Rodney's Milestone

Families worse off than before Starmer came to power

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

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

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

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

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

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

Plan for Change II

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

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


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

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

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

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

Political Theatre

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

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

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

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


This is political theatre.

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

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

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

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

Blog Stats and Honking Beeb

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

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

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

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

Realism v Magical Thinking

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

 
Affordability In, Renewables Out (again)

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

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

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

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

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

It never goes away

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

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

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

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

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

How very Lib Dem

Liz Jarvis MP slams Tories and Reform over climate vote

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich people could just move

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

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

   

Burnham’s fantasy about ‘trickle down economics’

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

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

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

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

Two 2030 target dates

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

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

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


2030 climate targets

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

Reducing emissions - raising our ambition

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

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


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

Bought and sold every day

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

What a grandiose mouthful of verbiage.

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

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


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

Seneca - Epistulae morales ad Lucilium c. 65 AD

How to Wear a Monocle (1930)

 

Welcome to the Club

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

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

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

Welcome to the Club.

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

“He was very kind,” Brittin said.

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

But of course, you are already a Club member.

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

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

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

Why Burnham Will Fail

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

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

What the Left doesn’t get about investment

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

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

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

The BBC’s unusual tactic

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Crisis brings clarity? It does indeed

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

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

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


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

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

Charles Dickens - David Copperfield (1849-50)

The bar is already too high

It is worth contemplating an imaginary situation where the UK electorate goes wild and votes for some significant improvements in how we are governed.

To achieve this crazy, impossible, radical ambition, the chosen political leader and his or her party would have to tackle the national debt, excessive government borrowing, excessive taxation, excessive spending, absurd energy policies, the Civil Service, immigration policies, excessive regulation, the NHS, policing, the armed forces, the MoD, a range of education problems, including universities, useless quangos, taxpayer-supported charities think tanks, the BBC and other activist organisations…

And potholes.

This level of political commitment would inevitably label the imaginary political leader and his or her party as extreme, extremist, far right, mad or whatever tired old labels come to hand. The political bar is already too high and there is too much personal profit for politicians to shove it a little higher. As the good folk of Makerfield should have known.

Starmer announced a policy handed to him by the Tony Blair Institute

A concise presentation of the Digital ID issue.

An unambiguously negative development

Andy Burnham warned 'basket case' Britain cannot withstand any more tax hikes as economy flounders

Andy Burnham has been warned that ‘basket case’ Britain cannot withstand any more tax hikes after a bleak two years for the economy under Labour...

Matthew Ryan, head of market strategy at Ebury, added: ‘Sterling and gilts are holding up for now, but we view this as an unambiguously negative development for UK assets.

‘Burnham sits firmly to the left of the Labour Party, and his record as mayor points to a significant step-up in public spending, a higher tax burden and greater gilt issuance. This is an experiment that the UK can ill-afford.

‘The critical near-term question is who becomes Chancellor. Any indication that a new Chancellor intends to loosen or abandon the existing fiscal rules could trigger fresh selling in UK assets.’

 

I lived upon words, and believed in phantoms.

Ivan Turgenev – Rudin (1856)

Starmer Legs It

Keir Starmer resigns and sets out departure timetable as London MPs surge behind Andy Burnham

Sir Keir spoke to the nation from Downing Street as he became the shortest serving Labour Prime Minister

Cheer up old chap, you are well out of it and at least you didn't descend to this level -

 

Old enough to vote but...

Students excluded from university free speech complaints system

A new freedom of speech complaints system for England’s universities has come under fire for excluding students...

The scheme was proposed in 2023 by the previous Tory government under the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act and was intended to apply to students, as well as staff and visiting speakers.

Key parts of the act – including the complaints scheme – were set to be introduced in August 2024 but were shelved just days before by Bridget Phillipson in one of her first moves in Government.

Although the Education Secretary later revived the act after facing legal action from the Free Speech Union (FSU), several key elements were watered down, including the use of the complaints scheme by students.


Modern education means handing down the customs of the minority, and rooting out the customs of the majority.

G. K. Chesterton - What's Wrong with the World (1910)

Old cars with big engines

 

Political theatre collides with reality - reality wins

Mannheim says goodbye to the 2030 climate target – political target fails due to reality

According to a recent assessment by the city administration, Mannheim is saying goodbye to its climate target for 2030. The Committee for Environment and Technology was informed about this on 9 June 2026. The city wanted to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 percent compared to 1990. By 2023, however, it had only achieved a reduction of 40 percent. Now there is a lack of money, personnel and sufficient possibilities for intervention. Industry in particular is largely evading municipal control. Existing projects are still running, but the central target no longer has a reliable basis.

Climate target was based on political assumptions instead of secure planning

The municipal council adopted the climate protection action plan in November 2022. At that time, SPD Mayor Peter Kurz led the city administration. The plan included 81 measures and more than 300 individual activities. Mannheim wanted to become a European pioneer city. However, neither all the financial resources nor the necessary technical capacities had been determined. Politicians declared a desired result to be the goal before they had fully secured its implementation.

Reality wins, as it will in Ed Miliband's shabby little huckster's theatre, but we're still paying the price of admission. Maybe he'll change the scenery and rewrite the ending if the audience becomes too restless.

Or maybe Andrew Burnham will do something constructive.

Or maybe pigs will learn to fly.

Politics as Theatre

Sometimes a viewpoint solidifies while alternatives fade away. To my mind, one of the solidifying viewpoints is an old one – politics as theatre. To take a topical example, the UK power struggle between Keir Starmer and Andrew Burnham is mostly theatre.

We've always known it too. The need to analyse doesn't go away, but even Burnham’s preference for ‘Andy’ over ‘Andrew’ is obvious theatre. Unfortunately for Starmer he isn’t a very good actor – he only does Awkward Lawyer.

The Starmer/Burnham performance highlights the problem though - what we are presented with is mostly theatre. As theatre it has little room for analysis apart from analysis of the performance, the stories, setting and perhaps the cost. Critics have no secure place from which to criticise – the performance must go on as the old cliché has it - and it does.

Politics as theatre is not even a remarkable political conclusion because much of the public arena is theatre, even in our supposedly technocratic age. From the World Cup to Davos, from the arts to soap opera, from TV news to activist stunts, theatre dominates, critical analysis doesn’t.


Amory had grown up to a thousand books, a thousand lies; he had listened eagerly to people who pretended to know, who knew nothing. The mystical reveries of saints that had once filled him with awe in the still hours of night, now vaguely repelled him. The Byrons and Brookes who had defied life from mountain tops were in the end but flaneurs and poseurs, at best mistaking the shadow of courage for the substance of wisdom. The pageantry of his disillusion took shape in a world-old procession of Prophets, Athenians, Martyrs, Saints, Scientists, Don Juans, Jesuits, Puritans, Fausts, Poets, Pacifists; like costumed alumni at a college reunion they streamed before him as their dreams, personalities, and creeds had in turn thrown colored lights on his soul; each had tried to express the glory of life and the tremendous significance of man; each had boasted of synchronizing what had gone before into his own rickety generalities; each had depended after all on the set stage and the convention of the theatre, which is that man in his hunger for faith will feed his mind with the nearest and most convenient food.

F. Scott Fitzgerald This Side of Paradise (1920)

The sound of scraping barrels

 

It isn't easy to know what to say about the current UK political situation. 

We may treat it seriously, or as an absurd circus or we may treat it as something in between, but these two chaps on the left shouldn't be there.

Neither man is anywhere near to possessing the ability required. Neither has the capacity to take a firm hold of the prime minister's role and stave off further decline. 

With Starmer we already know this is so, with Burnham we are close enough to knowing, close enough that finding out for sure isn't worth the risk.

Cheaper Screens

Good news for cheaper OLEDs: China's huge screen factory is finally rolling at full speed

• BOE has started mass production at its huge new factory in China
• It's cranking out OLED panels for use in monitors, laptops and other devices
• These OLEDs will be more affordable, and provide competition to drive down pricing with the dominant players, LG and Samsung

In a move that's set to usher in more affordable OLED monitors and laptops, BOE has officially flicked the switch to crank the production lines into action for its Generation 8.6 panels.

The Elec reports that mass production of Generation 8.6 OLEDs began this week at BOE over in China, with the manufacturer holding an event in Chengdu to celebrate the milestone.

Apart from the technical interest and a further indication that China is doing things that Europe can't, perhaps there is another hint that the world may still be moving away from the written word.

There are two videos and a picture embedded in the above article and the previous blog post to this one was a parody video which said things in a way that the written word never could.

Major politicians may emit spoken words that make little or no sense, but in doing so they may also have their faces transmitted to millions of screens. The words are heard, the screens are seen. Politically, which matters more?

 

A Makerfield Win For Our Andy!

Among the chuckles, a number of nails are hit on the head here.

 

Clearly unsustainable

BBC 'loses 300,000' licence payers as 'clearly unsustainable' licence fee considered

The BBC lost 300,000 licence fee payers in the last 12 months, an MP told the Commons as the corporation came under pressure, announcing major job cuts. At Culture, Media and Sport, a Tory MP branded the BBC's financial model 'clearly unsustainable'.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy is overseeing a comprehensive review of the BBC's funding and governance to ensure the broadcaster remains financially sustainable and independent for decades. Her review, launched in late 2025 as part of the Charter renewal process, focuses on modernising how the BBC is funded as viewing habits change.

Conservative Nigel Huddleston said: "Last year the BBC lost another 300,000 licence fee payers. The BBC's current scale and financial model is clearly unsustainable. Yesterday the BBC announced controversial cuts, including "The World Tonight" and "Money Box Live", without anyone in Parliament expressing a view. That is not right.

Below is a good question from the comments, but it's no good expecting a coherent answer from Lisa Nandy, her job is to make sure the state broadcaster survives. 

Lee Simpson
I haven't watched the BBC in years, yet I still have to pay the licence fee because I like to watch live football on Sky Sports which I also pay a subscription for. I am basically paying twice. Why?

People who talk all the time

On a recent holiday bus journey, Mrs H and I found ourselves sitting a few seats in front of an old chap and male companion. For the entire journey of about 40 minutes, the old chap didn't stop talking apart from a few brief observations from his friend. We don’t know what he was talking about though, in these cases we’re fairly good at ignoring content.

We came across another example over coffee in an M5 service area. The were four people at the next table, two men and two women and one of the women was another non-stop talker. There were three other people who could have said something, but there was no need, they mostly left it to the constant talker. She was still talking when they left.

Common enough of course, but what keeps listeners listening to non-stop talkers? Maybe they don’t, we certainly didn’t.

When issues aren't issues

Some interesting results from the Makerfield by-election, especially when we consider issues which are supposed to be politically important.

• Howling Laud Hope (Loony) -45 (0.10%)
• John Dyer (Ind) – 37 (0.08%)
• Peter Ward (Rejoin) – 35 (0.08%)
• Dan Clarke (Libertarian) – 18 (0.04%)
• Ed Gemmell (Climate) – 18 (0.04%)

Hmm- Ed Gemmell of the Climate Party secured fewer votes than Howling Laud Hope of the Official Monster Raving Loony Party and so did Peter Ward of the Rejoin EU Party.

Will Ed Miliband take note of how voters view climate change?

Will Keir Starmer take note of how voters view the EU?

Nope, they don't need to, these issues aren't issues if the political focus isn't on them.

Look, a squirrel!

Historic crucial pivotal crunch

That's it, our holiday is over so early tomorrow morning we'll be trundling back up the M5 to sunny Derbyshire. Meanwhile we're finishing off the stock of ginger biscuits we brought with us all the way from Derbyshire in case Devon doesn't have any.

Tomorrow morning, as we grab a hasty coffee before setting off, we may even miss early news about the result of that historic crucial pivotal crunch Makerfield by-election, but every cloud...

Out on the tiles

Deadly danger: Employers' liability insurance association warns of solar boom risks

A total of 74 workers died on German construction sites in 2025. Of these, 26 died as a result of a crash. 15 of these fatal accidents occurred on roofs. The employers' liability insurance association therefore warns of additional dangers due to the boom in photovoltaic systems. This is because more and more fitters, electricians and maintenance workers are working on hard-to-reach roof surfaces. Missing fuses, brittle components and unsuitable access can have fatal consequences there...

Photovoltaic systems take more workers to dangerous heights

Roofs have long since ceased to protect buildings from wind and precipitation. They now also serve as locations for photovoltaic systems and other technical facilities. As a result, assembly, maintenance, repair and cleaning work increases significantly. However, many solar panels are located in areas that are difficult for workers to reach.


When we had a new roof last year, the roofer told us we should contact him before installing solar panels as he'd come across a number of dodgy solar installations. Cowboy installers drilling through roof tiles for example, or not replacing tiles correctly.

Not that we intend to have solar panels on our nice new roof.

They live in an economic fantasy land

Labour’s taxes are driving jobs offshore, says AO World boss

John Roberts, the company's founder and chief executive, also accused ministers of living in an "economic fantasy land" and failing to understand the impact of higher taxes and wage costs on employers.

The online electricals retailer said it had offshored around 150 sales and call-centre jobs to South Africa, generating savings of about £2m, and that it expects annual savings to reach £4m.

Mr Roberts, who founded the fridge and washing machine retailer in 2000, said: "The brutal truth is that of course these roles could have been in the UK.

"When you make these staff ever more expensive and ever more inflexible, that's what businesses are going to do.

"We've got a political class that doesn't understand business. They live in an economic fantasy land."

Our political class does live in an economic fantasy land, we know that, but it's also the land far too many voters vote for decade after decade. Apparently it's where they think they can live without bad things happening. 

Bad things are happening.

Big Part

Starmer says he wants Burnham to play 'big part' in Labour government

Sir Keir Starmer has said he wants Andy Burnham to “play a big part” in the Labour Government in what appeared to be a signal he could invite him to join his Cabinet.

The Greater Manchester Mayor hopes to win in the Makerfield by-election on Thursday and secure a return to Westminster as an MP, and has made no secret of his Labour leadership ambitions.

Sir Keir repeated on Wednesday that he would not walk away from his post and intended to fight any challenge.

Presumably in that case, someone who already has a 'big part' must make way for Andy Burnham to show us how it's done. Ed Miliband is an obvious choice, but there are quite a few choices where Mr Burham could improve things simply by staying in Manchester.

Within the wider population, we could probably find millions of other people with more modest aspirations such as playing a bigger part in how government is run. That one is off the table of course.

When manufacturing is viewed as a legacy sector

Nicoletta Kouroushi has an interesting European Conservative piece on Europe's failure to grasp the significance of its faltering ability to manufacture and innovate.

 
Europe’s China Reckoning: The Cost of Outsourcing Sovereignty

Europe is beginning to recognise that sovereignty is not merely a legal or political concept, as it also rests on the capacity to produce, innovate, and sustain economic power.

China now accounts for roughly 30% of global manufacturing value added and has established itself as the world’s dominant manufacturing power. Europe once believed that globalisation would make such concentrations of economic power largely irrelevant. Today, however, policymakers in Brussels are increasingly discovering that economic dependence can quickly become a strategic vulnerability.

The implications of that concentration are becoming increasingly difficult for European policymakers to ignore. As the European Union debates tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, investigates state subsidies, and seeks ways to shield domestic industries from unfair competition, it is confronting a reality it has long preferred to overlook: economics and geopolitics can no longer be separated.

The issue is not only one of trade balances or market access but also of resilience, competitiveness, and Europe’s capacity to act autonomously in an increasingly contested international environment.


The whole piece is well worth reading as Europe, including the UK, slowly drowns in a swamp of incompetence, bureaucracy and useless ideology. 

In the case of the UK, replacing Keir Starmer with Andy Burnham as Prime Minister will to nothing whatever to turn this around, their power struggle is wholly irrelevant.

For decades, many European governments assumed that industrial capacity could be taken for granted. Manufacturing was often viewed as a legacy sector rather than a strategic asset, while policymakers focused on regulation, finance, services, and climate governance, paying comparatively less attention to maintaining competitive production. At the same time, energy costs rose, permitting procedures became increasingly cumbersome, and businesses faced mounting regulatory obligations.

Chris Uhlmann on Australia's energy transition

 

Crumbs, what does that imply?

A man’s social rank is determined by the amount of bread he eats in a sandwich.

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

ABF’s Hovis takeover deal given go-ahead by competition watchdog

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said ABF could have pulled out of the UK bakery sector if the merger were not to take place.

The takeover of Hovis by Kingsmill owner Associated British Foods (ABF) has been cleared by the UK competition watchdog...

Both companies have been affected by an overall decline in demand for bread, increased demand for lower-margin supermarket own brand bread and significant cost increases, particularly for energy, wheat and distribution.

Significant cost increases for energy, wheat and distribution eh? That would be tangled up with Mad Ed Miliband's energy games, although on a personal note we eat less bread these days, it's not the staple it once was. Maybe it's a social status thing as Scott Fitzgerald said. 

Crumbs, what does that imply?

Made without warning or scientific review.

Trump admin faces backlash over plan to dismantle ocean sensor

• A bipartisan group of senators and two Democratic House committees are challenging the National Science Foundation's (NSF) plan to dismantle the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), a crucial ocean monitoring network.
• The OOI, a $386 million network of over 900 sensors, has tracked ocean circulation, climate change, and extreme weather for a decade, with data freely available and contributing to over 500 scientific publications.
• The NSF plans to remove most OOI instruments by 2027, citing 'evolving scientific priorities,' a decision that scientists say was made without warning or scientific review.

No doubt the decision was made without warning because there is only one conclusion a scientific review was ever likely to reach. It would also be designed to take longer than Donald Trump's remaining time as US President. 

It's what they do.

Surely Andy, this dead horse is already buried

Andy Burnham says he 'would revive HS2' if he became prime minister

Andy Burnham has said he 'would revive HS2' if he became Prime Minister by using a 'Crossrail style' of funding.

The Greater Manchester Mayor said that he would revive the northern leg of HS2, between Birmingham and Manchester, as he claimed the 'lack of high-quality rail infrastructure in the north of England holds back its growth potential'.

Speaking to the i Paper about what he would do if he became Prime Minister, Burnham said 'if you put that infrastructure in, it lays the foundations for higher growth'.

He was ineffectual and vaguely helpless here as he had always been. One of those personalities who, in spite of all their words, are inarticulate, he seemed to have inherited only the vast tradition of human failure — that, and the sense of death.

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

Spot the Savings

NHS says Microsoft Copilot rollout could save ‘millions of hours’ a month

More than 500,000 staff in England will be given access to the AI administrative-support tool after a major health service trial found average time savings of 43 minutes a day

 
NHS England has announced that it will provide more than 500,000 staff with access to Microsoft 365 Copilot by the end of October after a trial found large potential time savings.

If 500,000 staff save 43 minutes per day in an 8 hour day, then that sounds like an NHS which could manage with nearly 45,000 fewer staff.

Alternatively -

Rob Thompson, chief digital, data and technology officer at NHS England, said the health service is keen to embrace cutting-edge technology.

“This Microsoft partnership will mean staff can be freed from admin so they can focus more of their time on what matters most – improving care for patients,” he said. “Innovations like this will help drive NHS productivity so patients can get the treatment they need sooner and there is better value for taxpayers. The potential to save NHS staff around two days of admin time every month could be a gamechanger for patients. As part of our 10 Year Health Plan, we’re making sure every pound is spent on cutting waiting times and boosting care”.

Too timid to endure responsibilities

At the moment, polling suggests that about 63% of UK voters would vote Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem or Green in a general election. We might say that democracy blockers rule because these voting intentions, assuming they are accurate, cannot resuscitate UK democracy.

Until voting habits change drastically towards the promotion of major reform around issues voters claim to care about, then it is not clear how anything democratically positive will come about.

Opinion polls are a political scammer's guide. Voting intention polls are a political scammer's guide. As a result, voters are mostly scammed until the next election when they will be scammed again.

It’s an old problem and there are few indications of worthwhile change. Democracy hasn’t decayed as G K Chesterton wrote well over a century ago, it never really got going –


Now most modern freedom is at root fear. It is not so much that we are too bold to endure rules; it is rather that we are too timid to endure responsibilities. And Mr. Shaw and such people are especially shrinking from that awful and ancestral responsibility to which our fathers committed us when they took the wild step of becoming men. I mean the responsibility of affirming the truth of our human tradition and handing it on with a voice of authority, an unshaken voice.

That is the one eternal education; to be sure enough that something is true that you dare to tell it to a child. From this high audacious duty the moderns are fleeing on every side; and the only excuse for them is, (of course,) that their modern philosophies are so half-baked and hypothetical that they cannot convince themselves enough to convince even a newborn babe. This, of course, is connected with the decay of democracy; and is somewhat of a separate subject.

G K Chesterton – What’s Wrong With the World (1910)

It doesn’t feel doable, does it?

UK heading for ‘poisonous’ politics of the US, Andy Burnham says

The Greater Manchester mayor said ‘things are getting harder, and politics is getting more polarised’.

He asked the audience: “Does anyone here feel that we can just stay on the path that we’re on as a country?

“It doesn’t feel doable, does it? It doesn’t feel that we’re heading in the right direction.

“It doesn’t feel like we’re heading to better lives for people."

No it doesn't feel doable, but it takes at least two parties to sustain poisonous politics. One of them is your party Andy old fruit, has been for decades.

But you know that.

Why does the state keep costing more while delivering so little?

Damian Pudner has a useful CAPX reminder of the UK government's intransigent unwillingness to manage the economy and its own activities in a sustainable manner.


Reeves is closer to an IMF bailout than she thinks

• The IMF's former chief economist is worried about the UK
• Britain's debt interest bill has nearly tripled since 2019
• The gilt market has no patience for political cowardice

Britain’s national debt is on course for £3 trillion this year. Servicing it costs £30 billion a year at 1% interest and £150 billion at 5%, near where long-dated gilts have recently been trading. That’s a number so big it almost becomes meaningless. So, let’s try another way: it’s about the yearly gross pay of nearly four million median full-time workers.

That’s the background to Kenneth Rogoff’s warning that Britain has a better than 50:50 chance of a major debt crisis before 2030. Rogoff is not an excitable commentator. He is a former chief economist of the IMF, a Harvard professor and co-author of one of the gravest studies of sovereign debt crises ever written.


Familiar but well worth reading because of the question it raises - what is the state for?


Welfare alone is forecast to cost £333bn in 2025-26. The triple lock keeps adding pressure to the pensions bill, year after year, regardless of the state of the public finances. Meanwhile the public-sector workforce, payroll and pension promises have all grown through supposedly austere times, without anything like the productivity gains needed to justify the expense.

This is the conversation Westminster avoids because it leads straight to the real question: what is the state for, what can it afford and why does it keep costing more while delivering so little?

It’s impossible to say anything polite about Mr Miliband’s politicking

Andrew Montford has an interesting Net Zero Watch piece on the cynical way Ed Miliband disguises the costs of Net Zero.

The cynicism of the Secretary of State

Ed Miliband’s decision, announced towards the end of last year, to move three quarters of the cost of Renewables Obligation subsidies to general taxation was a move of profound political cynicism. In this post, I’ll try to explain why.

At first sight the move was an attempt to relieve the cost-of-living burden on consumers, albeit a moderately duplicitous one in that it simply shifted the burden from a household’s electricity bill to its tax bill. However, the decision to move only three quarters of the cost seemed strange – why not all of it?

The whole piece is well worth reading as yet another insight into Keir Starmer's choice for the role of Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.

It’s impossible to say anything polite about Mr Miliband’s politicking. The story reveals a man whose objective has been to screw the public, to disguise the fact that he is doing so, and then to leave a depth charge for the next government, apparently for his own entertainment. It’s the kind of thing that might seem clever to a student politician, but is simply unbecoming for a minister of the Crown.

To lose one minister, Mr. Starmer, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose two looks like carelessness

Al Carns resigns hours after John Healey as Starmer crisis deepens

Armed Forces Minister Al Carns has joined Defence Secretary John Healey in resigning over Sir Keir Starmer’s military spending plan.

In another hammer blow to the Prime Minister’s authority, Mr Carns quit from his role as he criticised Sir Keir's Defence Investment Plan (DIP), saying it is "neither transformative enough nor sufficiently funded".

Mr Healey had earlier resigned from the cabinet on Thursday accusing Sir Keir of failing to properly fund defence which he said “could make the country less safe”.

Too little, too late

Damien Phillips has an interesting Centre Write piece on Keir Starmer's self-inflicted failure to promote economic growth.


Deal with Gulf countries too little, too late to save Starmer

It is a mark of how much the Government is struggling that even when it scores a clear win, the voters do not care, and the news quickly vanishes from the front pages. The recent signing of a major free trade deal with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE is a classic example.

The agreement, four years in the making and the first of its kind signed between the GCC and a G7 country, would be the feather in the cap of any successful British Government. Worth around £3.7 billion (0.1%) in annual GDP gains to the UK economy, the deal is predicted to raise total UK wages by £1.9 billion and generate £15.5 billion in additional trade each year over the long term...

But behind the headline figures for the agreement are the missed opportunities for boosted growth and investment that Britain could have got out of this deal if the UK economy were more competitive and dynamic. The Gulf has vast reserves of surplus capital available for investment in the UK, but Labour has done its best to deter as much of it as possible. Keeping corporation tax at 25% and jacking up employer NICs have been accompanied by rising employment costs through an increasingly unaffordable minimum wage and onerous labour market regulations via Angela Rayner’s Employment Rights Act. Add to this the uncertainty around wealth and capital gains taxation, and the Government has created the sense that Britain is a hostile environment for business and mobile global capital.


The whole piece is well worth reading as we watch an unfolding Labour leadership challenge which seems to be wholly irrelevant to the economic challenges we face. 


Although the Government has had some successes with trade and investment on the international stage, unfortunately for Starmer, the Government’s domestic economic failures and its lack of ambition on free trade have killed any prospect of the voters feeling the benefits in time to save his beleaguered premiership.

Shopping

 

A litmus test for state control.

Labour’s rail nationalisation dream faces a looming taxpayer crisis

Britain's railways are creaking at the seams. The rail regulator ruled last year that a 7am Avanti service from Manchester to London should run empty to guarantee the train's availability in the capital and ease overcrowding.

It led to the bizarre scene of a 600-seat "ghost train" departing the platform of Manchester Piccadilly with a full complement of staff – while hundreds of stranded passengers looked on in despair.

Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, last month hailed the state-backed takeover of Govia Thameslink, Britain's largest train operator, as a "defining moment" for the nation's railways.

The takeover forms part of Sir Keir Starmer's flagship transport policy to nationalise the railways, slowly taking back franchises from private companies one by one...

With politicians of all stripes, including the possible future prime minister, Andy Burnham, hailing greater public ownership of key industries, the battle to fix the railways is set to become a litmus test for state control.

That risks quashing a wider nationalisation drive that, under a new Labour leader, might extend to water firms, energy supply networks, Royal Mail and broadband providers. Nothing less than the future of the British economy could be at stake.

This litmus test for state control is also a litmus test for what must be the most stupidly malicious government since... well... since the last one I suppose.

Yet when we consider the remarkable stupidity of successive governments, normal folk must have an equally remarkable capacity for just plodding on. Ordinary people doing what they do keeps the show on the road, not climbers of the greasy pole.

But we already knew that.

Not in our lifetimes or the lifetimes of most of our children or grandchildren

What Starmer could plunder from net zero’s £63bn ‘war chest’

How can Britain pay for defence? That question is bedevilling Labour.

The defence investment plan has been repeatedly delayed by wrangling over how exactly to fund the billions of pounds needed to rearm in a more dangerous world...

For most departments, the cuts being demanded amount to just 1pc of their budgets. But Ed Miliband's net zero department, with its planned capital spend of £63bn between 2025 and 2030, is seen as a far richer seam of funds for the taking.

Carbon capture, hydrogen and the Energy Secretary's multi-billion-pound heat pump installation programme could all be targeted.

Miliband has set aside £9.4bn to invest in carbon capture, most recently committing £439m of taxpayers' money to create a network of subsea waste pipes to bury CO2 under the North Sea. He hopes the pipelines will soon be pumping CO2 from factories around the Humber into permanent burial deep under the seabed.


Alternatively we have -

The Climate Scam Is Acknowledged. Americans Were Fed Lies, & Deserve To Be Compensated. – The ‘Dire Climate Scenario’ scam exposed

The Times last week produced a story headlined, “Why Scientists Retired the Dire Climate Scenario Used for Over a Decade.” The story reported that an international team of researchers has “abandoned a dire — and often criticized — high-emissions scenario known as RCP8.5 that has been prominently cited in thousands of climate studies over the past decade. The authors said the scenario was now ‘implausible’ given recent energy trends.”...

The authors of the new study are now presenting revised predictions that imagine worst-case scenarios “that could lead to similarly high estimated levels of warming later in the 22nd century (but) they’ve added a warning that these are not business-as-usual pathways.”

Read that carefully. The worst-case scenarios could lead to dangerous warming levels “later in the 22 nd century.” Not 12 years from now, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) (and others) have warned. Not 30 years from now. Not in our lifetimes or the lifetimes of most of our children or grandchildren. And even that prediction is unlikely to happen, they admit.

Stupidity v Malice

  

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

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

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


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

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

Deranged

 

Signal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

That is not a sign of a healthy system

Zack Polanski: 'Food is too cheap'

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

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

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

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


Zack Polanski is busy chasing the incoherent politics market.

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

The Curse of Awareness

 

Another one goes up

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dodgy EV Fire Data

Filed under "One born every minute"

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

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

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

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

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

Werner Herzog on Chickens

 

Hols

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

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

Let's have an Edith Wharton quote instead.  

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

Edith Wharton’s 1934 autobiography 'A Backward Glance'

Filed under "What could possibly go wrong?"

New proposals to cut bills with community batteries

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

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

Pumping heat into the debate

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

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

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

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

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

According to... er... AI -

Location and Size

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

Not everyone can do monotasking

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

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

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

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

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

 

Ed demonstrates monotasking

Lammy supports Starmer until he doesn't support Starmer

David Lammy defends Keir Starmer after Andy Burnham vows leadership challenge

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

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

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

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

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

No, I'm not betting on it either.

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

Plato quoting Socrates in Republic (about 375 BC)

Do you want chips with that?

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

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

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

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


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

Moving Targets

 

Types

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His vanity was of the calm, settled sort

Wilkie Collins on Honoré de Balzac. 


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

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

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

Wilkie Collins – My Miscellanies (1863)

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

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

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

Blame the phones

The irreversible smart phones and world’s dropping birth rates

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

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


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

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