The Great Puff-Pantomime

They’ve done it. Banned disposable vapes. Applause all round. Ministers in hi-vis puffing their chests out – "saving the kiddies and the planet", they beam, while posing next to a pile of lurid green Elf Bars confiscated from a teenager called Jayden in a tracksuit. The press eat it up. “Action at last!” scream the headlines. Except, of course, it’s nothing of the sort. It’s bollocks – stage-managed, superficial, selective bollocks.

Let’s break it down, shall we?

The stated aim? Stop children vaping and reduce plastic waste. Laudable. But the ban only targets disposables. Not vapes. Just the convenient ones – the bright little ones the tabloids can photograph easily. Meanwhile, the rechargeable, refillable devices – which are cheaper over time and still deliver the same nicotine – remain entirely legal. Why? Because banning vaping outright would mean tackling the actual problem: regulation, enforcement, and corporate interests. And we can’t be having that, can we?

This is classic Westminster sleight-of-hand. Like banning alcopops to protect teenagers, but leaving the vodka aisle untouched. It’s moral panic dressed up as policy – all smoke, no substance. The government gets its headline. “Crackdown!” “Protecting the youth!” “Saving the Earth!” Meanwhile, Jayden’s already figured out how to fill a pod.

Enforcement? Don’t make me laugh. Trading Standards can barely police dodgy MOTs, let alone under-the-counter vape sales in every backstreet shop from Blackpool to Barking. And the real source of underage supply – older siblings and dodgy blokes outside the Co-op – continues unabated. Disposable or not, kids will still get their fix, because addiction doesn’t check packaging regulations.

Then there’s the environmental guff. Yes, five million disposables a week go to landfill. And that is appalling. But do you hear the same ministerial outrage about the billions of takeaway coffee cups, wet wipes, and fast fashion flooding the same landfills? No, because that would involve taking on Starbucks, Primark and the other big boys. Disposable vapes, though – easy target. Small enough to ban, big enough to virtue-signal.

And can we kill this absurd idea that flavours are the issue? Adults vape flavours. I wouldn't touch the stuff if all the juices tasted like a pub ashtray or a Marlboro left out in the rain. It's because they taste like mango or mint or raspberry cheesecake that they’re a viable alternative to smoking. Pretending it's the flavour that leads to addiction, rather than the nicotine or the stressors of modern life, is like blaming sugar for alcoholism because some people drink flavoured vodka.

So who benefits? Certainly not the kids. Not the planet. But the big players – the BATs and Philip Morrises of this world – oh, they’re laughing. Their slick refillable systems remain untouched. Their market share? Secure. The corner shop brands are the ones getting kneecapped. It’s regulatory capture with a mango scent.

So what are we left with? A country still awash with vapes, just slightly less colourful. A government patting itself on the back for a “bold step” that’s neither bold nor a step. And the real problems – addiction, regulation, environmental hypocrisy – all quietly sidestepped in favour of a headline-friendly fix.

Disposable vapes aren’t the issue. Disposability is. Disposable politics. Disposable accountability. Disposable truth. And until we bin those, we’ll keep choking on the consequences – one strawberry ice puff at a time.

The Long and the Short of it

Once upon a time, the length of a woman’s hair was more than just a personal preference. It was a social semaphore, a moral litmus test, and even a weapon in the arsenal of femininity. Now, though, it seems that a woman's hair length serves as a crude calendar – the shorter it gets, the more years she's been marking off. This curious phenomenon of follicular reduction, where hair shortens as life lengthens, isn't merely a passing style trend. It's cultural, psychological, and, dare I say it, political.

Let's start with the obvious. The classic image of the youthful woman, long hair flowing down her back, is still deeply embedded in our collective psyche. Literature, art, and film have all reinforced the notion that luxuriant locks signify vitality, fertility, and allure. Hair in its unfettered, Rapunzel-esque glory speaks to a kind of rebellion against time. But once a woman hits a certain age, society seems to expect her to engage in some sort of ceremonial shearing – as if shorter hair equals maturity and respectability, while longer hair remains the province of dreamers, deviants, and the eternally late to parent/teacher meetings.

But why? The answer lies somewhere between practicality and patriarchy. There's a whispering voice of so-called common sense that suggests shorter hair is easier to manage for women of a certain age. It requires less maintenance, less time in front of the mirror, and less patience with the inevitable grey. It's as though women, having spent their youth keeping up appearances, are now expected to choose functionality over frivolity. It’s a bit like swapping your stilettos for sensible loafers – only it’s happening on your head.

Then there's the matter of power. Historically, a woman cutting her hair has often symbolised a rejection of societal expectations. Think of Joan of Arc, shorn of her femininity to take up arms. Or flappers in the 1920s, their bobs a defiant snip at Victorian restraint. Yet, paradoxically, modern older women are often pressured to crop their hair as a concession to those very same societal expectations – expectations that tell them they're past their prime and ought to stop trying to steal the spotlight from the younger generation. (Although let’s be honest – if the younger generation really cared about the spotlight, they’d spend less time squinting at their phones.)

But there's a deeper, more insidious undertone to all of this. As women age, they are often told, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, to shrink themselves. Not just their hair, but their presence, their voice, their desires. Short hair becomes a metaphor for this societal shrinking act. It says, "I'm not here to disrupt. I'm practical, I'm sensible, and I'm not trying to compete with the ingenues anymore." Basically, it’s the hair equivalent of wearing beige.

Of course, there are exceptions. Some older women grow their hair long as a statement of defiance, a refusal to let society dictate their choices. Others, like the iconic Dame Judi Dench or Helen Mirren, embrace the crop and somehow manage to turn it into a crown. But the fact that these exceptions are notable speaks volumes about the rule. Besides, if you’re going to go short, you might as well do it with a wink and a bit of swagger. After all, nothing says “I’m still fabulous” quite like a perfectly tousled pixie cut paired with a devil-may-care grin.

Ultimately, the length of a woman's hair should be nothing more than a matter of personal preference. Yet it remains laden with meaning, a silent dialogue between the individual and society. Long hair shouldn't be the sole preserve of youth, nor should short hair be an inevitability of age. In a truly liberated society, a woman of seventy should feel just as free to sport waist-length tresses as a woman of seventeen. Until then, let's at least acknowledge the unspoken pressures at play and give women of all ages the freedom to wear their hair however they damn well please – whether it's a pixie cut, a bob, or a mane that would make Rapunzel herself green with envy. And let’s remember: hair grows back, but regret over a bad haircut lasts forever.

Now, long hair on an ageing, balding man is another issue......

Free Speech My Arse

Apparently, Lucy Connolly’s jailing marks the end of free speech in Britain. That’s the latest screech from the usual quarters – those who think liberty means being allowed to spray petrol around the public square and then get uppity when someone takes away the matches.

Let’s be clear. Free speech doesn’t mean you can shout “set fire to the hotels!” after a racially charged stabbing and expect nothing to happen. That’s not opinion. That’s incitement. And if you get caught doing it, you haven’t been “silenced” – you’ve been held accountable.

In America, you can more or less say anything short of handing someone a detonator. The law stands back until the damage is done. There, it’s not illegal until there’s blood on the pavement – and sometimes not even then. That’s the American model: let it burn, then send in the thoughts and prayers.

Here in Britain, we do things differently. If your words look likely to whip up violence or racial hatred, the law steps in before someone gets hurt. Not because we’re fragile – but because we’ve learned that words, left unchecked, lead to bricks through windows and worse. It's not about offence – it's about harm.

Cue the chorus: “I thought this was a free country!” From the same people who want drag story time banned and libraries purged of anything more nuanced than Enid Blyton. Funny how their belief in free speech always seems to stop at other people’s throats.

Lucy Connolly wasn’t jailed for having a view. She was jailed for crossing a legal line that exists to stop racist violence before it starts. She wasn’t brave. She wasn’t silenced. She was reckless, and she was convicted.

And now we’ve got Trump’s State Department – under his second term, no less – “monitoring” the case. Not because they care about British justice, but because they smell an opportunity. Trump’s America doesn’t defend free speech – it brands it. Uses it as a slogan while crushing protest, gagging the press, and handing power to zealots. If you speak up for equality or climate action, you're a traitor. If you call for mass deportation, you're a patriot. That’s their idea of liberty – selectively applied, violently defended.

So no – I’m not going to wring my hands over a hate-filled keyboard warrior facing consequences. I’ll save my concern for the real threats: governments that pretend to love free speech while quietly criminalising dissent. Like the one currently occupying the White House.

If you want the American model – where bile flows freely and consequences only arrive in body bags – be my guest. Go there. Just don’t pretend it’s freedom. It’s chaos wrapped in a flag.

I’ll stick with a system that tries to stop the fire before the spark takes hold. That’s not censorship. That’s grown-up government. And if that makes me a snowflake, I’ll melt proudly – all over your hateful little bonfire.

Tommeh

Tommy Robinson didn’t uncover grooming gangs – he exploited them. By the time he swaggered into the story, smartphone in hand and martyrdom complex fully inflated, the truth was already out. Victims had already spoken. Investigative journalists – most notably Andrew Norfolk at The Times – had already exposed the pattern of abuse and institutional cowardice in places like Rotherham, Rochdale and Telford. The Jay Report had been published. Trials had been concluded. Convictions had been secured. Robinson wasn’t a whistleblower – he was a latecomer with a grudge and a platform, not a truth-seeker but an opportunist.

When he wasn’t endangering trials by ignoring court reporting restrictions – as he did in Leeds in 2018, risking a mistrial and retraumatising victims – he was repackaging the suffering of young girls into grist for his anti-Islam mill. He cherry-picked the ethnicity and religion of a subset of offenders and used it as proof that the real threat to Britain wasn’t paedophiles or safeguarding failures, but Muslims. He framed child abuse as a cultural pathology, not a criminal one. In doing so, he deliberately ignored the elephant in the room – that the vast majority of child sexual abuse in the UK is committed by white men.

There have been grooming gangs involving white British men. There have been rings operating out of care homes, schools, churches, even Parliament. Where was Robinson then? Nowhere. No livestreams. No rallies. No fundraising videos. He never campaigned outside a court when the abuser wore a dog collar or a House of Lords pass. His outrage isn’t rooted in justice – it’s tribal. His cause is not child protection – it’s identity politics for the far right. Dressed in a Union Jack and pretending to care, he’s weaponised real suffering to advance a paranoid worldview where everything bad comes from “them” and everything righteous flows from “us”.

And now, in a final act of farce, he’s being funded by Elon Musk – the world’s richest edgelord. Musk has decided that throwing money at reactionary provocateurs is somehow a defence of free speech. In reality, it’s a war on accountability. Musk didn’t bankroll whistleblowers, investigators, or victims. He threw his weight behind a man whose antics could have collapsed a child abuse trial. That’s not dissent. That’s sabotage. Free speech doesn’t mean you get to play chicken with the justice system and then cry censorship when you’re held to account. But that’s the game now – the rules don’t apply to the chosen few.

Musk has increasingly aligned himself with a particular strain of politics – the kind that cries victimhood from a position of immense power. The kind that equates responsibility with repression. By funding Robinson’s legal battles, Musk isn’t levelling the playing field. He’s backing a loud, divisive figure whose only talent is self-promotion and whose entire narrative depends on cherry-picked grievances. This isn’t some principled stand for liberty. It’s the globalisation of grievance culture – a bizarre alliance between tech billionaires and far-right rabble-rousers, united by a shared belief that truth is whatever they say it is, and consequences are tyranny.

So let’s call this what it is. Robinson is not a journalist. He’s not a campaigner. He’s a carnival barker in a culture war, flogging outrage to an audience desperate for someone to blame. And Musk is not a saviour of speech. He’s a rich man playing politics with other people’s trauma. Together, they make the perfect pair – one shouting nonsense, the other paying to keep the mic switched on. And the real victims? Still overlooked. Still politicised. Still waiting for justice to be more than a talking point on someone else’s YouTube channel.

Ears

I have recently discovered yet another indignity of ageing. It seems that when I lift my head from my pillow in the morning, my ears – those once resilient flaps of cartilage – now take their sweet time unfolding from whatever grotesque shape the pillow has imposed upon them overnight. There I am, stumbling towards the mirror, only to be greeted by a pair of ears that appear to have given up on being ears and are instead auditioning for the role of Shrek's understudy.

This was never an issue a few weeks ago - my ears would spring back into position with the same enthusiasm as a Labrador spotting an unattended sandwich. Now, they seem to sit there, sulking, as if they are waiting for some sort of written permission to return to their natural state. I prod at them, flick them, even try the old “rub vigorously with the palm” technique, but they just ooze back into place at their own leisurely pace, as if to say, “What’s the rush? We’ve got all day.”

It is, I suspect, one of those delightful side effects of ageing that no one warns you about. Skin loses elasticity, cartilage gets lazy, and before you know it, you’re wandering around the house in the morning looking like you were halfway through being vacuum-packed in your sleep. No one tells you that ears, which have spent decades minding their own business, will suddenly decide they no longer have the structural integrity to bounce back from a bit of compression.

This is just another chapter in the slow betrayal of the body. First, the metabolism sneaks off into the night without so much as a goodbye. Then, the knees decide that stairs are an unreasonable demand. Now, it’s the ears refusing to participate in the very concept of instant rebound. At this rate, I fully expect my nose to start migrating sideways out of sheer spite.

I am sure some medical bore would tell me this is all due to a reduction in collagen, hydration levels, or some other grim biological process that ultimately ends in a pine box. I prefer to think of it as my ears going on strike. Decades of loyal service, and now they want shorter hours, more rest, and apparently, a slow and thoughtful return to their original shape. I almost respect the audacity.

When the Mob Rules, the Fortress Falls

There’s a curious irony to Europe’s current predicament – one that would be delicious if it weren’t so bloody catastrophic. We spent the 20th century learning, through blood and rubble, that cooperation makes us stronger. That peace comes not from sabre-rattling nationalism, but from compromise, treaties, and mutual dependence. And now, just when we most need to pull together, we’re gleefully voting for the very thing that tears us apart.

Populism – that shapeshifting conjuror of the modern right – has wormed its way into Europe’s bloodstream, seducing electorates with the same tired lullabies: "Take back control", "Protect our people", "The elites don’t care about you". It’s always the same tune – just sung in different accents. From Meloni to Le Pen, from Orbán to Wilders, the nationalist Right has built its power not on solutions, but on sabotage. They thrive on division, dependency on scapegoats, and a pathological fear of cooperation – particularly with foreigners.

And here’s the punchline: while Europe atomises itself into squabbling enclaves of wounded pride and petty grievance, the real players – the empires-in-waiting – are doing the exact opposite.

Yes – empires. You thought those were finished? How quaint. They’ve not vanished – they’ve evolved. Muskets and redcoats are out. Data, ports, and debt traps are in.

Russia is still playing the imperial game, bombing its neighbours in the name of “historic unity”, while feeding its own population myth and misery. China’s empire is quieter – a port here, a copper mine there, a telecoms contract laced with dependency. And the United States? It doesn’t annex – it influences, dictates, and monetises. If Rome taxed provinces, Washington bills them monthly and calls it a subscription.

Even the EU has been accused of bureaucratic empire-building – except it’s the only one that didn’t need to coerce or conquer. It offered prosperity in exchange for shared rules. And that, in today’s populist politics, is unforgivable.

This isn’t a new story. History is stuffed with examples of fractious, self-absorbed states being swallowed whole by those who could organise themselves. Ancient Greece, too busy bickering over whose hoplites had the finest tunics, was eventually devoured by Macedon – then again by Rome. Renaissance Italy, rich in art but poor in unity, was carved up by Spain, France, and Austria. The princely states of India, more worried about local rivalries than the East India Company, found themselves colonised while still sharpening their spears at one another.

Even the Holy Roman Empire – a tangle of German principalities in permanent discord – served as little more than a doormat for French and Austrian ambitions until Bismarck finally forced unity with blood and iron.

And it’s not just failure we repeat. When petty states do manage to pull together, even briefly, they can stop an empire in its tracks. The Greek city-states held off Persia at Salamis and Plataea – but only when Athens and Sparta stopped measuring shields. The Dutch united long enough to kick Spain out and build an empire of their own. The thirteen American colonies, so often at each other’s throats, banded together just long enough to see off the greatest empire of their day.

In the 1940s, even the most improbable alliance – Britain, America, and the Soviet Union – held together long enough to smash Hitler’s dream of empire. Because survival, when recognised as shared, can bind the unlikeliest of allies.

And yet here we are – unlearning it all.

Because while Europe splinters, the empires consolidate – and scale is everything.

Populism and nationalism can work – but only at scale. Once a country passes around 100 million people, it can just about afford to indulge itself. That’s the threshold often cited by economists like Ha-Joon Chang, strategists like Zbigniew Brzezinski, and political theorists such as Yascha Mounk – the point at which a nation begins to have enough internal market, institutional ballast, and geopolitical weight to absorb the consequences of isolationist bluster. Below that? You’re not a great power – you’re a medium-sized customer with delusions of grandeur.

When you're America with 330 million, or India with 1.4 billion, or Russia with enough gas and guns to punch above its weight, you can afford to thumb your nose at multilateralism. You can survive on your own market. You can bluff, bully, or bribe your way out of isolation.

But when you’re a mid-sized democracy – like Britain, Hungary, or even France acting alone – populism isn’t strength. It’s theatre. You don’t gain independence – you lose leverage. You don’t control your destiny – you hand it over, piecemeal, to whoever shouts loudest or lends fastest. You become a client state, still waving the flag, while someone else calls the shots.

This is the paradox at the heart of modern populism: it promises sovereignty but delivers submission. And the smaller the country, the bigger the lie. In today’s world, it doesn’t take boots on the ground to be conquered – it takes contracts, servers, supply chains and influence.

Populism weakens democracies – but it strengthens empires. The more divided, isolationist, and paranoid Europe becomes, the easier it is to exploit. We’re not defending sovereignty – we’re dismantling the scaffolding that holds it up. The new imperialism doesn’t bother raising flags. It raises invoices.

And Britain? We led the charge – left the EU not to be independent, but to be irrelevant. Imagining Empire 2.0 and ending up with nostalgia and chlorinated chicken. A country that used to build coalitions now can’t even build a customs system.

So let’s be clear: the age of empires isn’t over. It’s back. Quieter. Smarter. Hungrier. It wears a suit, not a sash – and it never left, it just moved online.

We’re not being invaded. We’re being out-organised – by those who never stopped thinking like empires, while we were busy shouting about blue passports and banging on about Trafalgar.

And so, like every disunited league, city-state, and coalition that came before – we are not being conquered. We’re delivering ourselves – gift-wrapped, deluded, and chanting "take back control" all the way to the loading bay.

Britain: The Country That Left the Future and Took the Wrong Turn at 1952

South Korea is powering ahead with semiconductors, green tech, and a ruthless focus on education. China’s reshaping the world order with data, steel and geopolitical muscle. And Britain? We’re still debating whether kids should learn critical thinking or just memorise 1066 and draw a nice picture of a motte-and-bailey castle.

Once, we were a services superpower – brains over brawn, ideas over industry. But then came Brexit, and with it, a sharp right turn into delusion. We tore up trade deals, turned away global talent, and wrapped ourselves in bunting while the economy quietly shrank.

Now, just as we need a generation of young people trained to think critically, analyse media, spot logical fallacies, and challenge lazy narratives, we’ve got Nigel Farage eyeing up the curriculum with all the subtlety of a man clutching a pitchfork. He wants to muzzle lawyers, meddle in education, and stamp out anything that might encourage a young person to ask, “Hang on, where’s the evidence for that?”

Because that’s the point – critical thinking is dangerous to populists. Teach a child to think, and they’ll soon wonder why we’re still blaming immigrants for government failure, or how Brexit made us poorer and more isolated, or why the NHS has fewer doctors than slogans. Farage doesn’t want a thinking electorate – he wants a saluting one.

Meanwhile, councils are broke, trains are broken, and Britain is running on vibes and Victorian sewage pipes. South Korea invests in the future. China plans decades ahead. We? We clutch pearls over statues and pretend that knowing the date of the Battle of Hastings is more useful than being able to deconstruct a Daily Mail headline.

Of course, teach 1066 – but teach it alongside the tools to interrogate it. Without critical thinking, history is just propaganda in a funny hat.

We could lead again – in renewables, biotech, culture, ethics. But only if we stop treating knowledge like a threat and education like an ideological battlefield.

Because in a country where ignorance is cultivated and curiosity is condemned, there’s only one winner – and it’s not the people.

Chassis Ascending: A Triumph in Vertical Gardening

Let it never be said that the British countryside is dull. There, nestled between the gravel track and the buttercups, stands what may either be a masterstroke of engineering pragmatism… or the avant-garde installation of a man who's had enough of sheep-proof fencing and wants to usher in the age of Automotive Bauhaus.

Yes – that is, in fact, a Triumph GT6 chassis, erected like some post-industrial scarecrow, propped up by timber stakes in a manner that says, "No, officer, I’m not starting a commune – I'm just painting the underbelly." But what an underbelly! Suspended in a dignified headstand, it's less restoration and more resurrection – as if the whole car's waiting for the bodywork to descend from the heavens like some sheet metal messiah.

In truth, this arrangement solves several problems at once. First, it avoids the misery of grovelling underneath with a face full of gravel and Hammerite fumes. Second, it’s oddly beautiful – equal parts Mad Max and Capability Brown. And third, it’s already got the neighbours wondering if I've joined a breakaway sect of the Green Party that worships chassis integrity.

But here's the thing: now that the frame’s wearing its Sunday best in black Hammerite (smooth, naturally – we're not savages), you’re left with a real aesthetic conundrum. California Sage is on the way for the body, but those upper rails? They’re crying out for contrast, given they'll be visible in the engine bay. A whisper of rebellious flair. Something to say, “Yes, this is a Triumph, but it’s my Triumph – and I’m not afraid of colour theory.”

So why not go bold? Opalescent copper? British Leyland mustard, just to rile purists? Even a rich burgundy or bronze would make those Sage panels pop like a 1970s Haynes manual photo. It’s not just a frame – it’s a canvas. And let’s be honest, if you're already installing your chassis like a kinetic sculpture in a meadow, you're not the sort to shrink from a bit of chromatic showmanship.

Keeping with the herbal theme, I plumped for Hammerite Soft Thyme, but only in way of the engine bay.

  

In conclusion, what I erected in order to achieve a top and bottom paint job may be the start of a new vernacular in garden design. The National Trust should be taking notes. Because with a few more old chassis dotted about, tastefully arranged and brightly coloured, I might just have launched a whole new movement: Restoration Pastoralism. Chelsea Flower Show 2026? I'll get my entry form in early.

Tax Evasion

There's a world of difference between a small tradesman pocketing the odd cash-in-hand job to keep the wolf from the door and a millionaire siphoning profits through a labyrinth of offshore accounts, yet both are technically 'evading tax'. Only one of them, however, gets chased down with the full force of the law, while the other gets invited to political fundraisers - just ask the likes of Rishi Sunak's donor circle, or look at the countless loopholes baked into the tax code under successive Tory governments, all while HMRC ramps up audits on the self-employed.

The small tradesman - plumber, carpenter, market stallholder - operates in a world where tax feels less like a civic duty and more like a punishment. The cost of compliance is high, the paperwork endless, and the government’s so-called 'support' is a bureaucratic swamp that only seems to work for those with a dedicated accountant. Faced with rising costs, late-paying clients, and a tax bill that could mean the difference between feeding the family and defaulting on the van lease, it’s no wonder some turn to cash jobs and a bit of creative accounting. According to a 2022 Federation of Small Businesses report, nearly 50% of self-employed workers experience late payments, with many citing cash flow struggles as a key reason for resorting to informal income streams. Unethical? Maybe. Understandable? Absolutely.

Now, contrast that with the millionaire tax evader. Not someone who just dodges the rules, but someone who writes them - funding politicians, lobbying for loopholes, ensuring the very laws that ordinary people are expected to obey work entirely in their favour. These are the people with armies of lawyers and accountants, setting up shell companies in the Cayman Islands and booking their profits in Dublin while actually raking it in from British workers. They don’t evade tax to survive. They do it because they can - and because no one stops them.

And here’s the real sting - while the small tradesman risks being clobbered by HMRC, the millionaire tax avoider is seen as a 'savvy businessman'. They turn up at Davos to pontificate about 'wealth creation', all while siphoning money away from the very societies that enabled their success. They use the roads, rely on a healthy workforce, enjoy stable markets protected by publicly funded institutions - but heaven forbid they actually contribute to any of it.

Both evade tax, but let’s not pretend the moral weight is the same. The small tradesman is often demonised as a cheat, yet public sympathy tends to be on their side - they’re seen as people just trying to get by. Meanwhile, the millionaire tax dodger is often framed as 'financially astute', lauded for 'playing the game' rather than called out for gaming the system. This double standard allows the wealthy to keep bending the rules while the self-employed and working-class are hounded for pennies. The system wrings every penny from the small tradesman while letting the tax-dodging elite off the hook. One is a symptom of a broken system; the other is the reason it’s broken. And if HMRC really wants to crack down on tax evasion, it should start at the top, not with the bloke fixing your boiler - unless, of course, the real aim is to protect the powerful.

From Shopkeepers to PowerPoint Peasants

Once upon a time, the dream of the British worker was simple: escape wage slavery and hang out your own shingle. A shop, a van, a bit of kit in the back of a lock-up. You might not make a fortune, but it was yours. You set the prices, picked the hours, and swore at the government without checking over your shoulder for HR.

This, lest we forget, was what prompted Bonaparte to dismiss us – with more than a tinge of envy – as a "nation of shopkeepers". He meant it as an insult. It was, in fact, a compliment. We were economically stubborn, fiercely independent, and utterly ungovernable – a patchwork of small traders who owed fealty to no man but their accountant.

But that’s all gone now. Killed off not by foreign conquest or plague, but by a slow and sapping shift to a service economy – an endless grey sprawl of ‘customer success managers’ and ‘senior synergy consultants’, all working 60-hour weeks to pay for the privilege of not owning a bloody thing.

The modern middle class – if it even qualifies for the term – no longer owns a shop. It doesn’t even own its tools. It rents software by the month and logs into Teams to serve someone else’s dream. The cobbler’s hammer has been replaced by a login ID. The butcher’s block by a spreadsheet. The publican’s bell by the Outlook calendar alert.

What we’re left with is a generation of high-earning, highly-strung professionals who have all the trappings of success – the house (mortgaged to the hilt), the car (leased), the clothes (ironed by someone else) – but no sovereignty. They’re not middle class. They’re corporate vassals. PowerPoint peasants.

And woe betide anyone who dares leave the plantation. Try opening a small café, or a high street shop, or even a mobile valeting business – and see how fast the red tape wraps itself around your ankles. We’ve gone from building empires of our own to defending KPIs for empires that wouldn’t notice if we vanished overnight.

I spotted this enterprising business on a recent trip to Bridport.

 What a brilliant idea - a mobile barbershop. No quartet though, which was rather sad.

The middle class of old was self-employed, self-respecting, and self-reliant. Today’s version is salaried, sanitised, and spiritually spent.

Welcome to the age of middle-class servitude – where we swapped the till for the Teams call, and now answer not to customers, but to compliance.

Weaponised Lens

So Netanyahu wastes no time. Israeli embassy staff are killed in the US, and before the bodies are cold, he declares it anti-Semitic. Not a political assassination. Not a response to Israel’s policies. Not an isolated act in a broader geopolitical context – no, straight to anti-Semitism. Case closed.

Now, it may well turn out to be anti-Semitic. That’s entirely possible. But as it stands, there’s not a shred of evidence. No manifesto, no racial slurs, no affiliation with hate groups. What we do have is a reported shout of “Free Palestine!” – which complicates Netanyahu’s narrative rather awkwardly.

Because if someone commits a killing while invoking Palestine, that suggests rage against the state of Israel, not hatred of Jews. Misplaced, murderous rage – absolutely. But political, not racial. The attacker didn’t yell “Death to Jews.” He shouted about a people under occupation. That distinction matters. Or at least it should – unless we’re now pretending that any opposition to Israel is by definition a hate crime.

And that’s the trick: conflate Israel with all Jews, and suddenly any act against the state becomes an attack on the entire faith. Criticism becomes persecution. Resistance becomes racism. It’s a cynical sleight of hand – and a dangerous one. Not least because it trivialises real anti-Semitism and uses Jewish identity to shield a government whose military is currently levelling entire neighbourhoods.

That trick reached farcical levels this week, when Netanyahu accused not just one, but three Western leaders – Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, and Mark Carney – of “emboldening Hamas” and fuelling antisemitic violence, simply because they called for a ceasefire and more humanitarian aid in Gaza. Yes, even Starmer – a man married to a Jewish woman, who observes Shabbat with his family, and who’s done more to tackle anti-Semitism in the Labour Party than any of his predecessors. But in Netanyahu’s world, even he is smeared with the brush of bigotry, simply for suggesting that bombing civilians might not be the path to peace.

It’s absurd. And it reveals the strategy: any criticism – no matter how cautious, moderate, or humanitarian – gets spun as support for terror. It's a move designed not to protect Jews, but to silence critics of Israeli policy. And that’s not just dishonest – it’s corrosive.

Because if criticising the Israeli government is anti-Semitic, what does that say about the 56 to 70 percent of Israelis who oppose Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza and beyond? Are they anti-Semitic too? Are the tens of thousands marching in Tel Aviv – demanding a ceasefire and calling for Netanyahu’s resignation – suffering from some form of self-hatred? Or is it only non-Jews who get smeared for pointing out the obvious?

By Netanyahu’s logic, if someone shouts “Free Palestine” before committing a murder, it’s proof of bigotry. But when an Israeli pilot drops American-made munitions on a refugee camp, killing civilians, that’s just “neutralising a threat.” When a Palestinian child is pulled from the rubble, we’re told Israel had no choice. But if violence flows the other way, nuance vanishes. It's racism. No debate. No context. Just hatred.

It’s a grotesque double standard. You can’t brand your enemy’s violence as identity-based hatred while insisting your own identity-driven actions are above criticism. That’s not justice – it’s propaganda. Because if one act is labelled anti-Semitism, then the other damn well should be called Islamophobia. Otherwise, we’re not applying principles – we’re just deciding whose corpses count.

Let’s be clear: the killing of embassy staff is murder, not resistance. But so is the bombardment of city blocks. And if we insist on viewing violence through the lens of identity, then that lens must work both ways. Otherwise, we’re not fighting bigotry – we’re managing narratives.

You can’t wrap every Israeli death in the Star of David and shout “Never again,” while reducing every Palestinian death to a regrettable inconvenience. That’s not moral clarity. That’s narrative warfare – and it’s got to stop.

The Ducking of Duct Tape

We live in an age where truth bends to branding, where ignorance is monetised, and where a bit of adhesive becomes a cultural Rorschach test. Enter: Duck tape – the linguistic mangling of duct tape, now fully embraced by the commercial overlords who know full well that if enough people get it wrong, it becomes "right".

Let’s be clear – it was duct tape. Invented during WWII to keep water out of ammunition boxes, then repurposed to seal ductwork in post-war America. Strong stuff. Did the job. No-nonsense. Functional. You could argue it was the physical embodiment of common sense – before that, too, was rebranded into extinction.

But somewhere along the way, someone misheard or misread it – probably the same people who think nuclear is pronounced "nucular" – and duck tape waddled into the room. And like most errors in the modern world, instead of correcting it, we put it on a t-shirt, trademarked it, and sold it in neon pink with glittery unicorns.

The decline of duct into duck is a symptom, not the disease. It's part of the same cultural entropy that allows Farage to pass for a man of the people, or lets Brexit masquerade as sovereignty. It’s the same triumph of perception over precision – the same wilful ignorance paraded as authenticity.

So now we have children growing up thinking duck tape is the real deal, blissfully unaware that it’s a linguistic dumbing-down wrapped in shiny marketing. And we wonder why nuance is dead and populism thrives.

It’s not about tape. It never is. It’s about whether we still care about accuracy, history, and meaning – or whether we just slap a logo on our mistakes and call them success.

Illegal Verbiage

Once upon a time – not so very long ago – the BBC was a public broadcaster in the truest sense: a bastion of impartiality, a check against hysteria, and a bulwark against the creeping Americanisation of public discourse. Now, it’s become something else entirely: a timid mouthpiece, too cowed to challenge power, too eager to appease the red-faced chorus of tabloid Britain.

Case in point: refugees. Or rather, as the BBC now increasingly calls them, “illegal immigrants”. A term spoon-fed by ministers, recycled by pundits, and now delivered deadpan by BBC reporters who should damn well know better.

Let’s be clear: under international law, no one is “illegal” for crossing a border to claim asylum. Not now, not ever. The UK signed that principle into law in 1951, when the world still remembered what happened to people turned away at ports with nowhere else to go. But today, nuance has been jettisoned in favour of government-approved dog-whistling, and the Beeb – that once-proud institution – is right there, nodding along.

When a child from Sudan arrives on a Kent beach, soaked and terrified, he is not “illegal.” When a woman flees Taliban rule and arrives via dinghy because there's no visa route for the desperate, she is not “illegal.” But say it enough – say it on the news, in headlines, in bulletins – and the public stops seeing people. They see criminals.

And that, of course, is the point.

This isn’t reporting. It’s linguistic laundering – taking a term deliberately weaponised by the Home Office and giving it the air of neutrality. The BBC could clarify. It could explain the legal right to asylum, or how the UK has shut down all safe routes, forcing the persecuted into peril. But it doesn’t. Instead, it mouths along with whichever minister is wagging the finger that week. “Illegal immigrants,” they say – and so the BBC follows suit, like a dog trained too well.

What we are witnessing is not a lapse. It’s complicity. The gradual adoption of right-wing framing – on immigration, on protest, on “woke” culture – is no accident. It is the BBC chasing a ghost called “balance” down a rabbit hole of cowardice, fearful of offending the very forces that despise its existence.

And so, the Overton window shifts. Not with a bang, but with a byline. Once, it was the job of journalists to speak truth to power. Now it seems they’re content to copy and paste from press releases and pretend it’s news.

If refugees are now “illegal” by default, it’s not law that changed. It’s language. And the BBC helped rewrite it.

Bonnie Prince Bolognese

The other day I was listening to a BBC Radio advert for some new historical drama about Bonnie Prince Charlie – all swelling strings, galloping hooves, and reverent tones muttering about destiny and thrones. Then the man himself piped up. And what do I hear? A pronounced Scottish accent. Rolling Rs. That soft Highland lilt – all very “Och aye, the Hanoverians are doon the glen!”

That made me curious - he wasn't raised in Scotland and so was very unlikely to have a Scottish accent. I did some digging.

Bonnie Prince Charlie didn’t sound Scottish at all. He was born in Rome, raised in Italy, educated in French, and could probably tell you more about Florentine tailoring than clan loyalty. His English was passable – just – but always tinged with continental vowels and the crisp elocution of a man more used to pronouncing "mon Dieu" than "moose stew."

The BBC, along with every romanticised tartan-flinging drama since the dawn of telly, insists on handing him the voice of a Gaelic bard. But the reality? He probably addressed the clans with something like “Bon amici, we go-a fight-a for zee throne, yes?” Cue the Highlanders exchanging puzzled glances and wondering if they'd joined a rebellion or been invited to a wine tasting.

The truth was that Bonnie Prince Charlie sounded like a European courtier. Because that’s exactly what he was. He wasn’t a Highlander. He wasn’t even Scottish by upbringing. He was a pampered exile with delusions of grandeur and the military instincts of a confused but well-meaning maître d’.

But history on screen doesn’t care about that. What matters is that the hero has the right accent – which, bizarrely, means the wrong one. A soft, musical voice speaking English with Italianate phrasing doesn’t cut it for prime-time drama. So instead, we get a fictional brogue, kilts, and the ludicrous idea that Culloden was lost not due to dire planning, but because of tragic romance and wet heather.

So next time you hear “Scottish” Charlie rallying the clans in perfect BBC Highlandese, remember: the real Bonnie Prince probably pronounced “Culloden” like a pasta dish – and wouldn’t have known a sporran from a soufflé.

The Great Fishing Betrayal - Not

Let’s be crystal clear: Keir Starmer’s new EU trade deal isn’t some betrayal of British fishermen. It’s a lifeline. It fixes part of the damage Brexit inflicted - damage sold to voters on a plate of jingoism, fantasy economics, and red-faced tabloid fury.

Yes, the deal extends EU access to UK waters for another 12 years. But that’s not new. That was baked into Boris Johnson’s own Brexit agreement – the one Farage, the Express, the Mail and the Telegraph all hailed like it was the second coming of Churchill. Now they’re pretending it’s a fresh betrayal to keep the outrage machine wheezing along. It’s pathetic.

What Starmer has actually done is remove the bureaucratic brick wall Johnson’s deal dumped on seafood exporters – especially shellfish, where freshness is everything. Less paperwork. Fewer delays. Lower costs. More profit. And crucially – more trade. And more trade means greater demand for British-caught fish. Which means more work for fishermen. That’s not betrayal. That’s common sense.

You know, the kind of common sense that actually benefits the people who go to sea, rather than the people who go on telly.

Because here’s the bit the Brexit cultists can’t stomach: this is their deal. Johnson signed it. Farage backed it. The right-wing press flogged it. Starmer’s only “crime” is clearing up their wreckage quietly and competently – so now they have to scream “betrayal!” at their own reflection.

And they look ridiculous doing it.

Let’s not pretend this is about the fishing industry. The real betrayal of British fishermen wasn’t this deal – it was Brexit itself. It torched access to EU markets, crippled small exporters, and handed European vessels access to UK waters for a decade – all under the flag of “sovereignty”.

Where were the front pages then? Where was the Express when crab boats were being turned away at Calais and coastal communities were being hung out to dry? They didn’t care then – and they don’t care now.

They care about protecting offshore cash, cosying up to billionaires, and stoking culture war bile to distract from economic vandalism. That’s why they screech “betrayal!” while banking the profits and pointing at dinghies.

Starmer’s deal is no silver bullet – but it’s a grown-up, practical fix. It helps real businesses. It reduces friction. It boosts exports. It creates demand. That’s how trade works – and trade helps fishermen.

And as for Nigel Farage – the man who’s supposedly the fishermen’s champion – he wasn’t even in Parliament for the announcement. He was on holiday in Nice. The same Farage who never turned up for fishing debates in the European Parliament. The same Farage who, having swaggered into Clacton and grabbed the seat, now barely shows his face there. His idea of serving fishermen is a sunbed and a selfie.

So when you hear the cries of betrayal, ask yourself – who’s actually fighting for British fishermen?

And who’s just fighting to stay relevant?

The Cold Embrace of Stupidity

It’s official – television has gone absolutely bonkers. We’re now being sold the idea that voluntarily hurling yourself into a freezing lake at sunrise is somehow good for you. Not just good for you, mind – life-affirming, character-building, and (God help us) “transformational”.

Every other week, there’s some doe-eyed presenter standing barefoot on the banks of a glacial tarn, waxing lyrical about nature and inner peace, before plunging into water that would give a polar bear pause. Cue swelling music, a drone shot of some mountains, and the inevitable voiceover about “reclaiming the wild self”.

Reclaiming the wild self? The only thing I’d be reclaiming is my sanity – preferably wrapped in a dry robe and clutching a hot toddy.

It used to be that wild swimming was the preserve of eccentrics – the sort of people who also grew their own hemp sandals and thought breakfast was optional. But now it’s become a thing, and once telly producers get their hands on a thing, it’s only a matter of time before everyone’s trying to outdo each other on Instagram with #IcyDipChallenge and smug selfies beside a hypothermia warning sign.

Let’s be clear: this isn’t swimming. It’s self-administered cryotherapy with the bonus round being accidental death. The water is often so cold that your body goes into shock before you’ve even had time to feel smug. You gasp involuntarily, your muscles seize up, and suddenly your much-vaunted spiritual awakening involves a rescue helicopter and a body bag.

And yet, the telly never shows that part, does it? Oh no. We’re treated to scenes of ethereal calm, serenity, people emerging from icy lochs looking like reborn water nymphs. What we don’t see is the frantic towelling-off, the purple extremities, the mild cardiac incidents, or the inevitable bout of pneumonia.

If you or I produced a programme encouraging the public to leap off cliffs or tightrope between tower blocks in the name of mental clarity, we’d be arrested. But slap some plinky-plonky piano over footage of someone submerging themselves in a frozen canal, and suddenly it's BAFTA-worthy.

Now I’ve nothing against people testing their limits. Some folk like deep diving, others climb mountains, and a few mad souls try both at once. But those activities come with rules, training, and a mutual understanding that death is on the table. Wild swimming, as portrayed on telly, is presented as the aquatic equivalent of a mindfulness app – just with more goosebumps.

The danger here isn’t the swim itself – it’s the illusion of safety. That anyone can do it. That cold water is magical and healing and, if you believe the more woo-woo influencers, might even align your chakras. I’m no doctor, but I suspect what it’s aligning is your prospects of a coronary.

So let’s stop pretending this is some innocent dip in a pond. It’s an extreme sport masquerading as self-care – and if the telly won’t say it, I will: get it wrong, and you're not coming back up.

And if you do want to take the plunge, fine – but maybe start in summer, don’t go alone, and for the love of sanity, leave the drone at home.

Wigs on the Overground

There I was, trundling toward Enfield on the Overground, half-lost in the rhythm of the train and half-watching the London suburbs unfold through the window – all net curtains, satellite dishes, and the odd surprise of a red-brick Victorian beside a kebab shop. We called at Stoke Newington, and on got a group of Jewish women – from one of the more visibly orthodox sects, by the look of things. And immediately I was struck, not for the first time, by the wigs.

Not discreet little nods to nature, but bold, unmistakable, 60s era helmets of hair. Often short, occasionally styled, always obviously wigs. The kind of wig that doesn’t try to pretend – doesn’t want to pretend. And that got me wondering. Not out of mockery, but out of genuine curiosity: why wear a wig that so clearly isn’t fooling anyone?

Well, as it turns out after a bit of searching, that’s precisely the point.

In the intricate and sometimes baffling world of Jewish religious law – particularly in the stricter Haredi and Hasidic sects – married women are required to cover their hair. Not for decoration, not for show, but as a sign of modesty and, in some interpretations, marital status. The logic goes that a woman’s hair is private, intimate – and should therefore be hidden from all but her husband. Enter the sheitel, the modest wig. Except – as with all things human – the application of this principle varies wildly depending on which rabbi you follow, which community you belong to, and, sometimes, which street you live on.

Modern Orthodox women often go in for the full ‘wig that looks like hair’ approach – real hair, salon-styled, indistinguishable from the real thing unless you’ve got your nose in it. But the more conservative Hasidic sects? That’s another matter. For them, the goal is not to look natural, not to blend in, but to be recognisably apart. Some even wear a hat or scarf over the wig, just to hammer the point home. It’s modesty, yes – but it’s also a kind of uniform, a flag of identity.

There’s something curiously paradoxical in all this. A wig is, at its core, a deception. A performance of hair, not hair. But here, it becomes the opposite – a statement of separation. Of not being part of the secular world’s obsession with appearances. Yet in doing so, it still draws attention – to difference, to otherness, to the very things it’s supposed to mute.

And one can't help but muse: how did we get here? How did covering up become an exercise in such conspicuous uniformity? Why the wig, of all things? Why not the headscarf or the snood, which are still used by other sects and arguably more modest, at least in practice?

The answer lies somewhere between theology and sociology – in the need for modesty tangled up with the need for visibility. For communities under pressure, both historically and today, dressing differently becomes a shield. A declaration: We are not like you. Which, in fairness, they aren't – nor do they want to be.

And so back to the train. The ladies sat, chatting quietly, heads sheitelled in matching regulation styles, the younger ones pushing buggies with children in identical coats. A world within a world, brushing up against mine for two stops and then disappearing again.

There’s something admirable in the discipline – the daily decision to wear your beliefs, quite literally, on your head. But it’s also a reminder of how complex, how performative, how contradictory religion – and identity – can be. The wig is both concealment and declaration, modesty and defiance, sacred and synthetic.

Meanwhile, I sat there with my own hair – unruly, untheologised – and pondered whether anyone would think I was hiding anything at all.

Here We Go Again

So, Keir Starmer’s gone and done the unthinkable – he’s managed to negotiate a trade deal with the EU that actually makes things slightly less terrible. And as sure as night follows day, the right wing has reacted in exactly the way you’d expect: by throwing itself down the nearest metaphorical staircase while wailing that Brexit has been murdered in its bed.

Let’s pause to consider what’s actually happened. Have we rejoined the Single Market? No. Have we handed control of our laws to Brussels? Not in the slightest. What we’ve done is agree, quite sensibly, to align food standards with our nearest and largest trading partner to avoid having lorryloads of perfectly edible British produce turned back at Calais like diseased contraband. It’s not treason. It’s logistics.

But of course, the usual suspects – Kemi Badenoch, the Daily Express, that man on Facebook with a Union Flag in his profile picture and the strategic insight of a pigeon – are all shrieking “betrayal” as though someone’s just torched the Magna Carta and sold the ashes to Macron.

Let’s be clear: nothing in this deal erodes our precious, abstract “sovereignty”. The EU hasn’t been given a key to Downing Street. We’ve just agreed not to poison each other’s sausages. That’s it. And for this modest, technocratic step forward, Starmer is being called everything short of “French.”

But of course, these are the same people who think sovereignty means being allowed to suffer in splendid isolation – who think that working with other countries is weakness, but selling ourselves to the lowest bidder in a chlorinated trade deal with the US is “Global Britain.”

They shout that fishing’s been sold out – again – as if 0.1% of GDP should dictate 100% of our foreign policy. Never mind that the rest of the country quite likes affordable food and young people being allowed to spend a few years in Spain not picking fruit. Oh no – Geoffrey from Bridlington demands revenge for cod wars lost and haddock dreams deferred.

The new trade deal maintains much of the existing framework for the UK fishing industry, with some enhancements in trade facilitation and economic support. While it doesn't represent a significant shift from the previous arrangement, it aims to balance the interests of trade, industry sustainability, and international cooperation.

And what about the youth mobility scheme? Cue more fury. “Why should our young people go to Europe to work?” they ask – in between moaning that British workers won’t take jobs in hospitality and agriculture. A Remain-voting 23-year-old going to Berlin to pour craft beer is apparently a threat to national identity. But importing tomato pickers from Nepal is fine, because they’re outside the EU and that, somehow, makes it patriotic.

Honestly, if Starmer negotiated world peace, the headline in the Mail would be “TRAITOR SELLS OUT BRITAIN TO FOREIGNERS WITH DOVES.”

Meanwhile, the same people who crashed the economy with a hard Brexit now demand we all pretend it’s been brilliant, and that any attempt to make it slightly less absurd is a betrayal of the people – by which they mean themselves, and the imaginary flag-waving queue of Britons who’ve been gagging to eat only British-made goods, sold in ounces, while living in permanent queue-based ecstasy.

We are governed by ghosts – the ghosts of Brexit fantasies never realised and never questioned. Starmer, to his credit, hasn’t tried to exorcise them. He’s just quietly tried to make the ghost sheet a little less flammable. And for that, they scream. Not because it’s bad. But because it’s not them doing the negotiating – and because if things improve, even slightly, the jig might finally be up.

And so the shrieking must continue. For in the Brexit cult, reality is the ultimate heresy.

Men of Fighting Age

There's a tired old trope doing the rounds again – "men of fighting age." It’s wheeled out by the far right every time a photo surfaces of a refugee who hasn’t visibly wept into a handkerchief or clutched a teddy bear. The implication? If they’re not old, pregnant, or six, they’re probably an invader. A threat. Cowards for fleeing instead of staying behind to... what? Take on the Taliban with a sharpened spade?

The daftness of it becomes clear the minute you apply it to history. Should Jewish men of fighting age have stayed in Nazi Germany to "fight" the Nazis? Using what – sarcasm and a broom handle? Maybe Vietnamese boat people should have turned their canoes around and wrestled the Viet Cong. Perhaps Rwandan Tutsis should have popped down to the machete shop and joined the melee.

It’s idiocy, dressed up as common sense.

People fleeing hellscapes aren’t skipping country for a jolly. These are families making impossible decisions. When a family scrapes together every penny to get one person out – they send the one most likely to survive the journey. That tends to be the young, the fit, the ones who can endure deserts, smugglers, detention centres, and rubber dinghies at night. It's not cowardice – it’s triage.

But nuance isn’t the far right’s strong suit. They see a bloke with stubble in a life vest and assume he’s on manoeuvres. Not fleeing a civil war. Not escaping conscription into some brutal militia. Not avoiding persecution because of his ethnicity, sexuality, or politics. Just a freeloading faker, here to claim benefits and ruin village fêtes.

It’s all projection, of course. The people bleating loudest about standing and fighting are the same ones who’d soil themselves if someone shouted "boo" in a Lidl car park. They mistake Twitter bravery for actual courage. And while they guffaw in the comments section, real people risk their lives for the slim chance of safety – and are met with sneers from those who’ve never known real danger in their lives.

Let’s call it what it is. "Men of fighting age" is just a dog-whistle for people too cowardly to say what they really mean – that they don’t want anyone who looks, prays, or sounds different.

And the truth? If the roles were reversed – if bombs were falling on Bognor – we’d be on those dinghies too. Sending the strongest first. Hoping they’d survive.

So stuff the trope. It’s not analysis. It’s cowardice dressed as courage, and it deserves nothing but ridicule.

"Nothing Ever Changes" – The Most Dangerous Lie in British Politics

You hear it all the time – down the pub, at the school gates, in the comments section under any vaguely political article: “Whoever gets in, nothing ever changes.”

It’s the national shrug. A weary, knowing sigh dressed up as wisdom. And let’s be fair – there’s truth in it. Governments often do seem more like caretakers of decline than agents of progress. Grand promises melt into fudge. The NHS remains on life support. The trains don’t run. You can’t see a GP without sacrificing a chicken under a full moon.

So the temptation is to say: “Surely it’s worth giving them a go? I know very little about politics but can they be any worse?” Things feel broken, stale, like the same tired crew has been steering the ship into the rocks for years. People are absolutely right to be fed up. But here’s the danger in “can they be any worse?” Because honestly? Yes, they absolutely can, they can be catastrophically worse. And history is packed with examples of people voting for change just to shake things up – and ending up with chaos in spades.

Saying you don’t know much about politics but still wanting to roll the dice is like picking a surgeon based on vibes. You wouldn’t say, “Well, I know nothing about medicine, but how bad could it be if he operates with a hammer?” Some of these candidates are exactly that – all brute force, no idea. Wanting change is good. Necessary, even. But it matters what kind of change. Some people flog “different” as if it’s automatically better, when really it’s just the same dysfunction wrapped in a new flag. Because here’s the truth: change can happen. It’s happened before. Attlee built the NHS from the rubble of war. Thatcher – whether you cheered or booed – rewired the economy. Blair brought in the minimum wage and tackled child poverty. These weren’t tweaks – they were structural.

The problem now is that we’ve got leaders with neither the courage to be bold nor the competence to be careful. Political bandwidth has been devoured by Brexit, culture wars, and pantomime outrage, while the real machinery of change – housing, energy, education – clanks on in neglect. And when people stop believing change is possible, they disengage. Shrug. Stay home. Let others decide. That’s when the truly dangerous ones creep in – the ones who rely on your apathy. Who want you to stop caring.

So no – it’s not that nothing ever changes. It’s that meaningful change takes effort, attention, and, yes, a bit of homework. By all means, back someone new – but make sure they’re not worse than what you’re trying to fix. Ask questions. Don’t just vote for "vibes." Because once the wreckers get their hands on power, they don’t tend to give it back.

The Fart Walk

I want to introduce you to The Fart Walk. Ah yes – the Fart Walk. Not the dainty countryside saunter with the odd polite puff beneath corduroy, but that Fart Walk – the grim morning procession that starts the moment you swing your legs out of bed and attempt to shuffle upright, joints clicking like castanets and your posterior launching into its own overture.

Because that’s what it is – an overture. A brief, introductory toot. A lone bassoon clearing its throat before the full symphony of parps begins. Not angry, not ostentatious – just there. Honest. Inevitable. The gentle pfft of a backside that’s lost all shame and now functions as your body’s unofficial spokesperson.

It’s never just one, of course. No, what follows is a sequence. A rhythmic, measured series of expulsions with every step. A percussive accompaniment to your early movements. A sort of… arse-led Morse code. Sometimes to the loo. Sometimes just to find your glasses. But most gloriously – and this is the true ceremonial version – the Fart Walk down the garden in your dressing gown to feed the fish in the pond.

There you are: wild hair, flapping robe, cup of tea in one hand, plastic tub of pellets in the other, slippers squelching on dew-soaked grass – and with every single stride, another entry in your symphonic diary of dignity gone by. Prrrt. Flap. Blip. Ffft. A toccata in brown major. You don’t walk – you announce.

The fish, traumatised, circle cautiously. The heron refuses to land. Somewhere a neighbour quietly draws their curtains and Googles "bungalow in Cornwall".

The best part? You barely notice. It’s no longer worthy of comment. Your spouse just shakes their head and mutters, “he’s up”, like a weary stage manager watching a veteran thespian fluff his lines for the fiftieth time. The cat leaves the kitchen. Birds stop singing.

And this, dear reader, is the truth of the Fart Walk. It is not a defect. It is not shameful. It is a stage of life. A declaration. A metronomic memoir of age and beans. You have become a living wind instrument. You are the morning oboe. The brass section of the over-70s.

So let the air speak. Let your cheeks applaud your efforts. Walk proud – down the hallway, down the garden, through the years – and know that you are not alone.

For every man of a certain age with a dressing gown and a pond is playing the same tune.

And the overture, my friend, has only just begun.

Sea Glass Redemption

Last weekend we took the motorhome to Charmouth and engaged in one of our hobbies while walking back from Lyme Regis along the beach route - looking for sea glass.

There’s something marvellously absurd – and profoundly human – about what we do with sand. Nature gives it to us soft, safe, and benign. We melt it down, pour it into moulds, and fashion it into bottles, jars, windows, and the occasional Molotov cocktail. Then we smash it, discard it, and leave it as a hazard – jagged remnants of our brief encounters with purpose. And only then does the sea get to work, with infinite patience and a quiet sort of mockery, smoothing out our sharp edges and turning our waste into treasure.

Nowhere is this strange redemption more evident than between Charmouth and Lyme Regis – the Jurassic Coast at its most poetic. The cliffs crumble not just with the weight of geological time, but with the remains of domestic history. Crockery, pipework, old bricks – the discarded relics of lives once lived – now tumble onto the shingle like ghosts escaping their foundations. Among them, sea glass. Worn, frosted, beautiful. And the blue – oh, the blue – is the grail. Rarer than an honest politician and far more useful, it's usually a shard of old poison bottle or perfume flacon, now made safe by decades of abrasion.

But beware the charlatans. For every authentic sliver of ocean-tempered history, there’s a bag of chemically frosted fakery waiting to deceive the unsuspecting collector. Real sea glass wears its story on its skin – a pitted, matte surface etched by salt and sand, with edges that have been softened by time and tide, not by a rotary tumbler in a garden shed. Fakes, by contrast, are too perfect – overly rounded, evenly frosted, often suspiciously uniform in colour. If it feels waxy or powdery, or you found it online by the kilo in improbable hues of red and orange, chances are it’s a modern imposter.

Because real sea glass doesn’t emerge from Etsy. It’s born of carelessness, neglect, and time. And if you want to find it, you go to the coastlines where history’s rubbish was heaved over the edge – not Instagrammed into existence. Seaham, in County Durham, is the high temple – glass factories once hurled their waste into the sea like confetti. Today, the shoreline offers up multicoloured fragments like relics from a forgotten stained-glass cathedral. Whitby, with its gothic cliffs and shipping heritage, gifts frosted relics amid the kelp. St Ives and Marazion in Cornwall, Fort William on Loch Linnhe, and South Queensferry beneath the Forth bridges – all places where time and tide have done what we would not: turn brokenness into beauty.

And still we do it. We take sand – harmless, abundant – and fashion danger from it, only to treasure it once nature has made it harmless again. It's the long game of redemption. We never clean up after ourselves, not properly. We outsource it to the sea. And then we turn up in walking boots and cagoules, pockets bulging with its quiet forgiveness, congratulating ourselves for finding beauty in the wreckage we caused.

So next time you find a perfect piece of sea glass – blue, green, or clear – run your thumb over it. Feel the texture. Examine the shape. Ask yourself whether it's earned its place in your palm. Because you're not just holding glass – you're holding a fragment of human folly, smoothed by the one force that still bothers to tidy up after us. The sea doesn't lie. It just waits, tumbling our sins until they're safe to handle.

The Digital Revolution?

Computers and mobile phones. Supposedly the greatest inventions of modern times, right? Silicon sorcery that promised to transform society and turbocharge the economy. And they have… sort of. We can stream cat videos at lightning speed, doomscroll through headlines, and have meetings in our pyjamas. But when it comes to GDP – often treated as the holy grail of economic progress – these digital marvels haven’t delivered the punch of older inventions like steam power or the aeroplane. 

While GDP remains a convenient benchmark, it overlooks broader measures like quality of life, innovation, and social connectivity, which better capture the true impact of modern technology.

Think back to the steam engine – that gloriously grimy, coal-fed beast. It didn't just speed up transport; it built the modern world. Factories sprang up, railways knitted towns together, and entire industries exploded into existence. The economy didn’t just grow – it sprinted, with GDP in industrialised nations increasing by an estimated 6-10% annually during the height of the Industrial Revolution, depending on the country and sector. Likewise, the aeroplane didn’t just make holidays easier; it reshaped global trade, business, and warfare. Innovations that changed the physical landscape and left GDP graphs looking like Everest.

Now, look at the digital revolution. Computers and mobile phones made things faster, yes – emails instead of letters, spreadsheets instead of ledgers. But GDP? Not much to shout about. Between 1980 and 2020, global GDP growth averaged around 2.8% per year, but the digital revolution itself has contributed only modestly to this, with productivity growth in advanced economies often lagging behind expectations. Robert Solow nailed it: "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics." We’ve built an economy where half the gains are in consumer surplus – free apps, cheap communication – rather than measurable growth.

While these gains remain sector-specific, the picture isn't entirely bleak. Technology is making waves in specific areas. Healthcare has seen massive advances through AI-driven diagnostics and telemedicine, while renewable energy systems are increasingly powered by smart grids and digital monitoring. The rise of e-commerce, turbocharged by mobile apps, has reshaped retail and logistics. Even agriculture has been transformed by precision farming tools that optimise yields while reducing waste. These gains are real, but they’re sector-specific rather than economy-wide.

There are glimmers of something more transformative on the horizon – nascent technologies with the potential to reshape economies as fundamentally as steam once did. Yet, their scalability, cost, and regulatory acceptance remain significant hurdles, making their promise far from guaranteed. Fusion energy could revolutionise industries by delivering abundant, clean power. Artificial General Intelligence, if realised, could automate complex decision-making across sectors. 

Quantum computing promises breakthroughs in materials science, healthcare, and climate modelling. Synthetic biology might reinvent agriculture and medicine, while advanced robotics and space industrialisation could unlock new frontiers. If any of these reach maturity, they could finally deliver the sweeping economic transformation that mobile tech has promised but never quite achieved.

Mobile phones and computers have transformed how we live, not how much we produce. They’ve revolutionised leisure, communication, and convenience (not to mention marketing) – but try measuring that in pounds and pence. It’s hard to quantify the value of FaceTiming your grandkids or bingeing a Netflix series. Meanwhile, the physical economy – the one steam and flight built – plods along, barely breaking into a jog.

And there’s a darker side. Mobile technology is a prime driver of the polarisation of politics, largely due to social media algorithms that amplify divisive content and reinforce echo chambers. This 'us versus them' mentality deepens ideological divides and fuels political extremism. The smartphone has become a battleground, not just for attention but for ideological warfare. It’s hard to argue that this kind of "progress" is an unalloyed good.

Then there’s the rise of the tech-bros, the self-styled "sovereign individuals" who see themselves as untethered from traditional society, thanks to their digital wealth and mobility. The term comes from the 1997 book The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg (yes, Jacob's dad), which predicted a future where technology would allow the wealthy to transcend national boundaries and social obligations. Today’s crypto millionaires and remote-working venture capitalists embody this vision, flitting between tax havens and gated communities while preaching disruption to the rest of us.

These tech-bros aren’t just floating above society – they’re concentrating GDP in their hands while doing it. Their wealth stifles competition, skews economic growth, and drains resources from local communities and small businesses, amplifying inequality. The digital monopolies they helm shape markets to their advantage, creating ecosystems where profits flow upwards, leaving the broader economy with fewer gains to share. 

Their platforms extract value from every corner of the economy – ride-shares undercutting traditional taxis, online marketplaces squeezing local shops, app-based gig work sidestepping labour protections. This concentration of wealth not only entrenches inequality but also undermines innovation, leaving fewer opportunities for smaller players. It’s a new kind of industrial capitalism, except this time the factories are cloud servers, and the workers are algorithms and precarious gig workers.

Even today’s headline-grabbing tech – drones, AI, blockchain – remains tethered to the digital infrastructure built decades ago. They're evolutionary, not revolutionary. The aeroplane didn’t need a century of platforms and ecosystems to change the world; it just flew, and everything changed. Drones are impressive, but they’re more "fancy remote-controlled helicopter" than "industrial revolution."

So, while mobile phones and computers have undoubtedly transformed society, they’ve done so in a subtle, digital way, changing the feel of life rather than the foundations of the economy. They’ve connected us, entertained us, distracted us… but they haven’t propelled us into the same economic stratosphere as steam, steel, or flight. The hype promised another industrial revolution; the reality gave us TikTok and better spreadsheets.

Revolution? Hardly. More like an upgrade – superficial, uneven, and firmly under corporate control.