A Peculiar Ritual

Emmanuel Igwe has an interesting Critic piece on the gap between the Starmer/Blob narrative on UK-EU trade and ONS data. 


Brexit was not an act of economic self-harm

Whatever you have heard, UK-EU trade is doing just fine

Some circles of the British commentariat have perfected a peculiar ritual: that of prodding through good economic news, only to declare such news as bad. A major target for such investigation is Britain’s post-Brexit data. The latest data released by the Office for National Statistics quietly refutes the established narrative that “Brexit did deep damage to our economy”, as our Prime Minister said on 1st April. I promise you, it was not an April Fool’s joke.

When measured in real terms, after Brexit total exports rose by more than 23 percent, from £735 billion in 2015 to £905 billion in 2025. Meanwhile, the fact that Britain’s trade has grown faster than GDP in the same period is an even sharper rebuttal of assertion by erstwhile Remainers that Brexit was an act of economic self-harm. These numbers are empirically robust, unarguable, and yet noticeably avoided in mainstream political discourse.

The whole piece is well worth reading as yet another indicator that Starmer/Bob has yet to get over their hatred of Brexit and those who voted for it.

Despite the growing prevalence of non-EU trade for Britain, our current Labour government continues to insist on the importance of “dynamic alignment” with various EU standards and regimes — that is, mirroring EU regulations onto British statute books whenever the EU changes them. Under dynamic alignment, Britain’s regulatory scope would be defined in offices it cannot enter and decided by parliamentarians not elected by the British people.

Canada Bids for the Rabbit Hole Record

 

Paying bureaucrats to define marmalade

Marmalade may need to be relabelled as part of post-Brexit deal

Marmalade may need to be relabelled if a post-Brexit food deal is a agreed with the European Union as part of the government’s attempt to slash red tape and reduce trade friction with the bloc.

The spread will need to be sold as “citrus marmalade” if the agreement - which would see Britain readopt EU food regulations to boost trade - goes ahead.

The name change would reportedly be required because the EU is relaxing its labelling rules to widen the legal definition of marmalade across Europe.


We're used to this of course, it's just one of an uncountable number of EU petty bureaucracy stories we've been treated to over the years.

Oh well, it's worth reminding ourselves that there are bureaucrats paid to perform excitingly vital tasks such as relaxing the legal definition of marmalade. After previous bureaucrats were paid to make it tight of course. 

Yet it would surprise nobody at all if the relaxed legal definition has to be tightened again when a marmalade scandal erupts. The Tight Marmaladians could yet win.

Relaxing the marmalade definition doesn't quite put the Artemis II project in the shade, but it seems to be closer to the kind of adventure Keir Starmer favours. I bet he's a closet Tight Marmaladian though.

Dyson on Miliband's destruction of our energy assets

Sir James Dyson accuses Rachel Reeves of 'revenge economics' with taxes on farms and delays in North Sea gas drilling damaging nation and its security

So far, Sir Keir Starmer has declined to comment publicly on the debate over expanding North Sea operations.

Sir James described this as ‘folly.’

He said: 'As President Trump likes to remind us, the US has its own energy so can survive without the Strait of Hormuz being open, while Britain, under Ed Miliband's perverse destruction of our energy assets, cannot.'

It's far worse than perverse of course, it's hopelessly deranged as the consequences have been obvious for such a long time. Evil too - that's in the Miliband mix.

The Helen Keller story doesn't add up

Below is an interesting video on why the Helen Keller story could reasonably be classed as dubious. It doesn't add up as the video title says.

Also interesting is that Wikipedia gives no real hint that there are good reasons to doubt the validity of the Helen Keller story while Grokipedia gives those doubts reasonable coverage. 

 

Something none of us believe

M&S boss issues stark warning over worsening crime

Retail director Thinus Keeve has demanded action after groups of young people wreaked havoc in south London over the past week...

He also questioned claims that crime rates are falling in the capital.

He said: "I keep hearing crime is falling, especially in London - something none of us believe, and very few people working in retail would see."

It's the problem with politically important statistics, to believe them is to invite deception. 

Sadiq Khan warns Londoners

Vote Labour or risk Farage, warns Sadiq Khan as party launches London elections campaign amid dire approval ratings

The Mayor launched Labour’s London local elections campaign in Peckham after poll showing party could lose all but two of its councils

Sadiq Khan has warned Londoners that backing smaller parties at the local elections could pave the way for Nigel Farage to become prime minister, as Labour faces a difficult set of polls.

The Mayor of London launched Labour’s local election campaign in Peckham on Thursday.

Calm down Sadiq, these are council elections, not the general election. 

He knows this of course, but once Labour strategic "thinkers" have decided to demonise someone for political advantage then that's it - they demonise away like crazy.

Fortunately Labour spin doctors stopped short of claiming a Labour vote would help keep Donald Trump out of No.10 but I bet it was a closely fought argument.

     

The fashionably feckless vote

An interesting video, Charlotte Gill on the Green Party way to hoover up fashionably feckless voters.

 

Handing over the managed decline of the UK

Starmer signals need for closer ties with EU in light of Iran oil crisis 'storm'

Sir Keir Starmer has insisted Labour’s manifesto red lines on closer relations with Europe remain, as he signalled the Government will seek stronger ties with the EU in light of the Iran war’s global impact.

The Prime Minister said the “volatile” international situation caused by the US-Israeli conflict with Tehran meant Britain’s “long-term national interest requires closer partnership with our allies in Europe and with the European Union”.


Keir Starmer hardly needs to spell it out. He would deny it of course, but all we can read is his behaviour and that is clear enough - the managed decline of the UK is something he is prepared to hand over to the EU.

UK ruling elites have experience of managed decline but the EU has more. The Iran conflict is merely an opportunity to hand over the incompetence too. Another area where the EU has bags of experience.

Drowning in communities

Henry Clifford has a very useful Centre Write piece on the common but misleading political use of the word 'community.' Not an unfamiliar source of mendacity, but the whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder that it is a very common one.

Most “communities” are empty categories

We are drowning in communities. Gay community, Muslim community, international community, business community.

Yet, we feel increasingly isolated. Forty-four percent of Britons say they sometimes feel like “strangers in their own country,” and 50% feel “disconnected from society around them.” Indeed, these “communities” seem to be sources of opposition and division rather than connection. After losing the Gorton and Denton by-election, Matt Goodwin took to X to proclaim, “We are losing our country” to a “dangerous Muslim sectarianism.” Battles over the place of the “trans community” within society have likewise become incredibly divisive. While public figures like JK Rowling have faced death threats and boycotts over their views on the topic, trans people themselves have been increasingly suffering too — according to the Home Office, in 2014/15, 607 recorded hate crimes were motivated by trans identity. By 2024/25, that figure had risen to 4,120.

Community ought to be the bedrock of our society, the things which bind us to one another. Why then are individuals isolated and “communities” in conflict?

A large part of the trouble stems from a wrong, and statist, view of what ‘community’ means.

Community, properly conceived, is formed from the concrete connections between individuals — not from shared characteristics. Communities are existing networks, not downstream from categories, but groups of real connections.

I've Got Two Legs

Clarity, consistency and continuous learning

Mark Barry has an interesting TechRadar piece about shifts in online marketing due to searches producing AI‑generated overviews before lists of links. Interesting because it is something we see ourselves and also has implications about what we might call incompetent political marketing. 

The whole piece is well worth reading.


AI‑first browsers and the end of the pageview economy

With 60% of searches now ending without a click thanks to AI‑generated overviews, even established brands are disappearing from view at the point of discovery.

Many large business software and services companies are already seeing search‑driven visits fall sharply, even as revenue and product usage continue to grow, forcing a rethink of how demand is created, captured and measured.

This marks a fundamental shift because for years, the browser was the reliable cornerstone of digital marketing. Chrome and Safari became the dominant gateways to the web, and most playbooks assumed a predictable path: search, click, website, conversion...

With switching easier than ever and clicks falling, buying more attention quickly becomes expensive and does not always translate into outcomes. The teams that will win are not those that buy more reach, but those that design for clarity, consistency and continuous learning.


Political marketing may be somewhat different, but to take one topical example, the UK Labour Party is a political brand. Even its most loyal supporters would probably not praise it for marketing itself with clarity, consistency and continuous learning.

Loyal supporters might not chose to see their party in this way, but the comparison is interesting and the incompetent marketing unmissable. 

Not a Starmer fan

Labour suspends MP Karl Turner for criticising plan to limit trial by jury

A prominent Labour critic of Government plans for a major restriction on the right to trial by jury was suspended by the party today.

Karl Turner, 54, was leading internal opposition to David Lammy's proposal to allow juries to hear only the most serious criminal cases in a bid to cut a major backlog.

The Hull East MP vowed he would 'not stand back from speaking truth to power when it matters' after his suspension, saying his only concern was improving the court service.


Apparently Karl Turner is not a Starmer fan, Lammy fan or McSweeney fan -


He questioned the circumstances around the theft of a phone belonging to the Prime Minister's former chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, which may have contained messages relating to Lord Peter Mandelson's time as ambassador to the US.

He had branded the former aide to Sir Keir Starmer 'McSwindle' and in an LBC interview recorded just before his suspension accused the PM of 'treating the electorate as fools'.

Including Ed?

AI 'is a year away from knowing more than all human experts', those startled experts predict

AI will be ready to score full marks on one of the world's most challenging knowledge tests branded Humanity's Last Exam (HLE) in a matter of months, developers claim.

HLE was set up by tech bosses to see just how intelligent their systems are and consists of 2,500 meticulously chosen questions, spanning around a hundred topics from rocket science and mythology to physiology.

Each one requires at least PhD levels of understanding and to achieve a score even close to 100 per cent would earn someone the title of a 'universal expert'.


 

Ed - a leading Net Zero expert

Your money is our money

From Blackout News, AI translation from the original German.    

Government takes control of the Federal Court of Audit

In Berlin, the CDU/CSU and SPD are taking control of the Federal Court of Auditors, damaging the very authority that is supposed to independently audit the government's handling of taxpayers' money. After the departure of the previous president Kay Scheller after twelve years, the CDU member of the Bundestag Ansgar Heveling is to become the new president, while the SPD has already filled the vice post with the former Minister of Construction Klara Geywitz. The process hits the core of state financial supervision, because it means that both top offices go to politicians of the governing parties. Heveling's personality is particularly explosive, as he is considered a close confidant of Chancellor Friedrich Merz and still comes from active parliamentary business. The consequence is serious: one of the last effective control bodies of the federal government visibly loses distance from the very power it is supposed to monitor

Control of billions in party hands in the future

The Federal Court of Audit is not a subsidiary authority. It examines whether ministries are wasting money, projects failing or concealing risks. This is precisely why this institution needs political distance. If the government fills the top with its own people, it damages the independence of control.

Morgan McSweeney's multiple phones

 

Cheap as Ships

Royal Navy in talks to sell Batch I offshore patrol vessels to Uruguay

Local media reports the UK has offered to sell the three River-class Batch I OPVs, HMS Tyne, HMS Mersey and HMS Severn to the Uruguayan Navy when they go out of service in 2028.

In October 2025, the Uruguayan government announced that it would terminate a contract with Spanish shipyard Cardama, signed in December 2023, for two 1,500-tonne OPVs that were due to be delivered in 2028. The reasons given for the cancellation were “contractual irregularities” and possible fraud.

The acquisition of second-hand OPVs by Uruguay is seen as a short-term solution to the gap left while plans are developed to acquire new-build vessels in the longer term. The River-class would meet the Uruguayan Navy’s requirements for ocean-going vessels. Each ship would reportedly be sold for around $20M (£15M), compared with around $60M for a brand-new OPV. The Uruguayans will need to see more detailed technical documentation and consider support arrangements before advancing negotiations...

All three Batch I OPVs have now completed a life extension refit designed to see them serve for another five years and have been well-maintained throughout their lives. Inevitably, there is no plan to replace them in 2028 as there is no budget. Some of the Batch II OPVs, mostly forward-deployed overseas, will have to be brought back home to take over their roles while Type 31 frigates eventually replace them. The vague official line is now that the first Type 31 frigate, HMS Venturer, will not enter service “until the end of the decade”, so another gap is looming. Building a new batch of low-cost OPVs would be a sensible solution, or at least extending the Batch I in service rather than selling them overseas.

Keir Starmer's values - tell it as it isn't

Starmer 'won't quit as PM' even if Labour hammered in local elections

Sir Keir Starmer will not resign even if Labour suffers very heavy losses at the May local elections, says a Cabinet minister.

Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds braced the party for dismal results in just over a month’s time, stressing many people may use the elections to voice a “protest” vote in the cost-of-living crisis deepening due to Donald Trump’s Iran war...

Sir Keir was pledging to “fight for our values” in an increasingly volatile world as he kicks off Labour’s local election campaign on Monday in the West Midlands.

By gum, "Sir" Keir Starmer seems intent on using the Iran war to present himself as some kind of aloof statesman as his piercing gaze penetrates the fog of war through Lord Alli's special spectacles.

Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds is confused though. She may not have noticed, being too busy fixing the environment, but Labour was extremely unpopular long before the Iran conflict.

Something else Emma may not have noticed is that it is Labour policies which have been busily damaging the UK economy and Donald Trump isn't the UK Prime Minister - "Sir" Keir Starmer is.

Lost for Words

Lost for words! Proof we're losing the art of conversation as Britons using 20 per cent fewer words

They say the art of conversation is dead – and psychologists have found we now speak about 20 per cent fewer words every day than we did two decades ago.

We are losing more than 300 words from our daily conversations every day – equivalent to 120,000 words a year, a study reveals.

The biggest decline is among Gen Z, with major implications for the loneliness epidemic and how we communicate in the future, especially with the rise of AI.

Baffling - perhaps there are reasons why we don't listen to words as much we used to - 

 

Propaganda Works

Large crowds attend 'No Kings' rallies against Trump across US

More than 3,200 events ‌were planned in all 50 states, and organisers hoped it would be the largest single-day protest in US history.

Tens of thousands of anti-Trump protesters have been attending "No Kings" rallies on Saturday across the US.

More than 3,200 events ‌were planned in all 50 states, and organisers hoped it would be the biggest single-day protest in US history.

The words provide the unmissable clues - 'planned in all 50 states' and 'organisers'. 

The weird but too familiar aspect is that supposedly intelligent and independent people are willing to be organised in this way and are prepared to rally round an infantile slogan as such as 'No Kings'.

'No Kings' is broad-brush, virtue-signalling, fashionable and effortless. It is propaganda, obviously so, but it works. Are demonstrators generally uneasy about the effect such crude propaganda has on them? No, the slogan is not aimed at people who might be uneasy about succumbing to it. It selects them and we may assume that they don't know they have been selected.

It's propaganda and clearly about generating headlines, but it works well enough to do that, as the organisers knew it would. 

Hot Topic

Victory for the Mail on Sunday as emergency services start tracking cause of fires in hybrid cars

Emergency services are overhauling how they investigate accidents involving hybrid cars after The Mail on Sunday revealed that motorists are three times more likely to die in hybrids than in petrol cars...

A total of 122 people died in hybrid car crashes in 2024, compared with 777 in accidents involving petrol cars, according to Department for Transport figures analysed by the MoS.

But as hybrids are outnumbered by almost 20 to 1 on Britain’s roads by petrol models, that means hybrids are three times more likely to be involved in a fatal crash. Previously, the Government did not accept that there is a problem.

You will own nothing and be...

Video from the US, but the general trend has been visible for some time.

The Crazy Golf Solution

Cap on number of drinking venues in Derby city centre to remain in place

A restriction to limit and control the number of drinking venues within Derby city centre will remain after police warned crime could rise if it was removed.

Derby councillors have voted to keep large parts of the city centre a Cumulative Impact Area (CIA).

A CIA allows local authorities, such as Derby City Council, to restrict the number of licensed premises in specific areas – if they believe a high concentration of them could undermine key safety objectives.

The CIA encourages different types of offerings for the city centre away from drinking venues and nightclubs. Derby also has Vaillant Live, Derby Theatre, The Quad, casinos, crazy golf and cinema attractions. 

Time to be positive

The weekend is upon us, UK clocks go forward to British Summer Time tonight and it's moderately sunny here in Derbyshire. Perhaps it’s time to be more positive about Sir Keir Starmer, it’s a difficult job and he sticks at it. For example we could describe Sir Keir as –

Tenacious
Unwavering
Reliable
Dependable

A cheap and easy weekend pat on the back perhaps, but it feels good to be more positive about the chap.

Imagine a world

AI's arrival complicates Big Tech climate goals, and some worry it's locking in more fossil fuels

Tech companies set ambitious climate goals at the start of the decade, promising to slash emissoins [sic] that contribute to global warming

The race to deploy artificial intelligence is complicating tech companies' commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, most of which come from the burning of gas, oil and coal and drive climate change. They say they must be flexible as they rush to build sprawling data centers that can consume more power than entire cities...

Tech companies say they’ve made significant progress on emissions through energy-efficiency measures, buying renewable energy credits and power from sources that don't emit greenhouse gases and requiring suppliers to reduce their own emissions.

Imagine a world -

Imagine a world where a global scam is so deeply embedded that huge businesses feel obliged to purchase renewable energy credits while knowing quite well that these credits are as genuine as medieval indulgences.

That's our world.

The Litmus Duo

Meta and YouTube found liable in landmark social media trial

The trial is the first in a series of first-of-its-kind cases against Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Snap that are set to follow in the US.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have said "the floodgates are open" for more legal cases against tech giants after Google and Meta were found liable for a woman's social media addiction in a landmark lawsuit...

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex said "accountability has finally arrived" and declared: "The question is no longer whether social media must change - it's when, and how fast."

In a statement, Harry and Meghan hailed the "landmark" court verdict as a victory "for families, advocates, and young people everywhere - and a powerful message that justice has caught up to Big Tech".


Ah - that's the word we are looking for - justice. If Meghan and Harry tell us an issue is about justice then it isn't likely to be about justice, but about them. It always is - they are a kind of language litmus test and a pretty reliable one. 

This 'justice' is likely to reflect an underlying and powerful political desire to give compliant mainstream media a boost against digital media where sniggering about such people as Meghan and Harry can be part of the fun. 

Some people do seem to be addicted to their mobile phones though. 

Only an hour ago I saw a young woman park her car then wander across the road, head down, fiddling with her phone. She probably wasn't reading a sycophantic account of the latest efforts of Meghan and Harry to grab some attention though.

It's complex and there are language games in play, such as framing the use of digital media as an issue  of 'personal responsibility' or 'manipulation' or 'addiction' or whatever.  

Using the word 'justice' is part of another language game of course, but fortunately Meghan and Harry have signposted that one for us.

Judged on what I’ve delivered

Starmer: I’m not going anywhere and Rayner has a lot to offer

Sir Keir Starmer has said he expects Angela Rayner to play a “leading role in this Labour Government” despite his former deputy’s criticism over the direction of the party.

The Prime Minister insisted the ex-Cabinet minister had “a lot to offer” and expressed regret about her resignation last year after a row over her underpayment of stamp duty on a new property...

But asked whether he was “going anywhere,” he said: “No. I intend to be judged at the next election on what I’ve delivered for the country.”

 

Starmer Delivers

Bake your own

Proposed bread mergers ‘would leave Northern Ireland with just two commercial bakeries’

The proposed acquisition of Hovis Group by Associated British Foods “threatens competitive conditions for the bread market in Northern Ireland”, regulators have said.

And if the merger, first announced last August, does go ahead, it will leave Northern Ireland with just two large-scale commercial bakeries, where there was once nine.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is probing the deal for ABF bakeries (which owns Sunblest and Kingsmill) to acquire Hovis, which is currently owned by Leeds-based private equity firm Endless, and whose brands include Mothers Pride and Ormo.

If approved, the enlarged ABF would control 80% of the Northern Ireland market in pancakes, 60% of soda farl sales and nearly half of potato bread, which are all staples in the traditional Ulster fry.

We don't eat much bread, but it's not difficult to bake bread which is superior to most supermarket loaves, especially stuff like Mothers Pride. 

Using a decent bread maker makes it even easier, I can do it.

Dogma v Education

Damien Phillips has an interesting Centre Write piece on how the Schools Bill reflects Labour ideology of control and centralisation over more effective international approaches achieved via greater autonomy and accountability. 


The Schools Bill ignores international best practice

Labour’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill has returned to the House of Lords for final scrutiny before Royal Assent and will soon be inflicted on the country. Eroding both independence of schools and their accountability, this deeply regressive package turns its back on international best practice in favour of parochial interests and dogma...

The whole piece is well worth reading as yet another indication that the current UK government does not understand the limitations of its antique ideology. Or it doesn't care, which seems just as likely.

Indeed, if you look at the countries that have seen the most dramatic turnaround thanks to school autonomy reforms — Estonia, Poland, Portugal and England — it is clear that accountability and consequences for failure are essential for driving up standards. All these now high-performing systems are united by an ability to replace failing school leadership, withdraw contracts or close schools that are letting down their pupils.

Labour would do well to heed the lessons here. Their Schools Bill turns its back on this global education revolution by not only reducing the institutional autonomy and innovation that freedom for schools brings but also weakens the ability to replace failing school leadership quickly. Their Bill will leave England in the worst of all worlds, with schools that are simultaneously more centrally controlled and rule-bound but also less accountable to parents and the pupils that attend them.

Labour often flaunts its internationalist ethos. But, when it comes to education, they have chosen the narrow interests of teaching unions and their ideological opposition to the rigours of competition over changes that have been proven to work wherever in the world they have been tried. England’s pupils will be the poorer for it.

Starmer's marked distaste for answering questions

Keir Starmer's marked distaste for answering questions isn't news to anyone, crude evasions are one of his most significant personal characteristics. A charmless individual who seems to view any question as an impertinent distraction. He is not alone in that.

 

Meddling, ballooning and slower trains

New HS2 farce as trains to be made slower and even more expensive

Experts believe Labour is repeating the mistakes of previous governments by "meddling" with the project once again

HS2 high speed trains could run slower than initially planned to keep costs down – but it could end up inflating them even further, The i Paper has learned.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has asked HS2 boss Mark Wild to look at whether slower trains could cut costs and delays, as the project has been hit by repeated delays and a ballooning budget.

A dedicated bus route might have been a better bet, but the ability of government to screw things up at enormous cost suggests that the 'do nothing option' should have been selected to begin with.

A creeping reduction of industrial substance

From Blackout News, AI translation from the original German. Relative industrial decline is an issue we in the UK have been familiar with for decades and the issue sets lots of hares running. For example, if industrial production does go elsewhere and AI takes on a range of other functions, what is the point of mass immigration? 

Or to take another topical example, it is glaringly obvious that Net Zero does not favour industrial production and is likely to drive it to less ideologically hamstrung countries. 

Automotive industry is increasingly relocating vehicle production abroad

In Germany and other major car countries in Western Europe, vehicle production has been collapsing noticeably for years. Manufacturers are increasingly relocating their production to Eastern Europe. Last year, unit sales in Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK together were more than a quarter below the level of 2019. In Germany, the minus was 16 percent, in Italy and Great Britain even more than 40 percent each. The main reasons for this are high costs, overcapacities at the plants and fiercer international competition. At the same time, pressure is growing due to weak profits, problems in China and the USA and expensive electric cars with low margins. The main consequences are therefore falling production, endangered locations, job losses and a creeping reduction of industrial substance.

The decline often remains a marginal topic in the public, but it affects a core area of German industry. Manufacturers are building fewer vehicles and at the same time relocating parts of production to countries with lower costs. Industry expert Stefan Bratzel said: "Nobody is talking about it loudly, but we have a creeping relocation of production and jobs abroad." In doing so, he describes not only a trend, but a deep structural change.

But no crackdown on tax gouging

Reeves reveals plan to protect public from unfair Iran war price hikes

A crackdown on companies profiteering from the Iran war at the expense of millions of Brits is among cost-of-living plans announced by Rachel Reeves today.

The Chancellor vowed that the Government would guard against unfair price rises amid fears over surging oil and fuel costs sparked by Donald Trump’s conflict in the Middle East.

She told MPs on Tuesday that she was investigating cuts to tariffs on food in a bid to keep prices low and would be meeting with supermarket and banking bosses this week to “discuss how they can further support their customers”.

The Government will “monitor the cost of household essentials for both price rises and disruption” and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) will have the power to "crack down on price gouging", the Chancellor said.


By gum this is poor stuff, as if senior politicians still hope certain words and phrases might trigger something more than indifference. Twaddle words such as protect, unfair, crackdown, support, monitor, gouging and so on. 

Among voters, only blockheads are likely to pay attention and even Labour doesn't seem to have enough of them to stave off electoral disaster. 

Presumably it's the best they can do, but where do they go from such a low and hopelessly unconvincing baseline? Nowhere we'll enjoy probably.

Do It Yourself

B&Q and Screwfix owner hails ‘rapid progress’ as profits jump

Home improvement giant Kingfisher has revealed a jump in profits for the past year on the back of cost-saving efforts and “standout” performances from its B&Q and Screwfix brands.

Bosses at the FTSE 100 company said it has made “rapid progress” in its growth strategy as they hailed the “strong” performance.

That's no surprise, do it yourself and grow it yourself may have acquired more appeal thanks to the economic expertise of Rachel from Accounts. 

Interesting times

A powerful presentation and perhaps inevitable given the politics of the past few decades.

Unbalanced

'Every indicator is flashing red,' says UN as it warns of record 'climate imbalance'

The Earth is close to breaching the key warming threshold of 1.5C - beyond which increasingly severe and compounding climate impacts are triggered.

The Earth's climate is in a "state of emergency", according to the United Nations which has warned it is more out of balance than at any other time in observed history.

Forget wars, death, destruction and grotesque political incompetence, the real threat is made up numbers.

Curiously Familiar

North Korea orders 400 housing units built in North Hamgyong in a single month

Local cadres voice quiet alarm over materials shortages and labor mobilization demands

North Korea is pushing a sweeping housing construction drive across the country under the banner of “regional development,” and central party officials traveled to North Hamgyong province earlier this month to enforce the campaign’s targets with unusual intensity...

The officials repeatedly stressed that the current housing construction targets surpass those of the Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il eras, describing the campaign as “an unprecedented housing supply revolution for regional development in the history of the republic.”

Interesting due to a significant similarity with the UK government target of building 1.5 million net new dwellings in 5 years. 

Not only housing of course. There are prominent UK politicians and political pundits who have government central planning securely embedded at the centre of their ideology, where government is the sole originator of inflexible plans, targets and rules in all areas of life.

The State of Britain's Navy

Mark Felton's depressing summary of the current state of the Royal Navy. 

Sometimes reputations are very reliable

Bill Nighy: 'Don't be intimidated by someone's reputation'

Bill Nighy has opened up on why you should never be intimidated by somebody’s reputation.

Speaking to The Independent at the Broadcasting Press Guild Awards on Wednesday (18 March), the 76-year-old discussed his podcast Ill-advised, which sees him dish out opinions under the guise of an agony uncle.

Asked what is the best piece of advice he has ever been given, Nighy said: “ Don’t be awed by people's reputations, because reputations are unreliable.”

Evidence for the post title -
 

That's handy

Starmer faces 'cover-up' claims as chief aide's Mandelson messages 'were on stolen phone'

Keir Starmer is facing claims of a cover-up today after it emerged his chief aide's messages to Mandelson have gone missing.

Discussions between Morgan McSweeney and the peer were apparently on a mobile phone that has been stolen.

That means some information cannot be retrieved to be published with a swathe of other material about Mandelson's appointment as US ambassador.

It all sounds very casual and certainly doesn't come across as joined-up government, but the whole appointment process seems to have been casual. Especially when Keir Starmer is so keen to stress that processes have been followed after previous debacles.

Maybe Starmer could try asking Xi Jinping if they have the phone and can we have it back if they have finished laughing at the contents.

Hit or Miss

Any ballistic missile fired by Iran at London would be shot down, signals Cabinet minister

Communities Secretary Steve Reed says the UK has systems in place to protect the capital after Iran fired missiles towards a UK-US base, raising concerns over their potential reach

UK may have to rely on US if Iran targets London, experts warn

After Iran target a US-UK airbase over 2,500 miles away, defence experts are concerned over the regime's offensive capabilities

Either way there could be yet another panic about toilet paper.

The Universal Labour Era

An interesting People News piece on a Chinese government push for the elderly to re-enter the workforce, a move towards what is being called the 'universal labour era'. 

Shanghai Issues 'Work Urging Order' to the Elderly: Is the Social Security Fund Running Dry?

In the vibrant city of Shanghai, known as the most prosperous and astute city in China, a peculiar event has unfolded in recent days. Zhang, who was born in 1962 and just celebrated his 64th birthday, found himself unexpectedly urged by the government to return to work. After navigating through waves of layoffs and stock market fluctuations, he is now set to restart his life in the latter half as a 'senior intern.' The government's push for the elderly to re-enter the workforce has quickly become a trending topic.

On March 19, 28 departments in Shanghai collaborated to issue a document, delivering a 'work urging order' to the elderly. This initiative not only responds to the call of the Two Sessions but also serves as a form of 'self-rescue' by the government in light of a 35 billion yuan pension shortfall...

The document from Shanghai is certainly not an isolated incident. It marks the beginning of the entire nation transitioning into the 'universal labour era' as the mainland gradually implements delayed retirement policies.

The Hard Realities of Honesty

…for the first time it occurred to her that science was honesty, and that honesty was a great liberator. It cut away romance and sentiment and a great deal of nonsense, but it left clean wounds which would heal quickly without scars, leaving life whole and sane and cured. It could make people less miserable because it dealt with hard realities, instead of the unwholesome putrescence of dead moralities, and the high sentimental purities which had ruined so many lives.

Louis Bromfield – Twenty-Four Hours (1930)


Suppose we divide the political spectrum between two extremes of honest and dishonest rather than Left and Right - which is a dishonest spectrum to begin with. 

The trouble is, and this immediately pops up, is that the honest end of an imaginary political spectrum would be apolitical and the spectrum would become –

Political >>>> Apolitical

Okay - suppose we move on and change the Louis Bromfield quote to –

…for the first time it occurred to her that honesty was a great liberator. It cut away romance and sentiment and a great deal of nonsense, but it left clean wounds which would heal quickly without scars, leaving life whole and sane and cured. It could make people less miserable because it dealt with hard realities, instead of the unwholesome putrescence of dead moralities, and the high sentimental purities which had ruined so many lives.

Indeed – honesty is a great liberator. You know it and I know it, especially in these troubled times. Science and numerous other pursuits can be great liberators if they are based on honesty and they cut away romance and sentiment and a great deal of nonsense.

Therein lies the problem of course, our culture has been based around a certain level of honesty in certain areas, but the hard realities of honesty have not been applied to politics or social status. We do not cut away romance and sentiment and a great deal of nonsense even when we know or merely suspect that we should.

Unfortunately honesty is not some kind of panacea. Obviously it is common enough to be honestly mistaken and honestly uncertain, but honesty can at least be an ideal against which we assess narratives, ideas and assumptions. This is probably why we have political ideologies of course, to evade the hard realities of honesty. 

Ideology allows politicians to stand up and tell the most egregious lies, spin the most shamefully misleading narratives and foster the unwholesome putrescence of concocted moralities.

And we know it.

Sighs of relief all round

UK ministers begin contingency planning amid economic fears over Iran war

Donald Trump has branded the UK and other Nato allies “cowards” but anger is growing among cabinet ministers that his war in Iran could jeopardise Britain’s fragile finances.

Senior members of the government are in despair about the potential effects on the economy, with experts warning of higher energy prices and mortgage and borrowing costs.

They have already begun contingency planning in case the conflict is protracted, including considering lowering speed limits to minimise fuel consumption.


The blame game ramps up as we knew it would - make the plebs conform to something futile to hammer home the message. It's always the way.

The lower speed limits wheeze pinched from the 1973 oil crisis is a good one. Don't let the plebs handle it themselves by adjusting their own travel arrangements - that's no use for the blame game. It's no use for the status game either, but that's a game which never ends.

Keir Starmer and Rachel from Accounts must be relieved, but many others will jump in with their favourite narratives. Mad Ed is bound to.

Words v Action

EU summit ends in strong words but little action

European Union leaders emerged yesterday from a 12-hour summit overshadowed by two wars on Europe’s doorstep, yet with little to show beyond rhetoric...

European Council President António Costa attempted to frame the stakes in stark terms, arguing that upholding the international rules-based order was essential because “the alternative is chaos” and “if you want to preserve peace, we need to uphold the international law and uphold the multilateral system”. He explicitly pointed to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East as examples of what is at risk.

That sense of urgency, though, did not translate into action.

As we know, lots of people in the UK favour reaffirming our marriage vows with this lot, including that strange chap who pretends to be UK Prime Minister. Maybe demonstrations of obvious irrelevance such as this will change attitudes, but it doesn't seem likely.

Hypnodosh

Kristian Niemietz has a useful Critic piece on Zack Polanski and his plans to dazzle low carbon voters with yet more incoherence. This time it's economics. 


Zackonomics is incoherent and outdated

Zack Polanski is a great political entrepreneur but he is terrible at economics

So this is it. Zackonomics.

Today, Green Party leader Zack Polanski outlined his economic philosophy at an event organised by the New Economics Foundation (NEF). I will not pretend that I was listening with a completely open mind: I mostly made up my mind about Zackonomics on the day when Polanski said that his three favourite economists were Gary Stevenson, Richard Murphy and Grace Blakeley.

My issue with that is not that all three of those are completely wrong about economics (although they are). It’s that they are all wrong in very different, and mutually incompatible ways. You can be a fan of each of them in isolation (although you really shouldn’t), but you cannot, in a meaningful way, be a fan of all three of them at the same time.

The whole piece is worth reading as a reminder that numbers sometimes matter a great deal. The number of useful idiots who vote for example.  

I could go on, but I realise that I am missing the point by judging Zackonomics by the standards of a conventional economic policy programme. Zack Polanski may be terrible at economics, but he is a great entrepreneur — a political entrepreneur, that is. The lesson from Corbynmania, the Greta Thunberg movement, BLM, Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, the gender movement and the Palestine movement is that there is a lot of vaguely youthful, vaguely left-wing, vaguely anti-capitalist political energy around. That energy was looking for a political outlet, a gap in the market which Polanski spotted and filled. I wish he had used his talents to become an actual entrepreneur in the private sector instead, creating wealth rather than promoting ideas that destroy it.

Ed cracks another joke

Ed Miliband calls for fairness in business energy contracts amid Iran crisis

Energy firms have been warned not to rip off businesses as the Middle East crisis forces prices up.

Regulator Ofgem and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband have written to business suppliers to demand “maximum flexibility” in contracts for small firms.

Mr Miliband said pricing needs to be “fair, transparent and fully justifiable”.

Mad as a box of frogs.

Residential mining

 

Driving standards

This morning found Mrs H and I tootling down our road having set off on a car trip to a local garden centre. At the junction with the main road into town, we had a very restricted view of traffic coming from the right due to parked cars. Many drivers approach the junction at excessive speed too, but we're used to coping with that. 

About fifty yards down the road into town we had to slow right down for a car coming towards us on our side of the road. He'd been parked on our side of the road facing oncoming traffic but when driving off he had hopelessly misjudged his attempt to join the traffic flow away from town.

Coming back from the garden centre on the A38 we watched a queue of traffic build up in the right hand lane as one lorry spent ages trying to overtake another on the dual carriageway. Eventually he gave up but tried again on the next hill. We're used to seeing that though.

It's just an impression and maybe it's an aspect of old age, but driving standards don't seem to be improving.

Taking a joke seriously

Ed Miliband branded 'a joke' after 'waffling' TV appearance on The Martin Lewis Money Show

The Martin Lewis Money Show viewers were left fuming over Ed Miliband's 'waffling' TV appearance last night, branding the politician 'a joke' and fuming 'he has no idea what he's doing'.

The Secretary of State for Energy joined Martin, 53, live via video link on Tuesday (March 17) to face questions submitted by the public about heating oil and energy.

It's an uncomfortable situation. Ed Miliband is a joke, but a joke that UK big media have to take seriously because he is still the UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. Does he have anything worthwhile to say? No he doesn't.

The damage he's doing isn't a joke though.

Running out of time

Rayner warns Starmer’s Labour running out of time to win back voters

Angela Rayner has issued her clearest challenge to Sir Keir Starmer yet, warning that Labour is “running out of time” to deliver change and cannot “go through the motions in the face of decline”.

In a speech at an event by left-wing campaign group Mainstream, the former deputy prime minister said the party had come to be seen to represent “the Establishment, not working people” and called for a change of course.

For anyone hoping for some slight improvement in the UK political outlook in 2026, current leadership betting extracted via Copilot AI merely reminds us that we are all running out of time -

Political betting markets currently indicate Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting as the front-runners to replace Keir Starmer, with 2026 being the most likely year for a leadership change.

The latest betting markets show a strong consensus that Keir Starmer may step down as Prime Minister during 2026. William Hill lists 2026 as the favourite exit year at odds of 1/5 , while other bookmakers place the probability of his departure by September 2026 at around 58%–80% .

In terms of potential successors:

• Angela Rayner: Former Deputy Prime Minister and prominent figure on Labour's left, consistently leads the betting. Odds across multiple bookmakers range from 11/4 to 14/5, implying a 26-27% probability .
• Wes Streeting: Health Secretary and a noted reformist, is closely behind Rayner. He is listed at odds around 9/2 to 11/2, translating to roughly an 18% chance in current betting markets .
• Ed Miliband: Former Labour leader, maintains a notable chance with odds of 6/1 to 7/1 .
• Andy Burnham: Popular in the North West and former mayor, features at longer odds of 12/1 to 3/1 in different reports .
• Other candidates: Include Shabana Mahmood, Nigel Farage (in disruption scenarios), Yvette Cooper, and Kemi Badenoch, with odds ranging higher, reflecting lower market expectations .

These betting odds reflect public and political sentiment as perceived by punters, and are subject to change based on events such as elections, media developments, and internal party dynamics. They do not guarantee actual leadership outcomes.

Overall, Rayner and Streeting are the primary focus in 2026 succession markets, while Starmer’s position remains under intense debate, making this a highly monitored political landscape.

Boutique poverty measures

Ryan Bourne has a topical CAPX piece on invented forms of poverty. Interesting and worth reading as another example of campaigners shifting goalposts and inventing new bits of language to obscure the shift and also obscure pragmatic solutions which don't require campaigners. 

Invented bits of language are also used to obscure the totalitarian narrative in the political background, but we already knew that.


Why are the Greens campaigning against invented forms of poverty?

• Green MP Hannah Spencer is backing a campaign to end 'furniture poverty'
• Households do not receive neat little envelopes marked ‘for beds’
• Slicing poverty into ever more theatrical subcategories won't help struggling families

Amid some brief research about the new MP for Gorton and Denton, Hannah Spencer, I came across her campaign against a boutique poverty measure I hadn’t previously been aware of: ‘furniture poverty’...

This methodology is now standard fare among anti-poverty charities. You take the old workhouse noun ‘poverty’, bolt a spending category in front of it, and declare a new affliction which society (read: taxpayers through government) must deal with. We’ve seen ‘food poverty’, ‘fuel poverty’, and now ‘furniture poverty’. But why stop there? One could imagine ‘car poverty’, ‘clothes poverty’ and ‘cutlery poverty’ if we want to explore a new first letter. Or what about sub-components of furniture? Perhaps ‘futon poverty’, ‘ottoman insecurity’ or ‘coffee-table precarity’.

I, Me, Myself

The other day found Mrs H and I chatting about people who seem to be the only significant character in their personal world. For such people, everyone else seems to have no background worth discovering and little in the way of an independent personality.

The simplest examples are people who may be chatty, pleasant and affable but never quite manage to talk about anything but themselves and their own circumstances. Their conversation always veers towards their own lives and it soon becomes obvious that they aren’t genuinely interested in anyone else and never will be.

For example, Mrs H and I once knew two people on a walking group who would always chat quite pleasantly for hours, but seemed incapable of chatting about anything but themselves and their own lives. We weren’t the only ones who noticed it.

Both of these pleasantly self-centred people were socially active and willingly gave their time for worthy causes, but in a curious way they seemed to do it for themselves, not for others. Yet it would be too cynical to point this out except privately to people who notice these things. People do notice though, it’s not uncommon to come across such people.

The behaviour of professional politicians seems to be much the same. We tend to assume there is a furtive schemer behind the politician, but what we see, the engagement with noble causes coupled with indifference to real people – there are similarities.

The Lanyard Made Flesh

Marcus Walker has a delightfully pungent Critic piece on government by the lanyard class.


The malignant mediocrity of managerialism

A country ruled by lawyers and HR managers will be culturally dessicated and politically sclerotic

It is one of history’s ironies that the House of Commons voted to slash trials by jury on the same day as the House of Lords voted finally to expel the last remaining hereditary peers from Parliament.

It was the hereditary barons of England who forced King John to agree that “No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers…” The barons have gone, and so have our ancient liberties, and both on the same day. Only the bishops still sit in that ancient council, heirs of Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury who led the barons against the king in 1215. They are unlikely to be removed right now because no Labour leader with any sense would remove 26 cast-iron supporters from the upper house.

There is something more than historical timing that links these two decisions. They both reflect the belief that the only people trusted to make decisions are those who have been properly credentialled and have been authorised by people like us. If you want to know who the “us” is, look at who dominates the Labour Party, the Civil Service, the National Trust, the Church of England, and every other institution of note. A world run for and by a managerial legalistic caste, in which it is impossible to rise, or even survive, if you do not submit to their marks of authority, mediated by speaking the right language, submitting to the right training, earning the right credentials. Deep mediocrity calls to deep mediocrity, and proof of it only comes with a certificate.


The whole piece is well worth reading for the entertaining way it scythes through the desperate mediocrity of our governing classes.


This whole reform is a consequence of having Keir Starmer — the Lanyard Made Flesh — sitting in Number 10. Of course the man who once headed the Crown Prosecution Service believes only lawyers should be involved in judging crime; of course he doesn’t trust any old widow, tramp, salesman, student, business woman, or golf club gardener to try a person for their liberty. How could he? He has been trained and has the certificates for it, they have not. Law is something done to people not by people.

2 + 2 = 5

Ed Miliband says Labour will 'fight people's corner' on energy costs - but not how

The energy secretary has told Sky News that the government will "fight people's corner" as the war in Iran threatens a fresh energy price crisis.

Mr Miliband said: "We're going to fight people's corner... when it comes to the effects on them. That's why this week, we've been saying to the petrol retailers, the heating oil companies, we're not going to tolerate price gouging. We're not going to tolerate unfair practices.

 

Edward Samuel Miliband 

Ed Dives In

 

Sir Edward Jonathan Davey

Davey demands 'new Magna Carta' to protect Britain from Trump

Sir Ed Davey has called for Britain to adopt a new written constitution, arguing it is essential to make the nation "resistant to authoritarian creeps like Donald Trump".

Speaking at the Liberal Democrat spring conference, the party leader advocated for a "new Magna Carta" to safeguard the UK's fundamental commitments to human rights, the NHS, and freedom of expression from potential erosion.

Does Magna Carta mean nothing to you? Did she die in vain?

Infantile fantasists run our economy

 

I do not blame myself for anything

Rachel Reeves gives damning verdict on Brexit’s impact on Britain

• Rachel Reeves has stated in an interview with The Times that Brexit has negatively impacted Britain's economy, growth, and prices.
• The Chancellor advocates for closer economic ties with the European Union, describing it as the "biggest prize" for the UK.

 

I do not blame myself for anything. I am a result, not a cause. I am trying to think. I am not through yet. I am going to begin again when I get things thought out.

Sherwood Anderson - Windy McPherson's Son (1916)

How's it going Rodney?

How Starmer’s inner circle colluded to see no evil, hear no evil on Mandelson

Matthew (now Lord) Doyle, Sir Keir’s then director of communications, and Morgan McSweeney, his then chief of staff, were handed the job of conducting due diligence on the “Prince of Darkness”, who happened to be a long-standing friend of both...

The initial due diligence on the peer was so informal that it seems to have been done via conversations with Lord Mandelson, rather than in writing, meaning official records are sketchy.


Epstein supplied Mandelson with illegal drugs and Botox while he was in government

Jeffrey Epstein illegally supplied Peter Mandelson with drugs while he was a government minister, The Mail on Sunday can reveal...

The astonishing exchanges came while Epstein was under house arrest after his conviction for soliciting sex from a 14-year-old girl. And in the most shocking message, Mandelson tells the sex offender that drugs thought to be Xanax sedatives are 'all very well but you need someone to use them on…'

UK 52 Kyrgyzstan 52

Global Internet Freedom Rankings: Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan Far Ahead of Eurasian Neighbors

The 2026 Global Internet Freedom Rankings, published this week by the research agency Cloudwards, have revealed that the five countries of Central Asia have significantly less internet censorship than all of their Eurasian neighbors. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan’s online environments emerge as particularly encouraging cases...

The only Eurasian country to rival Tajikistan is its northern neighbor Kyrgyzstan, which has the second freest internet in Central Asia, scoring 52 in Cloudwards’ ranking. For comparison, 52 is also the overall score given to the United Kingdom and Brazil...

The authors of the Cloudwards report, British editors Kit Copson and Sandra Pattison, commented: “The reasons behind online censorship range from protecting people targeted by hate speech to quelling political dissent. In especially restrictive locations, censorship and internet monitoring are tools commonly to control narratives.”

They added: “The consequences for breaching government-imposed censorship laws depend on the country. They could include fines or even arrest or imprisonment for those in highly restrictive locations.”

Can't read too much into these things, but a UK score of 52 seems to be the lowest European score. Expect it to be lower still next year. Zimbabwe is 48, so let's hope we don't fall that far.

All bets are off though.

Professional standards

Government should lead by example on professional standards for IT and digital

Technologists working in the field of public services now have some profound responsibilities, which should be accompanied by greater safeguards provided by professional bodies, argues Nicole Symes Frazer of BCS

Last month, during the second ever Chartered Week, more than 40 professional bodies representing over 1.5 million professionals wrote to government with a simple message: if the UK wants to rebuild trust in public services and deliver reliable digital systems, it must take professional standards seriously.

A serious issue, but suppose we widen our ambitions and change the headline to something more radical -

Government should lead by example on professional standards 

 

We could go further -

Government should lead by example on political standards

May well have a political component

German state broadcaster lies about Fukushima deaths

On the 15th anniversary of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Germany public broadcasters have been caught misrepresenting the almost 20,000 people who died in the catastrophe as victims of the Fukushima “nuclear catastrophe”.

That is despite the fact that that just one death was caused by the incident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, according to Japanese officials...

The tendency of German media to misrepresent the tsunami victims as casualties of a nuclear disaster may well have a political component.

The lies may well have a political component eh? Must be troublesome for folk who expect state broadcasters to be apolitical, not so much for those paying attention to these things.