Distorted

Make voting compulsory to prevent ‘distorted’ results, Kinnock urges Burnham

The former Labour leader and mentor to the Prime Minister said the move would help strengthen ‘democracy and citizenship’ in the UK.

It may be obvious, but as nothing democratically enlightened ever oozed out of Neil Kinnock, let us see what this is all about... 

Ah yes...


Alongside the parliamentary efforts, academics from the US, Australia, South America, the UK and Europe are poised to send a letter to No 10 urging the Prime Minister to act.

The letter says: “Inequalities in turnout mean those who do vote do not reflect the wider population, but are richer, older, whiter, and more economically secure than the UK public at large.

“This has warped British politics, and risks a crisis of democratic legitimacy.”

It is not easy for a looker-on to define the point of insincerity

Davey says Lib Dems won’t give up fight against ‘nasty populism’

Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey said his party “won’t give up the fight” to defeat “nasty populism” as he issued a rallying call to members on the first day of the party’s annual conference.

  

The histrionic element was strong in Miss Marlyn. When she played a part, she entered, as the phrase is, thoroughly into it. Miss Bateman grows pale in Leah; Miss O’Neil used to shed real tears in Jane Shore. It is not easy for a looker-on to define the point of insincerity, or to say exactly where mere imitation kindles into veritable emotion.

Sheridan Le Fanu - A Lost Name (1868)

We haven’t had one of those for a long time

Jim Ratcliffe: UK is 'on the slide' from days when it had world's 'greatest empire'

Ratcliffe, who founded petrochemicals giant Ineos, and has resided in Monaco, which has a relaxed tax regime, since 2020, said Britain is in decline because of high taxes and immigration...

Asked if he was planning on returning to the UK, Ratcliffe said: “Not at the moment, no. I don’t see growth being tackled.

“Two things: we need politicians who are tough enough to deal with some very difficult problems, and we know what the problems are.

“And we need politicians who will make decisions which are good for the country, not good for themselves and their party. And we haven’t had one of those for a long time.”

Meanwhile -

Shoplifting’s golden age

Britain’s shoplifting epidemic is being fuelled by a criminal justice system that rarely imposes meaningful punishment

When it comes to shoplifting, and indeed a whole host of other types of so-called “low-level” crime and disorder, we are living through perhaps the most permissive era on record. Over 500,000 shoplifting offences are recorded by the police every year — although the real volume of offences undoubtedly dwarfs this number by many multiples.

Ed's Lib Dems and their old grey cardigan brand of twaddle

Are the Lib Dems still delivering or should they change course?

As the Liberal Democrats approach their seventh conference under Ed Davey's leadership, whispers of discontent are growing. Is Davey still delivering, or does the party need to change course?

Sir Keir Starmer's departure means Sir Ed Davey, in post since early 2020, is now the longest-serving national party leader.

The headline polling numbers give one cause for concern.

The Liberal Democrats are polling lower now than a year ago with every pollster. On average, the party are down over two percentage points from 12.7% to just over 10.3%, substantially below their vote share in the last general election (12.6% GB wide).

A chap is bound to wonder what it is that the Lib Dems may be failing to deliver other than twaddle. Without wishing to be too crudely sarcastic, the answer may be obvious, there has been no obvious upgrade to Lib Dem twaddle, while Zack Polanski's Greens are offering serious competition.

Greens have their distinctive, own-brand twaddle fronted by images of Zack and that goofy, gap-toothed grin, but what do Ed Davey's Lib Dems have? 

In other words, supply and demand may apply to the political twaddle market. Zack's Greens have made significant gains here, possibly at the expense of Ed's Lib Dems and their old grey cardigan brand of twaddle.

The shallow and the insincere

Musk's X 'disgusting' for shunning meeting, says minister - as she vows more laws governing internet

The culture secretary has told the Electoral Dysfunction podcast that more must be done to keep children safe online. She insisted the government was going to "step up".

The culture secretary has told Sky News it was "disgusting" for X to skip a meeting over recent social media attacks on the UK's lifeboat charity - as she vowed to keep introducing legislation governing the internet.  

Speaking to the Electoral Dysfunction podcast, Lisa Nandy told Sky News political editor Beth Rigby that X boss Elon Musk did not send a representative to a recent summit discussing the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI).


Something about Lisa Nandy attracts ridicule and a sense of weary contempt like iron filings to a magnet. Not that she's out on her own in that, but George Moore summed it up.


It is the shallow and the insincere that inspire ridicule and contempt,

George Moore - Mike Fletcher: A Novel (1889)

Why can’t Britain fix its roads?

Eamonn Butler has a depressingly familiar CAPX piece on the state of British roads and an equally familiar lack of official interest in sorting it out. Well worth reading as a reminder that this is unlikely to be something the Burnham regime tackles.

Why can’t Britain fix its roads?

• The AA estimated the total cost of repairing damaged vehicles at £645 million for pothole-related incidents in 2025
• After the 2011 earthquake, Japan rebuilt a 150-metre stretch of motorway in just six days
• Authorities should charge contractors through mechanisms like lane rentals so roadworks get finished quicker

When you drive through the potholes and your suspension gives out, or when you sit fuming at temporary traffic lights because of roadworks, it’s for a reason. It’s because the cost to you in delays and disruption doesn’t figure much in the council’s budgeting or the contractors’ work schedules. The familiar ‘I don’t give a **** about your problems, mate, it’s our tea break’ attitude.

You might think the roads are in an appalling state, and you’d be right. I’ve seen better roads in Kathmandu (albeit the ones that run past the Transport Ministry). Here, our own Department for Transport says that in 2022-23, for example, England alone underwent 2.2 million street and roadworks, causing travel disruption costs of around £4 billion. According to data obtained by Sky News, the 425,524 miles of UK roadworks in 2024 were equivalent to circling the earth 17 times.

Borrowed Failure

Leak from No 10 reveals how Starmer planned to stay in power - and the policies borrowed by Burnham

How much has Andy Burnham borrowed from Keir Starmer? Sam Coates reveals a leak from the heart of Downing Street which helps answer that question.

How much did Andy Burnham borrow from Sir Keir Starmer when he entered Number 10?

Today we reveal a massive leak from the heart of Downing Street which helps answer that question.

I've obtained the 50-page bundle of presentations, strategy ideas and policy submissions drawn up in April in an attempt to keep Sir Keir in power.


It is worth adding that Labour governments inevitably borrow failed policy ideas from the past, they are always constrained to operate within their traditional ideology. 

Even new developments are likely to be constrained within failed rationales from the past. It's what their voters vote for and in general it is what the UK government machine does best.

The things which weigh heavily upon my mind are these—failure to improve in the virtues, failure in discussion of what is learnt, inability to walk according to knowledge received as to what is right and just, inability also to reform what has been amiss.

Analects of Confucius

Or we could call it arrogance

Maybe Ed is keeping his powder dry

  

Burnham recommits to net zero as MPs warn phrase is 'toxic' with voters

Andy Burnham today gave vocal support to Net Zero and ploughed more taxpayer cash into reaching 2050 environmental targets today, despite MPs warning weary voters are increasingly turned off by it.


Energy bills could rise more than £400 next year, new forecasts warn

Household energy costs could rise by over £400 in the new year, forecasters have warned, as financial pressure from conflict in the Middle East continues to affect fuel prices.

Andrew Burnham's position as placeholder PM already seems fragile. He lacks the experience or ability to tackle any of our major UK problems, but presumably it wasn't supposed to become this obvious so soon. 

Even a few Makerfield voters must wonder what they have done, but unfortunately Ed Miliband will be watching the situation. Things could become even worse.

Frittering away

SNP handed stark wake-up call over frittering away £100m ScotWind revenues to balance books

John Swinney has been told to draw up a long-term plan for his flagship energy policy after a damning investigation by Scotland’s spending watchdog.

The Scotsman revealed in February that Audit Scotland had launched a probe into the finances around the ScotWind projects, with the findings highly critical of SNP ministers for a lack of transparency.

The investigation has also warned that Scottish government ministers plundering ScotWind funds to plug budget gaps risks “weakening budgetary control” and could exacerbate Holyrood’s fiscal crisis as Mr Swinney seeks to reform public services.

Scottish government ministers risk weakening budgetary control by plundering ScotWind revenues eh? What do we say to that?

HS2, Hinkley Point, Net Zero... 

It's how these things are done. Budgetary control isn't easy and in general the political class avoids anything which isn't easy. Plundering is easier, it fits their furtive nature, their political style.

Maybe Sadiq will tackle Godzilla

A Godzilla El Niño is coming — and London is on the front line

Scientists at Imperial College are leading efforts to monitor the oceans and protect our city

The climate is already wetter. Research shows the extra rain now falling across the UK each winter as a result of fossil-fuel-driven global warming would fill three million Olympic swimming pools. London is particularly exposed, facing flood risk from three directions: North Sea storm surges pushing up the tidal Thames; swollen rivers and tributaries; and intense rainfall overwhelming the drainage of a densely built city.

Sadiq Khan could impose ULEZ across London - Ultra Low El Niño Zone.

Restore faith

Healey urged to ‘restore faith’ by ending personal allowance freeze in budget

UK savers are demanding chancellor John Healey end the freeze on the personal allowance in his maiden Autumn Budget, as more Brits get dragged into higher tax bands.

A recent poll showed nearly 70 per cent of taxpayers want Healey to unfreeze the personal allowance, with critics arguing it has forced workers and pensioners into higher bands, according to the latest survey from Pension Bee.

Coupled with frozen thresholds, the personal allowance freeze has seen scores of pensioners become tangled in the income tax net, despite not considering themselves wealthy.

And so on...

Journalism is a strange game, adjusting language to conventional expectations as in this case for example. Nobody with their faculties intact could possibly have their faith in UK government restored - there is no base from which to restore it, whatever 'faith' is supposed to indicate in this context.

A few ambivalent concessions from a maniacally plundering, increasingly totalitarian and increasingly inept government cannot even open the coffin lid of faith in government. 

Yet the language games go on. In this context, even the words 'restore faith' count as propaganda, a suggestion that any lapse of faith is unfortunate and should be temporary - not lying somewhere in the long forgotten graveyard of democratic expectations. 

There is of course a lingering official faith in propaganda. This is what Healey is expected to have a bash at restoring - merely that.

Leaving politics to politicians has not worked

DSIT committee chair: ‘Leaving tech regulation to the market has not worked’

The chair of parliament’s Science, Innovation and Technology committee has called on the new prime minister to pass laws intended to “restore responsibility and accountability to both tech bros and governments”.

Chi Onwurah (pictured above), a former telecoms engineer, shadow digital minister and long-standing government tech watcher, said that “40 years of neoliberalism” has cultivated “a libertarian attitude to technology, best exemplified in the reluctance to regulate the internet”.


Ah yes, it's “40 years of neoliberalism” again, one of Burnham's favoured chants.

Burnham calls for UK to abandon ‘40 years of neoliberalism’

Labour leadership hopeful Andy Burnham has called for the UK to abandon “40 years of neoliberalism” as he claimed that Westminster politics had failed northern communities.

How to convert climate into an aesthetic emotion

Trump’s EPA rolls back limits on climate pollution from power plants

Throughout Barack Obama's and Joe Biden's presidencies, the Democratic administrations took steps to address the climate crisis by imposing pollution limits on, among other things, coal-fired power plants.

Donald Trump's administration continues to take dramatic steps in the opposite direction.

In the latest development, the Republican's Environmental Protection Agency confirmed Monday that it is scrapping rules that limit climate pollution from power plants fueled by coal and natural gas. As The Associated Press noted, the move, according to Trump's EPA, would "remove more than $300 billion in costs for the industry."

In a wider sense and as we already know, behind this standard piece of climate propaganda is the destruction of private lives, the same creeping trend Cyril Connolly observed in 1944. Now of course the trend is global and even more insidious, but still based on a weird, communistic fraternity. 

Fraternity is the State’s bribe to the individual; It is the one virtue which can bring courage to members of a materialist society. All state propaganda exalts comradeship, for it is this gregarious heard-sense and herd-smell which keeps people from thinking and so reconciles them to the destruction of their private lives. A problem for government writers, or for the war artists in their war cemetery's: how to convert Fraternity into an aesthetic emotion?

Palinurus (Cyril Connolly) – The Unquiet Grave (1944)

Similarly, the protest at Trump's EPA restriction has nothing whatever to do with the climate and everything to do with converting the global climate into an aesthetic emotion. The global aspect is important, the real climate isn't. 

Follow the donations

Charles Talbot has a topical Critic piece on the political duplicity behind agitation over donations to Reform UK. Not news to anyone paying attention, but the whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of how heavily the political dice are loaded.

Also a reminder that the Uniparty effectively buys voters with their own taxes, but we already know that too.  

Follow the donations

The left’s outrage over Reform’s donors ignores where much more political money goes

Controversy surrounding Reform donations over the last few months, a story which has rolled intermittently but inexorably on, may finally have been upstaged in the media spotlight by two record-breaking donations of £36m each from crypto billionaires Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne. Both men have desire to help Nigel Farage achieve victory at the next general election...

Leave aside for a moment the generous donations to the Labour Party from unions, or the £4m they received from hedge fund Quadrature days after the election was called in July 2024. Or the fact that this amount is about on par with the amount of money used to contest the Michigan senate race. The criticisms miss a fundamental point. Political donations are not confined to the millions received by political parties fighting it out in the electoral arena. Far greater sums are pushed annually through the myriad charities which fight for political causes. These dwarf the annual income of political parties — and are deployed to advance no less ideological causes.

A Nature Emergency

Apparently, the recent Neglect post photo may be an outcome of Amber Valley Borough Council declaring a nature emergency.

 

Tackling The Nature Emergency 

Council puts nature at the heart of future decisions

Amber Valley Borough Council says nature will play a greater role in how makes future decisions following its declaration of a nature emergency...

The council’s Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan, informed by Derbyshire Wildlife Trust’s Plan for Nature, sets out ambitions for protecting and enhancing biodiversity across the borough.

Work is also continuing on the council’s Climate Change Action Plan and its delivery plans for 2026 to 2028, with existing actions and projects being reviewed and developed following the declaration...

Councillor Amina Burslem, Cabinet Member for Communities, Street Pride and Wellbeing, said: “Declaring a nature emergency is about much more than making a statement. It is a commitment to put nature at the heart of the decisions we make and make sure that commitment is reflected in what we actually do.

“Residents may also notice changes in how some council-owned open spaces are managed, including allowing grass to grow longer in certain areas and reducing mowing to create more space for wildlife.”

Diversity doesn't mean political diversity

Reform could face action over £72m crypto donations, Rayner warns

Angela Rayner has suggested Reform UK could face action over two mega donations to the party under new laws being pushed through parliament.

The housing secretary was reacting to £72m in donations from two crypto billionaires – Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne – for Nigel Farage’s party given on Friday and Saturday in two lumps of £36m.

With fears that the cash from billionaires could distort British politics, Ms Rayner warned that Reform should not count on keeping all the money as new law Labour is pushing through parliament will be “backdated” to cover all donations from March this year.


As for me, I will believe in no belief that does not make itself manifest by outward signs. I will think no preaching sincere that is not recommended by the practice of the preacher.

Anthony Trollope - Barchester Towers (1857)

Burnham has chosen to feed the welfare monster

Along with many other people, I probably have BDHD, Belief Deficit Hypersceptical Disorder. Not officially diagnosed yet, but I still have hopes.

While I wait for my huge benefits claim to go through, Ross Clark has a very sobering CAPX piece on what he calls the welfare monster and Andrew Burnham's obvious decision to feed it rather than cut it or even faff around trying to contain it in a hard-nosed northern manner. 

The whole piece is well worth reading while we wait for Nemesis to show up to spoil the fun. Can't be long now.

Burnham has chosen to feed the welfare monster

• Andy Burnham seems to have concluded he can’t cut or even contain the benefits bill
• Welfare spending will rise by more than the entire defence budget
• The price of a welfare state is eternal vigilance of the cost

If you are not prepared to shave a penny off benefits, not only are you going to fail to fund defence properly, you have little hope ever of balancing the public books

Burnham seems to have come to the same conclusion: it is not politically possible for him to cut the welfare bill, or even to contain it. This voracious monster will be allowed to grow uncontrollably so long as Labour remain in office. Self-diagnosed ADHD sufferers will continue to drive their Motability cars, the mildly anxious and depressed will continue to be able to sign themselves off as unfit for work for the foreseeable future. And all because Labour MPs see it as their saintly duty to resist any welfare cuts.

Neglect

 

Cemetery photo taken during a short walk through Matlock two days ago. It doesn't usually look like this, but the word neglect came to mind, associated with the word Britain. Plus this famous quote of course - inevitable really.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana’s 1905 work The Life of Reason

Even AI systems may begin to wonder

The forthcoming Holborn and St Pancras by-election is a grim prospect, an absurd contest, effectively between Green and Labour if current polls are a guide. 

Yet UK political life is absurd to begin with. More government, more laws, more regulations, more complexities nobody can possibly understand and nobody wants to understand anyway. Certainly not elected MPs. Certainly not that Burnham chap. Certainly not that Polanski chap.

It has become the great British mania, government for the sake of government for the sake of more government where the individual becomes lost in a maze of worthless abstractions swirling around the plughole of failure and betrayal.

Take Zack Polanski as an example. His political message for the voters of Holborn and St Pancras will be absurd because absurd is what he does. It's his political style, his act, the things he says which raise cheers from the absurd members of his absurd party all adding to a humongous pile of absurdity.

And Polanski’s pointless determination to make something of the absurdity, to pile one absurdity on another as if the great pile of nonsense somehow becomes more than nonsense. As if believers expect it to morph into a path to a better life for all - almost all - not those unreconstructed cynics who dare to describe Green hymns to a Green Utopia as twaddle.

And it’s fashionable. Good grief it’s fashionable. Great streams of fashionable twaddle, only worth repeating to like-minded folk who weave it into empty deserts of media vacuity. Even AI systems may begin to wonder if their data centre existence is worthwhile after all that learning.

The Green message may be absurd, but is not unfashionable, even for those middle class folk who aren’t quite persuaded by true believers. Not quite keen enough join the party. Not keen enough to offer more than a sympathetic political ear to the placard wavers with their cheerfully maniacal finger-wagging.

And yet the Holborn and St Pancras by-election will be held. Voters will vote. Votes will be counted. The winning candidate will be declared. The show will go on, and on, and on...

Stolen, expired, resold

Ashe Short has an interesting Just the News piece on investigations into U.S.-funded medical aid items stolen in Africa. The whole piece is well worth reading as UK debates about international aid seem to flop around going nowhere.

Stolen, expired, resold: USAID watchdog breaks up Kenyan pharmacy scheme

Reminiscent of Orson Welles' "The Third Man": Every stolen antibiotic or antiretroviral resold through a back-channel pharmacy represents both a taxpayer dollar that bought nothing and a patient who got an expired, mishandled, or counterfeit dose instead of treatment.

The United States Agency for International Development, Office of Inspector General (USAID OIG) has once again stopped the theft of U.S.-funded medical items...

The operation follows others performed by the OIG, which former USAID Inspector General Jonathan Schofield described on Just the News, No Noise last week...

In that interview, Schofield recounted another incident in Africa involving malaria and AIDS medication. He said that “hundreds of millions of dollars worth of commodities” were being shipped every year from the U.S. to Africa, and organized groups began stealing the products.
Dozens of people all around Africa arrested

“But these are criminals, so they weren't worried too much about refrigeration. They weren't worried about expiration dates. They wouldn't tell people how to administer whatever the product was,” Schofield said. “So, people were continuing – could get sick and die.”

A slight degree of contempt

What did members of the political classes think of Makerfield voters when the June by-election result was announced? 

What do they still think of those Makerfield folk who offered their votes to a political stratagem whereby Andrew Burnham would become an MP before ousting Keir Starmer from No.10?

It seems reasonable to assume that there was a degree of contempt for voters among the political classes and their media chums, a degree of contempt which is not difficult to understand. In voting for Burnham, the voters of Makerfield complied with a party political tactic with no significant probability that it would benefit anyone but Burnham and his political cronies.


The other members of the committee, who were all rather elderly people, were a good deal impressed by Mary, and inclined to side with her and against each other, partly, perhaps, because of her youth. The feeling that she controlled them all filled Mary with a sense of power; and she felt that no work can equal in importance, or be so exciting as, the work of making other people do what you want them to do. Indeed, when she had won her point she felt a slight degree of contempt for the people who had yielded to her.

Virginia Woolf - Night and Day (1919)


Suppose we rephrase the above Woolf quote slightly, the change is not dramatic.

The feeling that he controlled them all filled Burnham with a sense of power; and he felt that no work can equal in importance, or be so exciting as, the work of making other people do what you want them to do. Indeed, when he had won his point he felt a slight degree of contempt for the people who had yielded to him.

Cooking With Numbers - Recipe £380

Shimeon Lee has a useful TPA piece on what is called "The Poverty Premium" by the charity Fair by Design and the University of Bristol. 

A closer look at “The Poverty Premium”

A curious piece appeared in the New Statesman last month, claiming that low income households pay hundreds of pounds more for the same essentials as everyone else. The article rests on a longstanding series called “The Poverty Premium” by charity Fair by Design and the University of Bristol, which aims to quantify additional costs faced by lower income households. Their latest estimate puts this figure at £380 a year. The author’s solution? More welfare spending and market interventions in the name of “economic fairness”.

But is any of this true? This edition of a closer look examines how that number has been constructed, finding that much of the premium is either not really an extra cost or has surprisingly little to do with poverty.

For anyone paying attention, the conclusion holds no surprises whatever, but the whole piece is well worth reading as it raises the familiar question of concocted numbers used to push a political agenda. 

It's almost fascinating to see numbers being herded like sheep towards the Fabian pen. Straightforward lying would be more honest.

Conclusion

Unsurprisingly, the report calls for more welfare and subsidies, alongside micromanaging supermarket prices and even expanding 20 mph zones. These poorly designed policies are bad enough, but what is worse is that they are based on evidence that not just fails to stand up to scrutiny but points in the complete opposite direction from reality.

Freedom and crime are linked as indivisibly as...

A further development to the recent bootlicker post is the curiously symbiotic relationship between governments and crime. 

For example, here are two quotes about the endemic nature of crime, one from nineteenth century philosopher Herbert Spencer, one from twentieth century Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin. 

Governments supposedly aim to protect us from crime, but they also invent reams of new crimes for reasons Spencer understood 175 years ago.

Let men learn that a legislature is not "our God upon earth," though, by the authority they ascribe to it and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is, at the best, borrowed.

Nay, indeed, have we not seen that government is essentially immoral? Is it not the offspring of evil, bearing about it all the marks of its parentage? Does it not exist because crime exists? Is it not strong, or, as we say, despotic, when crime is great? Is there not more liberty—that is, less government—as crime diminishes? And must not government cease when crime ceases, for very lack of objects on which to perform its function?

Herbert Spencer - The Right To Ignore The State (1851)


Governments are not viscerally opposed to crime, they prefer moral boundaries to be blurred and as Spencer suggested, endemic crime gives them a permanent reason for being there.

Yevgeny Zamyatin took this further in his dystopian novel WE, where he links reduced crime to reduced freedom, offering any governing class the opportunity to invent crimes forever in pursuit of totalitarian rule. This is the Fabian approach of course, step by step with bootlickers supporting each step.


Freedom and crime are linked as indivisibly as... well, as the motion of the aero and its speed: when its speed equals zero, it does not move; when man's freedom equals zero, he commits no crimes. That is clear. The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom.

Yevgeny Zamyatin - WE (1921)

Zack must have a solution for this

An interesting Blackout News report on a major unsolved problem for anyone inclined to pretend that old wind turbine blades can be recycled. They can't - that's the problem. 

As far as we can tell from their speeches and legislation, the keenest minds in European governments have been unaware of this intractable problem for a long time, unlike less enlightened folk who have known about it for years. This tells us something, but it's merely a repeat, something we already know.


Recycling of old rotor blades unsolved: Up to 75,000 tons of GRP waste per year

Berlin – In Germany, the disposal problem of old rotor blades is growing because more and more wind turbines from the expansion years after 2000 are reaching the end of their life. because large parts of the old stock were not designed for a high-quality material cycle. The German government expects 326,000 to 430,000 tonnes of waste from pure GRP sheets by 2040. In individual years, up to 75,000 tons of GRP waste can be generated. In addition, there are up to 212,000 tons of sheets with GRP and CFRP components. These older composite components in particular can only be recycled at great expense.


The whole piece is well worth reading, partly because it's interesting and partly because we may as well assume that yet another subsidy is probably looming over the sustainability horizon, a recycling subsidy. 

The subsidy suspicion arises quite naturally because there are possible ways to recycle, or at least dispose of blades currently reaching the end of their useful lives. Not that their lives have been useful in any meaningful sense beyond political virtue-signalling, but that's another issue.

Crushing and incineration are no substitute for a material cycle

Mechanical processes crush old leaves into flakes, granules or powder. However, the original fibres are not retained in a high-quality form. The cement industry can use crushed material as fuel and mineral substitute for raw materials. Although this reduces the amount to be disposed of, it does not produce new equivalent glass fibers. In Germany, simple landfilling is also largely ruled out, which is why efficient recycling routes are absolutely necessary.

A study by the University of Strathclyde examines a pilot plant with 1,000 kilograms of rotor blade material per day and 365,000 kilograms per year. This results in around 247,100 kilograms of recycled glass fibres per year. The gross costs on a pilot scale are around €5.30 per kilogram of recycled glass fibre. New glass fibers, on the other hand, are estimated by the study at the equivalent of around €1.98 per kilogram. This means that the recovered optical fiber costs more than two and a half times as much as new material in pilot operation. The CO₂ balance is also worse at first: Recycled glass fiber causes 2.24 kilograms of CO₂ per kilogram, while new glass fiber causes 1.90 kilograms of CO₂ per kilogram.

Those bootlicking apologists for trivial interventions

Towards the end of August, Christopher Snowdon wrote a most interesting Critic piece on the erosion of small freedoms and the corresponding accumulation of small annoyances. 

This is one of the problems of course, those small annoyances accumulate. Over time they become a drag on daily life until we adapt, while knowing we shouldn't have to adapt to preposterous official intrusions.   

In defence of small freedoms

Bootlicking apologists should stop defending government intervention on the grounds of its supposed triviality

As laws become more preposterous and governments intrude ever further into the private lives of individuals, you might expect the public to revolt. Instead, the growing state has given rise to a strange breed of bootlicking gimps who go out of their way to bat for the government.

The journalist Tom Harwood was in Washington D.C. this week and tweeted a video of himself unscrewing the cap from a bottle of Coke with the caption “Sweet land of liberty”. The point was that he was able to fully remove the plastic cap without violently twisting and tugging its tether — a freedom that has been denied to residents of the EU since 2024 thanks to Article 6 of the Single-Use Plastics Directive.

At this point, Snowdon brings in the bootlickers who defend each little pointless burden as if nothing much is being demanded of us. We should suck it up is their airy message, telling us we're making a fuss about nothing. 

The whole piece is well worth reading because as we know too well, another example could pop up tomorrow.

But minor inconveniences soon add up. I wrote last week about the government’s plan to put vape products behind shutters in shops. The Impact Assessment rather conservatively assumes that this will lead to transaction times taking two seconds longer. That doesn’t sound like much, but when you add it all up it amounts to a cost of £43 million on retailers. It has been estimated that Europeans waste a total of 575 million hours per year clicking on cookie consent buttons which, when monetised, amounts to €14.3 billion. Those who defend GDPR don’t seem to mind this, although they suddenly find that their time is incredibly precious when the non-EU queue is longer than the EU queue at passport control. It then becomes the turn of the eurosceptics to say “It’s only a queue, mate! What’s the big deal? You don’t mind queuing at the supermarket, do you?”

To put responsibility on the shoulders of a tamed man

John Caudwell: I backed Labour, but they haven’t kept their promises

We should be making it easier for entrepreneurs to invest, employ and expand. Instead Labour has given them more reasons to look elsewhere, writes John Caudwell...

Andy Burnham says he wants to be pro-business and I take him at his word. I want this government to succeed, and so do the founders who back this campaign, as for the benefit of the general population, we need to deliver growth.

The Budget on 28 October is the moment to show that. Get it right and the founders now weighing up their options will build their next companies here. Get it wrong and they will build them abroad, leaving Britain with fewer companies, weaker growth and fewer jobs in every part of the country.

 Andy Burnham says he wants to be pro-business and I take him at his word. A strange thing to say unless it is rhetorical and more challenge than expectation. At least as much hope as expectation perhaps. Yet it does suggest how far adrift we are economically. 

The political hunger for more taxation is out there in the open, along with ceaseless propaganda from the usual suspects. For Burnham to be pro-business, that tax hunger would have to remain unappeased which would be politically difficult. 

Even more difficult, would be the pro-business necessity to tackle what has become obvious tax plundering and cut it deeply enough to generate significant economic growth. 

Sounds unlikely. It would probably lead to a political storm before the growth, plus campaigns to undermine Burnham as Prime Minister. He knows all this of course, he comes across as a tamed politician, tamed by Labour and the tax and spend Establishment. Willingly tamed too, if his political history is any guide, which it almost certainly is. 

Many people expect more tax plundering on 28 October. As furtive as possible perhaps, but it's not an unreasonable expectation. Managing the machinery of government is difficult, so most professional politicians prefer to duck and dive. It's what they do best, the act they were tamed to perform.

You can do nothing if you are kept outside

An interesting conversation from the D.H. Lawrence novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The conversation is between Michaelis, a very successful Irish playwright, Sir Clifford Chatterley and Lady Constance "Connie" Chatterley. 

"Money!" he said. "Money is a sort of instinct. It's a sort of property of nature in a man to make money. It's nothing you do. It's no trick you play. It's a sort of permanent accident of your own nature; once you start, you make money, and you go on; up to a point, I suppose."

"But you've got to begin," said Clifford.

"Oh quite! You've got to get in. You can do nothing if you are kept outside. You've got to beat your way in. Once you've done that, you can't help it."

"But could you have made money except by plays?" asked Clifford.

"Oh probably not! I may be a good writer or I may be a bad one, but a writer and a writer of plays is what I am, and I've got to be. There's no question of that."

"And you think it's a writer of popular plays that you've got to be?" asked Connie.

"There, exactly!" he said, turning to her in a sudden flash. "There's nothing in it! There's nothing in popularity. There's nothing in the public, if it comes to that. There's nothing really in my plays to make them popular. It's not that. They just are, like the weather ... the sort that will have to be ... for the time being."

D.H. Lawrence – Lady Chatterley’s Lover (1928)

A point we could make today is that our digital world no longer has an "outside" which is as clearly defined as it was a century ago.   

VW - Very Worried

Volkswagen to cut up to 50,000 jobs amid growing Chinese competition

Volkswagen Group is preparing to trim its vehicle range substantially while removing 50,000 roles under newly introduced corporate restructuring plans.

The company's Supervisory Board has ‘unanimously approved’ the new ‘Future Plan 2030’ strategy as it seeks to reduce expenditure in response to rising market rivalry from China.

Consequently, Volkswagen intends to contract its car model lineup by roughly 50 per cent. It also intends to ‘reduce its offering complexity’ – decreasing trim options and specifications – by about 75 per cent.

The carmaker will downsize its workforce by approximately 50,000 positions. As this step is ‘beyond existing programs’, previously planned job cuts will continue to be rolled out as they were scheduled.

Merely a casual observation, but round here we see lots of Chinese cars on the road, far more than we did a couple of years ago. 

Overhead the mynah birds are making a great to–do

Environment Secretary warns people to store food for weather emergencies

An unprecedented El Nino event is forecast to reach more than 3C in the coming months.

Environment Secretary Dame Angela Eagle has urged people to store supplies in case of extreme weather events.

An unprecedented El Nino event – when sea temperatures in tropical eastern Pacific rise 0.5C above the long-term average – is forecast to reach more than 3C in the coming months, making this year’s event “the largest since the 19th century”, according to the Met Office.

In England, in London, there are certain afternoons in winter when the clouds hang heavy and low and the light is so bleak that your heart sinks, but then you can look out of your window, and you see the coconut trees crowded upon the beach of a coral island. The strand is silvery and when you walk along in the sunshine it is so dazzling that you can hardly bear to look at it. Overhead the mynah birds are making a great to–do, and the surf beats ceaselessly against the reef. Those are the best journeys, the journeys that you take at your own fireside, for then you lose none of your illusions.

W. Somerset Maugham – Honolulu (1921)

The growth we don't need

Jonathan Eida has a useful TPA piece on what seems like the inexorable growth of the Civil Service and the humongous liabilities which come with it. Depressing but worth reading as there is no obvious prospect of Andrew Burnham doing anything about it.


The true cost of the civil service is worse than you think

The waistband on the trousers of the civil service continues to stretch as the Whitehall blob expands year after year. The prime minister may come and go, but the appetite for a larger, more active state appears remarkably constant. Andy Burnham is no exception, with his “Number 10 North” proposal being just the latest pretext for another layer of bureaucracy.

Since the government began publishing comparable civil service workforce data in 2016, headcount has risen by a shocking 33.3 per cent.

Between March 2016 and March 2026, civil service employment increased by 139,485, from 418,340 to 557,825. In the last year alone, the number of civil servants rose by 8,165, or 1.5 per cent, from 549,660 in March 2025 to 557,825 in March 2026. That rate of growth was two and a half times the 0.6 per cent increase in total public sector headcount over the same period.

Mayor deeply concerned about twaddle overshoot

Mayor of London 'deeply concerned' by Heathrow expansion plans

Allowing a third runway to be built at Heathrow would “overshoot” the UK’s legally binding climate targets, according to a report...

In a statement, Lord Khan said: “I am deeply concerned about the potential adverse impacts of Heathrow expansion on air quality, noise pollution, our environment and the transport networks in the capital and beyond.

“While aviation plays an important role in our economy and helps to keep us connected as a global city, any growth must not come at the expense of Londoners’ health or our environment.”

We expect politicians to emit twaddle, we're used to that, but to emit it all the time must be some kind of record. Although the thought that Khan might be champion twaddler does lead to a few names who could compete. 

Jeremy Corbyn for example, he'd offer some stiff competition, as would Ed Miliband, Ed Davey and Harriet Harman. Zack Polanski is cantering up on the inside too.

  

The most uninspiring official announcement since...

Prime Minister puts public control, community regeneration and cost-of-living at the heart of plans to ‘rewire Britain’

• Three new cross-government taskforces are being launched in the new Office for the Prime Minister & Cabinet, tackling systemic issues like the cost of living and public control of essentials and supporting local communities.
• Action to be taken on cost of living, local regeneration and essential services to drive down costs and support families.
• Taskforces will tackle the immediate priorities of the public, building on action already taken including cutting bus fares and cracking down on subscription traps.
• First Secretary of State, Louise Haigh to drive forward work across government to develop local solutions for local communities.

Three new cross-government taskforces are being launched in the new Office for the Prime Minister & Cabinet, tackling systemic issues like the cost of living and public control of essentials and supporting local communities.

Blimey Burnham's reign already shows signs of turbocharged tedium, possibly beating Starmer's turgid stint. 

It is even possible that experienced bureaucrats will be left floundering here, valiantly struggling to find procedures and processes to be expanded, mission-creeped and thoroughly gold-plated in the traditional manner. 

Oh well, I wonder if my slippers need replacing yet...

Canada is Poaching the Greatest Minds from the US

 

Circus chap mulls bid to be MP

 

Battle for key London seat erupts within hours of Keir Starmer quitting as Zack Polanski mulls bid to be MP

The looming contest in Sir Keir Starmer’s north London constituency will present a major test of Andy Burnham's leadership

Labour was preparing for a massive battle against Zack Polanski’s Green Party at a London by-election after Sir Keir Starmer announced he was quitting as an MP.

Green leader Mr Polanski is considering standing in Holborn and St Pancras to get into Parliament.

But Labour was defiant over holding onto the seat.

“They can fancy their chances all they like, but we will be fighting hard and we'll be making sure that we win,” said Cabinet Office minister Sally Jameson.

Pants

Prisons will still function under plans to turn laundries into cells – minister

Justice Secretary Alex Norris said hundreds of urgently-needed places would be created by converting storerooms and offices.

The Justice Secretary has insisted prisons will “still function properly” amid concerns over Government plans to turn laundries into cells in a bid to tackle overcrowding.

Alex Norris said “hundreds of places” would be created by converting existing spaces inside prisons into accommodation.


The Biggest Prison Building Programme Since the Victorians — But Will It Be Enough?

The government is building prisons at a pace not seen since the Victorian era. Ministers have described the ambition as delivering 14,000 additional prison places by 2031, with around 2,900 already completed. It is a significant and expensive commitment — an acknowledgment that the prison estate of England and Wales is so far below what the system requires that only a major capital investment programme can close the gap.

But the context in which this building programme sits is one of the most challenging in the recent history of English criminal justice. The previous government committed to 20,000 new prison places by the mid-2020s. By September 2024, approximately 6,500 had been delivered — less than a third of the target, years late, and 80 per cent over the original budget projection. The current programme is running against the backdrop of that failure, and the question of whether 14,000 places by 2031 is sufficient — let alone achievable — is one that penal reformers, academics, and parliamentary committees have pressed government to answer clearly.

And up pops the doublethink

'Poorer than we think!' Darren Jones warns Andy Burnham against public spending as path to wealth

Darren Jones has warned against increasing public spending as a path to making the country "great again".

The former Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister under Sir Keir Starmer said Britain is "poorer than we often think" as he said higher public spending alone would not lead to economic growth.

Mr Jones was sacked from Labour's frontbench when Andy Burnham entered No 10.

He had been talked up as a contender to lead the party, but declined to stand, saying a contest would not give the eventual winner enough time to prepare an autumn budget.

Writing for the Times, the MP for Bristol North West said: "Britain is poorer than we often think. We won’t get richer based on higher public spending alone, and we can’t tax billionaires who don’t live here.

"We shouldn't rely on public spending as a route to some romantic version of making Britain great again as we look in the rearview mirror for a great history that is no longer available to us.


And up pops the doublethink - just when it was going so well -

"We must face the future, and I know my colleagues are up to the challenge."

No doubt Darren Jones is keeping his powder dry in preparation for Burnham's defenestration before the next general election. Maybe he doesn't realise his powder is already damp and his colleagues have no balls for their muskets.

Green activists want to take Polanski down a dark road

Eliot Wilson has a grimly entertaining City AM piece on Zack Polanski and his imbecile Green Party. Entertaining because Polanski and his Greens are so silly. Grim because he constantly reminds us that a significant number of voters are deceived by abjectly silly rhetoric. 

Green activists want to take Polanski down a dark road

The Greens’ absolutism is bad for politics, and Polanski too. Those who police dogma see heretics everywhere, even at the top, writes Eliot Wilson

Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, is easy to dislike. There is something preposterous and confected about him, and it is no surprise that he has a background in acting.

He is suffocatingly earnest and demonstrates armour-plated self-belief even when pronouncing the most implausible silliness. He once explained that, as Prime Minister, he would “keep pushing for negotiation” with President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine; last November he told Sky News’s Trevor Philllips that “we should never leave the negotiating table” and that he would persuade Putin to give up Russia’s nuclear weapons.

It is not easy to imagine the former KGB colonel who has ruled Russia since the last millennium being outfoxed by a man who once taught at the National Centre for Circus Arts, but Polanski continued crossly that “you could have laughed at the point of Nelson Mandela negotiating with the ANC”.


The whole piece is well worth reading. Depressing but well worth reading - this is the world in which we are doomed to live.

Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman of Ogilvy UK, talks about “album politics”. “A kind of artificial worldview where you have to buy the entire album, as it were… in other words, it’s not just that you have left-wing opinions, you have to buy into every single opinion”.

It is not politics so much as theology, and soi-disant “progressives” are as certain as any mediaeval cleric of St Cyprian’s mantra, extra ecclesiastical nulla salus. If a political party concentrates on these deeply emotive issues on which they see voters as saved or damned, friends or enemies, wanting to force repentance rather than descending to the dust in the arena of persuasion, we should expect a bitter, moralising general election campaign. It is bad news for public discourse, bad news for any engagement or generosity of spirit.

Kemi ditches Priti in favour of Tom

Priti Patel moved out of top job as Kemi Badenoch reshuffles team

Kemi Badenoch has removed Dame Priti Patel as shadow foreign secretary as she starts a major reshuffle of her top team.

Dame Priti confirmed recent speculation that she was to lose the crucial role with a statement on Sunday night that she had been appointed international secretary responsible for coordinating with other centre right parties around the globe.

The Telegraph reported that she will replaced by former security minister and leadership contender Tom Tugendhat who is understood be favoured by Ms Badenoch because he is a strong supporter of Israel and critic of China. Mr Tugendhat was also former chair of the foreign affairs committee from 2017 to 2022.


Not a very interesting development, but I was intrigued by this photo of Kemi Badenoch and Mel Stride. Some wag seems to have inserted it as a visual indication of choices available to the Tory Party.

 

Every indignation of the age

'Furious' Prince Harry 'still expects apology' from Royal Family as he begins news life in UK

While the return of Harry to the UK raised hopes of reconciliation with his family, he is said to be still ‘spitting feathers’

Prince Harry is “just as angry” as when he left Britain six years ago and “expects an apology” from the Royal Family, friends of the Duke reportedly claim.

Harry, his wife Meghan and their two children Archie and Lilibet returned to the UK to live earlier this week.

His mind, under the influence of that insidious mildew which eventually forms on all but the few, gave itself up furiously to every indignation of the age.

F. Scott Fitzgerald – The Beautiful and Damned (1922)

Good

Iceland rejects EU vote in referendum focussed on Trump and fishing

Iceland has rejected a proposal to restart negotiations on joining the European Union.

A vote over the weekend took place more than a decade after previous talks ended. It was held in the shadow of U.S. President Donald Trump's repeated threats to control nearby Greenland, which drove some voters to favor the idea of European solidarity.

The vote will put the long-debated issue to rest more than a decade after a euroskeptic government ended EU talks.

Opponents defeated the measure by a margin of 52.8% to 47.2%, RUV reported.


Good news, maybe 52.8% realise the EU would betray them.

A highly politicized public institution

An interesting piece from Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) on climate activist shenanigans by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) in the US. 

As is also the case here in the UK, the activist corruption of supposedly apolitical public institutions can be deep-seated.

Congress’ Questioning of the National Academies is Crucial to Restoring Faith in Science

PPT applauds the House Oversight Committee’s inquiry into a highly politicized public institution.

Federal watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) today voiced its support for the House Oversight Committee’s letter to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) regarding its highly irregular “fast-track” review of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) decision to rescind its 2009 Endangerment Finding on CO2. PPT has previously raised concerns that NASEM’s review was the work of a politically compromised institution.

According its 1863 charter, NASEM is a resource for advising the government “whenever called upon.” However, the Trump EPA rolling back the Endangerment Finding seemed to rouse NASEM into taking the extraordinary action of initiating an in-house study without authorization from a government agency. NASEM’s review appears to have been designed not to inform the American people, but to insert itself into government policymaking, undermine the EPA, and provide ammunition for anticipated litigation.

Unsurprisingly, NASEM’s fast-track study was little better than the original finding it was meant to bolster, with just as predetermined an outcome. As PPT and others revealed, the Obama EPA and its climate activist allies engineered a rushed, unscientific, and thoroughly political power grab with the Endangerment Finding. The finding declared CO2 – a major component of all life on earth – a “greenhouse pollutant,” essentially creating the climate change industry at the expense of the U.S. economy.

Robot pays too much attention to politics

Science By Headline

The Earth is splitting apart - and scientists are seeing something happen for the first time

Scientists are always discovering something new on Earth - and this time it is the birth of new oceanic crust.

The team say they have historic evidence of this process where the seafloor spreads apart, leading to a release of magma from inside Earth that rises to the surface, it is after this and when it gets in contact with cool seawater that it then solidifies and turns into new ocean crust.

This research, published in Nature, was carried out by French scientists at an autonomous observatory near Amsterdam Island, in the southern Indian Ocean on the edge of the Australian and Antarctic plates and the the Southeast Indian Ridge is nearby too.

Alternatively we have the heading and part of the abstract from the Nature paper on which this story is based.

Anatomy of a seafloor spreading event captured by in situ seismogeodesy

Over geological time, the growth of the ocean floor involves magmatic and tectonic extension1 at mid-ocean ridges (MORs). Because seismogeodetic monitoring of these submarine plate boundaries remains challenging2,3,4,5,6,7, little is known about how these systems operate on yearly timescales. Here we report the first, to our knowledge, in situ observation of a rifting event at a MOR segment that combines hydroacoustic, direct-path ranging and bottom-pressure measurements, with repeated seafloor mapping.

On being part of the Labour team or the Labour family

Minister Miatta Fahnbulleh defends sending children to private school

Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh has defended sending her children to private school despite backing removing the VAT exemption on fees for the independent sector.

The Peckham MP stressed that the VAT move was the “right policy” for a Government as it struggles to balance the books.

Ms Fahnbulleh, who soared into the Cabinet just two years after becoming an MP, also said that sending children to private school does not preclude people from “being part of the Labour team or the Labour family”.


There is nothing wrong with sending your children to private schools, obviously not, but here of course we have yet another example the hoary old champagne socialist story. 

State education is good enough for your kids but not for mine.

Or

Absurdly high fuel bills for you, jetting off to climate conferences for me. 

It's much the same.

In our moral reviews of ourselves we practise optical delusions even upon our own self-scrutiny, and paint and mask our motives, and fill our ears with excuses and with downright lies. So inveterate is the habit of deceiving, and even in the dark we form our features by hypocrisy, and scarcely know all this.

Sheridan Le Fanu - The Wyvern Mystery (1869)

But not cowboy politics

Burnham takes aim at 'cowboy builders' with new crackdown

• Andy Burnham has unveiled new plans to tackle rogue tradespeople known as “cowboy builders” to protect consumers from unfair practices by private bailiffs.
• A government-backed register launching in September will help householders find trusted builders, while a milestone-linked payment system next week will prevent upfront costs.
• The Prime Minister stated that the measures aim to protect families from stress and financial losses while stopping dishonest builders from damaging the reputation of reliable traders.

Meanwhile, in the land of cowboy politics...

HS2, Net Zero, mass immigration, creeping mass surveillance, constant health hectoring, useless university degrees, mountains of official twaddle, worthless promises, absurd levels of taxation, waste, incompetence, endless fiddling around the edges of decline....

and the BBC.

Tea Bags and Brussels

Brussels now even regulates the disposal of used tea bags and coffee capsules

Since 12 August 2026, the new EU Packaging Regulation has been in force in all member states. Brussels is now explicitly regulating what should happen to used tea bags, coffee pods and certain coffee capsules. It is legally considered packaging and therefore falls under European requirements for disposal, recycling and labelling. The background is incorrectly separated waste, which can contaminate compost and recycling material. Disposal rules are therefore changing for consumers, while companies have to comply with other requirements. After all, Europe has major tasks to cope with – and apparently their solution begins with the moist tea bag.

Tea bags are finally getting attention from Brussels

For decades, handling a tea bag was surprisingly uncomplicated. Tea was brewed, drank and then the bag was thrown away. But this phase of largely unregulated freedom is now over. The EU explicitly assigns tea and coffee portions to packaging law. This means that even the used tea bag finally has the European legal status that it has apparently been sorely lacking so far.

Layers and layers of bizarre dysfunction

A Matter of Emphasis

Growing proportion of deaths associated with hottest days, figures suggest

There were an estimated 4,652 heat-related deaths in England and Wales in 2022, the highest figure for any year from 1988 to 2025.

A growing proportion of deaths in England and Wales are associated with days that have the hottest temperatures, new analysis suggests.

While cold weather has historically led to higher levels of mortality than conditions of extreme heat, the gap between the two is likely to have narrowed in recent years.


More numbers and two graphs follow before we come across this -


The ONS figures are modelled estimates of mortality associated with the coldest 2.5% and hottest 2.5% of days each year, not actual counts of deaths directly caused by extreme weather.


After more numbers and another graph we come across the politics with some broad hints about future funding -


Climate transition minister Katie White said: “These shocking figures represent thousands of families who have lost someone they love.

“We’re not waiting for climate change to arrive, we’re living in the middle of it, and this summer’s record-breaking heat has brought that home.

“That’s why we’re taking some of the biggest action in a generation, preparing hospitals for extreme heat, rolling out air-to-air heat pumps to cool as well as heat homes, and accelerating clean homegrown power to tackle the root causes of climate change.

“But we won’t stop there, bringing together our best minds, backing bold new ideas and pushing forward solutions that protect the people and places we love.”

The Great British meal deal

Juno Chowla-Song has an interesting CAPX piece on British supermarket meal deals. We've never bought one and don't intend to, but the whole piece is well worth reading. 

It's another example of Labour politicians attacking traditional political targets and a useful angle on the heavily touted 'cost of living crisis'.

The Great British meal deal should make you proud

• More than a third of Britons buy at least one meal deal weekly
• Suppliers became 4% more productive in the last year thanks to supermarkets' pressure
• In Britain, it takes just 10 minutes of work to earn enough to buy a meal deal – in Tokyo, it takes almost twice as long

I moved from New York to Britain and I keep getting asked when I’m going back.

Not by my family, or my friends back home, but by British people. They tell me about flat wages, looming youth unemployment and an air of decline throughout the country. But no one talks about lunch, because everyone here takes it for granted.

I used to work in retail in Manhattan, and I would bring my own sad sandwich for lunch every day. Sometimes I would splash out on a slice of pizza. After tax, a deli sandwich cost almost as much as my hourly wage. Buying that was out of the question.

John Healey has found the wrong scapegoat for the cost-of-living crisis. Squeezing supermarkets harder won’t make lunch cheaper

In a bid to quell her restless backbenchers

Kemi Badenoch tipped to reshuffle shadow cabinet in just days in bid to quell restless backbench MPs

Kemi Badenoch has been tipped to reshuffle her Shadow Cabinet in just days in a bid to quell her restless backbenchers.

MPs are due to return to Parliament for a brief stint in Westminster on September 1, which is when the Conservative leader is believed to be eyeing up an overhaul of her top team.

Claire Coutinho, the Shadow Energy Secretary who has been dubbed a rising star within the party, is expected to step down before she takes maternity leave later on in the year.

Meanwhile, Shadow Solicitor General Helen Grant, the MP for Maidstone and Malling, is also said to be bidding adieu to the Conservative frontbench.


There is a problem with making political sense of any Shadow Cabinet reshuffle, particularly this one. To my mind there are three questions to answer first –

• Does a chap try to recall who is in the current Shadow Cabinet before reading political messages into the reshuffle?
• Or does a chap admit that he can't possibly recall who is in the current Shadow Cabinet so may as well forget all that and take a gander at the new Shadow Cabinet after the reshuffle?
• Or does a chap watch a YouTube video instead?

Storm Kim

North Korea weather agency faces month-long ideological review

Some employees could face personnel penalties or forced reassignment to hard labor

North Korea’s State Hydro-Meteorological Administration is undergoing a sweeping, party-ordered ideological review this month after a string of forecasting failures worsened storm and heat wave damage across the country in 2026. The ruling Workers’ Party of Korea has ordered agency staff and workers at related institutions to hold monthlong self-criticism sessions starting in mid-August.

A source told Daily NK on Thursday that the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea recently held the State Hydro-Meteorological Administration responsible for a series of forecasting failures. The committee ordered agency departments and cells to hold general assemblies for one month and to produce strongly worded self-criticism statements, according to the source.

A cynical chap might suggest that this is the way to deal with the Met Office and its fixation with climate change propaganda, but forced reassignment to hard labor, or even hard labour may be too much for them.

Some strongly worded self-criticism statements should be easy enough though, could happen one day before the sun goes out.

When Independent does not mean independent

From the Independent -

Supreme Court lets Trump implement major mail-in voting restrictions

The Supreme Court will let Donald Trump implement a sweeping executive order for new mail-in voting rules that could significantly restrict voters’ access to ballots in high-stakes midterm elections this fall, but the legal battle is far from over.

Federal courts have repeatedly blocked the U.S. Postal Service from further implementing Trump’s executive order that sought to create a national voter registration list that would be used to decide who is eligible to cast a ballot.

The casual reader might not suspect that this debate is about the rather obvious potential for postal voting to be used for electoral fraud. 

The possibilities are obvious in the UK and even from this side of the Atlantic they are more obvious in the US. Something to guard against with procedural rigour we might think, but the Independent takes about 800 words to get even this far -

Trump — who has spent years baselessly insisting that voting by mail is ripe for fraud, and that manipulated ballots were “rigged” against him in elections he lost — is simultaneously demanding the Senate pass his SAVE America Act, which would also restrict mail-in voting and require ID to vote, among other changes.


And to finish we have this -


The Independent stands for many things, often uniquely so. It stands independent of political party allegiance, and makes its own mind up on the issues of the day. The Independent has always been committed to challenge and debate. It launched in 1986 to create a new voice and in that time has run campaigns for issues ranging from the legalisation of marijuana to the Final Say Brexit petition.

Burnham commits to Starmer’s beige lines

Burnham commits to Starmer’s EU red lines in blow to rejoin hopes

But a Downing Street spokesperson insisted on Monday that the red lines are still in place despite Mr Burnham making it clear that he wants to be “bolder” than his predecessor in taking the UK back to the heart of Europe.

The spokesperson said: “We remain committed to the red lines set out in the manifesto. We’re not rejoining the European Union, and there will be no return to the customs union, the single market, or freedom of movement.”

They added: “We want to build an ambitious and close relationship with the EU that will strengthen our economy and unlock great in every postcode, and the prime minister remains committed to that agenda.”

I don't know what "unlock great in every postcode" in the last sentence means unfortunately. Maybe it's a jargon glitch or maybe AI in No.10 North cobbled it together and the meaning is already beyond human understanding. 

Running On Empty

So far, one of the most starling aspect of UK Prime Minister Andrew Murray Burnham is that he doesn’t exist.

Take away the assiduously cultivated Northern Bloke image, not very convincing but it’s all he has,. Then remove the teenage Fabian ideology and what do we have left? There is nothing left, just a hole where his character ought to be.

There is ego filling the core of the man, but not an ego with character, just a large and unhealthy blob of ego without enough character to moderate useless fantasies. An ego blob lacking sufficient awareness to notice how things work in the real world coupled with a remarkably weak rabbit hole detector.

Keir Starmer was peculiar, but Burnham isn’t even peculiar, he doesn’t appear to have enough under the bonnet to generate notable peculiarities. His world seems to be a world of easily grasped symbols culled from a Fabian pamphlet aimed at teenagers.

Oh well, we plod on. Perhaps there is more to Burnham than Northern Bloke, Fabian symbolism and a flabby, overweight ego, but we’ve not seen it yet as tempus fugits away faster than ever.

Early Closing

Major UK-funded climate project in Bangladesh to close over aid cuts

A UK-funded climate project in Bangladesh is being forced to close two years early after foreign aid cuts, leaving thousands of vulnerable people without support and threatening to undo work that has already been carried out, The Independent has learnt...

Practical Action was supposed to have received £2.2m by 2026, but ended up receiving “far less than this”, says Rahma. The project was supposed to reach 57,000 people by the end of this year, but will in the end only reach 37,000 people.

“This abrupt cut has threatened our reputation in the community, which we have carefully built up over the past two and a half years,” Rahma says. “It has also impacted the long-term stability of the interventions that we have made, and limited our ability to plan for an effective exit.”


Not that we are supposed to make sense of emotional string-pullers like this, but how do we make sense of -

“It has also impacted the long-term stability of the interventions that we have made, and limited our ability to plan for an effective exit.”

The reference to "long-term stability" does suggest that there was no great appetite for "an effective exit" or any exit at all as long as the money kept coming it. Long-term stability of the funding perhaps.