded “grotesque” by rival parties.

Nigel Farage's party also promised that none of the hubs would open in places with a Reform council or MP if the party wins the next election. Instead, it said, it would "prioritise" sending migrants to Green-held areas because Zack Polanski's party supports "open borders".

The Green Party seems to be learning that politics is a rough game. They support open borders as an aspirational policy with some fudging over implementation, so they don't have much of an answer to this move by Reform. 

The response below for example - not a good effort, not good enough as an electioneering counter - 


A Green Party spokesman said: "Reform keep making unserious announcements to try and distract voters from the fact they want to privatise our NHS."

Greens are still learning politics seems to be the message here. Maybe they will eventually learn some economics, engineering and environmental science too. Or possibly not - that would dilute their message.

The Preposterous Enigma

Is there after all a key to the preposterous enigma of the universe?

Arnold Bennett - Imperial Palace (1930)


The universe is impossibly vast, we know this and Bennett was right, its unimaginable vastness is an enigma. 

Yet everything we know tells us that the entire universe is governed by laws which operate from the preposterously vast, down, down, down, smaller and yet smaller, down, down down to the polymer molecules of Sir Keir Starmer’s trousers.

Now that is a preposterous enigma.

Net Zero Rail Travel

 

The real scandal behind the Mandelson saga

Nada Kakabadse and Tim Knox have an excellent CAPX piece on government obsession with process over outcome. All normal people understand how important the difference is, in daily life we don't try to make good decisions merely by ticking boxes.


The real scandal behind the Mandelson saga

• A bad appointment cannot be rescued by good process
• Britain keeps ticking boxes while trust keeps collapsing
• Our state seems to think if you follow the rules, then the outcomes are secondary

Here is an idiotic question for an England football fan this summer. Which would they prefer winning? The World Cup itself? Or the FIFA Fair Play Trophy, awarded to the side with the best disciplinary record during the tournament?

The answer: it might be nice if England plays decently, but all of us would hugely prefer winning the real thing. Rules matter. But they are meant to support good outcomes, not replace them.

This preference for good outcomes over process applies to most of life. When we are shopping for a jar of coffee, it is a bonus to know that it has been ethically sourced. But for most of us, the primary deciding factor will be the quality of the coffee. A bad coffee, however ethically sourced, will remain a bad coffee.

One place where this does not hold is Westminster. And the Mandelson saga is the perfect illustration of how bad things are.

The whole piece is well worth reading for many reasons. Topical ones are not only the Mandelson saga, but also the absurdly futile government emphasis on economic growth by ticking ideological boxes.  

Survey research by Ipsos, in partnership with the Institute for Government, found that 49% of respondents rated the Government’s performance as poor, and 63% expressed disappointment with its record since the election. Only 23% believed governments could make substantial progress on key priorities over the next decade.

This matters because competence-based distrust is different from moral condemnation. A voter who thinks politicians are dishonest has lost faith in their character. A voter who thinks government cannot deliver has lost faith in the system’s capacity. Both are present in Britain today, and they reinforce each other.

Reeves and the Mystery of the Shrinking Growth

Rachel Reeves plots ‘growth push’ as Labour set for bruising elections

Rachel Reeves is plotting another “growth push” as the Labour party prepares itself for a potentially bruising defeat in the local elections.

Meanwhile -

154 Claire's shops, Russell & Bromley and more UK stores close down - full list

Claire's

In a huge blow, Claire's shut all 154 of its UK locations this week. Administrators at Kroll confirmed the closures, revealing that approximately 1,300 members of staff face redundancy.

Russell & Bromley

The British shoe retailer has closed 33 stores. The final Russell & Bromley closure took place on April 23, following the firm's announcement of the first 10 closures on April 21.

LK Bennett

Luxury fashion brand LK Bennett has shut nine stores following its entry into administration. The nine shops had been scheduled for closure by the end of April, although stock sold out more quickly than expected.

Ark Pet Centres

The pet retailer, which operated outlets across South and East Devon, including in Plymouth, Exeter and Torbay, confirmed the immediate closure of all its stores this week.

Unfortunately Reeves isn't likely to be any worse than Miliband or anyone else willing to take on this particular poisoned chalice. 

Even Miliband may see Chancellor of the Exchequer as a bit of a bacon sandwich role. Of course he may be picking up hints that Net Zero is becoming a bacon sandwich role too.

Use it or lose it

Government looks to tackle flight cancellations as holidays at risk

• The UK government is introducing measures to protect British families' summer holidays amid a significant rise in jet fuel costs, which have approximately doubled since the Iran war.
• Ministers will relax 'use it or lose it' flight slot rules, enabling airlines to cancel less popular routes, such as business flights, without incurring penalties.
• This initiative aims to reduce overall demand for aviation fuel and prevent last-minute cancellations of holiday flights, offering greater certainty for travellers.

Tediously familiar and all part of the 'Not our fault' narrative. 'Use it or lose it' has political relevance to any headline problem from which governments can both distance itself and virtuously meddle at the same time. 

It's the mania for micro-managing everything, every little detail of daily life and there is not the slightest sign of it slowing down.

Rental police

 

A protest for "fair affordable housing" in Berlin in 2024.

Berlin SPD wants to set up ‘rental police’ to combat exorbitant rents

The Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the German capital of Berlin has announced plans to set up a special investigative unit to examine thousands of rental contracts for supposedly excessive rents.

Okay I admit it, I only posted this story so I could include the picture which goes with it - as an example of the things demonstrators can be persuaded to do. 

Or maybe this is the uniform of the rental police. I hope so.

The Precedent Phoenix

 

It's the May Day bank holiday weekend, so let's try to wangle a mythological angle -  

We navigate our way through life by avoiding surprises and our most important social navigation guides are precedents, something we learn from our earliest childhood.

Adopting fashionable ideas or any ideas endorsed by precedent minimises social surprises, we know it so well that it becomes automatic. With precedent as a guide it is easier to navigate our way through life this way, both socially, professionally and politically.

Rejecting fashionable ideas or going against important precedents is often a problem, socially, professionally and politically. Eyebrows are raised and maybe worse, including police officers knocking on the door.

It’s a major problem for realists – but not a surprise.

This ease of following precedent, its vital importance as a social lubricant is why we cannot trust politicians – ever. There is no realist route to political power until the pressures of reality become so acute that it resets the precedents and the old ones become obsolete.

Then the precedent phoenix rebuilds itself from the ashes of the old and realists are side-lined again.

Spend it now

Britain braces for Ed Miliband, the radical left-wing chancellor

As Sir Keir Starmer looks to shore up his own authority amid expectations of heavy Labour losses in the local elections, the prospect of Miliband moving into the Treasury is no longer just hypothetical. Last week, the Prime Minister refused to say if Rachel Reeves would keep her job in a future reshuffle.

Miliband, the former Labour leader, certainly seemed buoyant last week when he addressed the Good Growth Foundation’s conference, striding onto the stage a few minutes after Jessie Ware’s aptly titled Free Yourself was blaring from the speakers.

The Energy Secretary’s speech – delivered to a standing-room-only crowd – made clear he intends to “double down, not back down” on net zero and that this would chart a path to economic growth.

When we thought it couldn't get any worse...

I'd like an argument please

From the video description- 

Rep. Rosa DeLauro got into a heated exchange with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on Monday after he made a comment that the Connecticut lawmaker was not familiar with a Supreme Court ruling that dictates agency power.

Hope is contagious and science is our serf

Hope is contagious and science is king: 10 big lessons on ending the fossil fuel era

Liberation lifts the spirits

The single most important thing to come from the first Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels conference, in Santa Marta, has been a change of mood. Whereas the UN’s annual climate summits, or Cops, can often feel stuck and frustrating, with countries circling the same topics without resolution, nearly every delegate in Colombia felt liberated.

“The mood here in Santa Marta is euphoric,” said Tzeporah Berman, the founder and chair of the fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty initiative. “After years stuck in endless debates about whether to phase out fossil fuels, finally we are focusing on the how. We are no longer fighting for recognition of the problem, but creating solutions. It’s like watching a dam break – all that pent-up experience, knowledge and passion suddenly flowing into concrete ways to phase out dirty fuels. The hope is contagious.”

Science has to come first

In a world of climate denial and misinformation, Santa Marta was a shining example of science-led decision making. Hundreds of experts, academics and scientists inspired and informed the launch of three major initiatives on the energy transition.

The emotional language is fascinating. 

Liberation lifts the spirits

mood

frustrating 

every delegate in Colombia felt liberated 

euphoric 

fighting for recognition 

like watching a dam break
all that pent-up experience, knowledge and passion 

The hope is contagious. 

a shining example

Hundreds of experts, academics and scientists inspired and informed the launch

This has no connection with the scientific method, technical feasibility or economics, it is wholly political and wholly emotional. Remarkably evil too, in its barely covert ambition to dominate everyone and everything all over the world.

As ever, follow the money.

Politically incorrect tumble dryers

Traditional tumble dryers to be 'phased out' under Labour

Traditional tumble dryers are set to be “phased out” in favour of green alternatives as the Labour government continues to push to reach net zero.

By gum - this says it all.

Compared to what they should be doing, phasing out politically incorrect tumble dryers must tell us something important about the pointless, meddling mess that is UK government. 

Not even tangentially sane. 

Floaters

Labour plans to blanket lakes with floating solar farms

Ed Miliband is preparing to blanket reservoirs and lakes with solar farms as part of Labour’s push towards net zero.

The Energy Secretary will launch a consultation to make it easier to build floating solar power plants, after a report that hailed their potential as a clean energy source.

Floating solar schemes use the same panels as land-based projects but are mounted on platforms floated in freshwater bodies such as reservoirs, lakes, quarry lakes and industrial ponds.

There is a hint of desperation about this, but also revenge against those who know Net Zero can't work and Ed Miliband is mad or bad and probably both.

I bet he's not even in the union

Health and safety-mad council threatens 'wonderful' Good Samaritan for cleaning gravestones

Ben McGregor, 25, who lost his father and best friend to suicide, voluntarily washes headstones in order to "do his bit for the community".

Mr McGregor manages his cleaning requests through a Facebook page, and said he always ensures he has the permission of the grave owners before embarking on any project...

A spokesman for South Tyneside Council said: "We greatly value the work of volunteers who help care for our cemeteries and work closely with several established Friends of Cemetery groups across the borough.

"A borough‑wide memorial inspection programme is currently underway and not all cemeteries have yet been inspected."

It added that it would be "inappropriate" to allow memorials to be cleaned in areas where standard checks for safety, risk, assessments, insurance and liability have not yet taken place, and has asked all volunteer groups to pause cleaning.

One of those entertaining jobsworth stories we never seem to run out of. We've been cleaning our daughter's grave for over thirty years, but we haven't done a risk assessment, insured ourselves or checked anything to do with liability. 

Don't tell anyone though.

Inside Europe’s propaganda apparatus

Luca Steinmann has a very interesting Brussels Signal piece on Italian journalist Thomas Fazi and his investigations into the EU propaganda apparatus. A familiar issue but well worth reading, particularly in the context of what USAID has been doing in the US.

Inside Europe’s propaganda apparatus: Thomas Fazi exposes how the EU influences media, NGOs, and universities

“The European Union is facing a geopolitical crisis that is difficult to reverse. In response, it has developed a wide-ranging propaganda apparatus to promote narratives favourable to its institutions and policies. This system operates through funding directed towards NGOs, newspapers, news agencies, and think tanks that produce narratives and analyses broadly aligned with the EU’s policy framework”.

This is the view of Thomas Fazi, an Italian journalist, writer and political commentator. He is the author of several books that critically examine the economic and political structure of the European Union. His latest essay, recently published in Italy, is titled The European Propaganda Machine. The Dark Side of NGOs, Media and Universities, in which he analyses the system of funding and relationships through which EU institutions support NGOs, media, and universities in order to build consensus around their policies.

The whole piece is a useful reminder of how far the EU goes and how much it spends to undermine democratically elected governments.

“Since the European Commission is not directly elected by national electorates, this amounts to an attempt to use foreign funding to pressure or weaken democratically elected governments.”

This, Fazi argues, resembles in some respects what USAID has done for decades, where formally independent organisations often pursue political agendas aligned with the interests of their funders. From this perspective, the issue is not simply the promotion of European integration, but the use of public funds to influence domestic political processes and public debate within member states. “From this perspective, the objective is not neutrality but influence over public opinion, particularly in countries with strong eurosceptic political forces”.

YouTube-friendly exaggeration

Disposal EVs? Xiaomi's "Aluminum Replacement" Isn't What You Think

Viral videos claiming that Xiaomi has "replaced aluminum" with a new metal sound like the start of a materials revolution. The reality is more nuanced and, in some ways, more disruptive than the headline suggests. A close look at the 2026 Xiaomi SU7 and SU7 Ultra shows a blend of genuine engineering innovation, aggressive factory design, and YouTube-friendly exaggeration.

This is the video - 

China's INSANE Technology Just Replaced Aluminum! XIAOMI CHASSIS 2026

But -

Where the video comes closer to reality is in its description of Xiaomi's 9100-ton "Hypercasting" cluster. This system replaces roughly 72 stamped and welded components with a single integrated die-cast rear structure. Tesla pioneered this idea with its Gigacasting, but Xiaomi's 2026 implementation uses higher clamping force and a more complex integration of functions into one casting...

On the repair side, the story flips. Because the rear chassis is a single, massive casting, even a moderate rear-end collision can render the car a total loss. The structure cannot be easily straightened, sectioned, or replaced in modules. Insurers in 2026 are already responding with higher premiums for hypercast vehicles, echoing similar concerns seen with Tesla's large castings.

Critics warn that this could distort the used EV market: vehicles that are brilliant when new may have little or no resale value if their structural "spine" is damaged or simply deemed uneconomical to repair.

Rayner to sail back in style?

PM could bring Rayner back to avoid leadership challenge - latest

Sir Keir Starmer has offered Angela Rayner a Cabinet return in an attempt to curtail a challenge to his leadership, according to reports.

Sources have told The Telegraph that amid the threat of a coup, with Ms Rayner, Andy Burnham, Ed Milliband and Wes Streeting among the possible contenders, the prime minister has offered the former deputy prime minister a route back into government to strengthen his leadership.

How about offering Ms Rayner a post where she can do something constructive about the dire state of the Royal Navy?

  

 

 

World War Eleven

 

Ed's Wind-Powered Moral Compass

'Profiting from crisis morally wrong', says Miliband as BP announces huge rise in earnings

The oil and gas producing giant BP has recorded a more than doubling of profits as it benefits from high prices from the Iran war...

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said, "Profiting from a crisis is morally and economically wrong."

But Ed isn't the only one with a windy moral compass.

Environmental groups have reacted angrily to the results

"The oil industry's capacity to profiteer from human misery is almost limitless," said Greenpeace climate campaigner Maja Darlington.

Oil companies, "destroy the climate, push up the cost of living, and rake in billions in profit while innocent civilians die", said Patrick Galey, the head of news investigations at NGO Global Witness.

The Political Armour of the State

A plausible view of UK politics over recent decades is that we aren’t supposed to take it too seriously. For example, only relatively small numbers of people take the major UK political parties seriously enough to join. Even 0.5% of voters would be a substantial party membership, so what are the parties for? 

Perhaps political parties project an unserious view of democratic politics because voters don’t take them seriously enough to become members. The symbiosis of political doom we might call it –

You don’t take us seriously so we don’t take you seriously.

Maybe it was inevitable that what we end up with is mostly political theatre, attracting actor politicians prepared to cater for that. Over time, voters tire of the performance but politicians know this is their destiny. It’s a gamble they have chosen and what voters voted for.

Ruling political parties expect to be booed off the stage eventually, but there are compensations. Politicians have the prestige of being an MP or Minister, plus salary, expenses, social contacts and further opportunities - compensations their talents would not usually have attracted beyond politics.

Inevitably the State tends to take advantage of unserious political parties. The complexity of government, the brief tenure of Ministers, the lack of experience all allow the State to ensure that its internal functionaries are not too heavily damaged by failure. Politicians end up damaged instead, they absorb the damage, shift the blame and move on if it won't be shifted. Political parties have become the political armour of the State. Voters let it happen.