Go on, try to remember what Theresa May achieved in politics at all, let alone as prime minister. It’s not easy.
|
|||||
|
September 15th, 2023 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Who fact-checks the fact-checkers? Whatever you do, don’t ask Marianna Spring. If new revelations are to be believed, the BBC’s ‘disinformation and social-media correspondent’ – who has been showered with awards, praise, broadsheet profiles and glossy photoshoots for her putative one-woman stand against online lies and conspiracy theories – can’t even be trusted to produce a relatively factual CV. September 13th, 2023 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
But this is not all that the Energy Bill 2023 does, and here we come to a fresher development in the relationship between law and the state. Importantly, Brownsword has recently been suggesting that we are rapidly advancing into the next iteration of law – Law 3.0 – in which law becomes essentially self-executing through technology and, indeed, the very exercise of subjecting human conduct to rules becomes subsumed by technological management. Here, the creation of rules itself will become seen as archaic, with technology providing us with better – more efficient, more rational, more effective – forms of justice than those available to the flawed system of law which we currently respect. The end result (the apotheosis of Law 3.0, as it were), will be the merging of technology with law, such that the requirement for rules to exist will disappear and human conduct will be more or less entirely managed by technology. September 12th, 2023 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Hobbes was right. We must have government. If men were to try to live without ‘a common Power to keep them all in awe’, life would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’, there would be ‘a perpetuall warre of every man against his neighbour’, and there would be adverts for cheese on the London Underground. City AM reports,
I think Sadiq Khan got to the bit in Leviathan about “Power to keep them all in awe” and thought, “I like the sound of that”. September 10th, 2023 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
…”once again the reintroduction of National Service is being mooted by think tanks, this time as a thinly veiled mechanism for enslaving the young. Leave aside the point that, far from bolstering conservative values, the diversity commissars of the Civil Service would turn it into the `national woke service’ from day one. Conscriptin is just about defensive as a way to maintain a military reserve; as a way to extract free labour for the state, it’s morally reprehensible. It’s also economically insane. The public sector is staggeringly unproductive. Labour that is unpaid is labour that is asking to be used in the most inefficient way possible, on jobs that would never be done if the work cost the minimum wage.” – Sam Ashworth-Hayes, Daily Telegraph (£). This is probably one of the best take-downs of the whole “put ’em in the Army and sort out the kids” trope that I have come across in a while. September 4th, 2023 | 46 comments - (Comments are closed)
Prior to this, in November 2018, academics at Queen Mary University of London were due to publish a study in the Lancet that found schemes like ULEZ make no difference to children’s health. It took the LEZ (Low Emission Zone), the precursor policy to ULEZ, introduced in 2008, which levied fines on lorries, buses and coaches, and examined its impact on over 2,000 children. ‘Despite… improvements in air quality, there was no evidence of improvements in the proportion of children with small lungs or asthma symptoms over this period’, it concluded. Unhappy with these findings, the mayor’s office wrote to the lead author, Professor Chris Griffiths, and asked him to change the conclusion. ‘It reads like LEZ or similar have no impact at all’, deputy mayor Rodrigues complained. Griffiths refused to budge. ‘It’s difficult to alter the sentence you refer to as it’s what we set out to look for but didn’t find’, he replied. The study was published unaltered the next day, but the deputy mayor’s intent was clear – to rewrite science to meet City Hall’s agenda. September 3rd, 2023 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here are three articles I saw over the last couple of days, one about Canada, one about the UK, and one about Ireland. Jordan Peterson writing in the Telegraph:
Bill Goodwin writing in Computer Weekly:
John McGuirk writing in Gript.ie:
“The right of persons not to be misinformed” is a truly Orwellian inversion of the meaning of “right”. It describes the withdrawal of a right as the granting of one. I would like to think that the absence of any news stories about threats to freedom in Australia, New Zealand or the United States in today’s little collection was because there were none to report. I would also like the figure and eyesight of a twenty year-old and a billion pounds. September 1st, 2023 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
I’m sure that vaccination might be the right thing for some – assuming that we are talking about an effective vaccine that doesn’t do more harm than good. Oh, right… As you were. As they admit, it isn’t something we should be concerned about, URTIs happen every winter and every winter some people fall off their perch because it is their time and that’s what finally sees them off. No, I’m not being harsh, just recognising basic biology. If there was an effective, safe vaccine, then I’d say go for it. However, I no longer have faith in our vaccination programme, so I will not be partaking. That loss of trust is nothing to do with me. I didn’t lie, obfuscate and demonise anyone who dared to raise concerns and I didn’t rush something through before long term results were in. August 31st, 2023 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
Katie Morley is the Telegraph’s “Consumer Champion”. People who feel they have been mistreated by companies write to her and she puts their tales of woe in the paper and threatens the company with even more bad publicity if they won’t put things right. Her articles usually end with a line about how So-and-so company has issued a full refund and apologised. Usually, but not always. Her most recent piece was this one: ‘I spent £27,000 on a cruise I can’t afford, and Cunard won’t give me a full refund’ Her anonymous correspondent says,
After listing some of the things wrong with this ‘preparatory’ trip on the Queen Victoria, the writer finishes by saying,
Ms Morley did express sympathy for the writer’s health and financial troubles, but her sympathy did not extend to taking up the cudgels on his behalf. She wrote,
What really interested me was the response from the Telegraph readers. I expected them to support Cunard, and they did, but I had not expected so many of them to specifically resent the way that the writer had attempted to garner sympathy by mentioning that he and his wife were retired NHS workers. The most recommended comment was by Roger Sidney and said, “Love the bit about ‘we are retired NHS workers’. Come one everyone, give ’em a clap!” Someone called Mytwo Penneth said, “Former NHS workers booking £27k cruises and speculating on shares. Then they have the brass neck to get KM involved in an attempt to recover a deposit.” Brian Gedalla said, “Nice to see some backbone from Katie. You could have played “Entitlement Bingo” with this one. Like Roger below, I laughed out loud when I got to the “we are retired NHS workers” line.” There were many other similar comments. Although I have long since ceased to believe that a command economy is a good way to arrange a nation’s healthcare, my own experiences with the National Health Service have been good. Those people I know who work for it are hardworking, and I did clap during the pandemic, and meant it. My view that it would be desirable to privatise the NHS is only shared by about 2% of British people. Even among Telegraph readers, the great majority still support the NHS model. I do not think that the anger in these replies was motivated by hostility to the NHS per se. But something has changed in Britain when so many refuse NHS workers the automatic deference that this pair clearly expected to receive. August 30th, 2023 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
– Dr Tim Rideout, from an article in the National with the title “How a Scottish currency will impact mortgages and other loans”. Dr Rideout, who was let back into the Scottish National Party after agreeing to undergo anti-racism training, is a member of the SNP’s Policy Development Committee and Convener of that party’s Scottish Currency Group. He is fully entitled to refer to himself as “Dr Rideout”, since he has a doctorate. He is also entitled to call himself an economist, as he has a BA in economics. He is “Dr Rideout, Economist” just like he says, and if you got the impression from that that his doctorate was in economics, that’s your fault for not checking. Same as it is your own silly fault if you got the impression that the website featuring his writings with the URL https://www.reservebank.scot/, bearing the title “SCOTTISH RESERVE BANK/ Banca Cùl-stòr na h’Alba”, and including on its front page the words “Welcome to Scotland’s Central Bank” was the website of an official body called “the Scottish Reserve Bank”. If you thought that the splendid neoclassical building in the first picture, which features in many photographs and paintings of Edinburgh, was the bank because of all those pillars, more fool you. A simple reverse image search would have told you that it was the disused Edinburgh Royal High School. Dr Rideout (Economist) cannot be held responsible for your inability to use Google. In any case, the website does say, “Please note, the Scottish Reserve Bank is not legally a bank.” Where? Right there, in the paragraph at the bottom of the “About” page, just before the bit where it says, “Website by Great-Value-Websites.Com”. It was your job to read every word of every page in full. After all that, readers might think I planned to cast doubt upon Dr Rideout’s prediction that “It is likely that the central bank will assist/require the banks to provide the same interest rates and terms on replacement Scottish pound mortgages and loans as you had on your old sterling ones”, or his prediction that “Your bank will contact you near the time and ask if you would like to change your mortgage into the Scottish pound or take out new Scottish pound credit cards and loans.” Perish the thought. Several of the replies to Dr Rideout’s tweet (or “X-cretion” as I believe they are meant to be called now) in which he flags up his piece in the National do point out that the banks would be insane to do any of these things, but a little thing like that does not invalidate his prediction. If Scottish independence comes to pass while the Scottish National Party is in power then you can bet that the Scottish government will indeed assist/require the banks to pretend the new currency is equal in value to the old. History is full of governments making insane declarations about the value of their currency and requiring, sorry, assisting, their citizens to impoverish themselves by acting as if the fantasies were truth. As Dr Rideout says himself,
August 29th, 2023 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
Tory councillor arrested for ‘hate crime’ after sharing video criticising police
So, let’s get this straight. Councillor Stevens was arrested for criticising the police for arresting Oluwole Ilisanmi, an arrest the police themselves have admitted was wrongful. There’s more.
When the actions of the police prompt a former Director of Public Prosecutions to say, “It is essential that police officers are properly trained in the importance of free speech rights and the particularly strong protection that the law gives to political speech”, it is a safe bet that a second apology for wrongful arrest will eventually be issued by Northamptonshire police. They will make the apology late and with bad grace, making sure to put in a bit about how, “When a complaint is made, the police must investigate”. They will speak in injured tones of being “damned if you do, and damned if you don’t”. Perhaps Plod has a point there. After the unprovoked racial murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993, laws were rushed through that said that if anyone connected with an incident thought it was a “hate incident”, then a hate incident it was. I distinctly remember the Guardian‘s Hugo Young saying at the time that this definition was “intellectually absurd”, though I cannot find the quote online. Still, the police display definite preferences in which way they choose to be damned. The sort of damnation that comes your way months or years after you arrested a local elected official for hate crime is so mild that it might more accurately be described as paying for your pleasures. And the truly damnable thing was this:
August 27th, 2023 | 35 comments - (Comments are closed)
Nadine Dorries is right in regard to Rishi Sunak: he is an unelected nonentity who is leading his government to annihilation at the next election. She is wrong about almost everything else. She is behind the disastrous Online Harms Bill, and she seems to have a strange crush on Boris Johnson, the liar and failed prime minister. I confess I have not followed her career closely enough to know she was a net zero fanatic, but if Boris was in favour of it, it is no surprise she was. In sum, if brains were dynamite, she couldn’t blow out a candle. And she’s probably not the thickest MP out there. – Commenter JohnK August 27th, 2023 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||