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)

That power of living in the present time

“I’m not sure that it is faith that enables them to promenade the state sword about. It seems to me more that power of living in the present time which most people possess to such an extraordinary degree.”

George Moore - A Drama In Muslin (1886)


An interesting quote because there are some people who in one way or another are aware of the past and how we arrived at the present time. Hazy and hugely incomplete awareness, but awareness all the same. Older people have that awareness imposed upon them, an effect which is multiplied if they are also interested in more distant times.

Today we see it all the time - that power of living in the present time which most people possess to such an extraordinary degree. It tends to hide the inadequacies of our times, even major inadequacies. Don’t peer down the memory hole it says, it will do you no good.

From illusion to illusion

Joy is passion, passion is suffering; we cannot desire what we possess, therefore desire is rebellion prolonged indefinitely against the realities of existence; when we attain the object of our desire, we must perforce neglect it in favour of something still unknown, and so we progress from illusion to illusion.

George Moore - Celibates (1895)


This is the rabbit hole the political classes persuade us to enter - rebellion prolonged indefinitely against the realities of existence. Political parties define themselves by the realities they persuade us to rebel against.

Now they are reduced to scraping the barrel with rebellions against carbon dioxide, human reproductive biology, practical personal transport, central heating that works and people who disagree with you.

Yet it does help us to home in on that strangely distorted word “progressive”. It means a person who advocates progress from illusion to illusion.

An Intentionist

‘Ford will create an impression in the part; but I don’t think the piece will run.’

‘And why? Because the public is too stupid?’

‘Partly, and partly because Price is only an intentionist. He cannot carry an idea quite through.’

George Moore – Vain Fortune (1891)


Intentionist - it’s a delightful word even if dictionaries don’t rate it. We elect intentionists, we are intentionists, we bond with other intentionists and learn how to become more intentionist ourselves.

Net Zero is an intentionist debacle. Trump was hated by intentionists because he isn’t one. Joe Biden is beyond all that but didn’t intend to be.

More from a hectoring profession

Keeping waist measurement less than half your height ‘good for your health’

People should ensure their waist measurement is less than half their height to keep health problems at bay, an NHS watchdog has said.

For the first time, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) says adults with a body mass index (BMI) under 35 should measure their own waist-to-height ratio as part of wider plans to tackle obesity.

An entire race, a whole caste, saw themselves driven out of their soft, warm couches of idleness, and forced into the struggle for life. The prospect appalled them; birds with shorn wings could not gaze more helplessly on the high trees where they had built, as they thought, their nests out of the reach of evil winds. What could they do with their empty brains? What could they do with their feeble hands?

George Moore - A Drama In Muslin (1886)

Moore was writing about Irish landowning families of the late nineteenth century, but today we have huge castes in a not entirely dissimilar situation. What could they do with their empty brains? What could they do with their feeble hands? In our time that’s easy – health hectoring is just one of numerous hectoring professions. 

Is it healthy to have so much professional hectoring though?