As progressive as candles and oil lamps

Burnham gambles on radical progressive plan to help Britain rise again

Andy Burnham has staked his future on a gamble that the public will back radical progressive policies on social care, electoral reform and Europe, telling voters that his agenda will break the mould of the last 40 years and “allow us to rise again”.

In a deeply personal speech at Labour’s conference, Burnham began building his next general election manifesto, acknowledging that he may end up paying the price for creating sharp new dividing lines in politics.

“I won’t pretend some of this won’t be difficult,” he said. “I accept I may pay a political price. But someone has to go through the pain barrier and rip the plaster off.”

It must surely be clear to even the dullest dullard that there is nothing remotely progressive in putting on the shackles of EU failure again. Neither is there anything progressive about slithering back to tax and spend which is what 'social care' will be. 

That same dullard would surely understand that electoral reform will aim to make it permanently impossible for voters to dislodge regressive political parties. Otherwise it wouldn't be supported by a man who may tun out to be the most regressive Prime Minister we've had for years.

Slightly less regressive than going back to candles and oil lamps for domestic lighting, but not much.

No gleam of reason, no momentary return to first principles, no abstract asking of any obvious question, can interrupt this mad and monotonous gallop of mere progress by precedent. It is a good way to prevent real revolution. By this logic of events, the Radical gets as much into a rut as the Conservative.

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

Bloke of the North

 

I say, that when a thing completely surpasses my comprehension, I am accustomed not to dwell on that thing, but to pass to another.

Alexandre Dumas - The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-46)

A new tool for the versatility of madness

Corporations claim their fossil fuel emissions are a drop in the ocean. But what if we could count the real cost?

The biggest coal project before authorities in New South Wales, the Hunter Valley Operations mine, will emit the equivalent of about 809m tonnes of climate-warming carbon dioxide if it wins approval.

That number, for most people, will carry little meaning, as might the calculation that adding that amount of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere will cause an extra 0.00036C of global heating.

But what if the public was instead told that that amount of carbon dioxide would expose almost half a million people to unprecedented heat, or kill nearly 15 million coral colonies on the Great Barrier Reef every time it bleaches, or lead to more than 100 additional deaths from heatwaves in Europe to the end of this century.

All those statistics come from a new tool that translates the emissions from burning fossil fuels into estimated real-world climate effects taken from peer-reviewed climate studies.

But the brilliance, the versatility of madness is akin to the resourcefulness of water seeping through, over and around a dike.

F. Scott Fitzgerald - Tender is the Night (1934)

The greatest orator of our time

Is she entirely sober? Maybe a Democrat voter would know. 

Puppet speech crackdown

A longish but interesting Daily NK piece on remarkably obsessive North Korean government efforts to prevent the spread of popular South Korean slang. 

It's an interesting example of a totalitarian government understanding the power of language and how difficult even the most extreme efforts at official control can be.


Puppet speech crackdown gains new legal weight from North Korea’s constitution

Years of harsh punishment failed to stamp out South Korean-influenced speech, so authorities turned to the constitution itself

North Korea’s 2026 constitutional amendment protecting Pyongyang Cultural Language has fueled a renewed puppet speech crackdown. Schools, workplaces and neighborhood organizations have stepped up enforcement.

South Korean-influenced expressions such as “jagiya” (honey), “oppa” and “jjokpalrida” (embarrassing) are not treated as harmless slang. “Oppa” is a term South Korean women traditionally use for an older brother or close male friend, popularized abroad through K-dramas. North Korean authorities view all three as a political and class threat to the socialist system.

Daily NK examined the situation in Pyongyang and Sinuiju through sources in Pyongyang and North Pyongan province. Both cities held lectures and study sessions in late July through party organizations, workers’ groups and schools. The sessions stressed use of Pyongyang Cultural Language and elimination of what officials call puppet speech, a derogatory term the regime applies to South Korean-style expressions.

Conspicuous Imitation

When UK Prime Minister Andrew Burnham met US President Donald Trump recently, the contrast between the two men was stark.

Burham comes across as a professional politician with little to mark him out as a distinct individual behind the obscuring veils of ambition, party politics and his place as the government machine’s regimental mascot. A shadowy shell of a man compared to Trump who certainly is an individual.

Apart from his presentational style, Burnham imitates Keir Starmer. He leads the same party and fronts the same government machine. In private he may project himself as a Fabian sophisticate, but that’s imitation too.

As for his presentation style, Burham could be any bland presenter familiar with public speaking. Perhaps he tries to imitate Tony Blair, yet imitation is one those aspects of life which becomes problematic if we follow it too far. 

We all imitate because we have to imitate whatever isn’t inbuilt from birth, including roles such as Mayor of Greater Manchester or UK Prime Minister. We know it too, we see children doing it and we see ourselves doing it throughout our lives - imitating. 

We imitate language from a very young age because we have to, but it never stops. Life offers so many advantages if we continue to adopt useful new words, phrases, expressions, arguments, explanations, information and insights. Even facial expressions and hand movements. Via language we imitate thoughts and beliefs too – social, political or professional viewpoints, attitudes, religions, biases. We even imitate emotions.

We imitate styles and trends – in clothing, hairstyles, music, entertainment, food, drink, interior décor, cars, motor cycles, bicycles, holiday destinations, sports, games, literature, arts, cinema, TV, online entertainment, travel, shopping, health, nutrition, clubs, societies, politics. Even careers, ambitions, bucket lists. Even body shape - until we look in the mirror.

The reason why imitation becomes problematic is obvious to all, the problem of locating a unique individual buried in the impossibly complex maze of imitation. Yet a curious aspect of imitation occurs where people over-imitate to become followers, fans, acolytes, believers or merely fashionable. It’s one of life’s oddities where conspicuous or even wildly conspicuous imitation is used to assert individuality.

At a basic level we have the imitation of important criteria such as true and false, good and bad, real and unreal, fact and fantasy. Natural sceptics tend to pull back from conspicuous imitation when it clashes with basic criteria and this seems to be a route to individuality.

People who know how to value their individuality seem to develop and enhance good/bad, true/false criteria throughout their lives, partly by avoiding conspicuous imitation. Andrew Murray Burnham hasn't done that.

A Ministry of Truth is coming

Adam James Pollock has a very interesting Critic piece on the latest UK government attempt to establish a Ministry of Truth, recently announced by Andy Burnham (real name Andrew Murray Burnham).


A Ministry of Truth is coming

BBC Verify shows why Burnham’s Ministry of Truth won’t work

This week, the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, told the United Nations that his Government would create a new National Centre for Information Defence to counter the threat of disinformation online. Burnham argued that this new body would allow “stem the poisonous tide” of disinformation that arose largely from Russia, claiming that the United Kingdom’s government could act as an “honest broker” of such arrangements, protecting the truth.

This new Ministry of Truth — as it may as well be named — would do no such thing, which has already been proven by numerous prior failed attempts at regulating information. To achieve similar ends, the Government already runs the National Security Online Information Team; the Government Communication Service; the Cabinet Office’s Media Monitoring Unit; the Home Office’s Research, Information and Communications Unit; the Foreign Office’s Hybrid Threats Directorate; and the Joint Election Security and Preparedness Unit. Not to mention whatever goes on within the intelligence services, the British Army’s intelligence units, and the National Cyber Force.


The whole piece is well worth reading as Pollock offers repeated failures as an interesting angle on the issue, particularly the ludicrous BBC Verify.

The limitations of such a vehicle’s aims can be summarised most coherently by none other than the most famous of all failed attempts at countering “misinformation”: BBC Verify.

Launched in 2023 with a team of sixty taxpayer-funded zealots, BBC Verify sought to bring “radical transparency” to, er, the news, by “pulling back the curtain” on its own staff’s journalism. What it revealed, more than dedicated and documentable disinformation campaigns, was a failure of both the BBC and BBC Verify to accurately report the truth.

Stand and Deliver

‘I can deliver’: Burnham pledges radical change on eve of Labour conference

Exclusive: UK prime minister says delivering fiscal stability would be ‘crucial’ to be able to fix bigger problems

Andy Burnham has said he can deliver on his promise of radical change for the country despite severe economic headwinds, telling the Guardian: “There’s always things you can do; it’s just whether you’re prepared to do them.”


More low grade twaddle, particularly low when we consider the level of confidence which must have induced Makerfield voters to go skipping off to the polling station or faithfully fill in their postal vote(s). 

Nothing about bus fares in there, but Burnham makes an unusually good point when he says -

“There’s always things you can do; it’s just whether you’re prepared to do them.”

Two good points in one really, there are always things he can do, but it is a question of whether a leader with his party background and remarkably modest abilities would be prepared to do them. 

The answer is 'no'.

Strewth, this is poor stuff

Andy Burnham pledges to set UK on ‘new course’ a decade on from Brexit vote

Andy Burnham promised to set the UK on a new course because the decade since the Brexit vote had resulted in “drift and division”.

The Prime Minister vowed to set out how he will deliver “good growth in every postcode, hope in every heart” as he arrived in Liverpool for his first Labour Party conference as leader.

Mr Burnham said: “We’re going to make this a really important week where we set out a new direction for the country.


Let us rummage through the twaddle. Ah, here we are -

Bridget Phillipson manages to come across as even worse than Burnham, she speaks of 'taking things to the next level'. Perhaps in a sense they are, but it's not a level up. 


Speaking to the Press Association on Saturday, Ms Phillipson said Labour recognised it had “a massive fight on our hands with Reform, with the Tories”.

She expressed caution about the latest polling, “because the only poll that will matter is the one that happens on election day in 2029”.

The Labour chair added: “But what we have seen with Andy Burnham is a real sense of connection with the public, taking things to the next level. That hope, that optimism, that sense that Britain’s best days lie ahead of us.

Give a bureaucrat a bone

Responsible Dog Ownership taskforce report

Defra commissioned research from Middlesex University (The Middlesex Report), to investigate measures to reduce dog attacks and promote responsible dog ownership, which was published in 2021.

The Responsible Dog Ownership taskforce was established in 2022, to consider these findings and make recommendations on measures to encourage responsible dog ownership. The taskforce includes representation from the police, local authorities and animal welfare organisations. The taskforce is comprised of a steering group and four subgroups, which focus on four key areas: enforcement, data, education and communications, and training (for both dogs and their owners).

The whole thing is worth reading for anyone who has trouble falling asleep. Alternatively any reader could zip down to the official conclusion before reaching their own unofficial conclusion. 

Conclusions

The taskforce concluded that dog attacks and dog control issues should be considered as complex and multifactorial issues, affecting different communities across the country in different ways. There is no single policy solution that could be seen as a ‘silver bullet’. As such, a range of interventions, both legislative and non-legislative, is required, from a range of parties working in partnership at national, regional and community levels.  

The taskforce hope that Ministers will consider these recommendations in detail and take action to progress them. Meaningful change will require collaboration. It is clear that everybody has a role to play, including government, police forces, local authorities, dog owners, animal welfare organisations, the wider public, healthcare providers and safeguarding professionals to name but a few. It is hoped that the Responsible Dog Ownership taskforce can continue to play a role in coordinating these groups to ensure significant improvements in responsible dog ownership over time.

The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men... but it's mainly mice these days

Launch of UK’s 'largest AI supercomputer' delayed by power supply problems

A huge datacentre project hailed by the UK government will miss its launch date next year and could be delayed into the mid-2030s.

The site in Loughton, Essex, was described as the country’s largest AI supercomputer when it was announced in 2025, but power supply problems mean it now faces a lengthy wait before coming online.

Doubts had already emerged about the scheme after the Guardian revealed in March that the planned location was still an operational scaffolding yard...

Keir Starmer’s government cited the Loughton project when announcing the UK’s AI strategy in 2025, describing the site as the “largest UK sovereign AI datacentre”. Datacentres are the central nervous system of AI technology such as chatbots.

Ofgem, the energy industry regulator, has warned of a logjam in applications for electricity connections. In June, it revealed there were 315 datacentres queueing to connect to the National Grid, representing 73GW of demand – compared with the peak energy demand for the entire country of 45GW.

Translation. Yes we had a scheme because it is true that we wish to build a significant number of AI datacentres here in the UK. An excellent and well thought out scheme it was too, but we didn't claim any of it was plausible.

Probably the first trick acquired by any Stone Age schemer was to give his enemy certain truths so that he should not regard the balance as lies.

Christopher Bush - The Perfect Murder Case (1929)

Why should we trust them now?

Tories had 14 years to change Britain and they failed - why should we trust them now?

• Tax-Free Shopping Flip: Tory leader Kemi Badenoch announced bringing back tax-free shopping for tourists, despite having scrapped the VAT Retail Export Scheme in 2021, which she previously defended.
• Policy Failures: Over 14 years, the Tories failed to address immigration, IR35 rules, Brexit issues, and ECHR obligations, while also neglecting schools, hospitals, and crime control.
• Legacy Concerns: The party left the UK with record debt, low productivity, a crumbling NHS, and rising street crime, raising doubts about their ability to fix problems they created.

A very common question of course, but we could also ask - 

The UK government had decades to change Britain and it failed - why should we trust it now?

We shouldn't, obviously, but too many voters do. 

If you have no drying paint to inspect -

  

Zack Polanski says he can pull off 'one of biggest upsets in British political history' and win Holborn and St Pancras by-election

Exclusive: Green Party leader rejects suggestions his party has reached the limits of its recent surge in popularity

Zack Polanski has acknowledged that he is the “underdog” in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election but insisted that the Green Party can defy expectations and take the safe Labour seat vacated by the former Prime Minister...

This is despite a YouGov survey this week suggested the Greens would win zero MPs in the capital if a general election was held tomorrow amid a “Burnham bounce” for Labour across the country.

The system working as intended

 

Two Headlines

Tesco’s slow retreat from Europe is depressing

Tesco is shrinking, and appears to be retreating from all its European operations outside the UK and Ireland, following reports the supermarket is in talks with the owners of Lidl to offload operations in Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic, which together account for a little under a tenth of its total turnover.


Retailers urge Healey to unwind national insurance hike to boost jobs

Retailers have called on Chancellor John Healey to unwind some of the national insurance reforms made by his predecessor in a bid to tackle the youth joblessness crisis.

Speed limit of 145mph

Mrs H recently heard about problems with a new Alfa Romeo and its speed limit warning system. On a stretch of 30mph urban road it showed a limit of 145mph for example.

Not an unknown problem apparently -

My Tonale is now just over a year old and from new has coped very badly with recognising speed limits.

I have it showing 10mph in 40, 45mph in 20, 145mph in 40 - you get the idea.

This is every day not just every so often.

The UK is a climate-science superpower

UK to join new EU ocean science scheme amid El Nino concerns

Environment Secretary Angela Eagle will today announce Britain is joining the scheme, Sky News can reveal, sharing much more data from bodies like the Met Office with counterparts in the EU and Canada than previously.

Her department said the initiative would help inform future flood defences and coastal planning, helping to protect the country from extreme weather like storms and flooding.

She told Sky News the UK is a "climate-science superpower" and said joining the alliance would "allow us to work with our allies to better protect our oceans and shield communities from the impacts of climate change".


Merely another reason to regard UK government-sponsored science as a bleak, diseased wasteland of political posturing, dishonesty, lost opportunities, squandered resources, and endemic corruption.

Merely another reason to pull out an Arnold Bennett quote about conspicuous ritualistic waste by the leisured class, because that's what it is. Nobody expects this game to have any value apart from handing out unearned status and remuneration to those who play it. 

In that sense the UK certainly is a climate-science superpower, a major player in a dirty game.

The great principle of conspicuous ritualistic waste had been illustrated in a manner to satisfy the most exacting standard of the leisured class; and incidentally a subject of talk was provided.

Arnold Bennett - The Roll-Call (1916)

UN Twaddle Exhibition

I couldn't see anything to enthuse about in this brief Evening Standard report of Andy Starmer's UN speech, but here are some bits and pieces I've picked out to suggest he's no improvement on Sir Keir Burnham.

Five key points from Andy Burnham's first major international speech

Russian disinformation

He used the speech to announce a new National Centre for Information Defence to fight Russian disinformation.

AI

Mr Burnham said the UK would work towards agreeing a set of global principles and standards to ensure transparency, access to AI models, and that development happens safely.

New national security deal with the US

The Prime Minister said the meeting was “excellent”, while Mr Trump said that Mr Burnham was a “man he could do business with”.

‘Decade-long plan’

Mr Burnham confirmed that his government will unveil a new decade-long plan for the country later this year.

The plan will focus on getting more people into work, especially young people, as well as easing the cost-of-living crisis for most people,

The Prime Minister did not announce any specific measures during the speech.

Middle East

Mr Burnham concluded his speech by saying: “You can count on us to stand up for those long standing British values of fairness and justice.

Burnham bows

Burnham bows to Trump over Chagos deal

Andy Burnham is reviewing the Chagos Islands deal after Donald Trump said it was “terrible” in their first face-to-face meeting.

The Prime Minister said he was doing “everything possible to find a resolution to the issue”, opening the door to scrapping the deal he “inherited” from Sir Keir Starmer.

Mr Burnham reversed his position after a meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in which the US president suggested he should review the “ridiculous” agreement.

It should be interesting to see what happens to this when Burnham returns to base.

I see no cliff

Ted Newson has a useful Critic piece on what he calls 'Britain’s energy cliff edge'. Nothing we don't know, but a worthwhile reminder that Andrew Burnham seems intent on driving us over the cliff while denying its existence.


Britain’s energy cliff edge

We shouldn’t sacrifice energy security for social security

Recently PMQs, Andy Burnham said the quiet part out loud. “National security can’t come at the expense of social security,” he told the chamber, to roars from the opposition benches. With the welfare bill expected to reach £400bn by 2030 and Burnham unsteady on a 3 per cent GDP target for military spending, it’s a startling admission but reflected in public spending.

He didn’t have to wait long for a response. Just a week later, at the Global Warming Policy Foundation’s annual lecture, Sir Richard Dearlove — former head of MI6 — used Burnham’s own words against him, warning attendees of the risks facing our current grid system. The ex-spy chief said Britain has “negligently wandered close to a cliff edge” and hearing the PM’s remark left him “in a state of pessimism and extreme concern.”


The whole piece is well worth reading as it emphasises yet again the serious nature of the situation. It's not something we can expect to survive as a developed country without major policy changes. 

So far, Andrew Burnham seems keen to avoid making those changes and relaxed about the likely consequences - the UK ceasing to be a developed country for example.


Moving Britain towards a safer energy system, as Sir Richard advocates, will likely cost money in the short term — switching from a wind-heavy grid to one powered by reliable sources doesn’t come free — but securing the future of the grid requires drastic action. Dearlove put the stakes bluntly: “We have very little industry left to protect and we cannot rebuild non-existent industries which lie in foreign jurisdictions beyond our reach.” A resilient grid is what keeps that industry here at all.

Groundbreaking stuff here

Labour’s race to net zero is driving up bills, warns IFS

Labour's race to net zero is driving up household bills unnecessarily, a think tank has warned.

A goal set by Ed Miliband, the former energy secretary, to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2030 risks "exacerbating" rises in energy bills, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)...

Taxes and levies on energy bills, excluding VAT, surged by 59pc in real terms between 2017 and 2025, the IFS calculated.

By 2025, these charges made up 23pc of an average household's electricity bill. The Government has since reduced this share to 17pc by shifting some net zero costs to general taxation.

Anyone paying attention knows all this, but the underlying message is that the government machine doesn't care.

Which we also know.  

It's policy and policy comes before reality until it doesn't, and possibly not even then. Until voters realise they could be more effective voting for and against major government policies rather than major political parties, then nothing will change.

But we know that too.

Quaint

Chancellor’s headroom to halve because of Iran war inflation and weak growth

Chancellor John Healey will face pressure to raise taxes or cut spending at next month’s Budget, as soaring borrowing costs because of the Iran war and weaker growth has wiped nearly £12 billion off the Government’s fiscal headroom, according to a new report.

The latest KPMG economic outlook estimates that Mr Healey could be left with headroom of about £12 billion in the autumn, down from £23.6 billion at the time of the spring forecast.

It said rising borrowing costs on the UK’s debt after the Middle East conflict has already cut about £9 billion off the headroom, with sluggish growth and expected downgrades from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) likely to to reduce it by about another £2 billion.


Surely referring to John Healey by the quaint olde worlde title of 'Chancellor of the Exchequer' has become an embarrassing anachronism. With a UK national debt of about £3 trillion, His Majesty's Treasury must be knee-deep in IOUs and very little treasure.

It would more honest if we were to replace the title 'Chancellor of the Exchequer' with some reference to a role which eschews plundering the economy as an answer to everything. A role tasked with cutting government waste, enforcing budgetary control, abolishing Net Zero, eliminating the patronage network...

Nope, that's all too fanciful.

 

Lib Dems not struggling for relevance says Ed as he struggles for relevance

Davey: Lib Dems not struggling for relevance, but MPs 'frustrated' at the system

Sir Ed Davey said one of his MPs was wrong to say the party is “struggling for relevance” and called the Lib Dems “the most united” party in British politics.

He said he understands how MPs get “frustrated” after they are elected to their posts and realise the limits of what they can achieve within the political system.

It's a pleasant Monday morning here in Derbyshire so it's worth admitting that Ed Davey is entertaining at times. 

There is a serious aspect when we remember how the ridiculous charlatan leads the equally ridiculous and always unpleasant Lib Dems in the House of Commons. Quite a few live voters are persuaded to waste their vote on them too.

But the absurd chancer is entertaining at times.

Distorted

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

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

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

Ah yes...


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

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

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

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

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

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

  

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

Sheridan Le Fanu - A Lost Name (1868)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile -

Shoplifting’s golden age

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

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

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

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

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

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

The headline polling numbers give one cause for concern.

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

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

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

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

The shallow and the insincere

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

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

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

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


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


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

George Moore - Mike Fletcher: A Novel (1889)

Why can’t Britain fix its roads?

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

Why can’t Britain fix its roads?

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

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

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

Borrowed Failure

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Analects of Confucius

Or we could call it arrogance

Maybe Ed is keeping his powder dry

  

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

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


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

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

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

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

Frittering away

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

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

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

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

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

HS2, Hinkley Point, Net Zero... 

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

Maybe Sadiq will tackle Godzilla

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

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

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

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

Restore faith

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

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

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

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

And so on...

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

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

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

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

Leaving politics to politicians has not worked

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

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

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


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

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

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

How to convert climate into an aesthetic emotion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Follow the donations

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

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

Follow the donations

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

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

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

A Nature Emergency

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

 

Tackling The Nature Emergency 

Council puts nature at the heart of future decisions

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

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

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

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

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

Diversity doesn't mean political diversity

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

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

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

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


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

Anthony Trollope - Barchester Towers (1857)

Burnham has chosen to feed the welfare monster

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

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

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

Burnham has chosen to feed the welfare monster

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

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

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

Neglect

 

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

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

George Santayana’s 1905 work The Life of Reason

Even AI systems may begin to wonder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stolen, expired, resold

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A slight degree of contempt

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

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

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


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

Virginia Woolf - Night and Day (1919)


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

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

Cooking With Numbers - Recipe £380

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

A closer look at “The Poverty Premium”

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

Freedom and crime are linked as indivisibly as...

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


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

Yevgeny Zamyatin - WE (1921)

Zack must have a solution for this

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

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


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

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


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

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

Crushing and incineration are no substitute for a material cycle

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

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

Those bootlicking apologists for trivial interventions

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

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

In defence of small freedoms

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

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

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

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

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

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

To put responsibility on the shoulders of a tamed man

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can do nothing if you are kept outside

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VW - Very Worried

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overhead the mynah birds are making a great to–do

Environment Secretary warns people to store food for weather emergencies

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

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

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

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

W. Somerset Maugham – Honolulu (1921)

The growth we don't need

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


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

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

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

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

Mayor deeply concerned about twaddle overshoot

Mayor of London 'deeply concerned' by Heathrow expansion plans

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

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

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

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

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

  

The most uninspiring official announcement since...

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

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

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

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

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

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