Last year the UK Met Office was shown to be inventing long-term temperature data at 103 non-existent weather stations. It was claimed in a later risible ‘fact check’ that the data were estimated from nearby well-correlated neighbouring stations. Citizen super sleuth Ray Sanders issued a number of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to learn the identity of these correlating sites but has been told that the information is not held by the Met Office. So the invented figures for the non-existent sites are supposedly provided by stations that the Met Office claims it cannot identify and are presumably not recorded in its copious computer storage and archive.
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May 12th, 2025 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Police face lawsuit after former officer arrested over ‘thought crime’ tweet, reports the Telegraph:
So long as the consequences of police misbehaviour are born by the taxpayer, not the police, why should they care? Words are cheap. They’ll settle out of court, promise not to do it again, and do it again.
He voted with the majority. They could tell he was a wrong’un. May 11th, 2025 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
For a few hours today the lead story on the front pages of both the Guardian and the Telegraph was about the untimely demise of a plant. The Sycamore Gap Tree was a mildly famous old tree next to Hadrian’s Wall. I don’t think I ever consciously saw it in person, but I had heard of it. The tree’s Wikipedia article – it has its own Wikipedia article – says,
That last sentence is certainly true. It was one of those news stories that is of little consequence by the normal measures of the importance of news stories but which packed a surprising punch emotionally. I’d heard of that tree. It had a node in my brain, not a big node but one in a nice area near to the ones dealing with history and nature and charming old guidebooks, and now some scumbags had cut it down, apparently for the fun of making me and people like me feel bad. I was glad when said scumbags were arrested and gladder still when earlier today they were both found guilty of criminal damage and told to expect custodial sentences. I was even a little bit glad to read that both men had been remanded in custody prior to sentencing for their own protection. Am I justified in thinking that the two men who cut down this particular tree deserve more serious punishment than other people who cut down trees that do not belong to them in order to steal the wood or something? I would not go quite so far as the readers of the Telegraph, who would be quite happy to use the wood to build a gallows and recover the costs by selling commemorative slices, but I am definitely in a vengeful mood. Why? It was not my tree, except in the feeble sense that it belonged to the National Trust, of which I am member. My suffering at its demise was not zero but was not great either. It didn’t ruin my life. It didn’t even ruin my morning. Presumably the same goes for all the other people who felt bad reading about the vandalism in the paper or hearing about it on the news. They suffered, but not greatly. The tree didn’t suffer. All agree that the criminal damage was a straightforward crime and should be punished, but why do so many people, including me, feel that this was a more serious crime than most instances of criminal damage because it upset people? The post below treats the idea of blasphemy laws and a so-called right to be shielded from offensive speech with a scorn that I fully share. I have an uneasy feeling that I am coming close to setting up an offence of tree blasphemy. May 9th, 2025 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
In Britain, in 2025, whether or not you should be able to criticise a religion, mock its practices, burn its texts, is an alarmingly live issue. And when I say ‘a religion’, you know which one I’m talking about. This debate has lit up again this week, following the charges brought against Hamit Coskun for burning a Koran outside the Turkish consulate in London in February. His one-man protest against the Islamist turn of Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been chalked up as a religiously motivated public-order offence, drawing the condemnation of shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick and causing an X feud between two MPs. Rupert Lowe – the member for the Very Online right – condemned our backdoor blasphemy laws, while Adnan Hussain – one of the so-called Gaza independents who rode a wave of sectarian, anti-Israel bile into parliament at the last General Election – accused Lowe of singling out Muslims under the guise of freedom of speech. May 9th, 2025 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
Asmongold is a Twitch streamer whose output is also edited and put on YouTube. A funny example (specifically the timestamp at 14:20). He is making fun of some protestors. At first glance it is inane. But there is more here. He makes several points. Free speech and peaceful protest are important. As soon as people are setting fire to things, it is no longer a protest but a riot. Rioters should be dealt with swiftly and severely to discourage others. Blocking the highway or taking over buildings is infringing on others’ rights. Here he is covering conflict between India and Pakistan. This is how The Kids are getting The News These Days. Streamers are surfacing, and commenting on, both mainstream and social media content. This is no bad thing. Mainstream media getting to set the narrative has proven unhealthy. Blogs had their day. Video is now where it’s at. Streamers and influencers are filtering things. This could be good or bad. It depends on the streamer. Asmongold is thoughtful, non-partisan, exercises critical thinking, caveats and bounds his opinions, avoids giving opinions where he lacks knowledge (such as specifics of politics between India and Pakistan in the above example), avoids (when he is being serious) sweeping generalisations, has views mostly compatible with maximising freedom and in general seems pretty smart. That he is one of the most successful and influential at doing this, is more successful than others in a similar line of work who might charitably be considered dangerous idiots, gives hope that the natural filter of the algorithms can do good. May 7th, 2025 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
You put in self check out in response to high wage costs, but then you find new problems. High trust systems cannot survive in the presence of low trust people. And this is why, in the second world, you cannot have nice things… And ultimately, the incentives and selectors turn the systems into pastiches of their intent. May 6th, 2025 | 68 comments - (Comments are closed)
Our diagnosis is that what really worries The Guardian here [about Argentina] is that this will all work. For where would the progressives be if classical liberalism were shown – once again – to work? May 5th, 2025 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Yes, like any philosophy, neoliberalism has its limits, and as with any philosophy, some of its adherents get overexcited and take things a bit too far. But given where we currently are, and where we are likely to go in the near future, focussing on the risk of “too much neoliberalism” seems bizarre to me. It is as if you were lost in the desert, and your main worry was that if you find an oasis, you might end up drinking too much water, and get overhydrated. Maybe one day, neoliberalism will be so popular that there really will be a non-trivial risk of taking it too far. If so – that will be a good day.” – Kristian Niemietz, Editorial Director, Institute of Economic Affairs. (Part of his commentary is this recent apologia to libertarians from Noah Smith, a US centre-leftist who appears to have some intellectual honesty and grit, which is refreshing, and so it appears, rare.) It might be helpful of critics of neoliberalism bothered to define it clearly. (Tim Worstall has a related takedown of George Monbiot’s recent forays into this territory. Worstall is, as you might expect, unimpressed.) May 4th, 2025 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
In The Times, no less:
Safety is one thing. The article goes on to discuss consent and the risks to female athletes of speaking out on this topic. May 3rd, 2025 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Before it’s possible to suggest a solution to a problem, it’s necessary to grasp the root cause of the problem itself. A sort of Reverse Chesterton’s Fence exercise. So, what has gone wrong? As we never tire of repeating it’s the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors. That is, for the past 78 years we’ve had that coherent national plan. With a long term vision. Run by the Rolls Royce minds of the Men in Whitehall who know best. Which is how we’ve ended up with the output we’ve got, something that would disgrace a Trabant factory. As it is national control of planning – the TCPA really does define who may build what where, is the nationalisation of land use – that is the problem then the solution is to get rid of what caused the problem. Blow up the TCPA, proper blow up – kablooie. May 3rd, 2025 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
After a recount, the Reform Party were declared the winners of the Runcorn and Helsby by-election by six votes. The first time they counted, Reform’s margin of victory was four votes. Assuming the second result is accurate, the first result was off by two. Not bad considering 32,740 votes were cast. Not a bad result for Reform, either. Sarah Pochin is Runcorn’s first MP from any party other than Labour in 52 years. If that result had come from the bowels of a voting machine many Labour supporters would have distrusted it. Because the count and the recount took place under the eyes of multiple observers – courtesy of the Sun live-streaming it, you can watch all three hours and twenty one minutes of the process here if you want to – few now will. May 2nd, 2025 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Press Gazette reports: Essex Police loses accuracy complaint versus Telegraph over Allison Pearson questioning
(The tweet in question criticised two-tier policing of Pro-Palestine marches.)
Why does it matter whether it was or was not a “non-crime hate incident”? Because Essex Police tried to claim that because Pearson was – ludicrously – being investigated for an actual crime (someone had complained that the tweet had incited racial hatred), that meant that the Telegraph could not report on their own columnist having the rozzers turn up unannounced at her door on Remembrance Sunday.
May 1st, 2025 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
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