Sunday 25 January

Isn’t it marvellous? The increasingly unhinged Trump gets politicians, media and quite a few of us alarmed and worked up about his takeover of Greenland and tariffs threats, only to back off (good example of TACO – Trump always chickens out), some of his MAGA sycophants even suggesting that ‘the Europeans overreacted’ as if we were stupid to believe him in the first place. His previous policies on tariffs and his operations in Venezuela were sufficient evidence of his capacity to carry out those Greenland threats, various specious arguments being put forward to ‘justify’ the action eg ‘national security’ doing far too much heavy lifting and questioning Denmark’s legitimacy in the island because it’s ‘just a very small country’. Other territories’ sovereignty is of no significance to him, the worst kind of imperialism.

It was only halfway through January when the world was already and still is reeling from Donald Trump’s continuing lawless antics including the further chaos he unleashed in Venezuela and his absurd claim to Greenland. What makes it all worse is the sycophantic collusion of yes-men in the Trump administration and the imperialist theories of Stephen Miller, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and homeland security advisor. Wiki describes him thus: ‘Considered one of the most influential figures of the Trump administrations and Trumpism movement, his politics have been described as far-right, anti-immigration and white nationalist’. He’s behind Trump’s draconian immigration and other policies and it’s been suggested he’s the most dangerous individual in the Trump camp. But many won’t have heard of him because he hasn’t until fairly recently featured hugely in the media.

Trump notably didn’t consult Congress before the Venezuela operation and surely members will be even more concerned now about what he could be planning outside due process. Polling shows that an overwhelming majority of Americans opposed the Greenland action  and some congressional Republicans have issued forceful warnings against Trump’s strategy and steamrollering. Apart from the impressive Canadian PM Mark Carney at Davos this week, no one has challenged his increasingly unbalanced and rambling Trump schtick to point out that this Emperor wearing no clothes (as the saying goes) isn’t rational and is an outright danger to international relations. Before Trump backed down a whole retinue of brainwashed allies, interviewed by the collusive media, continued to back his strategy, one of the most outrageous being US Treasury Secretary Scott Besant eg ‘The Europeans will understand this is best for Greenland, best for Europe and best for the United States… Europeans will understand that the best outcome is for the US to receive control of Greenland’. Europeans ‘understood’ nothing of the kind, of course, except right wing historian Tim Stanley in the Telegraph having suggested that we should accept Trump’s demands and just focus on domestic matters. This sort of appeasement once amounted to treason and perhaps it’s unfortunate that it’s no longer taken seriously.

As ever, Trump claims far more results following his interactions than the other participants. Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General, conceded that their meeting had been very good but that there was still a lot of work to do. Of course Trump is never interested in the detail and nuanced thinking that effective negotiations demand. Aaja Chemnitz Larsen, a Greenlandic member of the Danish parliament, wrote that, despite Trump’s claim of having struck an agreement about Greenland with NATO, the military alliance has no mandate to negotiate anything about Greenland. “Nothing about us, without us’: this is a good expression which was used in some mental health settings, but it’s striking how often authorities who see themselves as superior plan policy without consulting or involving those actually affected. As we know it’s a like this regarding Ukraine.

The best thing might have been for Davos delegates and the media to cold shoulder Trump rather than giving him the oxygen of publicity but it sounds like they were mostly in attendance for what was reported as an hour long, rambling speech: certainly the media clips sounded incoherent and since then some sources have identified one false boast after another. He started by calling Denmark ‘ungrateful’ and said the US had been stupid to give Greenland back to Denmark after WW2: in fact it’s been part of Denmark since 1721 and was never owned by the US. The condescension towards Europe continued, of course, saying the continent was not ‘heading in the right direction’. He’s a fine one to judge, of course.

Of the many examples of misinformation he claimed China had no wind farms when the country ranks number 1 globally for wind farm capacity and has more plans to expand than any other country. Another misrepresentation was that the US had ‘gotten nothing’ from NATO when it got support following 9/11. Yet another was that he’d secured $18 trillion of investment since re-entering office when the figure is closer to $9.6 trillion. The knowledgeable folk there must have had their heads in their hands at all this, especially given the unpreparedness of anyone to challenge him. But it got even worse: hes’s been lambasted to hell and back for daring to suggest that the NATO countries didn’t really help in Afghanistan and kept away from the front lines when 475 British servicemen died during that war and many more were seriously injured. Trump seems on a mission to cause outrage and hurt on a massive scale. Former Chief of the UK Defence Staff General Sir Nick Carter told the BBC: ‘Trump is exceptionally unqualified to comment on war given that he was a draft-dodger…a man who has no interest in service or duty.’

But some Congress members are beginning to call out the blatant disregard for what’s actually taking place. California Representative Jared Huffman is unequivocal: ‘Trump is running the biggest most corrupt criminal grift in criminal history, out of the White House.  We take an oath to the Constitution, but it seems all of you took an oath to Donald Trump. This is shameful, a disgrace…To pretend everything is just fine right now? The madman is in Europe driving our friends into the arms of our adversaries. Trump is doing immeasurable damage to our credibility on the world stage and you are just fine with it? What the hell is wrong? I’m not going to just sit here and pretend everything is fine. This is wrong. This is not normal. And I’m not going to normalise it’. And media collusion with the Trump narrative is one of the main problems.

So what’s to be done? Green Party leader Zack Polanski  said the UK should consider expelling US forces from British bases: ‘I think it’s pretty worrying that we’ve allowed ourselves to become so reliant on American interests, and that a lot of this depends on if Donald Trump is in a good mood or not’. It’s also been suggested that countries summon their US ambassadors in order to demand accountability and request an apology. Another is that the planned visit to the US of King Charles in April should be cancelled. On Saturday Trump rolled back on his NATO troops comment but it didn’t really constitute a proper apology and it wasn’t via a public appearance, just on Truth Social. It reminded me of the Priti Patel type apology ie ‘I’m sorry you feel that……’ etc, in other words trying to attribute the problem to the other’s over-sensitivity rather than taking responsibility for her own actions.

Countering those who labelled him weak (and the Tories’ regular accusation – ‘spineless’) for not standing up to Trump and threatening counter tariffs, Keir Starmer is now claiming that his stance produced the recent climb down on Greenland, ie diplomacy rather than ill-considered action. He’s also made crystal clear his disgust at Trump’s latest insult about NATO troops in Afghanistan. No doubt his Chequers meeting with the Danish PM Mette Frederiksen will prove productive. If you missed it you might be interested in her Radio 4 Profile broadcast on Saturday 17th – she certainly sounds like a woman to be reckoned with. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002q253

But it gets even worse…Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ for Gaza (which he expects to operate much more widely, some believe competing with the UN or even replacing it) chaired by Trump himself, not only has on it sycophantic sidekicks Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff of little political experience, but the Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and Sir Tony Blair. Unbelievably, Putin was invited and has also joined: what could possibly go wrong? It’s pretty clear that this ‘Board’ allegedly for Gaza’s reconstruction would also be about making money for certain individuals. And not only that – we hear Trump is expecting countries to cough up $1bn to be permanent members beyond three years. Invitations were sent to around 60 countries, apparently, and to the EU. Some have been deterred by Putin’s participation but there’s also the fact that the Board’s charter reportedly says Chairman Trump will have extensive executive power, including the ability to veto decisions and remove members, subject to some constraints. Constraints? As we heard recently Trump doesn’t recognise any constraints or limits to his power except his own ‘morality’.

It will be interesting to see which ones finally take up this invitation. In yet another example of performative antics by Trump, the invitation to Canada was withdrawn following Mark Carney’s speech at Davos. It sounds like a disaster for Gaza, a poisoned chalice and, interestingly, Israeli PM Netanyahu said that the US hadn’t coordinated this with them. Sky News told us: ‘In a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump called the board ‘the Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled at any time, any place’. Nothing like a bit of ambition and hyperbole. Its potential weaknesses aren’t reflected by the media taking this so seriously but surely with those strong and difficult personalities involved it could run into the buffers pretty early on.

Back in the UK, the media have been just as embarrassingly excited by all the intrigue and shenanigans regarding the defections to Reform of Nadhim Zahawi, Robert Jenrick and Andrew Rosindell as they’ve been about the Trump antics. Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, as defensive and defiant as usual, tried to suggest it was good riddance because he (Jenrick, the highest profile one) was a terrible liar and worse. Pots and kettles. Of course the damage caused to her party by the now 20 defections is another reason why she’s continued to clamber aboard one bandwagon after another, including opposition to the new Chinese embassy and the Chagos Islands deal when it was her party which negotiated this deal in the first place. It’s rumoured that at least five more high profile Tories are preparing to defect so the saga is likely to continue. It’s raised again the injustice of defectors not calling a by-election as they should do, since constituents voted for the Tories, not Reform. This is yet another example of inadequate parliamentary rules and even weaker implementation – these people should be made to resign their seats and let their constituents decide otherwise they shouldn’t consider themselves legitimate members of the House.

Another domestic source of media excitement is that of Labour’s Andrew Gwynne possibly resigning his seat (conditional upon getting his pension made up despite having been a wrongdoer), seen as facilitating the return to Westminster of Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, potentially resulting in a leadership challenge. It seems unlikely to happen as Starmerites dominate the National Executive Committee and there’s determination in some quarters to prevent Burnham gaining traction. ‘However, Burnham allies suggested there would be significant disquiet among MPs, the unions and party members should the leadership try to block him from returning to parliament, where he served as the MP for Leigh from 2001 to 2017.’Should Burnham decide to run, there are still multiple obstacles standing in his way. He would need to be selected by the NEC – where the odds are stacked against him – and win the byelection in Gorton and Denton against Reform UK and pro-Gaza independents, all before any potential leadership challenge’. So now he’s decided to throw his hat into the ring, the NEC is to decide whether that ‘hat’ can be entered. I hope for all our sakes they decide quickly (or should that be the political cliché ‘swiftly’?).

https://tinyurl.com/mr478stu

Two further stories under-reported or not all by the right wing media relate to Farage’s massive breach of the MPs’ Code of Conduct, blaming ‘administrative errors by his team’, but not challenged about in interviews (there’s definitely an agenda to protect the Reform UK leader) and the Prince Harry/Daily Mail court case. First, it was shameful that the four leading royals disappeared to Scotland on totally unnecessary vanity appearances in order to avoid Harry’s visit. Second, apart from Byline Times, I’ve seen no media coverage of how the disgraceful conduct of the Daily Mail further revealed in court could affect the owner Lord Rothermere’s £500m bid for the Telegraph. ‘Allegations that the Mail engaged in phone hacking, landline tapping, burglaries, and the theft of medical records are threatening to derail its £500 million takeover of the Telegraph’. And here’s a key element – about the finance for the deal. ‘NatWest, the Mail’s long-standing lender and the principal funder of the Telegraph bid, has the power to pull the plug if internal auditors conclude the legal risks are too great. And City scrutiny has intensified as allegations of industrial-scale criminality inside the Mail’s newsrooms are tested in court’. The case has already cost the Mail £30m and that’s without many more claimants’ cases to be considered and there are formidable regulatory issues to navigate. ‘Shares analyst Paul Scott has reviewed DMGT’s accounts and concluded that a £1 billion hit ‘would probably either bankrupt DMGT (Daily Mail General Trust), or at least stretch it to the limit’. At present surely it will be surprising if the Telegraph bid isn’t withdrawn.

Daily Mail High Court Trial Casts Shadow Over Lord Rothermere’s Telegraph Bid

Recently we heard that Radio 4 Today programme presenter Amol Rajan would be leaving (but still playing safe by hanging onto other BBC gigs like his Radical podcast?) in order to unleash his ‘inner entrepreneur’ and enter the ‘creator economy’ via his own company. He’s someone who’s divided opinion and the adjective ‘Marmite’ comes to mind: some have found him a breath of fresh air and a challenge to the usual BBC classism but others find his casual style and garbled delivery annoying and believe he’s contributed to the dumbing down of this programme.

There’s no doubt he rose up the media ranks very quickly. He’d already had an impressive range of posts in print media, for example becoming editor of The Independent at the age of 29. ‘Since joining the BBC as its first media editor in 2016, after a stint as the youngest ever editor of The Independent, Rajan has become one of the broadcaster’s most prominent personalities. He’s hosted documentaries about the royal family and the British class system, filled in as a DJ on Radio 2, headlined his own interview series and chatted to celebrities on The One Show’s green sofa…Little surprise then that last summer, the BBC’s annual top earners list revealed his salary to be somewhere between £315,000 and £319,999’.

The article purports to be about ‘why Rajan had to say goodbye to Today’ but doesn’t really address it except for this suggestion: ‘he has sniffed the air and come to the conclusion that talent and personal brand building have the potential to become bigger than the “show”. And there’s no doubt that he has plenty of talent and a distinct personal brand. Some article comments go further, acknowledging what a state of flux broadcasting is in, not least of which is the rise of the streaming giants. With the BBC Charter renewal coming up in 2027 more and more dissatisfied viewers are refusing to pay the licence and a recent piece of news suggests that YouTube is getting more views than the BBC. ‘What he has undoubtedly realised is that the BBC won’t survive a Reform Government and is gambling that by starting his own production company now, he will be well positioned should that calamity come to pass to hoover up the ‘opportunities’ that will arise’. It will be interesting to see how his new company fares.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/features/amol-rajan-today-programme-bbc-radio-4-leave-b2873753.html

Needless to say most of the news is pretty damaging to our mental wellbeing, making it even more important to look after our minds and bodies as far as possible. Research has shown that the arts are good for our sense of wellbeing and their heavy use would substantiate such findings. Good news, then, that the Department for Media, Culture and Sport. has confirmed that £1.5bn will be invested in cultural organisations over a five-year period – including £600m for its directly-funded museums and £160m for regional and local museums. Culture secretary Lisa Nandy made a point of saying that the money aims to turn a corner on the underfunding that the sector has faced in the past 10-plus years – underfunding by the philistine Tories, of course, who tried to influence policy by threatening to withdraw funding from institutions they considered ‘woke’. This money will also tackle urgent capital repairs and ‘unite communities in the face of division’. This latter aim is completely contrary to Conservative Party policy.

https://tinyurl.com/f72bn9kc

Contrast this with what’s happening in the US due to Donald Trump’s culture war on anything he considers ‘woke’. It’s beyond disgraceful that key post holders in cultural institutions have been sacked or threatened with termination of their contracts for disagreeing with the Trump administration’s strategy which pursues a very limited view of history (emphasising and instilling pride in ‘Americanism’ and downplaying or eliminating any reference to unsavoury elements like slavery). Trump doesn’t understand or respect the arts or anything that’s not ‘business’ so he’s undermining them and potentially killing them off. Trump’s assault on the prestigious Smithsonian Institution has been described as the intention to ‘reframe the entire culture of the US’. That is some goal!

You may recall that on his inauguration day, 20 January 2025, his executive order (so many of these have been examples of executive overreach) eliminated diversity and inclusion programmes from federal agencies. Only a few months later (although the Smithsonian had already shut down these programmes despite not being a federal agency) another EO called Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History claimed that the Smithsonian had ‘come under the influence of a divisive, race-centred ideology that promoted narratives that portray American and western values as inherently harmful and oppressive’. The individual charged with removing this ideology was a 30 something Trump aide with zero experience in the arts. Months later Trump stated: ‘The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been – Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future. I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made.” To use different language, Trump wanted museums to reflect a Maga vision of American history that was nationalist and triumphalist, and downplayed reflection on darker aspects of its past, specifically its history of slavery’.

It’s just astonishingly backward and dishonest, far worse than anything that’s happened in the UK, so far. (I’m thinking of the right wing ‘anti-woke’ contingent Restore Trust, which, year after year, tries to infiltrate the National Trust’s council in order to take it backwards. You get the idea from its ‘About Us’ – ‘We want the National Trust’s focus and priorities not to be driven by modish, divisive ideologies but rather solely by its noble mandate’. As many National Trust visitors will know many of its grand properties were effectively built and maintained by the profits of slavery and in recent years the Trust has been keen to make this clear via its curatorial policies. Let’s hope the damage Trump has inflicted on the American arts scene won’t be irreversible and that nothing like that ever gains traction here. (It’s not impossible to imagine, for example if Reform ever gets into government).

https://tinyurl.com/ywp72vvc

Finally, now we’re a few weeks into the New Year several articles have been presenting a different take on New Year Resolutions. Especially the self-styled wintering experts suggesting that instead of strict regimes for this or that we should be hibernating and adapting to the season which is not intended for frantic activity. Writer Oliver Burkeman goes a step further in Meditions for Mortals, saying stop trying to ‘sort your life out…Stop stressing about self‑improvement or waiting until you’re on top of everything. This year give yourself permission to prioritise pleasure’. This is the opposite ‘advice’ from all the stuff of self-help books, now a million pound industry which regularly recycles the work of past thinkers and psychotherapists, presenting it as their own. ‘This should be the year you stop trying so hard to turn yourself into a better person, and focus instead on actually leading a more absorbing life’. He reckons no objections to this argument hold any water. ‘In fact, there’s excellent reason to believe that doing more of what you want in 2026 will do nothing but good for your health and wellbeing, for your feelings of overwhelm, and even for the state of society’.

He’s critical of the stance that you need to fix yourself, that there’s something badly wrong with you. ‘And even if there is, it’s not clear that organising your life around the grim struggle to fix it is a particularly effective strategy’. In fact, this author claims that the relentless self-improvement jag is an avoidance tactic, avoidance of making life changing decisions eg about work and relationships. ‘As a finite human being in a world of infinite inputs, you’re always going to have too much to do. So it makes no sense to put off enjoyment or aliveness until such time as you’re no longer facing an unmanageable to-do list; you are, I regret to inform you, likely to end your life with a long to-do list of uncompleted tasks’. Plenty of food for thought here – it would be an interesting exercise to compare how the different approaches pan out for their adoptees!

https://tinyurl.com/mr8k58jc

Sunday 4 January 2026

Happy New Year to all – though it hasn’t started well and it’s not good for our mental wellbeing. The terrible situations in Gaza and Sudan, continuing intransigence from Putin on Ukraine, mounting protests in Iran and this astonishing attack on Venezuela by Trump don’t augur well. Thanks to the lawless conduct of Trump, Putin and Netanyahu, the post-war international world order has broken down and now it seems that organisations like the UN are impotent to challenge the outrageous actions carried out by these regimes. It’s hard to credit that without consulting Congress Trump ordered these macho military strikes, captured the president of a sovereign country and his wife, on flimsy grounds, intends to put Maduro on trial in the US and to ‘essentially run’ Venezuela until there can be a proper transfer of power. Nothing short of colonialism, a violation of international law hiding behind the drug trafficking fig leaf, all to deflect attention from Trump’s diminishing popularity at home and the ongoing Epstein Files scandal. What’s equally astonishing is the failure so far of politicians here and the media to condemn these actions.

BBC News broadcast quite a bit of Trump’s press conference speech (tellingly at his luxury Mar-a-lago retreat) and it sounded nothing short of frightening – bragging, arrogant, inarticulate and unbalanced. It was also irrelevant in places, rehashing grievances against certain generals, Joe Biden and others. Many will no doubt agree with the Law and Policy blogger (David Allen Green), who reckons Trump was given carte blanche for such conduct bythe failure of the Senateto convict him on indictment after the attempted January 6 insurrection. ‘For once he could get away with that, he knew he could get away with anything – and those around him knew they also could get away with anything while Trump was President’. It’s widely suspected that this attack is really to do with Venezuela’s sizeable stocks of oil and rare mineral deposits. On X Occupy Democrats said: ‘The pretext for this heinous act of aggression — which by any definition qualifies as terrorism carried out by the United States — is that Maduro is supposedly the leader of some sprawling drug cartel poisoning our country. In reality, next to zero fentanyl comes from Venezuela. This is about seizing that country’s vast oil reserves and bolstering Trump’s strongman persona amongst his bloodthirsty base’. Acknowledging the faults of the Maduro regime, OD added: ‘Venezuela deserves democracy. But believing that does not mean the US gets to break international law, ignore Congress, and unilaterally overthrow the government of a sovereign nation to police the world’.

It’s quite possible the reckless Trump hasn’t thought through what condemnations were likely to come from China and Russia, a supreme irony Russia calling it ‘an act of armed aggression”, that Caracas ‘must be guaranteed the right to determine its own destiny without any destructive, let alone military, outside intervention’. In most governments politicians and advisers should and would risk the annoyance, even wrath, of their boss in order to make important points but it seems the yes-men in the Trump administration are far too cowed to do so – they’re doubling down, claiming that the actions have been entirely legitimate. In contrast to Pete Hegseth’s Trump puppet appearance on US tv, many are pointing out that this oil is Venezuelan and never belonged to the US. ‘Do we now have the US Military being used as mercenaries for the international oil companies ? That does sound like what the soldiers signed up for’. ‘Venezuela’s oil wasn’t taken from the US, it was extracted from Venezuelan land! How can this worthless douche lie so casually? He sounds like Trump’s parrot, he should be caged! Venezuela was never US territory. Nothing was stolen, they’re the ones stealing from people!’

Commentator Will Hutton gets it in one, IMO: ‘Venezuela’s Maduro is a corrupt, vicious dictator repressing democratic opposition . But the US unilaterally capturing a foreign leader not at war breaches every canon of international law. Justifies Putin in Ukraine/Xi in Taiwan. Might is right. Who next on what pretext? A dark moment’. But another reminder: ‘Context is important regarding Venezuela. We’re talking about a psychopathic leader of a rogue state, who has enriched himself through his own corrupt actions, attacked his own citizens and has no regard for international law Maduro is no angel either’. It’s very chilling, though, that Trump has indicated he may not stop here: at his press conference, he  said: “We’re going to have our very large US oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country and we are ready to stage a second and much larger attack if we need to do so’. We hear that Americans and others are already protesting against his actions and these could intensify if US military carry out further attacks. It’s early days and the situation is changing all the time but it’s already starting to look like an own goal.

Journalist Simon Tisdall looked at the effect on the wider world: ‘The coup is illegal, unprovoked and regionally and globally destabilising. It upends international norms, ignores sovereign territorial rights, and potentially creates an anarchic situation inside Venezuela itself. It is chaos made policy. But this is the world we now live in – the world according to Donald Trump’. And this world is a dangerous place – no wonder other South and Central American countries are feeling anxious that the same tactics may be used there. Trump has already directly or indirectly threatened Colombia and Secretary of State Marco Rubio is known to want regime change in Panama. But despite Trump’s boast about their military being the best in the world, there’s a limit to the boots on the ground he can use for other attacks. Unless he uses mercenaries and the US has form on this. So much for being a man of peace. ‘Trump’s irresponsible, dangerously erratic behaviour is getting measurably worse. His Venezuela “success” may encourage him to attempt more and bigger, unhinged outrages. Like Mark Antony minus the toga and brains, he struts and preens, cries havoc! and lets slip the dogs of war’.

https://tinyurl.com/3v3mk6ht

At home right wing politicians and the media continue to undermine the government, part of this campaign being to effect the removal of Keir Starmer. Today Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg featured a long interview with the PM, during which the worst example of Tory client journalism sought to undermine everything he said. Her opening sentence of 2026 on air was ‘The Prime Minister has been in trouble for MONTHS’, a terrible way to introduce an interview. Keir Starmer insisted that the May elections don’t constitute a referendum on his leadership. It’s very difficult to achieve when the media are predominantly right wing but the government really needs to get a grip on getting its achievements and positive messages out there. There are indeed valid concerns about this government’s performance but the media often omit the positive stuff, thereby controlling the narrative. The latest plea comes from Chris Powell (brother of Jonathan, Starmer’s national security adviser who was also Blair’s Chief of Staff), who says an urgent plan is needed to ‘wage and win the daily war for attention’ in order to push back the populists.

‘We are at a very dangerous moment. We simply cannot afford to allow Reform UK to have a free run, and become established and entrenched as a credible potential government in the minds of disenchanted voters. The longer they go unchallenged, the more unthreatening and risk-free they will seem to voters. Just hoping that Reform UK and [Nigel] Farage implode, or that the rightwing vote will somehow fracture, is potentially suicidal for our freedom and democracy’. Powell reckons the UK is now ‘a textbook case of an establishment party caught in the headlights, as its populist opponent expertly fills the vacuum of voter pain and disrespect’ but rather than just carrying on, in the same way, remote from voters’ real concerns, it needs a radical re-set of the government’s strategy and messaging. It will be interesting to see if this nettle is understood and grasped.

https://tinyurl.com/4crfk3my

Perhaps one good thing (the only one?) about Venezuela dominating the news is having kept the royals off the front pages for a day or two. In the wake of further Epstein Files revelations including the incriminating emails from ‘A of Balmoral’ (guess the mystery identify) the collusive media have been inundating us with monarchist propaganda, attempting to show these luxurious and out of touch people in a positive light. The deluge increased at the same time as the Cabinet Officewas accused of a cover up after the release of documents including some relating to travel expenses for the former Duke of York as UK trade envoy were withheld at the last minute. ‘The retention of the minutes underlines the way that files relating to the royal family are routinely withheld from release under the Public Records Act. Graham Smith, the chief executive of anti-monarchy campaign group Republic, said there should be no royal exemption at all’.

https://tinyurl.com/y5n8zc9z

At the end of last week one example of monarchist hyperbole was about new titles for William and Catherine, clickbait which turned out to relate to them being granted the right to issue Royal Warrants. This is a form of corruption in itself, as there will be favours going back and forth between the Grantors of Royal Warrants and the organisations selected. Following the news over Christmas that Andrew Mountbatten Windsor was seen driving a brand new top of the range Landrover around the Windsor estate, it emerged that not one but an entire fleet is regularly loaned to the royals by Royal Warrant holder Jaguar Landrover. It will be interesting to see which products are chosen for this honour by the Wales duo, although we’re far less likely to learn if these have resulted in boxes of chocolate and crates of champagne delivered to Forest Lodge.

In the general context of senior public figures including the royals being protected from scrutiny, it was interesting that finally the Met Police has a new policy (surely necessary in all police forces) requiring officers to declare membership of the Freemasons. This is being opposed by the Freemasons (on tenuous human rights ground), who havedemanded an emergency injunction from the high court in order to halt the policy. In my view the Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, has proved underwhelming, but he’s right to stick to his guns on this as there have long been suspicions of links between freemasonry and corruption. The Met has much work to do to restore ‘trust and credibility’ in this force and this policy surely has to be part of that. It’s outrageous that the Freemasons would resort to the law to prevent a measure which should have been introduced long ago.

‘The issue has dogged policing, with numerous allegations that Freemasonry membership has led to people covering up for wrongdoing in keeping the organisation’s credo that members stand by one another. The official inquiry into the 1987 murder of the private investigator Daniel Morgan and police corruption that hampered the hunt to find his killers recommended tighter rules on Freemasons in policing’. The police across the board have been astonishingly slow to properly address this problem – perhaps no wonder due to powerful vested interests.

https://tinyurl.com/38e4k7t9

We can wonder whether freemasonry has been at work in the failure of local police forces to monitor trail hunting since the Blair administration banned fox hunting. Last year anti-hunting groups produced evidence of over 230 breaches of the ban, whereby ‘trail hunting’ was used as a fig leaf for continuing the banned barbaric custom. The government’s announcement of a wide ranging animal welfare strategy, including some new legislation, includes banning trail hunting amidstconcerns it is being used as a smokescreen for hunting foxes. There’s plenty of evidence of just this posted by hunt saboteurs, footage showing foxes being torn to shreds, fox hounds seen as no longer performing being shot and abuse and assaults on those trying to protect the foxes. Boxing Day hunts up and down the country were widely featured in the media, including some pretty poor defences of this practice, such as ‘the government doesn’t understand the rural economy’ and interviews with people like kennels managers who reckoned it would be the end of their ‘job for life’, they’d never done anything else, etc. Quite rightly those objecting made a much sounder case for livelihoods and the rural economy not depending on these arcane practices, misrepresented as ‘tradition’. Moreover, many country dwellers wrote to newspapers and posted on social media their opposition to these hunts, some citing destruction of their gardens and killing of pets by these entitled people rampaging through the countryside. Given the longevity of this custom, legislation will be difficult to implement but perhaps even harder to enforce.

Speaking of people dressed up in expensive red attire, what’s been dubbed the ‘ermine arms race’ is the absurd situation of Keir Starmer creating 34 more peers, taking his total to 96, with 850 peers already in the House, significantly outnumbering MP numbers (650). In recent years the Lords has been discredited by two factors: the ‘arms race’ of political parties appointing more and more, arguably to get their legislation through and the corrupt appointment of cronies and the undeserving. But again – no parliamentary rules are enforced so who or what can stop this risible and damaging situation continuing? The irony is that prior to entering office Keir Starmer had pledged to ‘radically reform’ the second chamber but so far it’s just been the planned removal of the hereditary peers. That’s a laudable intention but it could just be that some might be more capable than some of the cronies. One measure which surely needs looking at is the automatic assumption that so many former ministers and MPs who lose their seats should ascend to the Lords. The role of bishops in the Lords should also be questioned. It’s been suggested that the government must act, if only to prevent the possibility of Nigel Farage appointing many more if he’s elected in 2029.

But there’s also a financial consideration. If 850 peers attend 100 times each year at over £300 a day in attendance allowance, that adds up to over £25m. What kind of value for money is this when evidence shows that some just attend, sometimes very briefly, making no contribution? It gets worse as ‘rogue’ Tory peers have been open about blocking the government’s legislation (‘we will grind you down’) when the second chamber is not supposed to oppose the will of the elected chamber. Yet this is happening, for example, with the Assisted Dying Bill, with attempts to ‘talk it out’, the same as ‘filibustering’ which I recall learning about years ago in American history.

‘Labour peers said virtually every bill had been slowed down, from key manifesto pledges on water regulation to rail nationalisation, Great British Energy and the football regulator. The Employment Rights Bill was repeatedly rejected, even after a major concession’. It’s good news that this year ‘the campaign group Unlock Democracy will turn its focus to Lords reform and says it will put the spotlight on a small number of influential peers who it believes are blocking the Assisted Dying Bill’s progress. While the group does not take a position on the issue of assisted dying, it says it is fundamentally a democratic issue’. Let’s hope Unlock Democracy gains some traction on this – it makes a mockery of democracy that these people should be able to wield this power under the radar.

https://tinyurl.com/37mk3488

Finally, when so many jobs aren’t recognised (unlike those related to show business) but play an important role in society and the economy, it was cheering to read of a competition focusing on bus drivers. Michael Leech, from Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire, has been named the UK bus driver of the year (organised by the Association of the same name), winning £4,100 in prize money and celebrating with a cup of tea with his wife.‘I’ve wanted to win bus driver of the year for years, but it’s highly competitive. You need to have an exemplary record, good feedback from customers, no prangs on the bus and excellent timekeeping. About 100 drivers from across the country make the grand final in Blackpool. There’s a theory test and practical exam, where you’re asked to park a bus exactly one metre from the pavement and line up a lamp-post to the middle of the hubcap. It’s very tense, but luckily, I managed to be very accurate’. The same article also features Loo of the Year Awards, Convenience Store of the Year, Lollipop Person of the Year and Anorak of the Year (courtesy of the Dull Men’s Club). Long may these awards continue!

https://tinyurl.com/e7jbehw5

Sunday 21 December

As people retreat into intense Christmas preparations, I get the feeling that Donald Trump’s latest attack on Europe isn’t being taken half seriously enough. The sentiments expressed in the US new National Security Strategy are truly disturbing and will certainly be affecting our mental wellbeing at a conscious or less conscious level. Whereas some of us have been saying for years that the ‘special relationship’ is a myth and died some time ago, this didn’t stop politicians trotting this out whenever UK/US relations were discussed. But now we can be in no doubt about Trump’s contempt for Europe and determination not to ‘carry’ it, effectively driving a coach and horses through NATO. Trump’s cowardice with Putin, his preparedness to end the war in Ukraine totally on Russian’s terms and his condemnation of European leaders as ‘weak’, their countries ‘decaying’ are extremely unsettling because for years post-war there was a consensus that stability was underpinned by US power.

But it gets worse: remember J D Vance’s outrageous speech at the February Munich Security Conference, which ‘shook the transatlantic alliance’? It resembled an abuse of hospitality, in my view, that Vance suggested that Europe’s main danger was from within – erosion of democratic norms, censorship, suppression of dissent and exclusion of populist voices – rather than from external threats like Russia and China. The writing on the wall was his declaration that US support would be conditional on governments sustaining ‘free speech’ – the Trump administration’s fig leaf for hate speech. Effectively this new Strategy doubles down on this by not only laying into European leaders but going further down the culture war route, citing ‘civilisational erasure’, long exposed as a racist conspiracy theory (replacement by global elites of white populations by non-white immigrants etc). Although it will obviously take quite some time to get our defence budget up to 5% of GDP, as demanded by the Americans, and our defence capability up to scratch, the US is effectively telling the UK and Europe that we’re on our own. With Russia ramping up its incursions into European waters and airspace and simultaneously practising cyber warfare, it’s no casual threat.

Trump is nothing if not an erratic turncoat and all this makes the extremely expensive State Visit look rather a foolish and complacent exercise. Trump was reportedly disrespecting the UK and Europe even on his way home from it. US support for ultra-right wing European parties borders on political interference in their democracies -indeed, the new strategy arrogantly assumes dominance of the western hemisphere and the right to influence European affairs. One commentator said ‘Trump has essentially declared civilisational war against Europe’s liberal democracies’ but veteran journalist Andrew Neil said the Strategy gets ‘a lot right’. Who needs enemies when there are friends like this? He cites weak minority governments which have ‘gorged themselves on welfare spending for far too long’ and calls the Strategy ‘a wake-up call for a slumbering continent’. Perhaps Europe has been complacent for too long but when Trump and others criticise ‘weak’ regimes it’s clear they see simplistic bull-in=-a-china-shop politics as the only effective approach, without appreciating the need for nuance and negotiation. A supreme irony is thatover the coming months, the US Supreme Court will confront more cases in which the government invokes national security to justify the suppression of speech. There’s also Trump’s plan to make tourists reveal 5 years of social media history – people are already saying they daren’t visit the US because of what they’ve said about him on Facebook and X etc.

But we also have to wonder about the timing of this macho gesture, coinciding as it does with Trump’s declining performance in the polls, continuing speculation about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, legislators’ criticism of the Justice Department for withholding Epstein files and overly redacting others, and his absurd law suit against the BBC. And this isn’t all: the two latest criticisms are his takeover of the country’s national art centre (Kennedy Centre) using political skulduggery to remove ‘woke’ senior staff and programming, and threats of military action to sovereign governments like Venezuela and Colombia, citing specious reasons.

Regarding the BBC, veteran journalist Alan Rusbridger asserts in Prospect magazine that the BBC has no choice but to teach Trump a lesson. The overtanned egoist has no genuine grounds for his legal action – it’s political theatre, as several commentators have observed. Yet another macho battle to take a heavy toll on all involved but hey,that’s ok as long as the perpetrator believes it will appeal to his MAGA base. What he exploits ‘is a profound sense of the weakness of media and other organisations. Trump knows how to use litigation to exploit weaknesses and to obtain favourable outcomes…’. Although the BBC should never have committed its error of judgement involving the spliced footage, such errors are apparently not seen as a legal cause of action. Attributing exaggeratedly bad motives to the BBC has been seen as a way Trump’s lawyers can keep the case going, designed to get the Corporation to capitulate and settle – just as timid US broadcasters have done.

‘The BBC should, however, stand firm and prepare for trial. This does not necessarily mean that the case will go to trial: almost all civil lawsuits settle before a full hearing. But it is only by showing that it is genuinely ready to go all the way that the BBC can seek to bring this to an end on favourable terms. And faced with such fortitude, Trump may himself make a favourable offer or even pull the case completely… Trump’s perspective is that here is yet another vulnerable media organisation with unimpressive leadership and another opportunity for him to gain leverage’. Rather than a very expensive settlement the BBC must fight this claim, which comes at a very unfortunate time given the Charter renewal process in 2027. There’s plenty to criticise the BBC for, particularly its biased news and current affairs coverage, which Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy is either oblivious to or pretends to be, but I would defend it to the hilt in the face of Trump’s absurd aggression. As Trump himself so often says…. ‘we’ll see what happens’!

https://tinyurl.com/5fwb546k

Of course Trump isn’t alone in coming across as increasingly unbalanced. Perhaps the most prominent home grown public figure is Liz Truss, who, rather than exhibiting some humility and contrition for her extremely damaging administration, has doubled down on her eccentric economic theories, takes every opportunity to disloyally cosy up to Trump  (US trips funded how?) and now has her own tv show on YouTube. The Guardian called ‘her latest plea for Maga attention’ hamfisted and ‘hapless ravings from a cupboard’. She apparently made her debut with a long ‘barking mad’ monologue lambasting everything from the ‘deep State’ to ‘eco zealots ruining British towns’. As she’s been ostracised by the UK she’s apparently aiming to be embraced by the American right. ‘Her opening monologue was nothing more than a laundry list of Maga stereotypes about the British. The woman longs to become Donald Trump’s Lord Haw-Haw, or at least a version of Lord Haw-Haw who looked and sounded like a bucket of spanners had just dropped on his head’. Her coup de grace was to declare the BBC ‘fake news’ (remind you of anyone?) for covering up that ‘Britain is going to hell in a handcart’. She seriously needs help but it’s unlikely she will seek it – the inability and hubristic unwillingness of those who refuse to reflect on the consequences of their actions causes so much damage in both public and private life.

Another public figure who fits the latter description (but who’s at least sane) is former Tory Chancellor George Osborne, the man of many jobs. He went on X with ‘personal news’ that he’d got himself a job in AI because this was the most exciting field to be in right now, etc etc, prompting questions as to how the privileged manage to just jump into jobs and plum positions (like chairing the British Museum, though the major theft of museum artefacts took place on his watch) with apparently little effort. ‘George Osborne getting a new job isn’t exactly news. Since leaving frontline politics, the former chancellor has served as the chair of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, edited (not entirely successfully) the Evening Standard, advised asset manager BlackRock, joined boutique advisory firm Robey Warshaw, been appointed as the chair of the British Museum and taken on roles including advising crypto firm Coinbase. Oh, and like any white man of a particular age, he co-hosts a political podcast’. But this latest job he’s landed, with Open AI, the purveyor of ChatGPT, is seen in some quarters as a bit of a sinister risk we need to see off, because AI is now emulating the path taken by other industries before it (eg defence, oil and pharma). It’s suggested they’re acting more like ‘quasi governments’ than companies, getting themselves embedded in countries’ very infrastructures and recruiting political figures to act as their acceptable public face.

‘Osborne is not the first to don the branded hoodie and Silicon Valley lifestyle. His fellow coalition government bod Nick Clegg blazed the trail as head of global affairs for Meta. At the time of his initial hiring as a vice-president at Facebook in 2018, his appointment was treated as a PR move – a big name to help the company navigate scandal and scrutiny. But it hinted that platforms had become political actors, whether they liked it or not. The industry’s outsized spending on lobbyists (€151m in Europe alone at the last count) to support the political beasts is an indication of what is at stake’. These tech companies are trying to anticipate regulation so they can get around it and have it not interfere with their income streams: they’re not hiring these public figures (Rishi Sunak is another example) for their technical expertise but for their knowledge of institutions and their valuable networks. It’s a kind of Trojan Horse which needs recognising as such. The threat was evident when Trump had the temerity to ‘warn’ the Australian government regarding their under 16s social media ban, a ban which of course will impact the American tech giants. ‘The more tech companies start to act like politicians and global leaders, the more we need to treat them like it. That doesn’t mean deference; it means more scepticism and journalistic interrogation’. The world is watching the Australia experiment with great interest and the UK already has a panel focusing on it – let’s hope they also factor in the danger of these companies’ tactics.

https://tinyurl.com/39ufzvww

As sure as eggs is eggs, whenever some more unsavoury news about Andrew Mountbatten Windsor is likely to emerge, Kensington Palace, supported by zillions of royal industry dependents and social media bots release a deluge of monarchist propaganda. The current example is the latest Epstein Files revelations, which showed the former prince in various compromising situations, quickly accompanied by multiple mainstream and social media posts about Kate and William’s Christmas card (pointed out by many that this was an old photo dating from April, allegedly photo shopped), Prince William’s ‘major’ new role with the SAS (which isn’t major but just another patronage) and William taking George to a centre for the homeless to serve them Christmas dinner. Pure PR exercises but cynically designed to gaslight us into thinking they have any valuable role when costing so much. But it didn’t even end there – it’s constant and last night the final of Strictly Come Dancing was interrupted for a tribute to the departing presenters from ‘Camilla R’ to be read out. Meanwhile, Mountbatten Windsor remains above the fray, moving to a small and ‘temporary’ home on the Sandringham Estate in the New Year while a larger home is being refurbished. Surely the smaller home would suffice, but despite the appearance of harsh treatment of his brother, the King constantly gives into his demands, including one for various servants such as butler, cook and housekeeper. The arrogance and entitlement know no bounds.

It’s been cathartic watching David Dimbleby’s three part series for BBC tv, What’s the Monarchy For? The former BBC veteran, no longer tied to the Corporation’s monarchist shackles, has been refreshingly straightforward, even combative, asked key questions of his interviewees, skewering this institution in the process. Way overdue. Two striking examples come to mind, illustrating the longstanding cowardly and passive approach taken by politicians and others, causing these interviewees to squirm. One was discussing the King’s prolific letter writing to governments over the years, clearly intended to shape policy under the radar, letters routinely placed at the top of the relevant minister’s pile. ‘When Dimbleby points out that this is pure hypocrisy – Charles has the right not to be neutral, but also has the right to maintain the appearance of neutrality? – a floundering Grieve (Dominic Grieve, former Conservative minister and Attorney General for England and Wales) weakly denies it’. Another was when Dimbleby challenged former Chancellor George Osborne about the huge cost of the monarchy: Osborne complacently said it was better to spend money this way ‘than on the NHS and benefits’. Shameful.

https://tinyurl.com/y7awhm3h

Lest we get the impression that because of their warmongering the Russians have got all the answers here’s an amusing story published in The Week. The launch of its first robot to be powered by AI proved embarrassing because spectacular malfunction caused it to fall flat on its face. The manufacturers promised that it could walk, handle equipment and communicate fluently with people. But when it walked onto the stage in Moscow ‘to the theme song of Rocky, it began to stagger, before collapsing in a heap’. The funniest thing was surely that when assistants tried to hide it under a curtain, it continued to flail ineffectually. A commentator at the launch called it the ‘first robot with alcoholism’.

Finally, we can wonder whether this could be one of the worst things for Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. The former Prince is humiliatingly the butt of the best Christmas cracker joke of the year. ‘The annual competition is commissioned by the comedy channel U&Gold (formerly Comedy Gold) and decided by the British public. It usually produces a topical winner that sends up one of the biggest stories of the year.This year’s winner was written by Ben Smith from Chelmsford, who pithily summed up Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s fall from royal status: “Why is Prince Andrew not writing any Christmas books? He hasn’t got any titles!” Smith receives a top prize that includes £1,500 towards a holiday’.

https://tinyurl.com/23aput84

Happy Solstice and festive greetings to all.

Sunday 23 November

As Trump’s capitulatory and short-termist non solutions to Gaza and Ukraine struggle to take hold, not surprisingly, and Budget speculation gets worse, not better, there are three interesting sources of silence. One is that the BBC, having lost another Board member this week, has still not received the threatened law suit from Trump (is he just biding his time or has he been advised he doesn’t have a leg to stand on?) and it’s bad news for them to be losing so much licence fee revenue. Increasing dissatisfaction with the BBC and the compulsory nature of the fee has led numerous consumers to stop paying, some under the false impression that they don’t need a licence, but there seems to be very little checking. To get the content while evading payment I saw a recommendation to get a VPN and tick the box which asks if you have a licence. ‘The BBC is now losing more than £1bn a year from households either evading the licence fee or deciding they do not need one, according to a cross-party group of MPs who warned the corporation is under “severe pressure’. Attempts to enforce payment of the licence fee are also stalling. The number of visits to unlicensed homes increased by 50% last year, but it did not translate into either higher sales or successful prosecutions’. As the BBC charter renewal date is not that far off (2027) it will be interesting to see what they come up with as potential funding solutions. The Corporation seems to have learned nothing following the recent Panorama/Trump debacle, at least regarding its news and current affairs output – as right wing biased as before, if not more. It was appalling having ‘Lord’ Gove on the Today programme on Friday actually defending Boris Johnson given the findings of the Covid Inquiry, especially when Gove has been seriously implicated in the corrupt PPE VIP lane.

https://tinyurl.com/4fmznv5e

The second more predictable source of silence is Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. The former Prince had been given till Thursday to respond to the US Congress’s request to give evidence regarding what he knew about Epstein but no surprise, again, that this arrogant royal is treating the request with the contempt he’s used to doling out. King Charles’s hope that he has now, given recent the defenestration, put the Andrew scandal ‘behind him’ will likely prove in vain as the US is not letting this story die and the British public is increasingly losing interest in and commitment to the monarchy. Pressure is coming from various quarters including Keir Starmer, who said that ‘in principle anyone with knowledge of child sexual offence cases should disclose what they know’, clearly alluding to Andrew.

Following the agreement to release the Epstein files, we can expect further revelations concerning this disgraced character, who continues to live in luxury despite the spin of exile. And amongst ‘conditions’ that he’s laid down for leaving Royal Lodge, he’s refused to be ‘confined’ in his future home at Sandringham, despite royal family disapproval that he was seen riding his horse around the Windsor estate last week.

Meanwhile, royalist propaganda and bots continue to swamp the media, especially social media, with posts of various royals’ activities misrepresented as ‘work’, especially those of William and Catherine. Last week she gave an embarrassing opening address at the first Future Workforce Summit, a word salad clearly written by someone else and which she struggled to deliver, constantly looking at the notes and manifestly without the ‘passion’ she purports to feel. While, of course, the business leaders listened politely, the reaction of others was damning, along the lines of this privileged woman, living in luxury, has the temerity to address senior workforce and early years experts about the importance of ‘love’. It certainly is extremely important but, contrary to what the royal industry and her ethereal videos want you to believe, she did not develop this thinking herself – the crucial importance of early childhood was the work of 20th century psychoanalysts like D Winnicott. As one X user tweeted: ‘This is such an embarrassment, no job Kate lecturing businessmen on ‘love’. As if businesses were run on Kate’s puerile feelings or as if the princess has a clue of how employment or profit work in the real world’. Another said: ‘Got diverse family with independent business people, teachers & highly qualified people who’ve decades of experience in Social Care, Nursery Care, Early Years Teaching & SEN & Kate should go find another bloody hobby. Everyone I know has absolutely nothing to learn from her’. 

But what’s been noticeable since the early days of the marriage and is undeniable now is that the Princess has an eating disorder which the royal industry gushing about her has turned a blind eye to. Her obvious weight loss and gaunt appearance have been prompting more and more comments and speculation as to what could be behind this. Of course this has echoes of Princess Diana and her own mental health struggles. Despite their luxurious lifestyle it can’t be easy living in this bubble, forever under a microscope and hedged in by the expectations of others.

The third silence relates to former head of Welsh Reform, Nathan Gill, who has now been found guilty of accepting Russian bribes (and other allegations of Russian involvement have long dogged Reform) and sentenced to a ten and a half year prison sentence. The media have been supportive of Reform UK for some time (the BBC openly admitted this) so didn’t cover this subject and, extraordinarily, top dogs Farage and Tice denied even having met Gill despite footage of them together. But Reform’s Zia Yusuf has now broken this silence, describing Gill as ‘treasonous, horrific, awful’ in an interview with Sir Trevor Phillips on his Sunday morning political show on Sky News. ‘Sir’ Trevor suggested to Yusuf that these events would affect people’s ability to trust anything Reform said about Russia. Gill had been well embedded in Reform, but Yusuf responded ‘I think it is unreasonable to besmirch everyone else at Reform and the millions of people around the country who support Nigel and support our party’.

There’s been another silence that, now it’s been broken in part, is breathtaking in its dishonesty and disrespect. I’m talking about Boris Johnson’s initial silence, with no formal response, following Baroness Hallett’s second report on the Covid Inquiry (set up by Boris Johnson himself) which rightly condemned his chaotic management of the pandemic and the toxic culture which was allowed to take hold in Downing Street, leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths. One X user cited 44 serious mistakes, including failure to attend key COBRA meetings, allowing sporting events like Cheltenham to go ahead, facilitating the discharge of Covid positive patients into care homes, Eat Out to Help Out, lack of testing at airports and many more which all indicate a criminally slack approach to this life-threatening situation.

But it gets worse: Johnson has been found to have lied under oath, surely leading to criminal prosecution. Regarding his activities between 14th and 24th February 2020, he told the Inquiry in December 2023 that ‘There wasn’t a long holiday that I took. I was working throughout the period and the tempo did increase’. But official activity logs have revealed this to be untrue, that that he took time off at a crucial time, walking his dog, taking motorcycle rides and hosting lunches and overnight stays for family at friends at Chevening. And what has brought all this to light, you might ask. We have to be grateful to the individual (s) who leaked this information and a transparency outfit I’d never previously heard of called Distributed Denial of Secrets. They describe themselves as ‘a non-profit that specializes in publishing, archiving and analyzing leaked and hacked datasets, while protecting sources. It is the world’s largest public library of previously secret information’. How the presumptuous charlatan must have been infuriated by the revelation of his lies.

Lady Hallett’s report described February 2020 as ‘a lost month’, citing the fact that there were no Cabinet meetings between 14 and 25 February. Johnson was not briefed ‘to any significant extent’ on the virus during this period and received no daily updates. Such a contemptuously casual approach clearly indicates an individual not suited to public life, let alone this role.  

No wonder the Covid Bereaved Families for Justice have started a petition with the aim of bringing about legal action – public inquiries have to be about accountability besides ‘learning lessons’. It’s absurd that the main perpetrators in this tragic situation (Johnson, Cummings, Hancock, Sunak and Gove) have so far escaped any consequences for their grossly cynical and incompetent mismanagement. They should be prosecuted for misconduct in public office, but somehow such privileged people manage to remain above the fray. Even more astonishing, then, was Radio 4 Today’s choice of ‘Lord’ Gove to reflect on the report’s findings and its clear blame of the former PM. While Johnson himself remained silent yesterday, he was defended by Gove and also ‘Sir’ Mark Spencer, (unsurprisingly) Nadine Dorries, Tory MP Joe Robertson on Question Time and Rachel Johnson on LBC. An X user observed: ‘Conservative MP Joe Robertson’s dismissal of COVID negligence criticism reveals a chilling truth: the party’s moral compass remains broken. This isn’t just political defense, it’s institutionalized contempt for accountability’.

But now Johnson has attracted the ire of many by using his Mail on Sunday column to blast the Inquiry and Lady Hallett, a classic case of shooting the messenger. It’s a longstanding and cowardly defence to attack the means of seeking truth and justice and the individual in charge rather than considering one’s own role in a bad situation – I bet the mendacious clown learned this technique at Eton alongside their ethos of ‘cultivating effortless superiority’. He (of ‘let the bodies pile high’ notoriety) wrote: ‘Have these people lost their minds? More than three years after the end of the pandemic, they are still wrangling about what went wrong…Some judge has just spent the thick end of £200 million on an inquiry, and what is the upshot? She seems, if anything, to want more lockdowns. She seems to have laid into the previous Tory government for not locking down hard enough or fast enough – just when the rest of the world has been thinking that lockdowns were probably wildly overdone… I think it’s pretty obvious. Lady Hallett has been unable or unwilling to address the really important questions’. The irony which seems to have conveniently bypassed ‘Boris’ is that the two questions he reckons are key (Where did the virus come from and were the lockdowns worth the terrible price we paid?) were not in the Inquiry’s Terms of Reference which he himself approved.

He then has the nerve to describe Lady Hallett as ‘hopelessly incoherent’ and even purports to empathise with the victims and their families who, it’s been clear all along, he’s held in contempt, especially given what we later learned about Partygate.’ ‘So, faced with the agony of the Covid victims and their families – and their entirely understandable desire for catharsis of some kind – she has decided that the neatest thing is to administer a judicious kicking to the Tory administration, who no one much has an interest in defending except me, and to move on’. The families are clear: ‘He has no place in public life and we are calling again for Boris Johnson to lose all of his ex-PM privileges following the inquiry report’. Having penned his column, Johnson is now tweeting parts of it, to which the response has been forceful – the anger is palpable. One of the more polite ones reads: ‘Oh dear, what an inept response to the very clear findings that you and your shambolic government made a complete mess of the situation, resulting in thousands of premature deaths and costing the UK £billions. You and many of your colleagues should be on trial’. It will be interesting to see who else steps forward to defend this man. Also now attracting ire is a huge long ranting defence from Dominic Cummings accusing the report of being ‘damned lies’ and the result of ‘stupidity and incompetence’.

https://tinyurl.com/6t8e9znz

There have been other surprising events this week, some of which seem to have gone under  the radar. One is the surely astonishing offer from Labour’s Clive Lewis during BBC’s Politics Live to give up his seat for Andy Burnham, amid continuing speculation regarding Keir Starmer’s leadership. He later said this had been a ‘hypothetical question’ put to him and he did not intend to stand down, but perhaps it’s an indication that such a move could be considered at some point.

Another surprise has been the Daily Mail group’s offer to purchase the Telegraph for £500m after the previous deal fell through. I thought it further proof of the lack of proper regulation in this country that the bidders have anticipated no strong pushback from the government but they might be well aware of the weakness of Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy. One right wing rag buying another? The business model sounds most unhealthy: ‘The Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) said it had entered a period of discussion with RedBird IMI, which is a joint venture between the United Arab Emirates and the US private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners. RedBird Capital’s own bid for control of the Telegraph collapsed last week’. A Liberal Democrat peer, Chris Fox, has expressed the doubts many will have: ‘…we are sceptical about concentrating so much agenda-setting power in the hands of so few…’  and, urging the competition regulator to ‘rigorously examine’ the terms of the agreement, he spoke of the need to ‘ensure we don’t get an even more unbalanced media market for consumers and competitors’. This is a crucial point because most of our media, print and broadcast, are in right wing hands. If this bid succeeds it will be interesting to see how the BBC responds, as they nearly always cite the Telegraph and the Mail first in newspaper reviews.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2eg1w0n81o

It’s frustrating that government and officialdom are always late catching up with damaging trends and a key example must be the insidious inroads into the UK made by Chinese online retailers who escape import tax, prime culprits being fast fashion purveyors Temu and Shein. The BBC obtained data showing that the value of small parcels shipped from China to the UK under an import tax exemption more than doubled last year to £3bn.The government is reviewing the rules which lead to imports of small packages worth £135 or less currently avoiding customs duties. UK business owners and industry groups rightly want action to protect bricks and mortar retailers from being undercut and to protect consumers from potentially faulty goods. We Brits have been far too supine about this, less so in France. In Paris other organisations have been pulling out of a luxury department store, BHV, because Shein has set up there and there have been significant public protests. It’s the first time Shein has ventured a bricks and mortar presence and it’s not being taken casually. The Week quotes The Spectator: ‘Don’t look on this as just another retail opening- it’s cultural surrender’, because for ‘more than a century, BHV has ‘embodied a certain Parisian ideal of accessible luxury, craftsmanship and good taste’. It seems that Shein is regarded as the direct opposite. Some Parisian commentators have called it ‘the Walmartification of French fashion’ and ‘Paris renting out its soul to Chinese algorithms’.

But we, as well as the Parisians, have a big responsibility here. Too many have been seduced by the desire for cheap stuff at the expense of quality and environmental principles. Shein has been associated with ‘well documented vile labour and commercial practices’ but not unlike Primark and others here in the UK, what do the purchasers care when they can get some cheap stuff with zero hassle? It seems short termism rules supreme despite the concern in some quarters about these ‘regulation skirting companies’ effectively closing down domestic companies. I never thought I’d approve of anything Trump did but here’s something: he’s imposed a 100% tax on parcels from Shein and similar and shipments to the US have dropped 40%. That is some result. The EU and the UK need to do something similar but individual consumers need to understand what their desire for cheap fashion is doing to domestic industry and the environment.

Besides the Budget another over-hyped event coming up is Black Friday, trailed for weeks on end but which might prove useful if we’re clobbered by Rachel Reeves’s measures. This coming week the BBC is focusing on scams. ‘Scam Safe week brings together content from across the BBC including TV, radio, iPlayer, Sounds and online – to help the public stay informed in the fight against scams’. Consumers have been warned about Black Friday scams and also adverts which may not be scams as such but which are misleading, such as promoting a product at a higher price for a while then reducing it just before next Friday, to make it look more of a bargain. I’d be interested to know just how much people do benefit from this heavily hyped event.

Finally, on a lighter note, we often hear about library amnesties and books being returned after years but now The Week cites a plate stolen from a Cambridge College over 100 years ago being returned. It was swiped from Gonville and Caius College by a Gordon Stewart Wimbush in 1908 and on his death his widow passed it to a close family friend, then in her 20s. I wonder why this lady, now 85, waited all this time to return it to ‘its proper home’ and also if the college is still using the same china! The response of the college is not recorded.

Sunday 9 November

Today is Remembrance Sunday and although it may well be different from London in other parts of the country observation has definitely been declining in recent years. A while back many would sport poppies weeks or certainly days before the main commemoration and the two minute silence would be observed in workplaces and in public including cafes. It’s not the case now. It was interesting to see a bit of a tussle on social media following a post about the lack of poppy wearing. Some respondents said they wouldn’t do it as it glorified war but quite a few said they regularly donated to veterans’ charities but chose not to take a poppy. All proof that we can’t afford to make assumptions about people’s views and experience. Inevitably there have been the usual sanctimonious comments in the media from politicians and others about ‘sacrifice’ etc when many of them have been guilty of stirring up dissent and making zero sacrifices themselves.

Another phenomenon, of course, has been the appearance of the royal family, a longstanding tradition but one which they may think helps validate them given recent unsavoury events. It’s been really striking that the Palace PR machine has released multiple monarchist bots on social media, swamping us with posts about William on yet another environment busting long haul trip in aid of his performative projects while he lectures us about the climate crisis, the Princess of Wales and what she’s wearing and now Prince George and what a great king he’s going to be. Not if anti-monarchists can help it.

Having spent years covering up for him, the King only took action on the then Prince Andrew when the scandal surrounding him continued to dominate the news and raise further questions about the continuity of the arcane and expensive institution of monarchy. King Charles only managed to prise his brother from Royal Lodge by making him a hefty one off payment and an ‘annual stipend’ intended to stop him overspending. Each decision eg about removal of titles was just enough, it was thought,  to quell public discontent but the public weren’t buying it and, humiliatingly, the King had to keep making further gestures towards ostracism than he had intended to. Most people don’t believe that exile in another luxury home with an annual allowance is much of a punishment. The move was billed as being ‘as soon as practicably possible’ but this is a bit of a nonsense when it will actually be the New Year, in order for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s presence not to mar proceedings at the Sandringham Christmas. But what a hard bargain this arrogant de-princed individual is driving: we now hear that he’s demanding the same level of staffing that he’s had at Royal Lodge – a butler, housekeeper and cook at least. Why on earth in his humbled position would he need a butler? But the weak king will probably accept these conditions based on his form for caving.

So many commentators seem to be missing the main issue here and that is why there’s all this focus on the performative gestures of punishment when what’s needed is a criminal investigation of what he knew and when especially in view of the lies he’s told the media and public. There’s also the issue of his highly questionable financial arrangements and how he could afford his lavish lifestyle, partly enabled by some unsavoury connections he made when operating as a trade envoy. This isn’t just a personal matter because the sources of his finance touch on national security. The decisions taken by the King, with the collusion of this government, are widely seen as being about damage limitation, preserving the luxurious royals’ reputation rather than about justice and accountability. We keep hearing ‘no one is above the law’ but the royal family and other elites are in practice. Apparently AMW has until November 20th to respond to the US Congress request for him to give evidence over there regarding Epstein and it’s highly likely that lawyers and Palace staff, guarding their own positions as well as his, will recommend not replying and certainly not complying.

The royals seem to have fallen into the age old trap of believing that by excising what they see as the poison will be enough to deter well justified and way overdue attention and scrutiny – of their opaque finances, their being exempt from major taxes and numerous laws and the sheer amount they cost. Not only is the sovereign grant £86.3 million but besides the favourable conditions granted to the Crown Estate, the profits of the two Duchys (Lancaster and Cornwall) go straight to, respectively, King Charles and Prince William. But it doesn’t work like that: if anything this whole Andrew debacle has focused more attention on the arcane and hugely expensive institution of monarchy itself. Support for the monarchy is at its lowest ever level and especially given the parlous state of the country’s finances more are rightly asking why do we need it? The servility and deference (which some are still clinging onto) of previous times have goneand, thanks to the internet, social media and investigative journalism we know much more about the monarchy than at any other time. In recent years there have been media exposures of these issues by the Guardian (The Cost of the Crown), the Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches. The Guardian one partly focused on what the royals do in return for the largesse they receive (very little and the work of projects is done by others, not them), and the responses they received from courtiers and others was one of surprise that any reciprocation would come into the equation at all. For its part Channel 4 discovered the exploitative way the Duchys were run, charging high rents for land and properties with no proper maintenance and the charges were also the same for strapped public sector organisations like the NHS.

In addition, several myths abound which monarchists use to justify the institution’s existence, for example the idea that it brings in tourist income. There’s actually no evidence of a link between this income and the royals, and France gets many more tourists (especially to Versailles) when they’ve not had a monarchy for centuries. Cutting ribbons and attending charitable events and the like are billed as ‘work’ when they’re not and besides all the expensive travel involving frequent use of helicopters, William and Kate in particular have been criticised for the number of luxurious holidays they take (at least 8 this year so far). Another argument royalists resort to is that some of the 19 homes they have in their portfolio are their ‘own’, eg purchased by Queen Victoria etc – but as veteran Labour politician (and former chair of the Public Accounts Committee) said, the land and property ownership were only made possible because of historical gifts and inherited wealth. They have not earned it themselves and it should belong properly to the state. Some of those using these arguments are amongst the army of royal ‘correspondents’, photographers and other hangers on, who depend on royals for their living, constituting a form of parasitism. What would they all do if they had to seek alternative work?

We hear regularly about the King’s plans for a ‘slimmed down monarchy’ but we don’t see much evidence of change. All these are serious questions in the 21st century and the conduct of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor is only part of a much larger picture.

As the long anticipated Budget approaches there’s been no end of speculation and ‘kite flying’ about what it may or may not include, with increasing efforts by media figures to trap government interviewees into disclosing details. This becomes very tedious after a while eg interviewers like the right wing Nick Robinson, Chris Mason or Laura Kuenssberg divert from the main subject of the interview with the aim of landing a gotcha, only for the recipient to respond ‘I won’t be drawn…’ etc or ‘I honestly don’t know… that’s a matter for the Chancellor’. Of course right wing parties won’t suggest this but we should have had a proper wealth tax from the start of this government and some commentators have said a fair approach is a land tax. And there should be much more tax applied to the royal family, which currently manages to escape most of them due to historical precedent which needs challenging. At the same time Opposition parties engage in much scaremongering besides speculation, for example about taxes rising when they actually need to in order to maintain crumbling public services. This political habit of demonising tax is very harmful, in my view: it creates a ‘tax cuts good, tax bad’ narrative that can strongly influence voting patterns.

Speaking of which, that was quite some result recently in Caerphilly, where, contrary to the expectations of Reform UK, they were roundly rejected in favour of Plaid Cymru, a key element having been strong tactical voting to keep Reform out. Of course it was a massive wake-up call for the main parties as well, and as various commentators have observed, we’re seeing anyway the beginning of the end of the traditional two party system. Besides the nationalist parties doing better, the much more ethical Lib Dems and Greens (particularly following the election of leader Zack Polanski) are rising up the ranks. The government is not performing well, with numerous disappointments and resignations over the 18 months of their administration, and with the rise of Reform the Tories have been flailing around on the sidelines despite the arrogant bullishness of their leader Kemi Badenoch and gimmicky policy announcements like the one on stamp duty.

Commentator Andy Beckett suggests that the end of safe seats and long careers could lead to less complacency but the demise of large parties could result in greater corporate influence. And already the largely under the radar influence of powerful lobbies is toxic to our politics. Another key factor is the unsatisfactory nature of the first past the post system. ‘Every party’s gains or losses could be hugely magnified or minimised by an electoral system not designed for such multiparty competition… Experienced ministers and veteran rebels may become even more rare. Swing voters – easy to identify in battles between two parties – may be replaced by a multitude of still more fickle electoral groups, chased by half a dozen parties. Meanwhile, party heartlands may crumble, old loyalties overcome by dynamic-seeming new choices’. A third option he identifies is that this could be a temporary phase until a more settled political order takes hold.

I thought the most striking part of his piece is the 2013 quote from the Irish political scientist Peter Mair, from his book Ruling the Void: ‘The age of party democracy has passed. Although the parties themselves remain, they have become so disconnected from the wider society, and pursue a form of competition that is so lacking in meaning, that they no longer seem capable of sustaining democracy in its present form’. That’s so true about parties becoming disconnected from society, many politicians existing in the privileged and well-remunerated Westminster bubble whatever they say about what they allegedly hear ‘on the doorsteps’. Usually we only see them on said doorsteps prior to elections and it seems quite a few don’t hold regular constituency surgeries and some none at all.

https://tinyurl.com/rkh3bj55

With the rise of right wing parties in Europe and Donald Trump’s increasingly reactionary tenure in the US, it was very good news to at least see some Americans fighting back with the election of the Muslim DemocratZohran Mamdani elected as Mayor of New York City. No surprise that the vengeful Trump immediately declared war on him and threatened to withhold federal funding – something surely he should not have the power to do. It will be very interesting to see how the situation develops especially as more MAGA supporters become disillusioned with Trump.

Two current news items about the broadcasting industry are focusing minds on how we use the broadcast media in 2025 and what we’re prepared to pay for. A veteran of the industry, Sir Peter Bazalgette, commented that given the power of the streaming giants it was inevitable that some consolidation would take place, but surely the news that ITV is seriously considering selling part of its organisation to Sky is quite alarming. The mostly right wing ownership of all media means that we need more diversity of provision, not less. But a marked decline in advertising revenue is a reality which might well force them down this path. Such a sale would be worth £1.6 billion and include the public service broadcaster’s terrestrial TV channels and streaming service ITVX.

Rather riveting IMO is the row that’s broken out following Boris Johnson’s accusation of BBC left wing bias following the discovery that footage of Trump had been doctored and put together to suggest his complicity in the events of that fateful 6 January 2021. Radio 4’s Today programme presenter Nick Robinson allegedly ‘blasted’ Johnson over this accusation (absurd as the BBC is manifestly right wing in its news and current affairs coverage), linking it with plots to bring down the BBC. Our former PM said Director General Tim Davie had serious questions to answer and threatened to withhold his licence fee. (I never understand people saying this because most of us pay by direct debit and I’d have thought it doubtful that Johnson never watches BBC content, meaning that he’d be in breach of the law. Silly me, though – lawlessness is his second name). It’s this tweet of Robinson’s that seems to have annoyed Johnson the most: ‘Hands up all those who think Boris Johnson is well placed to lecture anyone else on upholding standards & admitting mistakes.  As I said this morning on Today, ‘it’s clear that there is a genuine concern about editorial standards and mistakes. There is also a political campaign by people who want to destroy the organisation…Both things are happening at the same time’.”

For once I agree with both these two: there is indeed a difference between seeking accountability and trying to bring the organisation down but there’s also a longstanding and deep-seated arrogance characterising the BBC. The issue is much wider than bias – there’s well proven misinformation and news omission, which make a mockery of its recent advert condemning disinformation and which finishes with a dramatic flourish – ‘trust is all: it’s OUR BBC.’ Yet ‘Defund the BBC’ often appears in social media and there’s certainly some resentment about the licence fee. I wonder how the BBC would fare if it was forced to change to a subscription model. As the fee comes up for reconsideration in 2027 it’s a reasonable question.

Apparently the BBC’s chairman, Samir Shah, is set to apologise to MPs tomorrow following this criticism of the Panorama broadcast last October. Yet another performative gesture in public life – I wouldn’t have thought his apology (a letter, not even in person) would make much difference at all. The whole affair has also shown again the weakness of Culture Minister Lisa Nandy, who has every ‘confidence’ in the BBC and the useless Ofcom. The irony of the entire situation is that Boris Johnson appointed Tories to at least four key positions in the BBC and now he’s chosen to find fault with them when they depart from the bias he prefers. But maybe Nandy is finally showing some strength, with the news this evening that both Tim Davie and Deborah Turness have resigned. A good result but I wonder why now when there has been plenty of cause for them to go before now. Let’s hope Boris Johnson doesn’t try to attribute these developments to his intervention.

A very important piece of legislation has been making its way through Parliament and last weekMPs debated amendments to Labour’s Employment Rights Bill, destined to get Royal Assent before the end of the year. Angela Rayner wrote a moving piece explaining why it was so important and pointing out the relentless efforts of right wing parties to upend it. ‘This game changing package of measures includes protection from unfair dismissal, strengthened sick pay, bereavement leave, action against sexual harassment at work, a ban on zero-hours contracts, an end to fire and rehire, and a genuine living wage. It means family rights such as flexible working and parental leave from day one, stronger protections for pregnant women, and steps to tackle the gender pay gap. It also includes an historic fair pay agreement in social care – a new, legally binding pledge that will set minimum pay and employment terms for care workers in England and improve the standard of care. Taken together, this package would be the single biggest boost to rights at work in a generation. And yet, our bill has faced fierce criticism from the Tories and Reform, and relentless lobbying from vested interests.’

In City AM Shadow Secretary of State for Business and Trade, Andrew Griffith, penned a scaremongering article saying ‘Employers are dreading this Bill. Written by and for the trade unions, it poses a dire threat to businesses and the wider economy, both of which are already struggling under the weight of Rachel Reeves’ tax hikes. And it also spells disaster for the jobs market – and everyone who is either looking for a job or at any risk of losing one’. We get the usual arguments about how ‘Labour doesn’t understand business’, when the Conservatives themselves haven’t been great role models in that area. But the Tory and cross party amendments the government rejected do sound worthy of consideration, eg reversal of Labour’s plans to scrap the 50 per cent minimum turnout required for strike ballots, which (in Griffith’s words ‘would allow militant activists to shut down vital services at will’. Meanwhile Labour says a poll found that employers are largely in favour of the bill. What’s surely depressing, though, is the view in some quarters that organisations only work well when workers are deprived of rights. An important and overlooked point surely is that given all political parties are concerned at the rising numbers of people not in work, not seeking work, on sick leave etc, measures aimed at improving workplace conditions and rights must be a good thing.

https://tinyurl.com/3vrxznpa

On a positive note, it was great news to hear that the overlooked area of older people’s housing was the winner of this year’s Royal Institute of British Architects’ Stirling Prize. The Appleby Blue almshouse is a modernised form of this historic model of accommodation, located in Bermondsey, South London, consisting of 59 flats for pensioners on low incomes, with some great sounding communal facilities designed to tackle loneliness such as a roof garden, courtyard and community kitchen. This kind of thing should be the norm, not the exception – there’s just too much older people’s accommodation that’s grim and institutionalised. Hopefully this project will energise other architects to follow suit.

Finally, many will have been amused at the news that hoax council letters were sent to homes flying the St George’s flag in Gloucestershire, informing them that they would be required to house refugees because ‘we know you would be proud to assist your country’. A Reform councillor called the letters ‘childish’ and ‘silly’ whereas we could probably do with more wheezes like this!

Sunday 28 September

In the wake of the Trump state visit and as the British political party conference season takes hold, there’s no shortage of concerning news, much of it subjected to mendacious massage by the right wing media including the BBC. (Private Eye got it in one with their ‘fake news’ about Chris Mason, the much criticised BBC Political Editor, defecting to Reform). The BBC has been on a mission to bring this government down ever since it was elected and it was alarming that a senior staffer, Deborah Turness, is on record saying they were making their content more sympathetic to Reform. Of course this could never happen if our regulators did their jobs, in this case Ofcom, but Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has never tackled the relentless right wing bias across the entire mainstream media. While there’s no doubt that dark forces outside the UK are behind some of these campaigns to attack our government, particularly via the manipulation of social media, the numerous mistakes and missteps made by Keir Starmer and his colleagues are mounting up and it seems likely there will be a leadership challenge. Starmer is accused of having no real direction or vision and, sadly, that’s increasingly looking the case. And we have to wonder about the under the radar role of shadowy fixers like Morgan McSweeney- some believe that it was he who chose Starmer, not the other way round.

But we have to remind ourselves how the cult of political personality has mushroomed up in recent years and how vacuous this has proved in the case of Boris Johnson, Farage and others. With ever shortening attention spans, too many are taken in by unsubstantiated sound bites which don’t pass muster when these big personalities are subjected to proper scrutiny. Although Starmer has won plaudits (mostly) for his performance on the international stage, the opposite of the embarrassing grandstanding we’ve seen from some of his predecessors, there’s an increasing fissure opening up between Right and Left within the Labour Party and I was taken aback to hear one MP say he’d never met the party leader. Surely, on becoming PM or before, he should havearranged to meet every single Labour MP, even if it tookseveral receptions to do so. This really shows what some have complained of – the gap between the parliamentary party and the leadership, seen as remote in some quarters.

Numerous commentators have now opined about the worrying state of the government and leadership and this is a key topic in the run up to the November Budget and the rising threat of Reform UK. Starmer is expected to tell discontented party members that now isn’t the time for infighting andthat it is in a ‘fight for the soul of the nation.. that history will not forgive them if it fails to confront and defeat Reform UK and the populist right’. He came up with a good label for their tactics: cultivating an ‘industrialised infrastructure of grievance’ – gallingly swallowed by so many supporters when the Reform leadership actually consists of public school educated tax dodging billionaires not genuinely caring about ‘working people’. But both Left and Right are divided, making for ‘interesting times’: the far right split between Reform and Advance and the left with the entry of the Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana Your Party.

The Guardian’s Political Editor quoted a senior aide: ‘The prime minister’s allies admit he has a tough task ahead but insist he is determined to press on. “It’s a big, historic moment, Keir understands that. It’s a crossroads for the country. Lots of people think the UK is in fundamental decline, and the populist right only ever do well in those conditions. But there are ripples of hope, signs that things can and will get better. The country is facing some big structural problems but it doesn’t mean that progress can’t succeed. The summer, with all the protests and anger about immigration, made him realise he has to make the case for the sort of country he wants this to be.” We should also remember what challenges this government has been up against which the preceding administration wasn’t: the ‘second coming’ of unreliable Trump with his lies, damaging tariffs policy and partial abandonment of NATO; the intensification of the Gaza and Ukraine invasions and the aforesaid rise of Reform. The already strong pressure on public finances has also been exacerbated by Trump’s demands for NATO members to spend if not 5% at least 3% of GDP on defence.

Nevertheless, a bit late for Keir Starmer to realise the need for a clear vision, some would say. Meanwhile left-leaning Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham is simultaneously saying MPs have encouraged him to mount a leadership challenge and also that it’s not his intention and that he just wants the party to succeed and stick to its agenda. It sounds as if there are plans to lift the two child benefit cap but many of us wish the government had introduced a proper wealth tax on entering office instead of bending over backwards to (as some would see it) target the vulnerable. Starmer’s conference speech on Tuesday will be widely anticipated.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives are looking increasingly irrelevant, bleating from the sidelines, often opposing interventions which aim to rectify problems caused by their 14 years of misrule. We have Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride still trying to pretend that they are the party of ‘fiscal responsibility’ when they wrecked the economy, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp obsessed with ‘small boats’ and the cancellation by Labour of their unworkable Rwanda scheme (he even gets fishermen to call him when they spot migrant boats so he can leap onto TikTok) and party leader Kemi Badenoch condemning the latest digital ID policy as a ‘desperate gimmick’ when they themselves are the party of gimmickry. Serious blows to the Conservatives come in the form of numerous defections of senior Tories to Reform, the ITV documentary Covid Contracts, which portrayed in fine detail the billions blown on often unusable PPE via the corrupt VIP lane and now the ITV drama series starring David Tennant and Toby Jones (Hack) about the phone hacking scandal. It’s genuinely hard to see how the Tories could ever be trusted again, though they still talk about ‘regaining the public’s trust’.

The topic du jour we should certainly be interested in is the digital ID debate but not for the Luddite conspiracy theory specious arguments often wheeled out. It’s indeed doubtful that this would reduce small boat crossings but we in the UK are way behind other countries with this technology, which is useful in many circumstances and helping prevent fraud and other forms of criminality. It constantly goes under the radar (probably because both Labour and Conservative governments have had links with this company) but it’s very worrying that the US IT systems provider Palantir could well be involved. It’s good news that someone has submitted an FOI request to the Home Office to ascertain the extent of Palantir’s likely role, since they’re already too well embedded in UK infrastructure including the NHS and security and surveillance systems for the police, Ministry of Defence, Cabinet Office and local government. The CEO, Peter Thiel, is a right wing democracy sceptic, big Trump donor with links to Elon Musk and other powerful public figures. And, along with Musk, he’s just emerged in the latest release of Epstein files. The whole process, if progressed, needs to be more transparent as it’s well known that corporate America has long been keen to access the markets facilitated via UK data harvesting.

Named in this latest Epstein files release is Prince Andrew again, and this, combined with the latest disgrace of the Duchess of York, the posthumous publication of Giuffre’s book and the calls of her family for the Yorks to have their titles removed, points up even more clearly the cowardice and passivity of King Charles for not properly excluding these two before. But a key question is why Prince Andrew is constantly protected from scrutiny – he should have been investigated by the police long ago but as we know in this country the elites somehow manage to evade what the rest of us could not. None of those listed in these Epstein files could have foreseen these repeating and tightening toxic tentacles resulting from their ill-advised association with him: Epstein has posthumously proved himself the poisoned chalice ‘gift’ that keeps on giving.

It was useful timing that Alan Rusbridger’s article in The Independent drew attention to politicians ‘wading in’ on all the important issues of the day, with the ‘glaring omission’ of the royal family. ‘It’s time for the royals to face the same scrutiny as the rest of society’. The reason they don’t is to be found in what’s regarded as the bible of parliamentary procedure – Erskine May, oft quoted by the pompous Rees-Mogg – which states that ‘the conduct of the Sovereign, the Heir to the Throne, and other members of the Royal Family must not be debated except where it is part of a substantive motion’. It’s a ridiculous situation when ‘the monarchy is treated as if it were a piece of delicate porcelain that might shatter under the weight of parliamentary scrutiny. Thus, we have a modern(ish) democracy in which the elected representatives of the people cannot properly interrogate how the unelected head of state and his extended family are funded, what they do, or with whom they associate. Unless there is a substantive motion, and it’s difficult to think of the last time an MP tabled such a thing’.

Yet support for ending the monarchy has been at least 24% of the population for some time and now, thanks to Channel 4, the Sunday Times and the Guardian (the Cost of the Crown series) we know much more than we did about the opaque and unjust royal finances. What’s often not understood is that besides the Sovereign Grant and paying very little tax of any kind Charles and William benefit from the massive incomes of, respectively, the Duchy of Lancaster and the Duchy of Cornwall: besides exploiting tenants these ‘private estates’ don’t fall within the Crown Estate, which surely they should. And when their haughty managers were called before the Commons Public Accounts Committee one actually had the nerve to ask what these estates had to do with the Committee. It’s appalling to see such luxurious royal lifestyles and millions spent on their 19 homes, travel, clothes and absurdly arcane ceremonies when public services and finances are so stretched. Another myth that gets trotted out is that the royals bring in the tourists: in fact there’s no evidence to support this and Versailles gets many more visitors than Buckingham Palace when the French haven’t had a monarchy for centuries.

‘It seems to me that the royal family have become rather assertive – if opaque – in answering criticism. Among them, they employ numerous communications advisers (precise number unknown) to ensure the best possible coverage and to neutralise the worst. The royals have occasionally resorted to law to protect their reputations – the Queen twice sued The Sun over copyright, and Prince Harry has shown how it’s really done’. On a daily basis we’re subjected to a barrage of misleading propaganda from the royal industry, consisting of the media and the numerous ‘royal correspondents’ who work with them, whose parasitic livings depend on the monarchy. Some vested interests. Rusbridger poses some very good questions which MPs could be asking, such as whether it’s right for him to pocket £30m a year from the Duchy of Lancaster with what tax being paid, if any, and whether he could be more forthcoming about the private income from investments, inherited wealth and the revenue stream from estates such as Sandringham, where he owns some 300 houses, and Balmoral. A key question is the one about the ‘slimmed down monarchy’, a term bandied about for some time but which hasn’t translated to anything yet. Numerous royals are still supported. But the dual disgrace of the Duke and Duchess of York now poses questions about the roles of Beatrice and Eugenie.

‘A democracy that cannot talk about its head of state is still partially in thrall to the old order. The monarchy may have Instagram accounts, transparency reports and diversity initiatives, but in the corridors of power it remains a sacred cow – majestic, costly, and conspicuously beyond question’.

https://tinyurl.com/n93prvkp

The number of organisations and retailers falling prey to cyber attacks – Jaguar Landrover, M&S, the Co-op, airports, the British Library, the Kido nursery chain and now Harrods again – surely shows that there needs to be legislation requiring them to have proper cyber security systems. It’s often found that organisations invest too little in their tech, making it easier for hackers to infiltrate them and while this is difficult for the cash strapped including public sector organisations, there needs to be a sense of responsibility. It’s not ‘just’ these organisations affected; it’s the wider supply chains and other dependent organisations, as we’ve seen with JLR, especially when the result is calls for government assistance. With public finances as they are, the government can ill afford to bail out these often wealthy organisations like Tata, but it could be argued that there’s a case for the smaller dependents. We can expect cyber attacks to continue. The decision for the government to underwrite a £1.5bn bank loan guarantee to JLR (to be repaid over 5 years) has been ‘cautiously welcomed’ and the company expects to recommence manufacturing engines by October. Given the number of jobs at stake in this company and wider supply chain (about 120,000 people), this is maybe the best outcome of a difficult situation but it still exposes the government to financial risk. I hope it’s not ominous that JLR has ‘declined to comment’.

https://tinyurl.com/3mj8uyc5

Remember all the scandal about abuse that emerged around last December, which enveloped the then Archbishop of Canterbury (Justin Welby) and to some extent the Archbishop of York (Stephen Cottrell)? Back then I thought the Church of England would deliver yet another own goal by delaying the appointment of a replacement until the autumn and now it seems a poll has confirmed this. These people in their grand regalia take themselves so seriously (you might recall media interviews at the time with clerics both defending the Church’s status and integrity and those feeling seriously led down by the Church leadership) and their pretentious pomposity does them no favours.  A new Ipsos polling for the PA news agency suggested 74% of the 1,100 British people surveyed do not care who is appointed. ‘Out of the 505 people who identified as Christian – not necessarily only those from a Church of England background – 62% also felt this way…More than half of those surveyed said the archbishop should speak out about homelessness and poverty, and a third said they should promote charitable causes and challenges facing the country more than predecessors’. This is also another reminder that, besides the removal of hereditary peers from the House of Lords, many feel that the bishops should also go.

https://tinyurl.com/3nhbsb8m

Now there’s a different kind of Levelling Up about to target 330 areas of the country to help repair broken communities – very different from the Tories’ version which was more a sound bite than actuality and which unhelpfully  set communities in competition with each other as they had to bid for funds. ‘Deprived communities to be given tens of millions to patch up derelict shops, pubs and libraries and ‘restore pride’…The fund forms a central plank of Labour’s policy response to the rise of Reform, which the prime minister believes is thriving in part because of voters’ discontent over the poor state of their local communities…. Unlike the levelling up funds, local authorities will be given the freedom to decide where the money will be spent, as well as extra powers to help them regenerate their high streets. Experts warn, however, that the money will need to be allocated and spent quickly to make a difference on either an economic or political level’. It will be interesting to see which areas are chosen and how quickly any difference can be felt including the mental health angle because mental wellbeing is undermined by living in a run-down area without any feeling of hope around it. And surely another good thing is focusing on regions as politicians are so often accused of a metrocentric focus.

https://tinyurl.com/ydjubevz Finally, I probably won’t have been the only one taken aback by English Heritage’s recent lament about the decline of traditional puddings in the UK diet. They’re talking about things many of us might have suffered unpalatable versions of at school like jam roly poly, Spotted Dick and the like, all served then with lumpy custard. It didn’t seem to occur to English Heritage (or a journalist who’s written about it since) that there at least three major disincentives to the preparation of these traditional puds: the need to eat healthily and watch one’s weight (puds are full of fat and sugar, of course) the time taken to make them and laziness, unfortunately – the rise of ready meals etc has led to expectations of quick or instant results. Our mothers and grandmothers might have hovered over a steaming saucepan for hours (also no mention of the pressure cooker) but the closest we might get these days is in restaurants (a twee little portion of sticky toffee pudding, for example) or with the little pots from supermarkets. But some of thesthese puds cited are in a superior league, like Queen of Puddings, a right hassle to make (from personal experience years ago) but absolutely delicious. It would be interesting to know if these laments and articles have made any difference!

https://tinyurl.com/4msyn2xs

Monday 11 August

Rather than August being the traditional ‘silly season’ the news agenda this year has been busier than ever, with desperate straits in Gaza and Ukraine including Netanyahu’s latest plan, growing opposition to Netanyahu from the army and the public, the collapse in authority of the UN with no concomitant genuine authority from Trump and his inexperienced team, the Trump/Putin summit coming up, shocking bloodshed in Sudan, Palestine Action protests, increasing arrivals of migrants on ‘small boats’ and measures to counteract them, anti-immigrant protests whipped up by the right wing media, the rise of Reform, no let up to the cost of living crisis, NHS strikes and millions still on waiting lists and more unsavoury news about the Royal Family. And there will be more…. I strongly believe that it’s important to keep up with the news (and not just what the biased BBC churns out) as ignorance allows charlatans to gain a foothold, but agree with Jonathan Freedland, who has felt the need for some light relief from the relentless flow. ‘The world’s in flames. But these are the ways I’ve found hope this summer amid the gloom… Tentatively, I want to make a moral case for escapism – for allowing oneself a break from world events… The supply of bad news is voluminous and apparently without end. You lament what is happening now, with the proliferation of social media pumping out falsehood, whether AI-generated or human-made, and hate …’

His own ‘guilty pleasure’ was the cricketing contest between England and India but everyone will have access to something which truly absorbs them and which provides some respite from the sense of impotence we can easily experience when faced with world events. IT’s about protecting our mental health but also retaining a realistic perspective. ‘None of it makes any of the other stuff go away. Trump is still there when the Test match ends; death still stalks Gaza when you close Leslie’s book. But it is a useful antidote all the same. No, not useful – essential. For it’s when we feel ourselves plunged into the abyss, when our despair at our fellow human beings pulls strongest, that we most need to look upward – and glimpse the stars’.

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Yesterday there were mass protests against the law proscribing Palestine Action (the judicial review challenging the ban won’t be until November), hundreds of protesters in central London deliberately testing the police with placards announcing support for PA. There’s no way the Met would have the resources to process so many but they did arrest 474 people (later amended to 500, then 532 but only 18 actually charged), 466 for supporting PA. What a shocking abuse of state power, this absurdly authoritarian measure mainly being to obscure the government’s embarrassment at having supported the genocidal regime in Gaza for so long. The sight of so many pensioners being manhandled in some cases and a blind and disabled man being wheeled away was sickening. The conduct of Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is also something to conjure with – how cowardly that she darkly hinted at reasons why such measures were deemed necessary but wasn’t at liberty to disclose them. She said that ‘the ban “only applies to the specific and narrow organisation, Palestine Action” and did not affect the freedom to protest about Palestinian rights. (But protesters rightly flouted this false distinction and held up signs of their support for PA). ‘Cooper was at pains this week to say that proscription was decided based on strong security advice, citing ‘disturbing information referencing planning for further attacks, the details of which cannot yet be publicly reported due to ongoing legal proceedings’.

A former UK government lawyer turned activist and co-founder of Defend our Juries, Tim Crosland, said: ‘How has the government got itself into this mess … over people peacefully expressing their opinions?” He anticipated that the protests would ‘see Britain’s backbone on display’ and that’s about right. The entire stance makes the UK look stupid, inhumane and authoritarian and it’s been condemned by numerous influential organisations and individuals, including ‘the UN’s human rights chief, Volker Türk, who said it was at odds with international human rights law; Amnesty International; more than 300 prominent Jews in the UK, who described it as “illegitimate and unethical” and dozens of global scholars including Naomi Klein and Angela Davis who applauded a “growing campaign of collective defiance” against the ban’.

It’s interesting that Palestine Action’s challenge to the ban has Gareth Pierce, representing them, ‘a veteran human rights lawyer with a record of repeatedly taking on the British state – and often winning – over a career spanning more than half a century’. Also that if this ban is overturned those detained will be able to sue for wrongful arrest. As many as 600 people could be within that category, although no doubt suing would be made difficult. One protester declared: ‘The rights to demonstrate and other rights are being eroded systematically by the government. We are on a slippery slope to all demonstrations being banned’. If this actually happened imagine the outcry from the Right, who continue to protest against‘illegal migrants’ in their areas (but also elsewhere as quite a few have been bussed in to boost numbers), cynically and unforgivably whipped up by Nigel Farage and his followers and others such as Tik Tok Tories Robert Jenrick and Chris Philp.

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Farage and others have been instrumental in fermenting unrest, constantly citing the ‘tinderbox’ cliché and others such as ‘the country is on fire’, their social media posts full of angry flag wavers, some accompanying images having been identified as old material recycled. Journalist John Harris notes that ‘rightwingers warn of another blaze of summer riots in Britain – but they’re the ones striking the match…. But for now, behold a fascinating spectacle: a country quietly refusing to chaotically combust, despite being endlessly encouraged to do so.. All this noise is part of a much bigger political development: a ballooning narrative about complete social breakdown’. Both Right and Left have their respective narratives, the Right that social breakdown will be due to ‘rampant wokery, crime, failed immigration policy, weak policing and general establishment decay and corruption’, the Left attributes it to the culmination, after 150 years, of capitalism being about to chaotically implode under the weight of its own contradictions’. The right wing media have a lot to answer for here, using the ‘kind of con trick used by reactionaries and authoritarians down the ages: warning of the country’s supposedly likely collapse in the hope that the rest of us support all the hardline policies they say would stop the rot’.

 ‘Neither Farage nor Jenrick’s parties offer anything that would assist its renewal and revival’ but, it will be difficult to counteract the cynical, siren voices of these media. You hear them all the time in media vox pops – people interviewed spout straight from the Daily Mail or GB News. But the government can’t afford to sidestep the real decline many areas have been sinking into, which community spirit can only go so far to address. The powerful ‘grim predictions of ‘societal collapse’ and ‘civil war’ will hit home so long as Labour fails to address the country’s problems’.

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It’s pretty clear that the government’s Middle East policy has (apart from the strength of the Zionist lobby and its hold over politicians) been driven by wanting to remain onside with Trump. We’ve been there before. The arrogant and imperialist stance of these American wannabe politicians is something to behold: most recently US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee lambasting the PM for calling for an immediate ceasefire and while with Foreign Secretary David Lammy at the country seat of Chevening J D Vance having the nerve to tell Keir Starmer not to recognise a Palestinian state. They really seem to think they can order Europe and the UK around. We understand that J D Vance has now departed for his family holiday in the Cotswolds. I wonder how the protest preparations have been coming along and when Vance will be meeting up with his friend James Orr, the far right Cambridge academic heading up Reform’s new policy making think tank (Centre for a Better Britain).

In the wake of the resignation of her ministerial post by MP Rushanara Ali following the outcry over her conduct regarding her tenants, it then came to light that 1 in 8 MPs are landlords. Why, when their salaries are high and they get much via via expenses? This is not a healthy situation when lawmakers are seen as profiteering from the housing shortage. Although in some cases it’s MPs renting out their houses while they operate from a constituency some distance away, that would not account for so many. Like so many found at fault, Ali played the ‘I’ve done nothing illegal’ card, but as we’ve seen so often, it’s not solely about what’s ‘legal’ as plenty of wrongdoing can be legally allowed but at the same time be quite unjustifiable morally. It looks as if we’ve not yet heard the last of what could be tip of an iceberg.

On worse territory, it’s interesting how the media continue to protect certain kinds of wrongdoers. We’ve heard very little in the mainstream media about Lord Dannatt being under investigation by the House of Lords for the third time (yet still regularly platformed by the BBC) and Lord Chadlington, who profited from the notorious VIP PPE procurement lane during the Covid 19 crisis. Although he denies the allegations, Dannatt apparently urged ministers ‘to crack down on Palestine Action at the request of a US defence company that employs him as an adviser. Richard Dannatt, a former head of the British army, wrote privately to two separate Home Office ministers asking them to address the “threat” posed by the group after its activists targeted a factory in 2022’. Only because the court proceedings against one of the PA activists were later obtained by the Guardian do we even know this- yet another example of news omission when it comes to public figures. At the time the judge ruled that Dannatt could not be named. I’ve not yet see this come up in relation to the current Palestine Action news but it’s important in illustrating inappropriate under the radar influence from those in high places. Just see the exchanges between Dannatt, the weaselish Chris Philp (responding on behalf of Suella Braverman) and Dan Jarvis – this is what those involved and the judge in that case didn’t want you to know.  

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The second example (and I admit to never having previously heard of him) is Lord Chadlington (formerly Peter Gummer, a PR chief), found to have participated in the corrupt PPE VIP lane during Covid, the company linked to this peer going bankrupt (besides providing unusable PPE) and leaving the government owed £24m. This is typical of so many of those crony contacts we later heard about. ‘The erstwhile adviser to John Major has “close personal friendships with many senior Conservative party politicians”, and as president of the Witney constituency association in the Cotswolds is “close friends” with its most notable MP: David Cameron. When the pandemic reached Britain early in 2020, Chadlington was a director and shareholder of a company registered in Jersey, majority-owned and run by David Sumner, a serial entrepreneur then based in Dubai’. Cameron duly made the relevant introductions,  leading to the company Chadlington was linked to being awarded two massive contracts, worth nearly £50m.

Here we are, in August 2025, but those involved had another think coming if they thought this disgraceful episode could just be buried. ‘The full story of how this £50m example of the government’s VIP lane commissioning turned out is only becoming clearer now…’ because the company went bankrupt and the liquidators have only recently completed their report, which reveals that it went bust owing HMRC £1.1min taxes. Information has also come to light because of coverage of the much-criticised VIP lane by the Covid Inquiry. Chadlington denied all knowledge of these financial difficulties but these journalists found evidence to contradict this assertion. Chadlington had also been investigated twice by the House of Lords and now there’s a third but, as so often, nothing seems to come of these exercises, possibly because these people get well lawyered up. The brass neck of these entitled people beggars belief. Despite all that’s been uncovered ‘In his witness statement to the Covid inquiry, Chadlington said: “While I was not involved in the awarding of contracts for PPE, I was proud that, by making the necessary introductions, I had played a very small role in helping the country during a national emergency.”

https://tinyurl.com/y73hzr94

Another long term ‘wrong’un’ has been yet again in the news recently. Partly because of the links to Epstein dogging the Trump administration but more because of the recent unflattering biography by Andrew Lownie, Prince Andrew, who still enjoys a lavish lifestyle, is again under fire. A royal correspondent has even said ‘It puts Andrew back at the front and centre of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal at a time when Donald Trump is facing serious questions about his own friendship with the late paedophile…It’s a scandal that just won’t go away for the Royal Family, even though they’ve tried to distance themselves from Andrew’. Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, is quite a hefty tome, currently serialised by the Daily Mail. Although one commentator thought it contained much that we already knew (the Epstein links, posing a security risk, his gaffes in important roles, opaque financial dealings, alleged obsession with sex, lack of self-awareness, arrogance in staff dealings etc) but also numerous snippets that we didn’t.

I can’t be sympathetic but I’ve often thought what a seriously miserable existence he must have, holed up in the decaying Royal Lodge on the Windsor estate, with no real purpose and shunned even by his own family. ‘Now in disgrace, Prince Andrew is claimed to spend his time, when not riding or golfing, cooped up watching aviation videos and reading thrillers, with The Talented Mr Ripley said to be his favourite. It is about a con-man taking on the identity of a wealthy playboy’. Re Epstein it’s no surprise that Lownie writes: ‘“Epstein played Andrew. The prince was a useful idiot who gave him respectability, access to political leaders and business opportunities. He found him easy to exploit’.

‘He’s been afforded every type of privilege, all his life, while displaying very poor judgement and getting into highly compromising situations…There are details of his unhappy knack of getting involved with all the wrong people in his money-making ventures, from Libyan gun runners and relations of dictators to a Chinese spy’. But this buck doesn’t just stop with Andrew: the entire luxurious Royal Family, whose financial opacity, hypocrisy and political meddling have increasingly come to light, is further compromised by their harbouring and financing of this black sheep.

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On a positive note, we endlessly hear about the amount of food wasted but could growing our own vegetables reduce or eliminate this undesirable modern habit? One woman has made what felt like a key discovery: ‘When I started caring for some tomato plants, it was as if a switch had been flicked in my mind. I knew I had to stop throwing food away. I immediately became much more creative with the meals I was making …’. With a busy work life and long commute, she used to study recipes and plan meals but kept finding that she was too tired to put these good intentions into practice: ‘By Wednesday, I would fill up with shop-bought sushi or soup. More often than not, I would get to the end of the week with a fridge full of wilted ingredients, which I would quietly chuck into the food waste. I felt guilt and shame, but I was stuck in a loop’. An audit of her spending had been the catalyst for trying growing her own vegetables, which enabled her to ‘truly understand the value and timescale of food production’ and to fundamentally change her habits. She describes how she’s become less ambitious but far more creative and wasting nothing. All this may sound simple but it would take quite some effort if one had long been bogged down in wasteful habits. Besides cutting out waste the act of cultivation is also good for mental health – harking back to the first piece above, such activities are even more important in these difficult times!

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Sunday 13 July

As it seems we have been rendered pretty impotent when it comes to influencing our government’s policies on international affairs, especially the increasingly dangerous antics of Trump, Putin and Netanyahu, focusing on the news at home seems appropriate and there’s no shortage of it. Just to say, as it’s both domestic and international, the announced intention to proscribe Palestine Action seems an appalling example of shooting the messenger, in my view, when no one has been hurt and direct action has resulted from people being deprived of a real voice. (Ditto re the Glastonbury controversy, without condoning the words but the message was the same). Years of marches and petitions about Gaza have done nothing to alter this government’s support of the Netanyahu regime so it’s hardly surprising (even in relatively well-behaved Britain) that protest has become much stronger out of frustration at our enforced powerlessness. But as ever the mainstream media talk in headlines without the detail, such as how far the proscribing would go. If every member of Palestine Action is deemed to be acting illegally, for example, will they be identified via PA’s records and tech and if so can they expect a visit from the plod to demand compliance with this absurd strategy? It would be nothing short of excessively authoritarian to follow through on this.

Verdicts on Labour’s first year in power have been coming thick and fast, many, unfortunately, from right wing sources which fail to acknowledge key successes and areas of progress. True – major mistakes like the acceptance of freebies and the need to partially u-turn on the Winter Fuel Allowance and disability benefits were avoidable and besides so many thinking that the PM has no ‘vision for the country’ many Labour backbenchers have been feeling marginalized and I was surprised to hear that some haven’t even met him. I find that very odd: wouldn’t you have thought that with a Labour government finally being elected after years of Tory maladministration the leader would make some effort to meet and engage with every one of them, even if this took a while? Also, two policy areas many voters find unpalatable if not downright unacceptable are the ongoing support for Netanyahu and the failure to implement a wealth tax. But major achievements have included Starmer’s success on the world stage, which eluded his Tory predecessors, especially given the huge challenges the Tories didn’t have to contend with such as dealing with a new Trump presidency, and navigating the Scylla and Charybdis of the tariffs yoyo; intensification of Putin’s war in Ukraine and the ferment in much of the Middle East.

In addition, NHS waiting lists are coming down, 750 school breakfast clubs have been rolled out, the minimum wage has been raised, planning rules have been liberalized  which should enable more housing projects and although there’s much further to go there’s been progress in tackling the corrupt and polluting water companies. Of course there remains much to do and serious concerns remain (not least with the migration policy) such as creeping privatization within the NHS (not acknowledged but facilitated by the Health Secretary) and slow progress with compensating the victims of the contaminated blood and Post Office scandals (despite that duty in the first example having been shirked for years by the Conservatives). In any case, though, there needs to be longer than a year to deliver a verdict on a new government – the time for commentators to start sharpening their quills would be 18 months or two years, perhaps.

But the government really should acknowledge and addres the Tory induced inequality which dogs this country and is the opposite of what Labour is supposed to stand for. We have children living in Dickensian poverty and in other areas ‘packed restaurants, pavements lined with new Range Rovers and rows of smoothly renovated home exteriors…

Creating a more egalitarian society and politics – which by definition means redistribution from the powerful – was Labour’s original purpose…. Yet the current Labour government, like others before it, has struggled to devise and promote policies that substantially redistribute wealth. It has proposed or enacted welcome but modest redistributive reforms: removing the tax privileges of non-doms, imposing VAT on private schools, ending the inheritance tax exemption for farmers, removing the winter fuel allowance from wealthier pensioners and reducing the power imbalance between landlords and tenants. But amid the huge controversy these policies have caused – itself a sign of better-off citizens’ sense of entitlement – Labour has either made the argument for greater equality too quietly and tentatively, or not at all’.

This hesitancy has been partly attributed to Harold Wilson’s much maligned hike of income and investment tax to 98% on the highest earners during the 1970s, but although this did a lot to level out inequality, the party was still roundly defeated by Margaret Thatcher’s anti-egalitarian Conservatives in 1979. It’s suggested that this led to the next Labour government adopting an almost timid and stealthy stance regarding redistributive measures, for example presenting them as advantageous to the economy and work ethic rather than for their real purpose. This stealth strategy worked well when incomes and tax takes were growing but not when crises hit, such as the massive 2008 financial crisis. With the latest consideration of a wealth tax, it seems that the party is divided, not surprisingly. ‘Some in Labour favour one; others believe that openly egalitarian policies are never wise in what they see as a naturally deferential, hierarchical country’. But surely the country is now far less deferential and hierarchical than it was: there’s clearly some way to go and politicians need to courageously take on this challenge and not collude with it.

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This last week we’ve seen the announcement of the government’s migrant processing pilot project (labeled ‘one in, one out’) which, together with the French is perhaps the biggest act of cooperation with former EU allies since Brexit, aims to tackle the smuggling gangs’ business model… because only those deemed not to have arrived via irregular routes will be considered for asylum. ‘Under the “one in, one out” pilot scheme, British officials will detain some of those who cross the Channel and send them back to France, in return taking an asylum seeker in France who can show they have family connections in Britain.The scheme is uncertain in scale and timing, but is nevertheless the first time such an agreement has been struck between the two countries. It is also the first time the government has increased the number of safe routes through which asylum seekers are able to reach Britain’.

Some Brexiteers, who still can’t bring themselves to admit that Brexit has been disastrous, were furious that Macron called out the lies we were told back in 2016. ‘Many people explained that Brexit would make it more possible to fight effectively against illegal migration. But since Brexit the UK has no illegal migration agreement with the EU … That creates an incentive to make the crossing, the precise opposite of what Brexit promised.The British people were sold a lie, which was that migration was a problem with Europe. With your government, we’re pragmatic, and for the first time in nine years we are providing a response’.

Numerous commentators have said this scheme won’t work but they don’t have a viable alternative and it has to be given a chance. It’s been so transparent that the Tories, still very bitter about the cancellation of the unworkable Rwanda Plan, and Reform UK, are determined to undermine it. Of course this is because they want to keep the anti-migrant culture war going for their own cynical political purposes. But neither politicians nor media want to sufficiently acknowledge and discuss the ‘pull’ and ‘push’ factors encouraging migrants to make the journey here as this would be politically embarrassing for them. Of course Western nations have contributed substantially (directly or indirectly eg through the arms trade) to the wars and civil unrest resulting in more being desperate to flee and the lack of ID cards and the size of our black economy are cited as major ‘pull’ factors. Some say making ID cards compulsory would make no difference but this can’t be known till it’s tried, taking years to implement, but the irregular economy could surely be tackled – with determination and with the right resources.

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A significant news generator was the accompanying state visit of President Macron and his wife, Brigitte, and although the government must have felt the need to pull out the stops post Brexit, the involvement of the royals, all the pomp and ceremony and huge banquet at Windsor would have come at considerable expense – obscene to some at £300,000 by some estimates, £500,000 by others. The BBC told us: ‘Across the three-day visit, there will be a message of building relations between the two allies, in diplomacy, defence and trade, at a time of uncertainty in international relations. The UK government has spoken of wanting to “reset” post-Brexit relations with European neighbours with the French state visit part of that process’. Of course this had some well-known Brexiteers like ‘Lord’ David Frost absolutely spitting, but not into the ‘special cocktail called “l’entente”, which combined British gin with lemon curd and French pastis, decorated with French cornflowers and English roses’ specially designed for the banquet’s 160 guests. At least at these ‘soft power’ gigs the expensive and luxurious royals can be put to some real work for a change.

Besides the ongoing and well-justified criticism of Kemi Badenoch as Conservative Party leader, focus on the Party has intensified this week as a result of the defection to Reform UK of their erstwhile chair – ‘Sir’ Jake Berry, hot on the heels of another former Cabinet minister, David Jones. Note the naivety we so often hear in Reform supporters – simplistically seeking a saviour. ‘Millions of people, just like me, want a country they can be proud of again. The only way we get that is with Reform in government. That’s why I’ve resigned from the Conservative party. I’m now backing Reform UK and working to make them the next party of government’. Of course the ever arrogant Badenoch dismissed this as merely the loss of someone who wanted to ‘play’ at politics. But two important points have been made which should cause the Tories to reflect further on the damage this inflicts, especially if more follow suit.

‘First, as a former party chair he has significant organising experience, which has always been a weakness in the Reform party because of the relative lack of experience among the grassroots. The more experienced Tories defect, including local association chairs and party agents, the more Reform gains vital ground game knowledge – mostly at the expense of the Tories. Second, and perhaps even more damagingly, it sends a signal that there are many ambitious Tory ex-MPs who do not feel ready to be put out to pasture – and they do not see the Conservative party as their route back to relevance any time soon’. As we know Kemi tried to dismiss this as opportunism but that wouldn’t be the whole story. It will be interesting to see how this inter-party shapeshifting goes over the coming months, especially as Reform UK seems to lose MPs and councillors as quickly as it gains them.

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Of course it was to be expected but Badenoch’s lionizing of the recently deceased Sir Norman Tebbit is another example of her defensiveness. To hear the eulogies of people like Badenoch, Boris Johnson and others you’d think Tebbit had been some kind of saint rather than the Thatcherite, racist and combative neoliberal enforcer that he actually was. Yes, he did indeed care devotedly for his wife badly injured during the Brighton hotel bombing but in the eyes of many that doesn’t redeem him from the damage which he, as part of that regime, inflicted on this country.

Boris Johnson, who certainly didn’t follow the example of rejecting ‘a culture of easy entitlement’, was responsible for this heavily biased piece of irony bypass: the opposite of how many will remember this man. ‘Norman Tebbit was a hero of modern Conservatism. In the early 1980s he liberated the British workforce from the socialist tyranny of the closed shop. He tamed the union bosses, and in so doing he helped pave the way for this country’s revival in the 1980s and 1990s. At a time when the Labour government is now disastrously reversing those crucial reforms we need to remember what he did and why. In his single most famous phrase he once said that in the 1930s his unemployed father had got on his bike and looked for work. That wasn’t a heartless thing to say – as the Labour Party claimed. It was because he believed in thrift and energy and self-reliance. It was because he rejected a culture of easy entitlement. We mourn the passing of a great patriot, a great Conservative – and today more than ever we need to restore the values of Norman Tebbit to our politics’.

Media coverage of the ongoing Covid 19 Inquiry has been appallingly minimal and you could almost think that right wing media were trying to protect their beloved Tories from scrutiny. Yes, of course we can watch the Inquiry live via YouTube but many don’t have the time for that and we should be getting updates via our media. Broadcasting coverage should be at key time slots guaranteed to supply the largest audience numbers, not squashed into an obscure early bulletin. My news has mainly come via the tweets of Covid Bereaved Families for Justice and it was through them that I learned that discredited former Health Secretary Matt Hancock was now giving evidence for the 9th time. He displayed the usual denial and arrogance we saw at earlier appearances and it was totally astonishing when he claimed that only a campaign group had taken issue with his dishonest insistence that they had ‘thrown a protective ring around care homes’ despite previously admitting to the inquiry that it was not an ‘unbroken circle’ and that releasing untested hospital patients into care homes had been the ‘least worst option’.

‘Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK, a group of nearly 7,000 people, said Hancock’s evidence ‘was full of excuses and completely devoid of accountability’…Almost 46,000 care home residents died with Covid in England and Wales between March 2020 and January 2022, many of them in the early weeks of the pandemic. The decision to rapidly discharge hospital patients to care homes in order to free up beds, when testing and isolation facilities were not yet widely available, has been strongly criticised for causing rapid spread of the disease in care homes’. So many like Hancock are resorting to blustering denial (even trying to undermine the cross-examining barrister) and buck passing (eg blaming Public Health England) rather than admitting their responsibility for the disastrous management of the pandemic.

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Having been suppressed for years it’s lately been the opposite with the contaminated blood and Post Office scandals, the inquiry chairmen both highly critical of the cover-ups and extreme tardiness of politicians in expediting compensation payments. It’s unfair to pin this onto the current government, though: the former Conservative administrations have been culpable for the delays. But the money needs to be found and promptly.

Although it’s been used for more media manipulation, ie blaming the employer NI and minimum wage hike, it was dismaying to learn that the National Trust is to cut at least 550 jobs in efforts to save £26m. Volunteers are already widely used and the 550 could mean the loss of vital curatorial and other essential roles. The Trust looks after 500 historic houses, castles, parks and gardens, 780 miles of coastline and 250,000 hectares of land and is the largest UK charity but now they say the £10m cost of wage and NI rises has outstripped visitor income. There will be no doubt that this is an issue for many organisations but I also wonder about the very high senior staff salaries we often see in such cases. The Trust has a board of governors boasting a very wide range of expertise and skills so let’s hope the forced redundancies can be kept to a minimum and that they can find a way through.

Many have been shocked and upset at the Observer’s exposee of the alleged false narrative of the 2018 The Salt Path, by Raynor Winn, which tells the story of her and her husband’s 630 mile walk around the South West coastal path after their house was repossessed and the husband was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Besides the recently released film, the author wrote two further books and was commissioned to produce a fourth, now paused by the publisher, Penguin. Last weekend, the Observer published an investigation alleging that Winn had lied about being made homeless and about the circumstances under which she and her husband lost their home. It also questioned the legitimacy of Moth’s diagnosis. The journalist alleged that they didn’t lose their home due to an unwise investment but that Raynor Winn had previously embezzled money from an employer, their house having been collateral on the loan to repay this money and the couple defaulted; that the husband’s much improved health was not consistent with the illness described and that the couple also had a property in France. Winn subsequently published a lengthy denial, declaring the article ‘highly misleading’ and that she would be saying nothing more at present, pending legal advice.

There’s now been quite a bit of media coverage and it’s shocking to learn that publishing companies don’t have fact checking departments and leave this to the author. We know that publishing is run on a shoestring but this is surely absurd. I wondered how on earth it was that neither the publishing nor film industries had carried out due diligence and had the wool pulled over their eyes in this way. But one commentator said that because of lack of regulation of these industries there are no costly repercussions for lies told in memoirs. One article drew attention to previous publishing scandals based on misrepresentations and also what seems a rather disingenuous kind of fudging – when a ‘memoir’ isn’t expected to be 100% ‘truthful’ but where to draw the line?

Some authors have handled this by categorising their work as ‘autobiographical fiction’, but this apparently is less attractive to readers. ‘…we’re all familiar with the strength of desire for real stories…Autofiction isn’t as well-established a genre as memoir so marketing teams face discrete challenges in framing and taking these stories to the public. A ‘true story’ has historically proved easier to build a campaign around’. What adds to the suspicion is why this couple felt the need to change their names – the real names are Sally and Tim Walker – and their expectation that this would never be found out. A bid to reinvent themselves? Another commentator said: ‘Memories are fallible and selective; we always remember half-truths, and the story an author chooses to tell is only ever one story of a particular situation. But what any reader wants to believe is that the story they have put their faith in is closest to the writer’s truth, that they have not been deliberately misled, that they have not been manipulated. This is essential’. Sounds like the debate has opened this particular Pandora’s Box to a wider public and the story will run for a while. It will be riveting to hear what Walker/Winn says when she’s reflected on the legal advice.

https://tinyurl.com/3ahnnvj5

Finally it was cheering to hear that the long established Beamish Museum (County Durham) had won the Art Fund Museum of the Year award, worth £180,000 and a lot of publicity, of course. Beamish describes itself as ‘a world famous open air museum, telling the story of life in North East England during the 1820s, 1900s, 1940s and 1950s’, so it tells the story of industrial and farming life, has shopping streets, vintage trams and a large collection of artefacts. I visited many years ago and would like to return since there have been significant additions since then. Judges called Beamish a ‘joyous, immersive and unique place shaped by the stories and experiences of its community’ – long may it thrive, especially in these difficult days for cultural institutions!

Sunday 22 June

As the bloodshed continues unabated in Ukraine and Gaza, the latest escalation in the Middle East crisis has the power to unleash unprecedented global shockwaves. I won’t be only one who finds it frankly terrifying that, thanks to Trump, Putin and Netanyahu wrecking the rules-based international order so no organization (eg the UN) any longer has any clout, there’s only one individual who can stop Netanyahu in his reckless, genocidal strategy. Trump – himself an erratic narcissist not fit public office – who initially told us he will decide within a fortnight whether he will order US forces to attack Iran, did the deed after two days (‘awesome and righteous might of the United States).This, after having sworn he wouldn’t take the US into foreign wars. I suspect that if there was a 24 hour media blackout on Trump he would make up his mind PDQ about anything he keeps the world guessing about, but meanwhile he loves the attention, politicians and journalists hanging on his every word and spending hours of broadcast time and column inches in speculating what he may do and how, what it signifies and how we should react. But while Trump and his supporters feel triumphant after this latest intervention, fears continue that Iran could blockade the Straits of Hormuz, which could have a much more devastating effect than weapons.

Global insecurity was already running high – terrible for our mental wellbeing – but now our feeling of safety will be under much more threat, matched with our impotence to do anything about it. An X user said: ‘Honestly, I’m so tired of everyone tippy-toeing around him. Next time he threatens to nuke Iran or invade Greenland or annex Canada the appropriate response should be ‘Go on then’. If we can’t see by now that the emperor is walking around butt naked, we never will’. The media collude with the ‘Emperor’ by constantly platforming Republicans and others who continue to take him seriously. It’s all a massive pretence when you consider the poverty of his schtick, eg ‘No one knows what I wanna do…. But I can tell you, Iran’s in a lotta trouble’. Yet we see him wreaking huge damage in so many areas of life.

Meanwhile Iran won’t negotiate until Israel stops attacking them, resulting in a bit of a chicken and egg situation but again it comes back to the international order wrecking: on nuclear capacity Iran clearly no longer feels the need to hold back when they observe the conduct of their adversaries. As an X user tweeted: ‘Please can an interviewer/reporter ask why it’s fine for Israel to have a nuclear weapon – as is widely believed but never mentioned – but it isn’t fine for Iran to have one. And don’t let the interviewee shut that question down’. Having consistently supported Israel our government has again gone down the same path by deciding to proscribe Palestine Action (which aims to ‘take direct action against Israeli weapons factories in Britain, in solidarity with the Palestinian people’) following its break in and damage at the Brize Norton air base. This isn’t to commend their action but you’d have thought that politicians and media (both no doubt embarrassed by MOD’s poor security, too) would realize that many people in this country feel impotent, their voices not listened to regarding the terrible situation in Gaza. For years now there have been pro-Palestinian marches and petitions which have had zero impact on our government’s policy direction, so it’s hardly surprising that some see direction action as the only way to go. Important to recognize, also, that numerous Israelis disagree with what’s being done in their name.          

Needless to say, the head of Palestine Action has condemned this decision, but a related question surelyis if it will soon be illegal to belong to PA, will authorities then round up those known to be activists and investigate their tech to identify members to target as well? What are the consequences of being a member of such an organization?

Standing aside from the flurry of the immediate to focus on the bigger picture, at least some commentators are realizing (why not more?) that we in Europe should stop dancing attendance on Trump, challenge him and develop non-US alliances. Commentator Nathalie Tocci says that the Middle East crisis has shown that we must go forward without the US but Europe has no idea how. ‘If Europe was not so in hock to Washington, it would sanction Israel over Gaza and condemn its unilateral attack on Iran… Tragically, EU governments were just beginning to turn the page after a year and a half of complicity with the Israeli government’s war crimes in Gaza. Donald Trump’s obscene plans for a Gaza “riviera” and “humanitarian” initiatives that breach humanitarian principles were creating distance with the US, and European governments were starting to craft their own course…. However, Israel’s military attack on Iran and the US’s ambiguous yet evident support for this belligerence have upended Europe’s shift towards greater autonomy and moral clarity…. When Trump launched a direct negotiation with Iran, Europe was sidelined, excluded from any mediation process. Now, with Israel’s military assault on Iran, we have failed to position ourselves with the necessary clarity… The risk is that Europe will also now block its own route to a more morally principled approach to the horrors in Gaza…’

Let’s hope this doesn’t come to pass. This is an article well worth reading.

https://tinyurl.com/4khjtbtc

Besides the Defence Review, Spending Review, the Winter Fuel Allowance and benefits changes, the most debated topics this week have been the decision to hold a public inquiry on grooming gangs and the Assisted Dying Bill, which passed in the Commons on Friday with a reduced majority of 23. A sickening factor common to both has been the sheer amount of misinformation put about by those determined to influence others’ viewpoints in order to score political points or defend their own interests. Those who only listen to mainstream media are vulnerable to the relentless right wing bias, constantly and disproportionately platforming Reform people though that ‘party’ (actually a company) only has 5 MPs. Also by giving Conservatives a fairly easy ride via a cosy chat while grilling and constantly interrupting government representatives. Reform and the Conservatives (the latter doing nothing about grooming gangs while in office and not acting on recommendations of previous inquiries) both now have the brass neck to accuse the PM of resisting and dithering when both Baroness Casey and Professor Jay had both agreed to a review prior to deciding what course of action there should be. On receiving the advice that a full inquiry would be in the public interest, the PM and colleagues immediately agreed. A good example of this persistent Labour bashing strategy is the constant use by media and Tory MPs of ‘U-turn’, when neither the WFA nor the grooming gang decision justifies use of this cynical terminology.

‘She (Casey) was tasked with examining data not available to the initial national inquiry led by Alexis Jay, and to look into the ethnicity and demographics of abusers and victims, as well as “the cultural and societal drivers for this type of offending, including among different ethnic groups”. Starmer said on Saturday that Casey’s “position when she started the audit was that there was not a real need for a national inquiry”, but that she had changed her mind after reviewing the evidence. In parallel to Casey’s review, the government asked Tom Crowther KC, who led an investigation in Telford, to help devise a model for a series of similar investigations in five towns where girls were abused, including Oldham.’

https://tinyurl.com/3axpszr9

You’d never know this, though, if you’d listened to the increasingly desperate Conservative leader and her deputy (Kemi Badenoch and Chris Philp), who ranted about this on X and during interviews for days. The worst aspect of Badenoch’s stance, though, is her cynical posturing with grooming gang victims, who by now might have seen through her faux empathy. Opportunism at its worst and well dissected in the Guardian. ‘Not a hint of apology for any failings for which she and previous Conservative governments might have made. The victims and survivors were just collateral damage in her fight with Labour. If Kemi is capable of self-reflection she keeps her findings to herself. She is thoroughly old school with her emotions. Never explain. Just keep going. Then things began to unravel a little as a Sky reporter observed that the cover-ups had been going on for years, during most of which the Conservatives had been in power. So maybe some kind of apology was in order….No. She wasn’t sorry for anything. None of this had been anything to do with her. Even though she had once been minister for children. “Apologies are easy,” she snapped, though not for her’. The pitiful thing is that whenever the PM makes a major decision, she continues to suggest that these were due to her own intervention when in fact she has not factored in his deliberations one iota.

https://tinyurl.com/5yxat2zc

The Assisted Dying Bill will now go to the House of Lords, which traditionally does not oppose legislation passed in the Commons but where some peers are determined to press for some amendments. The Bill certainly represents a historic change (terminally ill people in England and Wales with 6 months or less to live are to be given the right to an assisted death after approval from two doctors and a panel including a psychiatrist, social worker and senior lawyer), so that people no longer have to endure a prolonged and agonizing death, as so many campaigners have seen with their loved ones. As so many have said: ‘Why should anyone else have the right to decide when and how I should die?’ Some of the medics opposing the Bill have used emotive and dishonest arguments, in my view, eg the irresponsible one who suggested ‘it’ll turn doctors into killers’ and I wonder if some are angry that, for the first time, the patient and not the doctor will be the decision maker, thus depriving some of their sense of omnipotence. What’s worse and yet further proof of the need for statutory press regulation is a headline to an article in Saturday’s Telegraph (no surprise there) by the Catholic commentator Tim Stanley – ‘The state has been given the power to kill’ – and implying that MPs are not up to the job of dealing with such a topic.

A doctor MP interviewed on Radio 4 politely demolished key arguments of the antis, saying this Bill had had more scrutiny than a ‘regular’ Bill (it’s not inferior for being a Private Member’s Bill), hours of debate have been held on it, and although some medical organizations had declared themselves anti eg the Royal College of Psychiatrists, plenty of members were for the Bill. Another made the key point that (despite the cynical whipping up of alarm by some) the Bill is nothing to do with disabled people and the possibility of ‘mission creep’ is exaggerated and unfair. Yet another opined that rather than being less of a safeguard, the decision to have a panel of experts including a lawyer and social worker rather than (as formerly) a high court judge, was more appropriate.

A key point has been made by the Bill’s opponents, however. ‘The bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, a former chief nursing officer for England, said it would be a service introduced amid multiple risks to the most vulnerable, including serious shortfalls in social and palliative care.“It does not prevent terminally ill people who perceive themselves to be a burden to their families and friends from choosing assisted dying. And it would mean that we became a society where the state fully funds a service for terminally ill people to end their own lives but shockingly only funds around one-third of palliative care.” Some have sought to establish a polarity between palliative care and assisted dying but it’s not either/or: both should exist and at least it’s encouraging and right that the Health Secretary has been charged with reporting back on the state of palliative care. It’s disgraceful that hospices only get 18% of their funding from the NHS and have to find the rest from charitable donations. Also remaining is concern about coercion and whether the current safeguards are sufficient to ensure that this hasn’t been a factor in the individual’s decision.

Surely the initiator of this Bill, Kim Leadbeater, is to be congratulated but ever since the legislation started its passage she’s had to endure some vile abuse. She pointed out that this issue was first raised in Parliament in 1936. If it hadn’t got through this time it would have been another long time before it could be reconsidered and polls have shown significant public support for these measures. Leadbeater said: ‘I am relieved and overjoyed by the historic vote on assisted dying in England and Wales in the House of Commons today. The road has been long and hard, and I am very aware that many others have been on that journey since long before I even became an MP…While taking this bill through its Commons stages, I felt the burden of their anguish and that of those who are courageously and respectfully asking that their own death should be a good one, at a time of their choosing. It was for them that I and my colleagues took so much time and trouble to ensure that we put before parliament legislation that was fit for purpose while protecting everybody, but especially the most vulnerable in society, from any risk of coercion or pressure.’

https://tinyurl.com/yxt7ndjx

Two questions about process linger in my mind: what’s the balance between MPs voting ‘according to their conscience’ and reflecting voters’ wishes since they’re elected to represent us, and which peers will actually do the work in the Lords? We can well imagine that many of the crony peers gladly accept the status and daily allowance paid for Lords attendance but how many of them actually contribute to the legislative process?

The mainstream media are increasingly being accused of disproportionately platforming Nigel Farage and other Reform UK representatives when they only have five MPs and the smaller parties like the Lib Dems and Greens feature far less frequently in interviews and political panels. There’s some serious gaslighting going on: for weeks they kept telling us on social media ‘Britain Needs Reform’ and now it’s ‘Britain Wants Reform’.Nigel Farage and the others portray themselves as on the side of the working man when they’re billionaires and the other day (it is striking how many votes he’s missed in the Commons) Farage was parading at Ascot when he should have been in Parliament. As widely predicted Farage is rarely in Clacton and has not made himself available to constituents. We’re very aware of the collapse of international world order but Boris Johnson and his government were responsible for the collapse of rules here. These days, it seems, if there are rules for parliamentary conduct they’re not enforced. Surely, for example, there should be a minimum amount of time that an MP shows up to Westminster and is active in his or her constituency and their presence should be compulsory for key debates unless there’s a very good reason why they can’t attend. Since we can’t trust the media to do it, just as well the Lib Dems set up a Reform Watch project after the last election – but I’ve seen no news on how that’s going.

Speaking of Ascot, this has been another predictable lever for the collusive media talking up the royals (focusing on their dress, of course) in an attempt to convince you that these people have any real function in the 21st century. During the last week there’s been a series of unnecessary and expensive events associated with the royals including the Trooping of the Colour, the Order of the Garter, Ascot and most recently Prince William’s birthday, during which he pledged (like his father before him but there was no change) that he’d do the monarchy differently. The extent of mindless sycophancy from the mainstream media has to be seen and heard to be believed (but it makes sense when you realize how much royal hanger on livings depend upon this symbiotic relationship) and one MP (someone who doesn’t know what public service means) even tweeted: ‘Wishing His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales a very happy birthday. His sense of duty, quiet determination, and deep commitment to public service embody the very best of our national life. We are fortunate to have his leadership and dedication to our country’.

Finally, on a lighter point (though it won’t be ‘light’ to those involved), on the subject of what goes up must come down doesn’t apply to all statues at least. Many might just walk past these without noticing them but as was evident in the Edward Colston statue episode in Bristol and with others ever since, these objects have immense cultural significance. It was interesting to learn that not one but two statues of Melania Trump have been destroyed in her home town, making pretty clear what those locals think of her. There had been a wooden statue near her home town (Sevnica, Slovenia) but this was burned down. Recently a bronze replacement was chopped off at the ankles and taken away. In contrast, Russia, which had seen decades of former dictators’ statues taken down, is now experiencing a turnaround. Around 105 new monuments to Stalin have appeared across Russia since Putin took power, the latest in a central Moscow metro station, apparently a reiteration of a 1950 work called The People’s Gratitude to the Leader and Commander. If they don’t already exist how long before multiple statues of Putin appear in Russia and Russian occupied parts of Ukraine?

Sunday 18 May

Donald Trump continues to cause mayhem with what media sources euphemistically call his ‘quixotic’ policies and tariffs and the two major conflicts (actually invasions) rage on despite yet more air miles and hot air being expended in often fruitless efforts to end them. At least the India/Pakistan conflict has abated for now but of course it won’t be the end of this long running sore between these two nuclear powers. What a disturbed and disturbing world we’re living in. It’s long been the case (in the UK it accelerated under the corrupt Boris Johnson regime, of course) but I fail to understand why there’s been no discussion of the failure of the global rules based order, especially in relation to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. On Wednesday Tom Fletcher, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, called upon the ‘international community to act’ but what clout does any authority have now? Israel takes zero notice of the UN or any other organization: commentators have rightly said only the US can put a stop to this horrifying situation but still Trump does nothing. No surprise due to the heft of the Zionist lobby but how can it be that no organisation has any sway now?

Many Israelis are unhappy with Netanyahu’s regime but it’s thought that criminal proceedings against him that would follow if he was no longer PM (and support from an ultra right wing Cabinet) are a major factor in his determination to continue. The excuse that every air raid and territory clearance are to eliminate Hamas  and rescue hostages is wearing increasingly thin, especially when IDF attacks have killed quite a few of them, and it’s clear that the takeover of the entire Gaza Strip was his intention all along. Yet the media collude with this to a large extent via their choice of interviewees and cynical use of language. Said an X user: ‘Such a limp response from our media. Why aren’t they reporting genocide as damning and unacceptable’. Another said: ‘There’s no perpetual war in Gaza — only perpetual dispossession, oppression and erasure. Calling Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza a “war” normalises the actions of a genocidal, apartheid, settler-colonial state hell-bent on ethnic cleansing and dispossession’. Even the name of this latest onslaught, Operation Gideon’s Chariots, is performatively aggressive.

As for Trump, it seems he’s taking less and less care to disguise his transactional approach to complex political situations (walking away when things go beyond simple) and naked corruption. His acceptance from Qatar of a luxury jet of course will come with strings which it’s quite likely he’s not yet spotted – it could prove a bit of a Trojan horse. We also learn that much of this jetting around isn’t really for political purposes but primarily to cement business opportunities for the Trump Organisation, the major actors being Eric Trump and Donald Jr. ‘Trump’s inclination to accept a freebie plane from a foreign state has even given pause to some of his Maga faithful. There are suggestions that his endless promises to drain the swamp are in fact not delivered on by instead flying over the swamp in a lavishly appointed $400m sleazemobile…. For many, it’s becoming hard not to think that Trump is being played by his gifters. Imagine if you had petrostate money, and all you needed to spend to have the president of the United States fly around openly advertising his own corruption was $400m. It’s insanely cheap at the price’. Apparently 66% of Americans polled by the New York Times think Trump’s second so far is ‘chaotic’. I’m surprised the number isn’t higher.

https://tinyurl.com/mtzsczys

Back in the UK it’s been good to see the conclusion of trade deals with India and the US, though they’re not perfect, of course. The India one has been flagged up as a major achievement because India agreed to cut tariffs on 92% of British goods sent there, import duties on whisky and gin cut from 150% to 75%, from 33% to zero on lamb and over 100% to 10% on cars as part of a quota system. Another major benefit is access to India’s huge government procurement market, but unfortunately legal services were omitted and the Tories have predictably twisted the facts on national insurance, saying they had refused to cooperate with this proposal when in office. However, the excusing of National Insurance payments only applies to those being sent here by specific employers and only for three years, not across the board. And this arrangement has long been in force with other countries so it’s not the ‘two tier’ system the Tories accuse the government of. We won’t see this in the right wing press but the deal is said to be the best any country has ever achieved with India, forecast to add £4.8bn a year to the UK economy by 2040.

Needless to say, these deals had impotent Tories spitting venom from the sidelines, not to mention moving towards more constructive relations with the EU. (This tack elicited yet another example of Kemi Badenoch making an absolute fool of herself, saying they will ‘not let this government betray Brexit’ etc. Such performative nonsense when no one has ever been able to indicate a genuine ‘Brexit freedom’ or ‘Brexit benefit’). But the government’s new proposals to curb immigration are being seen in some quarters as a worrying kneejerk reaction to Reform’s success in the local elections. This may well be an unfair accusation, though, as apparently these proposals have been worked on for some years.

Two major targets for reduction are visas for care workers and international students but it’s worrying that such is the government’s desire to be seen to be addressing the issue that the (too heavy) reliance of universities on foreign student fees and the desperate need for care workers here have been underestimated. It seems extraordinary that the government has decided this approach when the major and vital piece of work on building a UK social care workforce has not yet been done – it should be part of the overarching Casey Commission on Social Care, but that won’t be delivering its final report until 2028. Once again it’s brought the rather unpleasantly labeled ‘economically inactive’ under the spotlight, numerous politicians (mostly but not all right of centre) saying we should be getting British people to do these jobs, raise the wages, etc.

Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice was all over the airwaves last weekend on this theme, stressing the dignity of work and condemning the reliance on benefits, but he kept citing just one experience of a care home in his Skegness constituency. Another media interviewee who owned a chain of care homes was adamant that they’d tried raising wages, to no effect, acknowledging that generally these jobs aren’t attractive to Brits. ‘They just don’t want to do these jobs’. This could be for a number of reasons but I suspect reluctance tocarry out intimate care is a major factor.

People have been struck by how much Tice has been platformed by the media recently, forever on BBC’s Question Time and other shows and now (astonishingly, assuming some brain power) on the Nick Robinson Political Thinking podcast. Regarding Tice’s ubiquity, a wag tweeted: ‘Is Tice singing our national anthem at Wembley today?’

In view of the widespread concern about Reform undermining democratic norms, it’s good news that the Lib Dems have started a Reform Watch project (why haven’t the other parties already thought of it?) especially as we hear 22 of their councillors have already resigned and a new 19 year old councillor, with zero life and political experience, will be in charge of the complex area of children’s services in Leicestershire. Ed Davey said: ‘A key part of the monitoring will be to see if and how Reform-run councils try to cut services’. Many families had been “alarmed” by Farage’s comments saying too many people were being diagnosed with special needs or mental illnesses. Other areas would include culture war battles, such as Reform barring councils from flying the Ukraine flag as a show of solidarity, and trying to cut back on climate and net zero-related work’. There’s also the little matter (actually massive) that Farage has appealed to his political base by suggesting they will bring in auditors to check for council waste etc when such auditors already exist so he would effectively be duplicating this work and at what cost?

https://tinyurl.com/22xm65yh

As will be fairly clear now, it’s not only our domestic and global political and economic conditions which are unstable but also our digital infrastructure, upon which we depend so heavily. The recent cyber attacks on service providers and retailers are a worrying example of this, some trying to keep the worst of the damage from the public until the truth emerges, sometimes from the hackers themselves. Some headline writing wags have had fun with the Marks one, ie ‘This is not just any cyber attack, this is an M&S attack’ etc. It’s thought that around three quarters of large businesses have been attacked in recent years and when it’s a household name like M&S or the Co-op, people sit up and take notice. The cost to the UK economy is said to be more than £21bn a year. Just think – if examples like this were rectified and added together there might be less need for austerity measures. The Sunday Times said this really brings home the vulnerability of today’s online, interconnected economy, with far reaching effects like empty shelves in shops, online ordering made impossible and recruitment frozen. Organisations need to be much more savvy and vigilant about this danger, for example keeping paper records of vital information and ensuring that staff skills and detection systems are up to date, not to mention investing appropriately in all of this. We hear a lot these days about resilience in our personal lives but it seems like most organizations need to step up their digital resilience.

Talking of amounts currently wasted which could be clawed back, HMRC has been in the news again with statistics suggesting that the wealthy are avoiding quite a bit of tax despite efforts being directed towards claiming it. The National Audit Office (NAO) said billions of pounds was going unpaid each year and the ‘tax gap’ (between the amount owed and that collected) was £1.9bn for the financial year ending in March 2023. The NAO said the ‘super-rich’ had faced far fewer penalties for non-compliance in recent years – what a surprise, coinciding with when their Tory chums were in office and protecting them. HMRC stated its ambition: ‘It’s our duty to ensure everyone pays the right tax under the law, regardless of wealth or status. The government is delivering the most ambitious ever package to close the tax gap and bring in an extra £7.5bn for public services per year by 2029-30’. Let’s hope the Public Accounts Committee or some other august body keeps monitoring this to check if anything like this amount is brought in.

https://tinyurl.com/4vm58mac

Another perpetual source of unnecessary expenditure which could be cut out or at least cut back is the outmoded institution of monarchy. While the family continues to fight and plot like ferrets in a sack, aided and abetted by the supine media, we learn from the Sunday Times Rich List thatKing Charles’s personal fortune increased to £640m in the past year, making him as wealthy as the former prime minister Rishi Sunak and his wife, Akshata Murty. ‘The 76-year-old monarch, who acceded to the throne in 2022, recorded a £30m increase in wealth and ranks joint 238th on the list of the UK’s wealthiest people and families. The estimate of the king’s wealth is based on personal assets, including the investment portfolio he inherited from his late mother and private estates at Sandringham and Balmoral, and does not include the crown estate’. And what about the Duchy of Lancaster and Duchy of Cornwall, so-called ‘private estates’, the vast income of which (based on exploitation of private tenants and public sector organisations like the NHS) goes straight to Charles and William? It doesn’t fall within the Crown Estate.

The core taxpayer-funded Sovereign Grant was £86.3 million for 2022-23. However, the total cost of the Royal Family, including items like security and other operational expenses, is estimated to be much higher, with some sources citing figures as high as £510 million annually. And this isn’t even the total as it won’t include all the marching bands and pomp of various ceremonies, often totally unnecessary, like the recent Order of the Bath, during which wags made fun of the King and Prince of Wales wearing robes made from ‘the curtains’, But it doesn’t even stop there because whenever the royals make visits there’s the additional cost to local councils of policing, security, catering and time lost from core tasks.

https://tinyurl.com/msef3npr

On the same subject of monies which could be brought in, there’s some that now might not be, or at least not for a while. Farmers and vested interests have been hugely exercised by the inheritance tax loophole being closed, with some justification in some cases but on the other side many feel that farmers are playing the victim card, those targeted mainly being those cynically investing in agricultural land as a tax dodge (certain household names come to mind). But now MPs on thecross-party Efra committee (environment, food and rural affairs) have raised concerns that the changes announced in the budget were made without adequate consultation, impact assessment or assessment of affordability, with a risk of producing ‘unintended consequences… The Committee has called on the government to hold off announcing its overhaul of agricultural property relief and business property relief until October 2026, before bringing them into effect from April 2027’. They say this would give farmers, especially the older ones more likely to be caught by these tax liabilities, more time to plan etc. It will be interesting to see how much notice the government takes of this Committee’s recommendations.

https://tinyurl.com/23yanybm

We learn this week that Royal Parks Police, which polices 5,000 acres of royal parks across London, will be disbanded by November and its 77 officers redeployed. Unlike most parks (I’m old enough to remember the ‘parkies’, employed years ago by local authorities to keep order but now long gone) you often see the Royal Police vans driving around in these huge areas like Hyde Park and Richmond Park. A few years ago some social groups and personal trainers were put out when a licencing arrangement was introduced, ie you couldn’t just be teaching someone a plank or squats or using this land in a walking group as a private business without coughing up for a licence. Now this force is being disbanded it will be interesting to see if there’s less oversight of these activities.

Finally, the editor of The Week draws attention to the prevalence of this or that ‘awareness’ Day or Week, some of which you’d never have heard of eg 2 May World Tuna Day, designated by the UN ‘to highlight the importance of responsible tuna  fishing’. All too often such days/weeks like Mental Health Awareness Week are cynically used as monetization opportunities and they also imply that ‘awareness’ is enough when it’s manifestly not. We need action, not just awareness. We could get awareness fatigue – apparently May will see no fewer than 24 UN-endorsed awareness days. Theo Tait reckons that few will celebrate International Human Resources Day on 20 May. ‘In medieval Europe, when feast days reached around 60 per year, the whole system fell into disrepute. There’s a lesson there somewhere. Leave our days alone: there’s only so much awareness we can handle’.