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Out: “Zack Polanski pledges to end the affordability crisis.” In: “‘Veg for seven pence is too cheap’, Zack Polanski says.”

· Environment · Political Economy · UK affairs

15th April 2026: Zack Polanski pledges to end the affordability crisis and ‘normalisation’ of foodbank use – The Canary

8th June 2026: Veg for seven pence is too cheap’ Zack Polanski calls for tighter supermarket regulation as food system is in ‘crisis’ – LBC radio.

June 8th, 2026 | 2 comments

The threat to democracy is her

· Media & Journalism · UK affairs

“Labour deputy says Farage is a threat to democracy and calls for misinformation clampdown”, the Guardian reports.

Reform UK is destabilising British democracy by spreading divisive material that is being amplified by bots and troll farms, Labour’s deputy leader has said.

Lucy Powell called for tighter laws on social media giants to tackle misinformation, arguing the online space was “open to wealthy individuals, and bad state actors”.

It’s open to everybody, even bad state actors like the UK.

She also highlighted the multimillion-pound donations that have bolstered Reform’s election war chest and “fund their powerful online campaigns”.

Reform UK should put that acknowledgement that they are running a powerful online campaign in their next ad.

Arguing Nigel Farage and his party posed a threat to democracy, she said the law should be strengthened to “tackle the scourge of dis- and misinformation which is ripping communities apart and undermining us all”.

She said Reform’s “exploitation of online algorithms on social media sites is well documented”, as was the way the party had benefited from “bots and troll farms to amplify support”.

A Reform spokesperson said Powell’s claims that its messages were spread by bots and troll farms was “completely untrue” and called her a “conspiracy theorist desperately trying to distract from a failing Labour government”.

“Rather than smearing voters and demanding more state censorship, Labour should be focused on fixing the messes they’ve created,” the spokesperson said.

June 6th, 2026 | 30 comments

“Half of Belgium sees the US as a bigger adversary than China”

· European affairs · European Union · North American affairs · Self defence & Security

“Half of Belgium sees the US as a bigger adversary than China”, reports EuroNews.

The poll also found that China is viewed less negatively than the US. Between 40% and 44% of respondents described China as an adversary. However, very few Belgians consider China an ally, with many respondents choosing the option “neither ally nor adversary”.

Despite that, concerns about Beijing remain. Nearly 60% of respondents said they believe a Chinese military attack on Taiwan is likely in the near future, reflecting continued unease about China’s growing military influence.

The survey also suggests that Belgians generally feel secure within their own country. Only a small minority believe Belgium itself could face a direct military attack, with 12% of respondents in Flanders and 21% in Wallonia expressing that concern.

At the same time, respondents supported greater European independence in both defence and economic policy. More than 80% said Europe should become militarily self-sufficient, while a majority backed stronger European responses to US trade measures and tariffs.

The poll also found strong support for limiting foreign influence in Belgian affairs. Nearly 90% of respondents said Belgium should not allow the US to interfere in its domestic matters, reflecting recent controversy surrounding comments made by the US ambassador to Belgium.

Despite growing scepticism towards Washington, Belgians remain broadly supportive of Western institutions. Around 80% said Belgium should remain a member of NATO under all circumstances. Many respondents view the alliance as a collective European security shield rather than an instrument of US influence.

Like it or not, the opinion of an increasing proportion of Belgians as revealed in this survey is shared by other European countries. Like it or not, the corresponding opinion of an increasing proportion of Americans is “Okay, bye”.

Quite possibly, this is all just a spat that brought on by the fact that, to use Scott Alexander’s formulation, Xi’s China is the “fargroup” you hardly ever think about, whereas Trump’s America is the “outgroup” whose antics irritate you every day.

But if these attitudes are real, the Belgians and other Europeans need to get equally real about the cost of the changes they say they want. “More than 80% said Europe should become militarily self-sufficient”. Europe being militarily self-sufficient would make Belgium safer, but also poorer. It would require more Belgians to be ready to fight and die for their country at a moment’s notice. I am not sure they even realise that that is what Trump has been asking them to do for years.

June 5th, 2026 | 18 comments

“Nicola’s only crime was to love too much. And to not notice the Jaguar on the drive”

· How very odd! · Humour · UK affairs

Stop it, John Crace! I officially only read the Guardian to mock it. It’s confusing when I read a piece from the Guardian’s political sketch-writer mocking Nicola Sturgeon and find myself laughing out loud:

Nicola’s only crime was to love too much. And to not notice the Jaguar on the drive

You know how it is. You wake up and look out the bedroom window. You see a brand new Jaguar worth £81,000 parked in the driveway. You smile to yourself. That’s what you love about your husband. Always nipping out to the shops to buy himself treats. And where’s the harm in that? No one can say he isn’t worth it. And a new car is only a trifle compared with a motor home. That’s just Pete being Pete.

You get dressed and go downstairs. Your husband is already in the kitchen making you breakfast. “Fancy a coffee?” he asks. You nod. You’re busy not reading the SNP accounts. “Which machine would you like me to make it from?” he asks. “The basic Jura? The Jura Z8? Or the Miele? I always think the Z8 makes the best flat white. And what milk would you like?”

You open the back door and look at the Galloway and friesian cows he bought the previous week. Both are grazing on the lawn. You reckon you will try the Galloway today. You smile. You count yourself lucky that you are married to such an amazing man. Someone who can still surprise you after all these years you’ve lived together. Never change, darling man. Never change.

For those who ken not the tale of the Fall of the House of Sturgeon, Mr Crace explains in the next few paragraphs:

On Sunday morning, Nicola Sturgeon gave her first broadcast interview since her former husband, Peter Murrell, pleaded guilty to embezzling more than £400,000 from money donated to the SNP by supporters.

This was Nicola as a woman who had been badly wronged. Yet if you had looked behind the lights of the makeshift studio, you might just have been able to see the outline of a man in the shadows. That man was her lawyer, Aamer Anwar. Because who among us doesn’t need their brief on hand when doing a sit-down chat with Laura Kuenssberg? Probably just a precaution to make sure Laura didn’t nick one of the Montblanc fountain pens.

The interview basically consisted of just one question. How could you possibly not have known that your husband had been on the take? Your house was basically a multimillionaire’s remake of the Generation Game. A non-stop conveyor belt of high-value goodies. The garage alone was full of salt and pepper grinders worth more than £2,000 a shot. And even if it had never occurred to you Pete had basically stolen the lot, surely you must have thought his compulsive shopping habit had got badly out of hand?

Meanwhile, the writers at The National are making the best of things. One of yesterday’s headlines says, “‘Fundamental flaw’ in Sturgeon and Murrell having top SNP roles, says FM”. A Scottish friend gives rare praise to First Minister John Swinney and says, “He’s right. There was a fundamental flaw in Sturgeon and Murrell having top SNP roles. The flaw was that they were Sturgeon and Murrell.”

If you want to keep up with Scotland’s “ultimate power couple”, check out the brands listed in this article from the BBC: “Coffee machines, fountain pens and Grand Theft Auto: How Murrell spent the money”.

June 1st, 2026 | 21 comments

Canada’s “Story of the Year 2021” turns five on life support

· Deleted by the Woke Media · Historical views · North American affairs · Religion

“Canada’s Newspaper of Record Asks: ‘What If They Ultimately Find Nothing?’”, asks Jonathan Kay at Quillette.

A month ago, I offered some predictions about how Canadian journalists would cover the five-year anniversary of the country’s infamous “unmarked graves” social panic, which began on May 27, 2021. On one hand, this kind of important landmark would be difficult for news outlets to ignore. (After all, this was considered the Canadian “Story of the Year” at the time.) On the other hand, any intellectually honest retrospective that these outlets produced would require at least some passing explanation as to why the entire Canadian media establishment had fallen hook, line, and sinker for a story that turned out to be fake—something that most journalists have so far proven unwilling to do.

On Wednesday, it will have been exactly five years since the Kamloops First Nation in British Columbia claimed it has found 215 unmarked graves of Indigenous children on the grounds of the community’s former residential school. In the weeks that followed, gullible reporters transformed the narrative into a kind of horror-movie script, complete with mass murdering priests and midnight burials.

It all turned out to be complete nonsense. In five years, not a single actual grave has been found.

The only evidence that had been offered in support of the original claims consisted of a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey of the former residential school grounds. As reporters (belatedly) learned, GPR technology merely detects sub-surface soil dislocations—not actual graves. These dislocations can be associated with graves, but also with pipes, rocks, tree roots, and a dozen other common subsurface artifacts. To truly identify actual graves, one must dig—something that the Kamloops First Nation leaders who originally advanced these false claims have conspicuously failed to do; despite having received more than $12-million from Canada’s (equally gullible) government for search activities.

The Globe and Mail is often referred to as Canada’s “Newspaper of Record”. True to Mr Kay’s predictions, it did carry a slightly repentant but very evasive retrospective. The Globe and Mail’s own link is here and the article can also be seen here. The article starts with the ringing title “There is no reconciliation without truth”, before immediately rowing back in the first line with “Two things can be true, at the same time.”

There is much else in the same vein, including this darvolicious line:

That there have been no human remains found at Kamloops does not mean children did not die there. It does not mean that crimes were not committed against children, crimes that were inexcusable. A contention otherwise is denialism, and it is morally repugnant.

As Jonathan Kay says,

In paragraph eight, the writers try a second motte-and-bailey gambit. We are informed that “regardless of what they find [in Kamloops], the fact remains that more than 3,500 children are named on the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation‘s registry of students who died as a result of the residential school system, which operated in Canada for more than 160 years.” This is absolutely true. But it’s also completely irrelevant. No one disputes the information published by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, which, unlike the Kamloops hysteria, was based on careful research. In that case, researchers had names, dates of birth, and other identifying details for the victims. None of that exists in the case of the Kamloops story.

The Globe’s implicit argument here is that it doesn’t really matter all that much if those 215 children actually existed or not, since we have the names of 3,500 other children that can be trotted out for the same purpose—so, at worse, we’re still batting 94% on dead-child statistics.

As my deliberately crude wording here is intended to suggest, the rhetorical trick the Globe is playing here isn’t just misleading, it’s also grotesquely reductionist. The documented deaths at residential schools were largely the result of tuberculosis. While the elevated tuberculosis death rates at residential schools represent a stain on Canada’s national conscience, the issue of substandard public-health amenities is completely distinct from lurid fairy tales in which mass murdering Catholic clerics intentionally dispatch 215 children into shallow graves. Every morally aware adult knows this, notwithstanding the Globe’s effort to blur the two categories.

May 31st, 2026 | 12 comments

Decolonising British farming: a thematic snapshot of the Food Justice Ecosystem

· Economics, Business & Globalization · Environment · Historical views · North American affairs · Political Economy · UK affairs

It is probably best if you do not actually read this post.

“Nourishing Justice” is a report produced by a charity (not the sort of charity that runs on voluntary contributions from the public) called “Eating Better” (Registered Charity No. 1175669). The Executive Director of Eating Better is Sarah Wakefield, the Green candidate for the Makerfield by-election upon which so much hangs. Sarah Wakefield wrote the foreword for the “Nourishing Justice” report.

I found out about the report from a GB News article called “Green candidate in Makerfield by-election wants farming to be ‘decolonised’ with ‘inclusive spaces'”. The idea that British farming needed to be decolonised confused me. Who from, the Romans? I was not convinced that GB News was giving a fair account of Eating Better’s charitable work, so I decided to check for myself. GB News was giving a fair account. “Eating Better” did indeed host a decolonial decision-making workshop called “The Gathering Table” in August 2025, co-facilitated by Diana Garduño Jiménez of a charity called “Nourish Scotland”.

“Nourish Scotland” (Registered Charity No. SC048239) is funded by a similar mixture of state money and grants from philanthropic foundations as “Eating Better”, but with the addition of some money from the Scottish government. To be clear, the organisation “Nourish Scotland” did not produce the Nourishing Justice report. “Nourish Scotland” might also be easily confused with, but is separate from, another body and another report mentioned on page 8 of the Nourishing Justice report, which says,

“The contemporary UK food system generally lacks the ability to apply race, gender, and class analysis to how food systems should change. The Sankofa Report: British Colonialism and the UK Food System delves into the numerous layers of inequalities in the current UK food system, stemming from the legacies of colonialism and exploitation. It highlights issues such as underrepresentation in the sector, food insecurity, lack of access to green space for marginalised communities and to the dominance of western epistemologies (theory of knowledge) in food research. Most importantly, the report emphasises that in order to create meaningful and lasting shifts, we must confront and address the forces that have shaped our present food system.

The “Sankofa Report” to which Nourishing Justice links is the rather grand title given to a fourteen page report on “British Colonialism and the UK food system” written by an intern called Jada Phillips at “Food Matters” (Registered Charity No.1178078). The organisation “Food Matters”, you may be surprised to learn, is a registered “charity” funded by by a mixture of public sector grants, National Lottery money, and most of the same charitable trusts and foundations as fund “Eating Better” and “Nourish Scotland”. The name of the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation turns up in all three.

I think. Maybe it was only two out of three, or maybe I was thinking of another charity called Eat Scotland or a trading card game called Charity: The Gathering. Gimme a break, I’ve got three tabs up from the Charity Commission, two Annual Reports, four responses from two different AIs (at least one of which is a lie), and a splitting headache.

It’s easy to get confused between the all these bodies with wholesome-sounding words to do with food and eating in their names, but it is very important that you distinguish between them because otherwise you might think that they are functionally identical bodies whose employees get to eat pretty well by being paid to quote each other by the taxpayer.

May 28th, 2026 | 39 comments

We need a Vicar of Trumpington to cure the delusions of our leaders

· Historical views · Political Economy · UK affairs

In the Telegraph, Charles Moore writes, “Will politicians ever realise that they can’t fix prices?”

The article begins with an anecdote to which I can relate:

When I was about 12, I thought like Rachel Reeves. “Prices are going up too much, so why,” I asked my parents, “don’t we just stop them going up?”

I cannot remember their answer, but I now know what my problem was. I did not understand what a price meant. I thought it was an order from on high (which, in dictatorships, it is). Only gradually did I come to understand it was something infinitely more subtle. It is the result – the signal – of an agreement made between someone who wants to sell something and someone who wants to buy it.

The equivalent “Why don’t we just” moment in my childhood occurred when my parents were moaning about lack of money. Less polite than the young Master Moore, I stamped my little foot and said, “If you haven’t got enough money, go to the bank and get some more.”

I blame fairy stories. I don’t recall ever believing in dragons, but I think I did believe that a Good King (or rather a Good Democratically Elected Prime Minister; I was that sort of kid) had but to say the word and there would be no more poor. I was pretty stupid for a clever seven year old. Our present Democratically Elected Prime Minister is sixty three.

After a brief explanation of what market signals are and how very bad things happen when people distort them, Mr Moore continues,

In my youth, most British politicians of both parties thought in my childish way. In 1972, Ted Heath’s Tories, shocked by the inflationary effect of the artificial boom their own policies had created, intervened to stop the merry-go-round. The Government’s Counter-Inflation (Temporary Provisions) Bill created a Price Commission and a Pay Board. All price rises were frozen for 90 days. Only one Conservative MP, Enoch Powell, voted against this profoundly unconservative measure.

Geoffrey Howe, later a great free-market Chancellor of the Exchequer, was Heath’s minister for consumer affairs. As such, he was the enforcer of every single price control. The utter absurdity of this was brought home to him when he was informed that the Vicar of Trumpington had doubled the charge for brass-rubbing in his church during the freeze. It was part of his job as the relevant Cabinet minister to prevent even that.

May 25th, 2026 | 13 comments

The Guardian unalived my comment

· Deleted by the Woke Media · Internet · Languages · Media & Journalism · North American affairs

Ten seconds after I wrote a comment to this Guardian story, “Trump self-deals, lies and seems to fall asleep in meetings. The media treats it all as ‘priced in’”, it was gone. Oh well. My comment was no great loss to the world (I forget the exact words, but it was something about how the New York Times and the Guardian didn’t report it when Biden fell asleep in meetings either) and, of course, a newspaper has every right to delete whatever it wants from its comment section.

But the sheer speed of its deletion made it obvious that it was done by A.I. That happens a lot these days, and not just at the Guardian. Some people on Twitter write “unalive” when they mean “kill” to avoid having their post automatically censored. Cens*red. Cenrosed. There are so many other instances of workarounds to avoid the robot censor that I begin to think we may be evolving something like the avoidance speech that is a feature of languages that originate as far apart as Australia and China.

The current state of Artificial Intelligence is particularly likely to result in pervasive stupid censorship; censorship that does not even serve the objectives of the censors. Four or five years ago the programs caught single words. “Unalive” dates from this period. Sometimes the algorithm caught utterly harmless instances of a given word, for example when a mention of a blue tit – the bird – would be deleted for obscenity. But one could work round it. In five years’ time, or maybe sooner given the speed at which this technology is developing, the A.I. will no longer mistake a blue tit for a tit. We’ll still have the political censorship, of course, and the system will be cleverer than we are when it comes to spotting evasive wordplay. Pray for Elon Musk’s health.

For several years the Guardian automatically deleted any reference to Hunter Biden’s laptop. As I said in this post, for some reason they briefly lifted the prohibition in January 2025:

What’s so surprising about that comment? The fact that it has been up for four hours despite including the words “Hunter Biden’s laptop”. My most recent attempt to mention Hunter Biden’s laptop in a Guardian comment was on 6th November 2024. It was instantly deleted, as was any comment – however polite, however on-point – containing any combination of those three words over the four years since the controversy began. I presume this was automatic. Comments that referred to the Laptop from Hell using circumlocution were also inevitably deleted after a slightly longer time, with the phrase, “This comment was removed by a moderator because it didn’t abide by our community standards. Replies may also be deleted. For more detail see our FAQs.”

MJuma2018’s comment is still up, but when I have tried mentioning the laptop on a few occasions since then out of a maternal concern for the imprisoned brains of Guardian readers, my comments did not get through.

However in my experiments during those four, now five, years it was always comments relating to Hunter Biden that got the chop. My comment of today only referred to “Biden”, as dozens of other comments in the thread also did. For such a general comment to be deleted is a new development. Before you ask, no, they do not delete all my comments. Nor do they delete all my comments that refer unfavourably to Joe Biden. It looks like the AI is just sophisticated enough to recognise a criticism of the Guardian’s own coverage.

May 23rd, 2026 | 42 comments

“Radical listening” from a would-be censor like George Monbiot is at best a sham, at worst a trap

· Chinese affairs · Historical views · Opinions on liberty · Philosophical · Privacy & Panopticon · Totalitarianism · UK affairs

On 7th May 2026 the Guardian published the following article by its regular correspondent, George Monbiot, a supporter of the Green Party: “Imagine a technique that can heal Britain of division and keep out the hard right. I call it ‘radical listening’”

He says,

Further work by the same scientists along with other people’s studies show that persuasive methods do exist. They don’t change everyone’s minds, but they can make enough difference to win elections and build a kinder, fairer, greener country. These techniques are known as “deep canvassing”.

Deep canvassing works only if you have a large army of volunteers, ideally from the community you’re trying to reach. Instead of delivering a message then scuttling away, as conventional canvassers do, their role is to connect and listen. Across conversations that might last for 10 or 20 minutes, they let people discuss their feelings. Then, without arguing or judging, they share their own experiences and ask questions (“have you ever been treated unfairly?”) that might reveal common ground.

Done honestly, non-judgmental listening is an excellent idea. “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak”, as the Stoic philosopher Epictetus once said.

Far though Mr Monbiot’s political beliefs are from mine, I acknowledge that on several occasions he has demonstrated both honesty and a willingness to listen, by publicly stating that he had changed his views in directions that made him unpopular with his fellow Greens. In the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear accident, he surprised many by saying that he had changed his mind in favour of nuclear power, and, so long ago that I cannot find the reference, he realised that the policy of autarky that the Greens then recommended for the UK was equivalent to the sanctions on Iraq that they were denouncing, and said so in public. Unfortunately, as it did for a lot of people, the Covid-19 pandemic de-magnetised his moral compass and in 2021 he came out in favour of censorship, writing an article called “Covid lies cost lives – we have a duty to clamp down on them”.

Censorship and seeking to listen “without arguing or judging” are matter and anti-matter; they cannot coexist. To censor is to judge certain opinions as so pernicious that they must be suppressed. In the world that Mr Monbiot has said he wants, if one of the people “exhausted with politics” to whom he is listening were to express the anti-vax views that a lot of such people hold, his next action would be to report them to the police. In our world – in our Britain – there are plenty of opinions about migrants and transgender people that are widespread among the alienated masses that when expressed have resulted in state punishment, ranging from sending the police round to issue a “friendly warning” (for most of my life I thought that sort of thing only happened in dictatorships), through people being forbidden to access social media without the permission of their police minder and having their devices seized, up to arrest and jail. Even if Mr Monbiot were to bind himself during his radical listening sessions by something like the seal of the confessional, the mind that holds it to be desirable to legally suppress certain bad opinions cannot hear expressions of those opinions without categorising them as crimes that it is not convenient to punish right now.

Three quarters of a century ago in 1956, Chairman Mao Zedong – whose name was then usually romanised as Mao Tse-Tung – launched the “Hundred Flowers campaign”. Under the slogan “Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend”, the communist authorities proclaimed that from now on they would no longer punish critics. All would be free to speak, the better to promote new ideas to improve China.

Tentatively at first, some did offer their criticisms. When nothing bad happened, the trickle became a flood. Then, having established who their critics were, the communists arrested them and sent them to labour camps.

May 22nd, 2026 | 11 comments

What is the point of the police appealing for witnesses to a racist attack if they will not state the race of the attackers or the victim?

· Deleted by the Woke Media · Irish affairs · Media & Journalism · Self defence & Security · UK affairs

This is the whole text of a BBC report published forty minutes ago:

Taxi driver victim of ‘unprovoked, racist attack’

Police are appealing for information about a racially-motivated attack on a taxi driver in Belfast.

Two men and a woman approached the taxi driver on Talbot Street at about 23:10 BST on Saturday and, after being refused a lift, they became aggressive and used racial slurs.

The taxi driver, who is in his 30s, was spat at and struck by one of the men and he hit the ground and lost consciousness. As he got back up, he was hit by a second man.

The three people then made off on foot in the direction of the city centre.

‘Unprovoked attack’

Inspt Moutray from the Police Service of Northern Ireland ( PSNI) described it as an “unprovoked attack, which is being treated as a racially-motivated hate crime”.

“There is no place for hate, racism or violence in our communities, and everyone has the right to feel safe and treated with dignity and respect,” the officer said.

“The area was fairly busy at the time, as would be expected for a Saturday evening, and we’d ask anyone who witnessed this assault to get in touch.

“The woman is described as wearing a black dress, while both men are described as being of muscular build and were wearing a white shirt and red T-shirt.”

I do not know if the decision to hide the race of the victim and the suspects was taken by the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the BBC, or both. Whoever it was, they cannot care very much about actually catching the perpetrators. Do they seriously think that someone reading the above who was in the area at the relevant time would have their memory jogged by mention of the colour of the woman’s dress or the men’s shirts? For any crime at all, giving a description of a suspect that leaves out their skin colour is unlikely to be productive in prompting witnesses to come forward. When the crime is a a racial attack such playacting becomes even more outrageous.

Related post: It’s not like anyone needs to know what a killer still at large looks like

May 17th, 2026 | 11 comments

The most pleasant reward

· Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · Education & Academia · French affairs · How very odd! · Media & Journalism · Philosophical · Self ownership · Sui generis

“Oui, la récompense la plus agréable qu’on puisse recevoir des choses que l’on fait, c’est de les voir connues, de les voir caressées d’un applaudissement qui vous honore.”

“Yes, the most pleasant reward one can receive from the things one does is to see them recognised, to see them greeted with applause that honours you.” – Molière,

– Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme

-*-

Wise words. Combine them with the equally wise saying “If you want a job done, do it yourself”, and you get this:

French professor accused of ‘gigantic hoax’ after inventing Nobel-style prize, as reported by the Guardian‘s Kim Willsher:

At a ceremony at the French national assembly attended by Nobel prize winners, former government ministers, MPs, decorated scientists and academics, all attention was on a previously unknown literature professor.

Florent Montaclair, then 46, a balding, bespectacled figure in an ill-fitting suit and rosé-coloured shirt, was receiving the 2016 Gold Medal of Philology – the study of linguistics – from an international society of the same name.

Montaclair was the first French recipient of the medal, previously awarded to the Italian author and linguist Umberto Eco, those attending were told.

It was a glittering event and an impressive achievement – but unfortunately, detectives claim, the award itself was entirely fake and part of a complex international hoax worthy of a film script.

and

Until 2015, when an article appeared in his local newspaper claiming he was about to win the equivalent of a Nobel prize or Fields medal, Montaclair was an unremarkable teaching instructor who liked to write fantasy books, many about vampires, in his spare time.

I’d give one of his novels a go, if any have been translated into English. But perhaps he ought to consider a change of genre, given his demonstrable talent for producing realistic fiction.

After the national assembly ceremony, Montaclair, who gave a Tedx Talk titled the Galilean Challenge, decided the next recipient should be the American intellectual Noam Chomsky, then 87, who travelled to Paris to collect the award in front of 200 people.

Don’t be too sad for Professor Chomsky. He has had awards, prizes, fellowships, honorary degrees, medals and memberships of learned academies poured upon him, not to mention his being the recipient of personal monetary tokens of esteem. His trophies surround him like a glittering ocean. Their lustre can scarcely be dimmed by one of them turning out to be an academic vanity project.

The Guardian article then quotes the public prosecutor, Paul-Édouard Lallois:

Lallois said whether Montaclair obtained that promotion and any material gain from an allegedly fake diploma and medal was at the heart of his investigation.

“In his view, the medal is not a forgery. A forgery implies that there is a genuine medal. As the genuine philology medal does not exist, his medal cannot be a forgery,” Lallois said.

“Anyone can create a medal. You can order online the ‘best journalist in France’ medal, in gold, silver or bronze, award it to yourself and hold your own little ceremony quietly at home over drinks.

“If you stay at home with your little medals on top of your mantelpiece, there are no legal consequences. If, on the other hand, you mention it to your employer, if you mention it to the media, and if all this leads to a certain amount of professional recognition, then it has concrete implications, and that is where the notion of fraud can begin to arise.”

It begins to arise, certainly. But does the notion of fraud ascend all the way into full existence? Like the man accused of wearing a toupée to cover his baldness who replied, “It’s all my own hair – I paid for the toupée myself”, Professor Montaclair could defend himself on the grounds that those in charge of awarding the Gold Medal of Philology sincerely believed he was a worthy laureate.

Montaclair could also point out that many prestigious academic prizes are awarded by foundations that are the creations of one man, with the only difference from his International Society of Philology being that their founders were rich enough to rent offices in a nice part of town and persuade or hire famous names to serve as judges. Montaclair clearly sought to hide his award to himself among his awards to other people such as Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky. If he had remained undetected he might well have managed to pick up a few well-known academic names to serve alongside him in deciding who should receive future Gold Medals. Perhaps his plan was to discreetly retire once the whole process had become self-sustaining.

Or if one wants something more democratic, the media will laud as “world-leading” bodies such as the International Association of Genocide Scholars that allow anyone who pays a fee to become a voting member. Professor Montaclair could say that his society… just hadn’t got any other members yet.

In the end, I would say that even if he does somehow manage to escape a penalty under French law, his use of his home-minted Gold Medal to gain promotion was morally a fraud. And, OK, the whole International Society of Philology being made from his left sock was a bit dodgy too. But the line between a fraud and a gutsy founder operating on the principle of “if you build it, they will come” is not utterly clear cut. Despite being a five times winner of the Prix de l’Academie Solent, I find this a difficult philosophical question.

May 8th, 2026 | 7 comments

“How Researcher Homogeneity Distorts Knowledge Production”

· Culture Wars · Deleted by the Woke Media · Education & Academia · Historical views · North American affairs

Musa al-Gharbi is an American academic – a sociologist and a professor of journalism – who is an occasional columnist for the Guardian. He describes himself as a Democrat.

If you were asked to guess from the information in the sentence above what he would say in a talk giving an overview of sociological research about American voters in the era of Trump, you’d probably be wrong, just like I was.

I found his talk “How Researcher Homogeneity Distorts Knowledge Production” informative and entertaining, particularly the section that starts at 28:02 and continues until about 40:00 on what is commonly called “the public loss of trust in science”.

(As Professor al-Gharbi points out, there has scarcely been any public loss of trust in science.)

May 6th, 2026 | One comment
 
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