It was in 1915 the old world ended

In D. H. Lawrence’s 1923 novel Kangaroo, his main character Richard Lovat Somers realises that the Britain he once knew had ended in 1915 –

 

Awful years—’16, ’17, ’18, ’19—the years when the damage was done. The years when the world lost its real manhood. Not for lack of courage to face death. Plenty of superb courage to face death. But no courage in any man to face his own isolated soul, and abide by its decision. Easier to sacrifice oneself. So much easier!

It was in 1915 the old world ended. In the winter 1915-1916 the spirit of the old London collapsed; the city, in some way, perished, perished from being a heart of the world, and became a vortex of broken passions, lusts, hopes, fears, and horrors. The integrity of London collapsed, and the genuine debasement began, the unspeakable baseness of the press and the public voice, the reign of that bloated ignominy, John Bull.

No man who has really consciously lived through this can believe again absolutely in democracy. No man who has heard reiterated in thousands of tones from all the common people, during the crucial years of the war: “I believe in John Bull. Give me John Bull,” can ever believe that in any crisis a people can govern itself, or is ever fit to govern itself. During the crucial years of the war, the people chose, and chose Bottomleyism*. Bottom enough.

The well-bred, really cultured classes were on the whole passive resisters. They shirked their duty. It is the business of people who really know better to fight tooth and nail to keep up a standard, to hold control of authority. Laisser-aller is as guilty as the actual, stinking mongrelism it gives place to.

It was in mid-winter 1915 that Somers and Harriet went down to Cornwall. The spirit of the war—the spirit of collapse and of human ignominy, had not travelled so far yet. It came in advancing waves.

We hear so much of the bravery and horrors at the front. Brave the men were, all honour to them. It was at home the world was lost. We hear too little of the collapse of the proud human spirit at home, the triumph of sordid, rampant, raging meanness. “The bite of a jackal is blood-poisoning and mortification.” And at home stayed all the jackals, middle-aged, male and female jackals. And they bit us all. And blood-poisoning and mortification set in.

We should never have let the jackals loose, and patted them on the head. They were feeding on our death all the while.

 
D. H. Lawrence - Kangaroo (1923)

* A reference to Horatio Bottomley

Serious Scrumping

Hunger drives North Korean children to raid state orchards

Even farmworkers say the children deserve sympathy, not blame

Hunger is driving teenagers in Kwail county, South Hwanghae province, to sneak into state orchards this summer. They pick peaches and plums to eat on the spot or carry home. Guards increasingly look the other way rather than punish them. A source in the province described the pattern to Daily NK recently, pointing to worsening hunger among North Korean children in 2026.

Peaches and plums are now in season, the source said. In Kwail county, teenagers in groups of two or three have been slipping into orchards to eat fruit or take it home. “Orchard guards only shout to scare them off,” the source said. “They don’t chase after them to catch them.”

Kwail county is a hub of North Korea’s fruit industry, known mainly for apples but also producing pears, peaches, grapes, persimmons and apricots, according to the source. Most of the fruit grown there goes to central government officials and Pyongyang residents.

PM Possibles

While reflecting on the way Andrew Burnham was shoved into No 10, a chap is bound to wonder if Labour could have chosen anyone at all, not necessarily a politician. 

Someone acceptable to the Labour Party, well known and a party member of course. Yet presumably membership could have been sorted for a public figure who was not a politician but might be interested in a spell as UK Prime Minister.

For example, should they so choose, were Labour Party fixers able to nudge famous people such as Gary Lineker, Lenny Henry or Stephen Fry into giving it a go via a safe seat, just as Burnham did?

Just a thought while I finish my morning coffee.

Germany in decline

Germany in decline: Foreign media see the disintegration of infrastructure and industry

In July 2026, foreign media are increasingly reporting on Germany in decline. British and Spanish newspapers as well as international business media combine railway chaos, dilapidated bridges, Stuttgart 21 and the crisis at Volkswagen into a comprehensive picture. They describe an economy whose infrastructure is decaying, whose industry is losing its competitiveness and whose government is not initiating any reforms that really help. The criticism no longer concerns individual mishaps, but Germany's economic and state ability to act.

Germany in decline becomes the judgment of foreign media

The British magazine "The Spectator" published the article "Germany is quietly disintegrating" on July 6. The author refers to unpunctual trains, closed bridges and the threat of job cuts at Volkswagen. He describes the reaction of the federal government as a "shrug of the shoulders that is sold as a reform". Germany once embodied technical reliability and industrial strength. In the meantime, the question arises as to why Europe's largest economy is no longer able to repair its own bridges in time.

My impression from the outside is that Germany cannot elect political parties with enough nous and determination to do anything about decline. Surely the crisis at Volkswagen must have some political impact.

The political situation seems to similar to that in the UK, voting for worthwhile reform isn't happening. We've just been landed with a dud from Manchester as Prime Minister who even at this early stage seems to think going back to the 1970s is a good idea.

Nothing to do with me

PM Mark Carney Blames Canada Wildfires on — ‘Climate Change Is Everyone’s Responsibility’

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney dismissed the possibility that his government could be doing more to contain the out-of-control wildfires ravaging Ontario this week and sending toxic smoke down to flood much of the American Midwest and Northeast, demanding the United States do more to fight alleged “climate change.”

The comments, made during a press conference in Ontario, are Carney’s first in the aftermath of a torrent of outrage in the United States as millions of people were told not to leave their homes on Thursday to avoid becoming sick from inhaling Canadian fire smoke. Disillusion at the inaction by the Canadian government is also reportedly growing among the First Nations communities most directly affected by the fires, including some that have burned to the ground entirely and found little to no support from Ottawa.

Canada’s extensive forests have traditionally experienced regular summer fire seasons, controlled through indigenous methods such as controlled burns and the removal of dry, dead tree branches and other material that serves as kindling for large fires. In the past decade, as the Canadian government has largely abandoned forest management as a national policy, these fires have grown larger, more dangerous, and more polluting. The Canadian government has no federal emergency response agency and no national fire authority, leaving the country’s provinces on their own to respond to the fires.

What an odious chap Carney is, but he has at least confirmed what he is, a man who will never accept responsibility for anything he may righteously choose to disown. He has also confirmed that this is a major political attraction of the climate game, the adaptable righteousness.

Would Andrew Burnham accept at least some responsibility in similar circumstances? Probably not.

Bridgnorth Litter Pickers do it themselves

An entertaining little insight into the reality of everyday bureaucracy.

The Noodles of Power

Some interesting comments about the levers of power from former No 10 insiders - Burnham may find those levers have been softened to the consistency of noodles.

Will Andy Burnham spark an exodus of London’s middle classes?

Andy Burnham has had it easy, at least compared with what will hit him when he walks through the door of No 10.

“He’s going to get the shock of his life when he sees how degraded and different it is from what it was when he left,” says former deputy cabinet secretary Helen MacNamara. “People who haven’t been in government since 2016 are really clueless about how different it is. People feel powerless.”...

Yet Burnham has largely still to answer how he will pay for his radical reforms. Having broadly committed to Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules, he has ruled out ramping up borrowing and has shown few signs of making significant welfare savings.

So that leaves a third possible option — tax rises. “If he does follow through on some of his tax and spend rumours, we might actually see an exodus of people... the middle class essentially starting to go,” says Cleo Watson, deputy chief-of-staff to Boris Johnson when he was Prime Minister.

But we already know this - so do the Labour MPs who shoved Burnham into No 10.

Expect gibberish and gesticulation

Trump threatens Canada with tariffs for smoke blanketing the US

President Donald Trump on Friday threatened to impose additional tariffs on Canada, blaming the country for wildfire smoke that has blanketed large swaths of the United States.

“We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable,” the Republican president wrote on Truth Social Friday afternoon.

Trump added that he planned to call Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to discuss how his government intends to respond.

Trump won't get much out of Carney apart from gibberish - and maybe some gesticulation.

It was a mere basic inability to front novel situations which was somehow in the dragoman; he retreated from everything difficult in a smoke of gibberish and gesticulation.

Stephen Crane - Active Service (1899)

By gum this is horribly uninspiring - he doesn't know what to do next

 

A Litany of False Claims

Robert Bradley Jr. has a useful and interesting MasterResource piece on years of broken "clean energy" promises in the US.


False Optimism, Broken Promises of Wind and Solar Advocates

“… I also know this credit won’t go on forever. It was never meant to, and it shouldn’t…. I have expressed support in the past for a responsible, multi-year phase out of the wind tax credit. But…”

– Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), an original author of the 1992 Production Tax Credit (PTC)

Special government favor has propped up solar power since the 1970s and wind power since the early 1990s. One decade turning into the next, the (not-so) “clean energy” lobby has repeatedly made promises that their technologies are, or soon will be, competitive with electricity generated from natural gas, petroleum, or coal.

Documentation of this failure is well reported here at MasterResource and by the Institute for Energy Research. This particular post reproduces in large part a 2015 piece by the American Energy Alliance (IER), “Wind Fail: 20 Quotes for 30 Years of False Hopes.”

A Litany of False Claims

It turns out that wind promoters like Sen. Grassley and AWEA have long made claims that wind would soon be cost competitive and that the PTC would not be needed forever. Here are of some of their claims over the years:

The whole piece is well worth reading as the optimism is just as false, the promises just as broken here in the UK.


Conclusion

The American Wind Energy Association surely knew in 2015 that their claims about wind being cost competitive were untrue. Without the PTC, no one would build wind turbines. As Warren Buffet said, “On wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.”

The dirty linen is collected and shamefully hurried away

UK's Burnham will pledge to be 'unashamedly Labour' as party leader

Andy Burnham will promise to be “unashamedly Labour” when he officially becomes the party’s leader on Friday before taking over from Keir Starmer as prime minister next week.

He will say in a speech that his government will have the “courage to fix the big things that politics has neglected” and the “conviction to argue for our plans”.

The former Greater Manchester mayor, who returned to Westminster last month as Makerfield member of parliament (MP), will be confirmed as Labour leader in a special conference and then enter No 10 on Monday.


Monday morning is a strenuous but somehow a glad morning in respectable households of regular habits. The clean linen is brought out in lovely white piles from the linen cupboard and distributed over the house, and the dirty linen is collected and shamefully hurried away and catalogued in a place without honour and thrown pell-mell in baskets and despatched, and then everybody has a sweet sense of relief.

Arnold Bennett - Elsie and the Child (1924)

An idiot’s guide to promoting “public health” policies

Christopher Snowdon has a delightfully incisive Critic piece on the authoritarian games played by those tedious food moralists who insist on promoting useless "public health" policies.

An idiot’s guide to promoting “public health” policies

How to make irrational authoritarian moralism sound like urgent common sense

The Health and Care Committee has published a report calling for yet another slew of anti-obesity policies. After taking “evidence” from such experts as the orthorexic children’s entertainer Chris van Tulleken and some “youth activists” from Jamie Oliver’s front group BiteBack, it has called for a ban on fast food outlets opening near schools, a ban on all outdoor advertising of high fat, sugar or salt (HFSS) food, a ban on companies associated with such foods advertising themselves even if they are not advertising an HFSS product, and a ban on companies which “derive more than a certain proportion of sales from less healthy products from any discussions on the formation of policy on food, diet and obesity prevention.”


The whole piece is well worth reading for the way it eviscerates political delusions of grandeur.


Most parliamentarians are powerless pygmies with delusions of grandeur. Having no answers to the big problems facing the country, they indulge themselves in the displacement politics of petty prohibition. They want to be seen as heroic, so be sure to flatter them by portraying the policy you are proposing as “bold” and “brave”. When the Health Committee proposed a sugar tax in 2015, it subtitled its report “Brave and Bold Action”. Jamie Oliver urged ministers to be “big and bold”. This week’s report from the Health and Social Care Committee uses the words “bold” or “bolder” six times. The first line of the press release calls for “a new, bold approach”. The committee’s chair, Layla Moran, said: “We ask this government to be bold, not to fudge and delay food restrictions.”

The Atomic Trampoline

 

Translating BBC Newspeak

New BBC boss pushes for new 'household levy' to replace licence fee: All would have to pay

levy = tax

Director-general Matt Brittin said he was 'open to all options' to fund the broadcasting giant after it was revealed that licence fee income has dropped by more than £1billion in real terms in the last decade.

open = not open

'We need universality, we need sufficiency,' he added.

need = want

A household levy would mean everyone pays a mandatory fee to the BBC regardless of whether people watch or listen to its programmes. The charge could be levied alongside utility bills, proponents of the idea say.

fee = tax

Mr Brittin stressed the need for the BBC to reinvent itself.

reinvent = entrench

And so on - BBC Newspeak, a special survival version. 

He waxes desperate with imagination

Starmer: I’ve left Britain better than I found it

Sir Keir Starmer has claimed he is leaving Britain in a better state than when he became Prime Minister.

During his final Prime Minister’s Questions today, the outgoing Labour leader said his Government had stabilised the economy, strengthened national security and enhanced the country’s global reputation.

Since winning a landslide victory in the 2024 general election, Sir Keir’s premiership has been blighted by a series of policy about-turns and scandals.

A man who is playing a part is always ultra-anxious and he often overdoes it, because he can never quite release himself from the fear that the person to be deluded must somehow notice what he, the deceiver, so plainly sees, i.e., the deceit.

J.M.W. van der Poorten Schwartz – The Black Box Murder (1889)

Expect to be poorer

McFadden: Labour cannot ‘just write cheques’ to benefit claimants

Pat McFadden has declared that Labour must stop “simply writing a cheque” to benefit claimants...

More than eight million people are claiming Universal Credit, according to the Department for Work and Pensions, up by 830,000 in the space of a year.

Britain’s ballooning welfare bill is set to rise by £74bn in the next four years to reach £406bn by the end of the decade.

However, Sir Keir Starmer’s attempts to cut the welfare bill by £5bn last summer prompted a backbench revolt by more than 100 Labour MPs. The Prime Minister was eventually forced to climb down on the measure and introduce a number of reviews instead...

Mr McFadden has privately complained about the attitude towards welfare in Labour ranks. The publication of the Mandelson files last month revealed that he had complained to the peer: “Every meeting I have is, ‘Who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others?’”


Some have said that McFadden would like to be Chancellor, but Andrew Burnham is just the chap to do less than nothing about this problem. 

Expect to be poorer seems to be the message.

Susan Hall tries the impossible - to shame the righteous

 

I don’t care a fig one way or t’other

Andy Burnham urged to change UK’s voting system before it’s 'too late'

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey is poised to urge Andy Burnham to introduce proportional representation before the next general election, warning that failure to act could render it "too late".

Speaking at the Institute for Government on Tuesday, Sir Ed is expected to caution that Labour may find itself "powerless to do anything" to alter the voting system once the election has ended.

He will appeal directly to Mr Burnham to collaborate, asserting that if Mr Burnham is "serious about changing the way we do politics", then his "door is open" for discussions.


“Oh, I’m entirely with you there,” said Dalloway. “Nobody can condemn the utter folly and futility of such behaviour more than I do; and as for the whole agitation, well! may I be in my grave before a woman has the right to vote in England! That’s all I say.”

The solemnity of her husband’s assertion made Clarissa grave. “It’s unthinkable,” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re a suffragist?” she turned to Ridley.

“I don’t care a fig one way or t’other,” said Ambrose. “If any creature is so deluded as to think that a vote does him or her any good, let him have it. He’ll soon learn better.”

Virginia Woolf - The Voyage Out (1915)

Political weather forecast – cliché showers blundering in from the north

Burnham vows to restore Labour’s ‘broad church’ in pledge to MPs

Andy Burnham has made a pitch to Labour MPs promising a change of culture in the way their views are valued after some complained that Keir Starmer had presided over “a reign of terror”.

In a one-candidate leadership hustings to MPs over Zoom on Monday evening, The Independent understands that Mr Burnham emphasised his desire to recognise that Labour “is a broad church” with a wide range of views.

A chap is bound to be uneasy about the use of clichés such as 'broad church' though. What do Fabian disciples worship these days apart from power? Do they still worship the wolf? 

As we know, the original Fabian Society coat of arms was a wolf in sheep's clothing. An early decision to run on clichés perhaps, a decision they seem to have taken to heart, but that's another cliché.

 

 

 

The Dim Squid Disaster

Squid Are Among the Most Intelligent Ocean Creatures. Climate Change Might Shrink Their Brains

Squid are among the scholars of the deep. Distributed across all of the world’s oceans, the 375 squid species can navigate mazes, cooperatively hunt, communicate via color change, recognize individual humans, and learn from past experiences—such as remembering how to escape from an enclosure. Neuron by neuron, squid have brains about as complex as that of dogs, and along with octopuses and cuttlefish, are the most intelligent invertebrates in the world. But the squid brain is in danger.

According to a new study presented at the Society for Environmental Biology conference in Florence, Italy, in early July, as levels of oceanic carbon dioxide grow greater, the brain of at least one species of squid is growing smaller.

Despite Ed's efforts

Fossl fuels at record levels worldwide and consumption continues to rise

In 2025, humanity consumed more oil, natural gas and coal worldwide than ever before. This is shown by the Energy Institute's new Statistical Review of World Energy, which was published in London at the end of June. At the same time, global emissions rose to more than 41 billion tons of CO2 equivalents. Although the expansion of solar and wind power accelerated significantly, energy demand grew even more strongly. That is why, despite the energy transition, fossil fuels remain the foundation of global supply in energy generation.

Fossil fuels continue to determine energy production worldwide

Global energy production reached around 600.3 exajoules in 2025. Renewable energies also grew strongly, but their share of the overall system remained limited. Solar, wind, hydropower and other renewable sources together accounted for 51.6 exajoules. By comparison, Germany needs about 10 exajoules per year. Data centers alone have already consumed 2.8 exajoules worldwide.

Here in the UK there isn't much to say about this. We already know about Ed Miliband, Net Zero, political stupidity and malice.

Before Photography

 

Governing is hard

Reeves warns Burnham ‘governing is hard’ and says he must have a plan

Rachel Reeves has warned Andy Burnham he needs to have a proper plan for government when he enters Downing Street in just over a week’s time.

In what is likely to be her last interview as chancellor, she appeared to concede her hopes of staying in the role were over and told the PM-in-waiting “governing is hard in Britain”.

During an appearance on the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg programme, she said: “It is important that when Andy walks through that door, that he has a worked-through plan, because governing is hard in Britain, and lots of lots of challenges and shocks will come his way.

“What is really important is that him and his team are really clear about what they want to achieve. As those shocks come along, he needs to stay laser-focused on those things that have always motivated him, have always driven him, and are the reason why he wants to lead our great country.”

It's good that "laser-focused" is in there, we wouldn't want to lose that in the new regime. Maybe it  could be part of Burnham's plan, along with a scattering of "turbocharged" and "good for Britain" and even "five point plan".

The language is something to look forward to as Mr Burnham finds out that governing is indeed hard. The carefully casual attire may not be enough for someone who seems to be shallow, politically unimaginative and weak on detail.

But possibly laser-focused.

Britain is going bankrupt in slow motion

Daniel Herring has a useful CAPX piece on the unsustainable nature of UK debt.


Britain is going bankrupt in slow motion

• The OBR says UK debt is on course to hit 300% of GDP by 2075
• If politicians wait until 2052 to act, the spending cuts needed more than double
• Sooner or later, taxes rise, spending falls or growth accelerates – duck all three, and we face fiscal catastrophe

The OBR’s latest Fiscal Risks and Sustainability report, published this week, gives a blunt assessment of the UK’s public finances: we can’t go on like this. If nothing changes, government debt will rise to an unsustainable 300% of GDP in 50 years’ time.

How did things get so bad? Well, there’s one big demographic challenge driving that number: the UK is an ageing society, with the median age projected to rise from 40 in 2025 to 49 in 2075. An older society is expensive; as each year passes, demands on the state by retirees gets larger, while the workforce that has to pay for it all gets smaller (first in relative terms, and eventually in absolute terms as well).


A familiar problem but the whole piece is still well worth reading as a reminder that this one isn't going away if voters continue to vote for political parties with no interest in resolving it. The political fads, environmental fantasies and antiquated ideologies we are still seeing today won't do it.

But we already know that.


The OBR report highlights the challenges an ageing population poses for the UK: sooner or later, taxes rise, spending falls or growth accelerates – duck all three, and we go bankrupt. How painful the correction turns out to be remains a political choice.

The UK is sick – but far from terminal. It needs medicine now: cuts to public spending, less reliance on the state and a relentless focus on growth. Prompt action will restore a healthy economy and sound public finances. Waiting will make things much worse.

Old Style Driving

This morning Mrs H and I buzzed off to the local garden centre in the MX5.

No driving in a closed box with the air-conditioning on, but old style driving on quiet roads. Top down, windows down, elbow on the door with the breeze blowing up my shirt sleeve. As Mrs H said, this is how roads ought to be.

The Price of 5 A Day

In early July, Shimeon Lee had a useful TPA piece on a Zack Polanski claim about food prices in 2050. 

To the surprise of nobody but Green voters, the claim turns out to be worthless. Worth reading but yet again it does raise an example of the perennial issue - why is rational voting such a forlorn hope? 


A closer look at "The Price of 5 A Day?

Green Party leader Zack Polanski recently made the alarming claim that the price of fresh fruits and vegetables is set to rise 170 per cent by 2050, making them “unaffordable” for many households. This figure comes from a report by the Autonomy Institute, a progressive research organisation, and has already been used to support calls for more climate spending, a higher minimum wage, increased welfare and unprecedented interventions like price caps.

But what is actually behind the 170 per cent figure, and does it really show that fruits and vegetables are about to move beyond the reach of ordinary families? Unsurprisingly, the claim does not stand up to scrutiny. This edition of a closer look examines how this figure has been calculated and what’s wrong with it.

Not when you want just power

A quote from  Kangaroo, a 1923 novel by  D. H. Lawrence set in Australia and said to be strongly autobiographical - 

He was silent for a while.

“Now,” he said slowly. “Now I see that you don’t have only to give all your possessions to the poor. You’ve got to have no poor that can be saved just by possessions. You’ve got to put the control of all supplies into the hands of sincere, sensible men who are still men enough to know that manhood isn’t the same thing as goods. We don’t want possessions. Nobody wants possessions—more than just the immediate things: as you say yourself, one trunk for you, one for me, and one for the household goods. That’s about all. We don’t want anything else. And the world is ours—Australia or India, Coo-ee or Ardnaree, or where you like. You have got to teach people that, by withholding possessions and stopping the mere frenzy for possession which runs the world to-day. You’ve got to do that first, not last.”

“And you think Jack Callcott will do it?”

“I did think so, as he talked to me.”

“Well, then let him. Why do you want to interfere. In my opinion he’s chiefly jealous because other people run the show, and he doesn’t have a look-in. Having once been a Captain with some power, he wants the same again, and more. I’d rather trust William James to be disinterested.”

“Nay, Jack Callcott is generous by nature, and I believe he’d be disinterested.”

“In his way, he’s generous. But that isn’t the same as being disinterested, for all that. He wants to have his finger in the pie, that’s what he wants.”

“To pull out plums? That’s not true.”

“Perhaps not to pull out money plums. But to be bossy. To be a Captain once more, feeling his feet and being a boss over something.”

“Why shouldn’t he be?”

“Why not? I don’t care if he bosses all Australia and New Zealand and all the lot. But I don’t see why you should call it disinterested. Because it isn’t.”

He paused, struck.

“Am I disinterested?” he asked.

“Not”—she hesitated—“not when you want just power.”


D. H. Lawrence - Kangaroo (1923)

UC Berkeley Joins Forces With Nancy Pelosi

Lloyd Billingsley has a useful American Spectator piece on Nancy Pelosi and the modestly named Nancy Pelosi Institute for Representative Democracy (NPI).

The whole piece is well worth reading, including the linked piece Pelosi’s Favorite Stalinist.

UC Berkeley Joins Forces With Nancy Pelosi

Presenting the ‘nonpartisan’ Nancy Pelosi Institute for Representative Democracy (NPI).

Nancy Pelosi is the daughter of Thomas D’Alesandro, a Baltimore mayor and member of Congress. He passed away in 1987, the year Nancy first ran for Congress in California, representing part of San Francisco. In the Congressional Record in 2001, Rep. Pelosi praised Harry Bridges as “the most significant labor leader of the twentieth century” and “beloved by the workers of this nation.” For all but the willfully blind, he wasn’t.

As Joshua Muravchik noted in “Pelosi’s Favorite Stalinist” article, Bridges’ membership in the Communist Party had been revealed a full nine years before Pelosi’s encomium. Bridges was a Stalinist thug dedicated to the Soviet Union, a Communist dictatorship. The former Speaker also has some strange ideas about how democracy works in America.

Lloyd visits a shipwreck

 

Does AI Know You?

Many people may know about IN THE WEIGHTS already, but if not it's interesting.

If you have an online moniker such as the one you use to leave comments, the site will display a range of AI systems which know you and a very brief summary of what they know, if anything.

The move to nuclear

There is a view, which isn't new, that the Net Zero nonsense here in the UK has always been intended to soften us up for going nuclear. Not very plausible as a conspiracy notion, but quite plausible as a long series of nudges from reality which are finally registering with decision-makers. 

For example -

Great Britain plans 14 mini nuclear power plants for eight million households

Great Britain is to receive a private fleet of new mini nuclear power plants from 2034. SGE SMR UK is planning 14 reactors at three locations for this purpose. The plants are expected to supply a total of 4.2 gigawatts and supply almost eight million households. However, the project can only start once locations, operators, financing and permits have been determined.

Behind the project is SGE from Warsaw. The company belongs to the environment of the Polish entrepreneur Michał Sołowow. GE Vernova Hitachi, Samsung C&T, Laing O'Rourke, Aecon and other partners are also involved. Therefore, it is not a purely state project.

The planned reactors will use BWRX-300 technology. Each unit is expected to produce around 300 megawatts of electrical power. This will create a fleet of 4.2 gigawatts with 14 turbines. However, SGE is focusing on series production so that planning and construction run faster.

The BWRX-300 has already achieved Level 2 of the Generic Design Assessment in the UK. The auditors found no fundamental barriers to safety, security, safeguards or environmental protection. Nevertheless, each specific power plant needs further permits. Location, grid connection and emergency planning also count.

Eco-friendly flats

 

No longer fit for purpose

BBC boss says £180 TV licence fee is no longer fit for purpose

The BBC's new director-general has described the current £180 TV licence fee as "no longer fit for purpose", saying the broadcaster is being held back by a funding model that no longer reflects how people watch television.

Matt Brittin made the comments as he appeared before the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee as part of its inquiry into the future of the BBC. The former Google executive, who succeeded Tim Davie almost seven weeks ago, said the corporation needed a funding model that matched modern viewing habits while continuing to provide universal and sustainable funding.

On and on it goes, but the phrase "held back" is interesting. Held back from what? Held back from more money presumably, held back by people deciding that BBC quality isn't worth the licence fee.

Yet if the BBC is no longer fit for purpose, then we are bound to ask which purpose Mr Brittin has in mind to ensure BBC survival. We are bound to ask what Mr Brittin has to offer the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee in return for survival. That's what must be on the table, however discreetly obscured, human nature tells us it's on the table.

Is impartial reporting and analysis of government policy and activity on the table? Hardly that, to ask the question is to answer it.

Politics - it's just a game

Count Binface given major boost in upcoming clash with Nigel Farage

Defence secretary wishes Count Binface ‘good luck’ in by-election showdown with Farage

Farage vs Count Binface? Parties rule out standing against Nigel in Clacton by-election 'circus'

Count Binface speaks out as he becomes Nigel Farage's sole Clacton by-election challenger

Only Count Binface willing to take on Farage’s ‘fake and pathetic’ by-election

Who is Count Binface? Odds slashed on comedian beating Farage in Clacton

Could Farage lose his seat to Count Binface? By-election descends into farce as everyone except comedy candidate pulls out

Mass sleep deprivation event

Heatwave leaves the UK in grip of a ‘mass sleep deprivation event’

As Britain endures its third heatwave of the summer, up to two thirds of people say they are struggling to sleep during sweltering ‘tropical’ nights.

The latest spell of hot weather could bring highs of up to 35C (95F) by the end of the week and today's temperatures are set to climb above 30C (86F) in southern England.

Amber heat health alerts apply between tomorrow morning and Saturday evening covering all of southern England, East Anglia and the Midlands.

Now a poll by environmental group Greenpeace suggests the country is not only struggling to cope by day but also suffering ‘mass sleep deprivation’ from extremely warm nights.


Ah - it's Greenpeace, enthusiastic promoters of mass reason deprivation events.

Gamble as we say, not as we do

 

Labour to introduce affordability checks for gamblers

Labour is set to forge ahead with financial checks on gambling customers who suffer heavy losses, setting up a clash with bookmakers who oppose the move.

The Gambling Commission is expected to confirm proposals on Tuesday morning to introduce financial risk assessments on online gamblers who lose large sums, including those spending more than £1,000 in a single day.

Casual Viewers

A number of people we know have their house up for sale at the moment. The market seems to be pretty sluggish which makes for a certain amount of anxiety in the sellers. An issue which doesn’t help are casual buyers who might be genuine, but they don’t seem to make much effort to find out what they are viewing before they arrange to be shown round.

For example.

• Finding out that the house isn’t where they thought it was because they haven’t checked the location properly in spite of online maps and Google Street View.
• Not near enough to schools or in one case, prospective buyers thought the house was in the next town.
• Not realising that the house is on a hill, even though the road name includes the word “Hill” as a clue.
• Not realising that the house is on a main road – maps, Street View and location again.

Of course people don’t take to a house for all kinds of reasons and may not care to tell the vendors what those reasons are. Yet some purported buyers are remarkably casual, they make little effort beforehand.

Or maybe they are just nosey.

People like us

Andy Ayim has a fine Centre Write piece on the way we do not reward merit. As Ayim succinctly puts it, we pattern-match for resemblance instead.


Britain is an HR mirrortocracy

Growing up as a kid in Tottenham, I felt limitless, as though I could be anybody and everybody. I spent my formative years, as any kid does, feeding my curiosity, playing and learning in and out of the classroom. My local community centre was where I made most of my friends back then, playing or talking about football. I wanted to stand out, show off what I was good at and make my parents proud.

Along the way that changed. Over the years, through interactions with my parents, teachers, media and the local community, I slowly shrank, desperately wanting to fit in. I was becoming a restricted version of myself to get good grades at school and, later, to do well in the job I was hired for. We all have a version of that story: the trade-off between belonging and fulfilling our potential.

I have come to believe that Britain has its own version, too. Are we, as a nation, playing it small? Or being all that we can be?

We tell ourselves we are a meritocracy: a flattering myth that talent rises, that merit is rewarded, that where you start off in life does not limit where you end up. But look closely at who actually gets to lead in business and public life. We do not reward merit so much as we pattern-match for resemblance. We promote the people who look, sound and think like the people already in the room. We take shortcuts to look for people we went to school with, people we previously worked with: people like us.


The whole piece is well worth reading as we wonder what the difference will be between Keir Starmer and Andrew Burnham as UK Prime Minister.

Through the course of my job, I have asked thousands of managers the same question. Who was your favourite teacher in school? What did they do? How did they make you feel? What impact did they have on you? Almost no one replies it was the teacher’s degree or technical skills. It is always the soft skills that surface. “She believed in me.” “He inspired me. “They supported me,” and so on.

Speech Control: Britain's China Temptation

A very interesting Yinfi video from a couple of weeks ago. From the video description -

Surveillance is never the disease. It’s the symptom. 

The real illness is older and quieter: the moment a society stops believing it can answer bad speech with better speech, and starts handing that job to the state. China gave in to that temptation decades ago. Britain is only beginning to feel the pull.

We don’t really need you

Former chancellor Merkel told Rheinmetall “We don’t really need you”, CEO reveals

Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger has publicly criticised former chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), claiming she was highly dismissive of the defence company and that Germany would rely on the United States in times of crisis.

Speaking at the Welt Security Summit on July 2, Papperger recounted that Merkel had told the arms sector: “We don’t really need you, if there is a problem we call the Americans.” The dependence on Washington, he suggested, had been a deliberate choice.

Donald Trump already knows it was a deliberate choice of course, hence his attitude and wider US attitudes towards Europe. Fully deserved attitudes too.

Trend-spotters have already spotted this one

Ex Treasury adviser warns HMRC to use AI to create surveillance state

A former senior Treasury adviser to Gordon Brown has warned that HMRC is on the cusp of using artificial intelligence to track people’s and businesses income and expenditure without them knowing.

Dr Chris Wales, who was a member of Mr Brown’s Council of Economic Advisers for more than six years, has sounded the alarm while launching a chilling book on the conduct of the Spanish tax authority, Agencia Tributaria.

He is set to join former Labour Treasury minister Baroness Dawn Primarolo at an event next week flagging up how the Spanish model of dealing with tax evasion is about to arrive in the UK suggesting that the door is opening for a “surveillance state.”

In a preview of the future, Dr Wales has claimed that confidentiality in personal life – not just finances – “will simply go out of the window” and asks whether there are adequate safeguards in the UK to prevent HMRC from emulating its Spanish counterpart.

How likely is it that a Burnham government will debate this openly before implementation is too advanced to call a halt?

On a scale of 0 to 0

Burnham’s shameful role in the David Kelly affair

Thanks to dearieme for passing this on - Kathy Gyngell has a TCW piece on Burnham's role in the David Kelly affair.


Burnham’s shameful role in the David Kelly affair

AS WE enter July, my thoughts have been straying back to the shadows of corrupt and cover-up government, evident well before covid and lockdown, and to an anniversary – the unresolved death of Dr David Kelly, the highly respected British weapons expert and former UN inspector whose body was found in an Oxfordshire wood 23 years ago.

It's not a long piece and well worth reading the whole thing.

Because of my work

Labour 'should win next election' with Burnham because of my work - PM

Labour “should go on to win the next election” under Andy Burnham, Sir Keir Starmer has said, because of the work he has done in power.

In his first sit down interview since he announced he will quit as Prime Minister, Sir Keir also insisted he held no “personal animosity” for Mr Burnham, who is all but guaranteed to succeed him.

Speaking to the BBC, the Prime Minister was asked what he thought his achievements were in power and as leader of the Labour Party.

He pointed to efforts to tackle antisemitism in the party in opposition, the 2024 general election victory and said his Government had “stabilised the economy” over the last two years.


Starmer is a strange man, one of the strangest we've seen in recent years and it's a tough field for anyone to stand out as strange. If he has “stabilised the economy”, then even a few Labour voters might wonder what an unstable economy looks like.

Naturally enough Starmer is still pushing the line that Burnham is a serious party choice for Labour and not a stand-in for someone willing to take the party all the way to the next general election. Burnham won't see himself as a stand-in and maybe he's right if nobody plausible wants the job.

Apart from the economy he claims to have "stabilised", Starmer hasn't even stabilised his party politically - they don't know what they are doing. Dud ideologies, dud MPs, habitual mendacity, furtive malice and pervasive stupidity don't help, but Starmer didn't do much about that, still seems to see it as part of the job. Perhaps many voters do too.

Why every Whitehall reform ends in failure

Tim Knox and Nada Kakabadse have a useful CAPX piece on a perennial UK problem, the failure to reform Whitehall. Well worth reading if only as a reminder that politicians we vote for have no great interest in tackling the problem - there are too few rewards for doing so.


Why every Whitehall reform ends in failure

• 17 attempts to reform government since 1968. Not one has made a lasting change
• Does Civil Service reform make things better or worse? No one ever checks
• The system rewards announcing change. Not delivering it

Talk about reforming the machinery of government often sounds like a wine tasting. One expert raises the glass, considers the latest initiative and says: ‘An interesting effort, but not enough depth.’ Another detects ‘promising notes of delivery, rather spoiled by departmental silos’. A third finds ‘hints of innovation and accountability, but with a disappointingly familiar finish’.

Everyone knows the vocabulary. Everyone has heard the speeches. Whitehall must be more agile, more mission-focused, more digital, more accountable, more joined-up, more innovative, more outward-looking. The words change a little with each administration, but the ritual is repetitive. A new government arrives, a new review is launched, a new unit is created, a new organogram is drawn, a new acronym is born. Then the system absorbs the initiative, waits for ministerial attention to move elsewhere, and carries on much as before.

The problem is not that Britain lacks reviews. It is that the system is exquisitely designed to produce them, praise them, file them and forget them: since the Fulton Report of 1968, there have been 17 major attempts to reform government, and not one has made a lasting change. The failure cannot credibly be blamed on one party, one ideology, one prime minister or one awkward generation of officials. It is too consistent for that.

An engineered assumption

Andy Burnham reveals tax plan to save pubs and high streets

Andy Burnham has signalled that he will introduce a so-called “Amazon tax” with a massive reform of business rates in a bid to save Britain’s high streets.


The engineered assumption behind Burnham’s bit of theatre is a familiar one - assume government is akin to a household balancing its budget against a limited income. It's a perspective which can be useful, but the background assumption in Burnham's version is that disaster will ensue if that limited income is ever decreased. 

The obvious catch is ignoring the absurdly wasteful, spendthrift nature of modern government, the swamp of waste, fraud, incompetence, malinvestment, patronage networks, worthless quangos and NGOs, costly political favours, disastrously expensive energy policies, the wasteful expansion of university courses and so on.

Obvious of course, but engineered assumptions such as this do limit political narratives and discussions. Too many voters seem to vote within those assumptions, too many seem to believe they believe them.

Between a rock and a hard head

 

Spread to the Edge

The other day, Mrs H and I were in a coffee shop and for some reason I found myself scrutinising a chap who was carefully spreading jam on a slice of toast.

The spreading operation attracted my attention because the chap was spreading his jam with such precision, holding the toast in one hand while taking great care to spread the jam right to the edge all the way round. I don’t know what flavour the jam was, but it was red.

I don’t eat toast and jam, I’m more of a marmalade or Marmite chap, but all I do is shove some onto buttered toast, smear it around a bit then scoff it. If the butter is too cold to spread properly then a few lumps of it will do.

I’d have consumed two slices before the careful spreader had taken a bite.

Yet to arrive in Ed's world

Climate researcher Judith Curry says the era of ‘climate stupidity’ is done and declares victory

As media outlets shut down their climate desks, corporations retreat from climate targets, and polls of voters show they rate climate change lowest on their priorities, critics of the “climate crisis” narrative are saying it may be time to move on.

American climatologist Dr. Judith Curry on Tuesday announced that she would no longer maintain her influential blog, “Climate Etc.”

“It’s time to declare victory against climate stupidity and move on,” said in her final post. The reelection of President Donald Trump came with an overall shift in the political landscape regarding climate and energy issues. Since then, major media outlets shut down their climate desks, corporations are easing back on emission-reduction targets, and polls consistently show the public rates climate change low on their list of priorities.

Some figures like Curry who disputed the “climate crisis” narrative — often in the face of vitriol from those who support it — are now saying their efforts paid off and an era of climate hysteria is coming to an end.


Andrew Burnham doesn't come across as the kind of chancer who would notice the failure of Net Zero, shift his position and shift Ed Miliband at the same time, but who knows?

Ed Miliband's climate fanaticism may be crazy and his craziness may have to end eventually, but politically it has served him well. 

Of course he is just a little crazy, poor sweet, but it is a very profitable kind of craziness, so one need not drench oneself in tears about it. One of the secrets of a successful life is to know how to be a little profitably crazy.’

Josephine Tey - To Love and Be Wise (1950)

Using our own innate nature as humans against our interests

As some may have noticed from the left hand side bar, AI data centres seem to have been scanning one of my 2021 posts caller Snugglers II. 

After reading the post and comments again, I've used Sam Vega's comment about the "bandwagon effect" for this post as it seems to be one of those permanently relevant observations about social and political matters. 

There are some interesting insights to be had in reading around the "bandwagon effect" and "social compliance" in Social Psychology. I get the sense that we are being gently manipulated by people who have studied this stuff in detail; in effect, using our own innate nature as humans against our interests. It makes me more inclined to value those oddballs who do not conform. That weird old boy who endlessly cycles around our nearest town with a big trailer full of dogs...that woman who carries old newspapers clutched to her bosom...the kid who talks to himself in public in a loud monotone. These people might become more important, and might even become valuable to us as the ratchet tightens.

The bandwagon effect is a cognitive bias characterized by the tendency of individuals to adopt particular opinions, behaviors, or attitudes primarily because they observe others, especially a perceived majority, doing the same, often irrespective of the intrinsic merits of the choice.

Monumental but meaningless

Ai Weiwei’s art is monumental but meaningless

Ai Weiwei, I suspect, would like me to feel guilt, and as I walk out of his new exhibition, guilt is what I feel. Not, though, over my complicity in Britain’s imperial deeds, or our more recent adventures abroad, both of which Ai invokes while studying the murky legacies of the West.

Rather, I’m guilty about the prospect of giving two stars to Button Up! Ai himself can take it: now 68 years old, he’s perhaps the world’s best-known living artist, a Western poster boy for resisting the Chinese regime – he lives, at least some of the time, in Britain – and his name alone should generate healthy ticket sales.

Button Up!, too, mounted in a single vast space at Manchester’s Aviva Studios, and described as Ai’s “largest site-specific exhibition to date”, is neatly presented – even, occasionally, stark. No blame accrues to the proverbial village, from curatorial staff to specialist artisans, who’ve brought it all into being. The problem, from top to bottom, is Ai Weiwei.


It may be meaningless and it seems to be woke, but it does display the art of governing supposedly educated minds.


It is not, then, the facts in themselves that strike the popular imagination, but the way in which they take place and are brought under notice. It is necessary that by their condensation, if I may thus express myself, they should produce a startling image which fills and besets the mind. To know the art of impressing the imagination of crowds is to know at the same time the art of governing them.

Gustave Le Bon - The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1895)

On Being Burnham

It’s an odd thing to do, but I’ve been wondering what it is like being Andrew Murray Burnham. Not really possible of course, but there are some obvious aspects which would apply to almost any prominent political figure.

For example we have personality, intelligence, upbringing, education, career and so on, all the usual factors which make us what we are. We have a deep personal experience of these. Anyone on the political stage is also subject to personal constraints and influences which we understand but most of us don’t experience directly, but in different contexts we get to know it via working life.

Apart from family and friends, we know that Burnham will have been moulded by the Labour Party, its history, structure and baggage, plus political colleagues and their aspirations. Then there are charlatan colleagues who won’t be colleagues if things go wrong or other opportunities beckon. Add in media contacts ranging from barely trustworthy to wholly untrustworthy. Then we have advisors, pressure groups, a range of officials plus a fringe of shouty obsessives who wave placards in public places.

A list of political constraints and influences would be enormous, but where is the space for an individual with an individual personality? The only available spaces are away from the political theatre, but they will still include a few political cronies who never quite leave the theatre.

What does the ambitious political actor have to offer apart from a willingness to play a role, and preferably a major one? In the case of Burnham, this seems nothing but his ambition and his fortuitous situation as a known and very ambitious Westminster outsider promoting himself with the chummy diminutive ‘Andy’.

Voters need more than personal ambition from political leaders, but so far Burnham seems to be offering nothing else. “I want to be Prime Minister” seems to be it.

Rodney's Milestone

Families worse off than before Starmer came to power

Households are now worse off than they were before Sir Keir Starmer came to power, new figures show, breaking one of the Prime Minister's key pledges.

Families' disposable incomes fell by 0.5pc between July 2024 and March 2026, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), highlighting Labour's failure to tackle the cost of living crisis.

It serves as a blow to Sir Keir as he prepares to leave No 10.

After winning the 2024 election, the PM pledged to "deliver a milestone of higher living standards", with success determined in part by rising real disposable household incomes per person.

Hardly a crisis, even if we assume 0.5% is measurable, but it doesn't seem likely that Andrew Murray Burnham will improve on this milestone.

Yet if Burnham has the imagination to tell us from the beginning that everything will be crap under his regime, then this will have an obvious advantage for him - it's what we are expecting anyway. 

Plan for Change II

Andy Burnham tells Scots he offers 'change' from 'broken' Westminster politics

Labour’s Andy Burnham has said he will bring “change” to Scotland as he told people north of the border that Westminster is “broken”.


Presumably this is changed change, a complete change from the other change Keir Starmer promised.

At the moment and whatever the rhetoric, it may be worth assuming that parachuting Burnham into this rather odd political situation was merely a way to remove Starmer while other potential challengers keep their powder dry. 

If so, then Labour MPs don't necessarily expect Burnham to have much chance of steering their party towards a worthwhile political position for the next General Election. Get rid of him once his approval rating falls through the floor seems more likely. A third time lucky approach perhaps.

Either way, let us hope we make it to the next General Election.

Political Theatre

Burnham latest: Labour MP unveils 'No 10 North' in 10-year policy plan

Andy Burnham has confirmed plans to create a “No 10 in the North” as part of his 10-year vision for a “new era” in Britain.

The Labour MP, who is expected to replace Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister next month, declared plans for a “rewired Britain” through devolution as he lamented his generation of politicians for failing to be “good enough” to create change in the country.

Speaking at the People’s History Museum in Manchester, Mr Burnham was met with raucous applause as he outlined a vision of reindustrialisation, a high street renaissance and the “biggest council house building programme since post-war period”.


This is political theatre.

But we know that, we've seen the play too often.

Yet the Labour Party and much of the media seem to have decided that more arm-wavy political theatre is to be an antidote to the grey incompetence of Keir Starmer.  

Hmm - even at this stage Burnham, comes across as no more convincing than Starmer. Assuming he is successfully parachuted into the role of UK Prime Minister, the indications are that he will resemble the man he replaces quite closely apart from the rhetorical tone - he won't know what to do. 

There isn't much Burnham can usefully do anyway, not within the confines of Labour Party baggage and there is not the slightest indication that he knows how to escape that, or wants to. More of the same but worse is the message so far.

Blog Stats and Honking Beeb

For anyone wondering why some of the posts in the Last Seven Days column on the left are rather old, it seems to be AI data centres scanning the blog and bumping up the viewing stats.

This has been going on for some time, so much so that I’m wondering if I should make up an imaginary Derbyshire village such as Thrippleford and give it a famous dairy which makes the connoisseur’s favourite cheese – Honking Beeb. 

Will Thrippleford and Honking Beeb soon become part of the online world? We’ll see.

Lots of other mischievous possibilities come to mind, but I’ve still no idea how many real people are viewing the blog apart from those who leave comments.

Realism v Magical Thinking

Robert Bradley Jr. has a useful MasterResource piece on what he describes as a sea-change in US energy policy as realism overtakes magical thinking. 

 
Affordability In, Renewables Out (again)

“The EV bust in the U.S. is front-page business news. The domestic battery industry is following suit. The demise of the U.S. rooftop solar industry, despite subsidies, is now all about litigation to get out of long-term contracts. Add the EV school bus bust.”

A sea-change is occurring in energy policy as realism overtakes magical thinking. But you would not know it from the social media ‘denialists’ (thousands of climate-related professionals) who claim that

• Wind and solar are cheaper than fossil fuels (some highly dubious studies say so, but government is required for on-grid additions)
• Recent social/wind/battery additions are high (government play: continuing IRA-PTC-ITC subsidies in the U.S.; UK/EU subsidies; central planning edicts)
• Wind and solar are inevitable (no, the fossil fuel era is still young with a global boom under way)

The whole piece is well worth reading, especially here in the UK while we are stuck with Mad Ed Miliband.  

If these intermittent power sources were cheaper, would you buy it without a utility grid to back it up? Would you want to pay less for a vehicle with a trick motor? Want to pay for another vehicle to act as a battery if the primary vehicle stopped running? I doubt it.

It never goes away

EU's 'chat control' plan is back: Critics warn it could allow governments to scan your private message

Privacy advocates warn of potential overreach as EU revisits controversial messaging regulations.

The European Union's controversial 'Chat Control' proposal is back on the agenda after fresh negotiations this week, bringing back discussions over whether governments should be able to scan private messages in the name of child protection.

Ahead of a crucial round of talks on Monday, former Member of the European Parliament Patrick Breyer warned that the latest developments could pave the way for widespread monitoring of encrypted communications if the proposed rules move forward...

Critics argue that the proposal goes far beyond targeting illegal material already known to authorities. In its strongest form, they warn that it could allow governments to issue detection orders requiring companies to scan private messages, even without a judicial warrant.

How very Lib Dem

Liz Jarvis MP slams Tories and Reform over climate vote

Rising temperatures have sparked fresh debate over climate policy and action.

Eastleigh MP Liz Jarvis criticised Reform and Conservative MPs for voting against the Carbon Budget Order, a parliamentary measure aimed at addressing climate change.

She said: "Time and time again, Reform and Tory politicians have failed to put the planet first.

"With temperatures soaring here in Eastleigh, it is farcical that those two parties are continuing to ignore the brutal impact of climate change."

How very Lib Dem, the careless emission of fading middle-class formulae and casual evasion of sceptical effort. Scott Fitzgerald described it so well over a century ago and the problem is still with us. It is a problem too, probably bigger than it was in Fitzgerald's day.

She would talk the language she had talked for many years — her line — made up of the current expressions, bits of journalese and college slang strung together into an intrinsic whole, careless, faintly provocative, delicately sentimental.

F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)

Rich people could just move

Mitchell Palmer has a useful CAPX reminder of why the good folk at Makerfield didn't know what they were likely to end up with by voting for Andrew Burnham as their new MP. In particular, they didn't know if he would continue failed redistributionist policies of the past. 

The whole piece is well worth reading as yet another example of how easily voters are steered into voting for more of the same.

   

Burnham’s fantasy about ‘trickle down economics’

• The economic argument for lower marginal tax rates on higher incomes is not that giving rich people more money will make them generously sprinkle it over the poor
• The real question is not whether the rich are getting more than their ‘fair share’ but whether Britain can afford to keep punishing work, saving, investment, and enterprise
• Rich people could just move to Dubai, Singapore, or even Italy

In a recent speech, Andy Burnham, Makerfield’s new MP and likely our next PM, said he would end ‘trickle-down’ economics. What on earth was he talking about?

The Left often accuses the Right – and particularly the last Conservative government – of practising this voodoo art form. Supposedly, right-wingers give tax breaks to the ‘rich’ in the sure and certain hope that these tax breaks will ‘trickle down’ to the poor. Or, as is often asserted, they might do so to curry political favour from their ‘mates’. After all, as Peter Manion said in The Thick of It, ‘some of my best friends are money-grabbing w*****s’.

As a description of the last Tory government’s actions, nothing could be further from the truth. Between 2010 and 2024, the only group who saw their direct tax bill increase were the top 10% of income earners. Today, the top 10% of income earners earn 34% of the income, but pay 59% of the income tax, up from 55% in 2010. If successive Tory Chancellors believed in a supposed ‘trickle-down’ theory, they were incompetent at executing it.

Two 2030 target dates

Volkswagen drawing up plans to cut 100,000 jobs globally, reports say

Germany’s Volkswagen is drawing up proposals for a major overhaul that will see 100,000 jobs cut in the next few years, double that of previously unveiled plans, reports say.

Top bosses are considering restructuring and dramatically cutting down the size of the workforce in a bid to make cost savings worth 11 billion euro (£9.5 billion) by 2030, according to local media.


2030 climate targets

The 2030 climate and energy framework includes EU-wide targets and policy objectives for the period from 2021 to 2030.

Reducing emissions - raising our ambition

In 2023, the EU adopted a set of Commission proposals to make the EU's climate, energy, transport and taxation policies fit for reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.

This will enable the EU to become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050.


Two 2030 target dates, maybe there is a connection. Ed Miliband should know - and the destructive loon probably does.

Bought and sold every day

We’re Saved! UN Climate Bureaucrats Hold Another Useless Meeting

What a grandiose mouthful of verbiage.

The Subsidiary Body for Implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (SBI-UNFCCC) just wrapped up its latest session in Bonn, Germany. Abbreviated SB64, it was the 64th meeting of this austere group of “multi-stakeholder coalitions” — politicians, government bureaucrats, business rent-seekers and “civil society” activists — some 7,000 strong.

They chattered and schemed for ten days (June 8-18) to set the stage and agenda for COP31, the 31st UN Conference of the Parties, set to take place in Turkey later this year — the annual gathering of climate-obsessed and cash-hungry countries.


No man is able to borrow or buy a sound mind; in fact, as it seems to me, even though sound minds were for sale, they would not find buyers. Depraved minds, however, are bought and sold every day.

Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD

How to Wear a Monocle (1930)

 

Welcome to the Club

New BBC boss Matt Brittin issues warning amid cost-saving plan

The BBC’s newly appointed director-general, Matt Brittin, has declared the corporation faces a significant challenge to "move faster and change to adapt to the world around us".

Mr Brittin, who succeeded Tim Davie in the role last month, spoke after he attended an investiture ceremony at Windsor Castle, where the 57-year-old received a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) from the Prince of Wales.

Welcome to the Club.

Brittin attended the investiture ceremony on Wednesday accompanied by his 92-year-old mother Shirley, his son Nick and his wife Kate, and said he and William exchanged a few words about his new job.

“He was very kind,” Brittin said.

“I’ve met him a few times over the years through his charitable work.

But of course, you are already a Club member.

He further told PA he believes tackling misinformation and improving media literacy are among the BBC’s main challenges ahead.

“At the BBC, we’re concerned about making sure that audiences get incredible quality journalism and creative storytelling that’s homegrown in the UK,” he said.

As ever, the language is interesting, such as "incredible quality journalism" when "credible journalism" would be an improvement. 

Why Burnham Will Fail

Mani Basharzad has a useful CAPX piece on how misunderstanding the nature of investment is a major reason why the UK Left fails to invest effectively. An old problem but the whole piece is worth reading as a reminder that voting for Andrew Burnham always had little chance of being a successful vote. 

Burnham could turn out to be better than disastrously useless, but the political culture of his party does not offer much room for optimism. It never did.  

What the Left doesn’t get about investment

• Left-wing economists conclude that government, through public spending, can simply increase investment and therefore create growth
• Investment isn't a magic variable that automatically creates growth simply by increasing it
• Politicians simply do not have the incentives to allocate capital in the most efficient way

Investment isn’t a magic variable that automatically creates growth simply by increasing it. As Andrew Lilico wrote, “Investment doesn’t create growth. It’s opportunities for growth that create investment.” Investment is not merely another variable in an economic formula that can be turned up at will. It is itself dependent on wider market conditions. What the UK faces is not a lack of investment but a lack of opportunities for investment, with the rhetoric of wealth taxes and exit taxes making investors increasingly uncertain about committing capital to the country.

 This is one of the mistakes the Labour government has made under Keir Starmer: investment for the sake of investment. As Rachel Reeves declared, “The only way to drive economic growth is to invest, invest, invest. There are no shortcuts.” But when investment is not driven by market forces, it creates two phenomena: malinvestment and overconsumption. You may spend billions of pounds on Net Zero and create new green jobs, but that is merely the seen rather than the unseen. The unseen consists of the jobs that could have been created in more productive sectors but were crowded out by this policy.

The BBC’s unusual tactic

The BBC’s unusual tactic to get people to pay the licence fee

A cash-strapped BBC is exploring new ways to claw back millions in unpaid TV licence fees, with the broadcaster issuing reminders during its 2026 World Cup coverage.

Audiences watching matches on the BBC at home may have noticed an on-screen prompt to pay the £180 charge as they tuned in to coverage in recent days.

During Brazil’s game against Morocco, a TV licence fee reminder in the form of a QR code, alongside the words “Buy a TV licence. Scan the QR code”, appeared as players returned to the pitch after half-time...

A TV Licensing spokesperson said: “We regularly test new ways of supporting people to get and stay correctly licensed.”


The language is always interesting such as "supporting people" and "correctly licenced". Supporting people with millions of threatening letters presumably. Plus "supporting" emails as we recently discovered.

It's also interesting to speculate about the near future. For example -

An Internet Licensing spokesperson said: “We regularly test new ways of supporting people to get and stay correctly licensed.”

A Digital ID spokesperson said: “We regularly test new ways of supporting people to get and stay correctly identified.”

Crisis brings clarity? It does indeed

'London is cooking': UN chief issues warning as he urges countries to cut fossil fuels

He warned that climate chaos is “accelerating before our eyes” while the arrival of the El Nino warming weather phenomenon this summer risks “blowing the house down”

Speaking at the event on Tuesday, Mr Guterres said: “Crisis brings clarity and here in London – the city of Dickens – it is clear that our world is facing a ‘tale of two crises’.


It completely conveyed the idea of a man who had been born, not to say with a silver spoon, but with a scaling-ladder, and had gone on mounting all the heights of life one after another, until now he looked, from the top of the fortifications, with the eye of a philosopher and a patron, on the people down in the trenches...

We talk about the tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannize over them too; we are fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to wait upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds well. As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on state occasions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so, the meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration, if there be but a great parade of them.

Charles Dickens - David Copperfield (1849-50)