We’re really important says WHO

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

At least it's not Derbyshire

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scapegoats Needed

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Baltasar Gracián - The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

Two viewpoints - but one is Ed's

Britain continues to break clean power records

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

Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said:

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

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


Wind and solar are parasites on the grid

The unpopular truth about electricity and the future of energy

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

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

Stooge Trip

  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The never-ending game

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


How ‘distributionalism’ killed long-term thinking

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

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


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


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

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

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

Ferrari Luce VS Nissan Leaf

Low IQ Missiles

North Korea tests AI-guided missiles for the first time

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

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

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

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

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

The background noise of public life

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

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

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

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


Meanwhile -

One million lives.

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

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

That tolerance is no longer acceptable...

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

A sense of urgency

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

They are all mad.

Ignorance of the disgraceful sort

  

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

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

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

ALCIBIADES: Yes.

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

ALCIBIADES: True.

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

ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.

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

ALCIBIADES: Yes, only those.

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

ALCIBIADES: Yes.


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

I don't need any figures

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

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

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

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

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

Fast Pseuds

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

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

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

Labour Party: Two Headlines

Baroness Harman: Labour leadership hopefuls must be radical feminists

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

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

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

Robotic Agentic AGI Prototype

 

Numbers Game

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

 

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

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

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

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

At least sometimes or often

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Lavish Lifestyle

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Green Data Centres Go AWOL

 

Government slammed for failure on hyperscale data centre emissions

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

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


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

  

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

Remember this?

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

Our plan is working

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

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

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

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

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

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

To avoid or not to avoid, that is the question

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

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

Ideology seeks to avoid the messy unpredictability of life.

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

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

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

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

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

   

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

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

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

Baltasar Gracian - The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647)

Not exactly the political equivalent of splitting the atom

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


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

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

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


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

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

Voters Don’t Matter

 From the US, but the UK is no better.

Blotted Out

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

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


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


Morrisons ‘set to close 100 lossmaking convenience shops’

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

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

People can shade themselves in a number of ways

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

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

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

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


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

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

 

Dear Leader

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

Jang Jin-Sung

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Britain has no sense of its own interests

 

Wes Tries Noble Spite

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

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

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

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

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

“And we wonder why people are angry.

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

They pay us some money

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

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

But we already knew that.

Sentiment analysis

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

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

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

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

Credibility in Government is at stake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We'll walk.

Masterpiece

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

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

One of the masterpieces -

 

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

The dirty tricks campaigns

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

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

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

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

Imagine a headline - 

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

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

Timeless History Invented Yesterday

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

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

Timeless History Invented Yesterday

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

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

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

Moonlight

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

Dud v Dud

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Seems like a fairly basic check

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

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

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

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

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

Starmer may be gone by then

Olympic Games could come to north of England under Labour plan

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

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


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

Robot or bio-engineered cyborg athletics.

Competitive virtual reality games where even couch potatoes take part.

Cloud racing in sentient rocket suits...

Nope, by then it will be all fake.

Wes aims to make voting even more pointless

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The disunited kingdom

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mendacious, incompetent, evasive and dull

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Waymo Jam

 

Wes "backs" Andy

Wes Streeting backs Andy Burnham for Makerfield by-election

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

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

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

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


Imagine three texts from Wes to Andy -

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

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

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

Government AI chatbot

Government AI chatbot goes live across GOV.UK App

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

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

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


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

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

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

We live in interesting times.

  

Rupert's views on Angela

 

Just the one?

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

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

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

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

The peculiar hard, inelastic touch of incipient decay

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

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

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

Our safest bet?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachel Reeves could do with one of those

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

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

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

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

Rachel Reeves could do with a numerologist... 

Oh hang on, numerology is just superstitious twaddle.

Ed's the man for that.

A hidden order that connects them together.

Scientists discover new way to find aliens

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

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

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

 

They’re economically illiterate

 

An odd and atypical politician

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


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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

Political parties promote charlatans

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

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

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

But we know that.

Digital Cars

 

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

Duds and Superduds

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Experts Use “Calamities”

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

The whole piece is well worth reading.  

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

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

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

Equality.

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

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

Could be fun for a while

Who is the Labour MP threatening to oust Starmer?

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

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

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

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

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

Benefit now, consequence later

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

The Logic of the Leftist Voter

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

The answer begins simply: benefit.

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

The Global Gravy Train

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Always degenerating into repetition

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

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

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

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

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

But we already know that.

The remarkable decline of British nuclear capability

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


Britain needs to ignore the Blob and go nuclear

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

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

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

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

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

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

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