Blunder

  

Ed Miliband just made blunder that'll cost UK billions and trigger tsunami of legal claims

The Labour Party is pushing through its manifesto commitment to ban new drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea in a move that will delight party activists and should horrify the rest of us.

It will drive up domestic energy bills and leave us totally exposed to the next energy shock. Even Labour-backing unions are up in arms at the move.

Worse, it will do absolutely nothing to slow climate change, because the UK will be just as dependent on fossil fuels as before. The only difference is that we will have to source even more from overseas.

Not that it's likely to make much difference. Nobody is likely to invest in new drilling until the loons and charlatans have left the stage and that seems to be extremely unlikely. More gesture than blunder, but politically significant.

A touching moment

Starmer says US relationship is 'stronger than ever' as he meets Biden in White House - with the help of personalised gift

The meeting comes after Sir Keir held talks with other world leaders, including Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as he arrived in Washington DC for NATO's 75th anniversary summit.

To cement the two countries' relationship, Sir Keir gifted Mr Biden a personalised Arsenal shirt - printed with his surname and the number 46 on the back, a nod to his presidential number.


A touching moment. I hope Joe showed Keir how to do the blank stare and hold it for at least thirty seconds. Keir is bound to find a use for that in cabinet meetings, especially when Angela pipes up.

Too many people in politics treat power as a game

Here's a YouTube clip where Steve Baker says there are too many people in politics who treat power as a game. "We need to be rid of them" he says.

The problem seems to be that politics has always been a game. In a wider sphere, gaming the system is everywhere, from local societies to government, from claiming benefits to the arts, science, media, gaming the culture - it's everywhere.

We all know what Baker means when he says this, we have just acquired a new Prime Minister who does nothing else but treat power as a game. This much was obvious enough well before his undeserved elevation. We can't get rid of such people, it's what political parties now want in a leader, what the media want, what voters vote for.

As Santayana pointed out over a century ago, the life of reason is a heritage. Lose this and the games people play are no longer constrained by that lost heritage.


The life of reason is a heritage and exists only through tradition. Half of it is an art, an adjustment to an alien reality, which only a long experience can teach: and even the other half, the inward inspiration and ideal of reason, must be also a common inheritance in the race, if people are to work together or so much as to understand one another.

George Santayana - Winds Of Doctrine Studies in Contemporary Opinion (1913)

A ‘minefield of imbeciles’

Labour sets out priorities on energy and climate - but how achievable are they?

Keir Starmer's new government talked a lot about energy in the election campaign, and has already made a slew of announcements this week. Sky News breaks down the top commitments, and why they will be harder than they sound.

Labour says it can get the UK off foreign fossil fuels, cut energy bills and tackle the climate crisis in one fell swoop: by making electricity 100% clean by 2030. (Last year was 51%).

It's not drastically different to the Tories' 2035 target. But the earlier date will require an "Apollo moon mission-like effort", said Adam Bell, director of policy at Stonehaven.


Starmer's cabinet has been described recently as a ‘minefield of imbeciles’ and a ‘combination of misfits’. Too kind in my view. This farce is closer to unprincipled charlatans jumping on a bandwagon where only the bandwagon and its opportunities count, nothing else and certainly not voters. 

 Watching it fall apart could be fun though. Let us hope Labour voters are watching too. They may learn something.

They are doing it still

 

 

Arrian

It’s fascinating how common it is to find hints of modern thinking in ancient writings. The example below comes from Arrian of Nicomedia and his Discourses of Epictetus which were Arrian’s notes on lectures given by the Stoic philosopher Epictetus.

For how do we proceed in the matter of writing? Do I wish to write the name of Dion as I choose? No, but I am taught to choose to write it as it ought to be written. And how with respect to music? In the same manner. And what universally in every art or science? Just the same. If it were not so, it would be of no value to know anything, if knowledge were adapted to every man’s whim. Is it then in this alone, in this which is the greatest and the chief thing, I mean freedom, that I am permitted to will inconsiderately? By no means; but to be instructed is this, to learn to wish that every thing may happen as it does. And how do things happen? As the disposer has disposed them? And he has appointed summer and winter, and abundance and scarcity, and virtue and vice, and all such opposites for the harmony of the whole; and to each of us he has given a body, and parts of the body, and possessions, and companions.

Arrian of Nicomedia - Discourses of Epictetus (c 108 AD)


There are hints of behavioural psychology in there –

Do I wish to write the name of Dion as I choose? No, but I am taught to choose to write it as it ought to be written. And how with respect to music? In the same manner.

Centuries go by and we forget so many ideas offering worthwhile development. Again and again we sink back into dogma, lies and futile ideologies spun by the rich and powerful and their academic stooges, endlessly reinventing the conceptual wheel in case we catch on.

They are doing it still.

Like an approaching storm cloud

Europe's newest rocket Ariane 6 blasts off in 'historic' maiden voyage

If the full launch is a success, it will give the European Space Agency (ESA) the ability to launch satellites again by itself.


Europe smarts as Elon Musk’s SpaceX wins key satellite deal

Launching a weather satellite with SpaceX and not Ariane 6 is a “surprising” decision, said Josef Aschbacher, director general of the European Space Agency.


Like an approaching storm cloud, we can almost see the anti-SpaceX propaganda looming. The indications and the sniping have been around for a while, naturally enough perhaps. Musk is too outspoken, too successful and worst of all he's unofficial.

Proud

Keir Starmer praises Diane Abbott and hails diverse Commons in first speech to parliament

Sir Keir said his first words at the despatch box as prime minister, having secured the keys to No 10 Downing Street after last Thursday’s general election.

He said: “Mr Speaker-elect you preside over a new parliament, the most diverse parliament by race and gender this country has ever seen.

“And I’m proud of the part that my party has played, proud of the part that every party has played in that.


Begin as you mean to continue, that's the bureaucratic spirit. Careful, empty twaddle anyone may interpret as they choose. Or just leave Hansard to file it.

As an aside, it's interesting how empty the word 'proud' has become. As in "proud to stock Izal Germicide" or -


Joe Biden proud to be ‘first black woman to serve with a black president' in shock gaffe