The Illusion of Reform

We’ve reached a strange moment in history. Marx said that when the forces of production outgrow the relations of production, contradiction sparks revolution. Well, look around: a handful of tech billionaires now command more wealth than entire nations. The world runs on algorithms and global platforms, while politics limps along on nineteenth-century machinery.

Wealth is digital, mobile, and borderless. Law, tax, and democracy remain national and slow. The mismatch is stark. Power concentrates at the top, inequality deepens, and ordinary people are reduced to data fodder and gig labour while a gilded few fire themselves into space. It’s the dialectic gone haywire.

When people feel powerless - wages stagnant, services collapsing, security eroded - they lash out. Not at the billionaires hoarding wealth, but at easier targets: migrants, Brussels, pronouns, statues. Enter Reform: a party that claims to speak for “common sense” while offering a billionaire’s wish list - fantasy tax cuts, “drill baby drill,” slash-and-burn deregulation.

It’s sleight of hand. Reform pretends to rage against elites, but it is a pressure valve for oligarchic capital. It channels anger away from the real contradiction: global wealth that dwarfs nations, untaxed and unaccountable.

And here’s the deeper betrayal: the mainstream won’t tackle it either. The Conservatives cultivated Britain as a haven for offshore money and opaque finance, and when pushed into action, offered only cosmetic reforms. Labour, fearful of spooking markets, has already ruled out wealth taxes and avoids serious confrontation with monopoly power. Both parties leave the foundations intact.

So Reform thrives in the vacuum. But imagine them in power. Their voters expect miracles: mass deportations, overnight NHS recovery, tax cuts without pain. Slogans don’t govern. When reality crashes in, those promises collapse - and the very people who supported Reform will feel cheated. Disillusionment, apathy, even revolt. Betrayal stings hardest when it comes from those you thought were on your side.

That’s the truth: Reform is not revolution. It is political misdirection with a brass band. And if you vote for it, don’t be surprised when the music stops and the illusion collapses.

Road Rage

It’s the oldest law of the road – no matter what you’re doing, everyone else is an idiot.

Behind the wheel, you are a monarch of metal, a sovereign of the slip road. And yet – pedestrians ruin it. Especially the one who, with sniper-like timing, presses the button at the crossing just as you approach, forcing you into a brake-slam and a low-level aneurysm. Cyclists? They’re just mobile road cones in luminous Lycra. But the real secret – the thing we don’t admit – is that you also hate every other car driver. Too slow, too fast, in your way, cutting you up, taking “your” parking space. It’s loathing on four wheels.

Step out of the car and onto the pavement, though, and suddenly you see the world afresh. Cars are killing machines piloted by maniacs, and cyclists are kamikaze warriors who appear silently at your shoulder before dinging a bell like a passive-aggressive butler.

Then, astride the noble bicycle, you become the most persecuted creature on Earth. Pedestrians are zombies wandering into cycle lanes, clutching their lattes as if they’ve paid rent on the pavement. Car drivers are homicidal juggernauts whose only aim is to shave your kneecaps at 50 mph.

And yet – you’ve been all three. You’ve pressed the button, you’ve dinged the bell, you’ve cut someone up. The problem isn’t the car, or the bike, or the footpath. The problem is us. We change uniforms like football fans switching ends at half-time – whichever team we’re on, the other side are all villains.

Maybe the solution is compulsory rotation. One hour a day driving, one hour walking, one hour cycling. By bedtime you’d hate everyone equally – and that’s probably the most honest traffic policy Britain will ever have.

Fusion, Fracking and Fairy Tales

America’s Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, popped up on the BBC a couple of weeks ago to tell us not to worry our little British heads about climate change, because in five years’ time artificial intelligence will have cracked nuclear fusion. Yes, the power of the stars, harnessed by a few lines of Python code and some blokes in lab coats at the national labs. Eight to fifteen years, he reckons, and we’ll have it humming away on the grid like a Dyson Hoover.

Even the real enthusiasts for fusion, the ones who live and breathe magnetic confinement and neutron flux, will be spitting out their coffee. We’ve been “twenty years away” from fusion since the 1960s. The idea that AI will suddenly solve a problem that has eluded the best physicists for seventy years is about as credible as Trump solving algebra.

Of course, Wright’s real interest isn’t starlight in a bottle. He’s a fracking man. Made his money that way. And lo and behold, he’s urging the UK to lift its moratorium on fracking, promising blue-collar jobs and cheap energy as if Lancashire were the Permian Basin. The British Geological Survey has already said the reserves are limited, but when has geology ever got in the way of a good sales pitch?

Then we get the usual Trumpist refrain – renewables have had their subsidies for long enough, isn’t it time they stood on their own? He neglects to mention that fossil fuels have been mollycoddled with subsidies for over a century and still are. Without them, the oil patch would look like a desert even quicker. Wind and solar, meanwhile, are already cheaper than gas in many markets – which rather proves the point of subsidies.

And then the China bogeyman. Apparently Europe risks becoming dependent on Beijing because it buys Chinese solar panels. Perhaps if the US hadn’t gutted its own renewable industry, it might have had some panels to sell us. But no – better to blame the foreigners and demand more drilling. Reform UK will be nodding along like dashboard dogs.

The pièce de résistance is the Department of Energy’s climate report claiming sea levels aren’t rising, models are exaggerated, and extra CO₂ is just “plant food.” Eighty-five scientists have already rubbished it as cherry-picked nonsense, but Wright doubles down, accusing everyone else of cherry-picking. It’s the classic trick: sow doubt, delay action, keep the fossil cash flowing.

Fusion as the shiny distraction, fracking as the payday, renewables as the whipping boy, China as the bogeyman, and climate science as the “church.” All designed to stall and confuse while the oil burns. And he does it with a straight face, standing in Trump’s shadow.

It’s not an energy strategy. It’s theatre. The fusion bit is just the glitter thrown in the air so no one notices the oil stains on his hands.

Cash Out Now – The End of the Used Car Game

So I popped into the Vauxhall dealer the other day. First, it was impossible to park - lots of spaces filled with cars for sale, but none for customers. Diagnosis? £144 an hour. Not heart surgery, not legal advice from a silk – just a bloke plugging a laptop into a car. At that rate you half expect them to throw in a foot massage and a glass of champagne, but no – you get a plastic chair and an invoice that makes your eyes water.

Now, if you think that model is going to survive the next decade, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. The Chinese aren’t just coming, they’ve already set up camp and are flogging tents at half the price. BYD, MG, NIO – they’ll deliver your car to the doorstep, update it while you’re asleep, and charge you less for the privilege. No need for a glass palace with cappuccino machines – just a bloke with a tablet who turns up at your house, smiles, and fixes it.

Meanwhile, BMW and Audi are still trying to flog you the dream of “residual values” – those mythical creatures that vanish the moment you try to part-exchange. Who in their right mind is going to drop twenty grand on a five-year-old German badge when you can buy a brand-new Chinese SUV, under warranty, for the same money?

And the used market? Forget it. Everyday petrol and diesel cars will be worth about as much as a bag of crisps in a thunderstorm. The only ICE cars worth keeping will be classics and oddities – the stuff enthusiasts want to tinker with on weekends. My GT6, for example – once I’ve finished turning it into a mint-green, turbocharged restomod with burr walnut and a growl that would wake the dead – that’ll still have value. Not because it’s “approved used” or comes with a stamp in a dealer service book, but because it’ll be a proper car. A car you want, not a car you tolerate.

By 2030 the whole second-hand game will be Chinese makers recycling their own fleets – ex-subscription cars, cleaned up, re-warrantied, and sent back out like Amazon returns. The local dealer forecourt will be reduced to flogging what’s left of yesterday’s ICE scrap to people who haven’t noticed the music stopped.

So yes, enjoy that £144-an-hour diagnostic rate while you can. It’s the last gasp of a dinosaur. The Chinese aren’t just wiping the floor – they’re taking the mop, the bucket, and the showroom carpets with them. Meanwhile, the GT6 will be thumbing its nose from the garage, still worth something because it’s got soul.

The "Contribution"

Another day, another glossy report telling us how much some shiny sector “contributes” to the UK economy. This week it’s YouTube creators, apparently worth £2.2 billion. Last month it was football, before that live music, and before that dog ownership. You’d think we were sitting on a gold mine if you believed all these press releases.

But “contribute” is a weasel word. It doesn’t mean £2.2 billion of new wealth, it means Oxford Economics have carved out a slice of GDP and declared it belongs to YouTubers. The same ad budgets that would otherwise have gone to ITV. The same £20 a teenager would have spent on a book or a T-shirt, now spent on a Sidemen hoodie. The same accountants, editors and camera crews who’d be working somewhere else if not here. The pie hasn’t grown, it’s just been rebadged.

The only bit that’s genuinely new is exports. When DanTDM pulls in dollars from an American kid, or Glastonbury sells tickets to Germans, that’s real growth - foreign money flowing in. But nobody ever subtracts the imports. British kids glued to MrBeast, billions in streaming fees sent to California, replica shirts of foreign clubs flooding the high street. Without that balance sheet, the “£2.2bn contribution” is just smoke and mirrors.

And here’s the political twist: Westminster laps this up. Every APPG and ministerial photo-op loves a big number with “billions” attached. It makes them look like they’re backing the future, the creative revolution, Britain at its best. In reality, it’s a convenient distraction. They can cheer a sector without doing the hard graft of fixing productivity, building exports, or grappling with the fact that Britain actually makes and sells far too little to the world.

So yes - YouTubers are a real industry, just like football and festivals. But let’s stop mistaking attribution for addition. Unless we start growing the pie rather than slicing it differently, we’re just clapping ourselves on the back while the net money flows out. It’s not a revolution - it’s an accounting trick dressed up as policy.

KFC? Never Again!

I was on my way back from Gloucester after dropping off some injectors when I received instructions from the boss to bring back food for the team. I pulled into the KFC at Michaelwood Services on the M5 - first time I’d set foot in one for about 30 years. Back then you could just walk up and order exactly what you fancied: six pieces of chicken, a pile of chips, job done.

Not anymore. Now you’re herded into the brave new world of touchscreens and pre-packaged “meal deals”. Want chicken and chips without a bucket of fizzy sugar-water? Tough luck. The screen won’t let you. The system insists you take the drink, whether you want it or not. It’s a modern absurdity: they’ve turned simple fried chicken into a rigid algorithm. Imagine if a fish and chip shop tried the same trick - “Sorry mate, you can’t have cod and chips unless you take a Coke with it.” They’d be out of business inside a week.

So I walked out, shaking my head at the nonsense. No chance I’ll ever set foot in a KFC again. Instead I drove on to Lidl, where £13 bought me everything I actually wanted - plus a huge punnet of black grapes and four figs - something infinitely healthier than anything Colonel Sanders ever fried up. strangely enough, no-one touched the figs, except me.

What was supposed to be a straightforward Gloucester errand ended up proving a point: when “convenience” becomes this inconvenient, it’s not worth the bother. Simpler, cheaper, healthier - and without a touchscreen telling me what to eat.

Digital ID Card

So, the “Brit Card.” Starmer has dusted off the ghost of Blair’s ID scheme, except this time it’s digital. Every working adult will need one, free of charge, to prove they’ve the right to work and rent. On paper, it sounds neat — one app instead of a bulging wallet of passports, utility bills and bank statements. Employers might finally have a straightforward way of knowing who’s who, without endless paperwork. Fraudsters and traffickers may find the game that bit harder when there’s a single secure check instead of the current patchwork of documents. In Europe, plenty of countries use ID cards daily without descending into tyranny, so the idea isn’t mad on its face.

But the devil is always in the detail, and Britain’s record on detail is ropey at best. A central database is a juicy target for hackers, and when it goes wrong — and it will — people could suddenly find themselves locked out of jobs or housing through no fault of their own. What happens to the bricklayer in Doncaster when the app won’t load, or the carer in Cornwall whose record has a typo? The government promises world-class security, but this is the same Whitehall machine that loses USB sticks on trains and hands ferry contracts to companies without ferries.

There’s also the bigger question of culture. Britain has never liked the idea of compulsory papers. Our national myth is freedom under the law, not “show us your documents.” Forcing every adult to flash a digital card whenever they move jobs or rent a flat risks shifting us into a “papers, please” mindset that jars with our traditions. And once the infrastructure exists, the temptation to expand its use — health, benefits, voting — will be strong. That’s not paranoia, that’s political gravity.

So yes, there are real potential benefits: less fraud, quicker access to services, a more orderly system for work and migration. But there are equal risks: surveillance creep, data breaches, exclusion of the digitally unconfident. If Starmer’s government wants this to stick, it needs to convince the country it’s a tool for convenience and fairness, not just another layer of control. And that means ironclad safeguards, transparency, and a cast-iron guarantee that it won’t be used for anything beyond what’s promised.

The Brit Card could end up as a useful modern tool — or as another expensive fiasco that makes life harder for ordinary people. Which way it goes depends not on the technology, but on the trust we place in the government to wield it wisely. And that’s the part that should make us all pause.

A Burnham Challenge

So, Andy Burnham may be challenging Starmer. Burnham looks good from a distance – the straight-talking Northerner who took on Westminster over buses and actually won. He comes across as a bloke who’d stand his ground in a pub argument, unlike Starmer who always feels like he’s mentally rehearsing cross-examination notes while you’re ordering a pint.

But here’s the problem. The Treasury’s books don’t change just because you put a Mancunian in charge. Debt interest, stagnant growth, Brexit-shrunken revenues – they’re the same whichever suit is behind the despatch box. Burnham could shout louder, posture more convincingly, but unless he was willing to smash the consensus on tax and spending, he’d end up chained to the same desk as Starmer, reciting the same excuses in a different accent.

Yes, he might be “better” in terms of authenticity, maybe even reconnecting with some of the voters Labour has lost. But the fantasy that he’d magically revive social democracy without touching Brexit, wealth taxes, or fiscal rules is just that – a fantasy. Swap Starmer for Burnham and you still have a government hemmed in by the same structural wreckage. It’s the same menu, just read out in a Manc twang instead of legalese.

Trump's Make China Great Again

Trump boasts about coal jobs roaring back and American energy “dominance.” Reality? Coal plants still shuttered, renewables investment stalled, the U.S. clean-tech sector strangled just as the world enters its biggest demand cycle. China, by contrast, is quietly building the solar factories, the wind turbine foundries, the battery gigaplants, and the rare-earth refineries. And Climate Change is a hoax.

Meanwhile, when Beijing makes a climate pledge, Western commentators often sneer that it’s too modest, too cautious. But China has a track record of setting deliberately conservative targets – then blowing past them. Take renewables: in 2020, the official target for solar capacity by 2025 was already surpassed by 2022. Wind installations keep leaping ahead of schedule. Even China’s much-derided carbon market – though patchy – is bigger on day one than anything the U.S. has managed. It’s the same pattern: under-promise, over-deliver, and let the world underestimate you until the results are undeniable.

Xi’s promise to multiply wind and solar sixfold isn’t just an emissions target – it’s an industrial policy. It guarantees domestic demand for Chinese kit, while export markets desperate to decarbonise are left with little option but to buy from China. Trump has effectively turned the U.S. from a potential clean-energy leader into a future customer of Chinese infrastructure. That’s not climate denial – that’s economic self-harm dressed up as patriotism.

The irony is delicious. A President who brands himself as “America First” has just written “China First” in ten-foot letters across the next century’s energy map. The U.S. pioneered much of this technology, then threw it away for a cheap applause line about hoaxes. Beijing will take the money, thanks very much, and the geopolitical leverage that comes with it.

So yes, China’s pledge may look small on paper. But remember – they tend to exceed their targets. Trump, on the other hand, rarely even meets his. One plays the long game. The other plays to the crowd. Guess which one ends up owning the future.

The Non-Euclidian Loaf

Nothing annoys me more than some people's inability to cut a loaf of bread, so I've conducted a trial on Hay and written a paper.

On the Topology of Domestic Bread: A Treatise on Non-Euclidean Slicing 

 Abstract 

The present paper addresses a recurring domestic catastrophe: the inability of ordinary persons to cut a loaf of bread in a manner consistent with Euclidean geometry. We demonstrate that once the knife enters at an oblique angle, the loaf transitions into a non-Euclidean state, manifesting properties of higher-dimensional manifolds such as the Klein bottle and Möbius strip.

1. Introduction While bread has traditionally been treated as a Euclidean solid – a bounded cylinder or cuboid – empirical observation reveals that most kitchen operatives fail to maintain perpendicularity when slicing. This transforms the loaf into an object inhabiting warped geometrical space. Sandwich construction, dependent upon parallel surfaces, collapses under these conditions.

2. Methodology A series of loaves were observed under domestic conditions, knives applied without correction. The resulting “slices” (henceforth, anomalous planar intersections) were measured. Angles deviated by up to 37°, producing structures inconsistent with three-dimensional Euclidean theory.

3. Results

Slice 1 exhibited properties of a Möbius band: butter applied to one side reappeared mysteriously on the “reverse.”

Slice 2 approximated a Klein bottle: the crust folded into itself, defying conventional inside–outside distinctions.

By Slice 5, the loaf had entered what we term the “10th-dimensional baguette state,” in which volume appears infinite but nutritional content remains finite.

4. Discussion The act of poor slicing must be considered not mere ineptitude but a portal into higher-dimensional carb-space. The physics of the sandwich fail here, as fillings leak along geodesics unknown to mortals.

5. Conclusion We recommend the immediate standardisation of bread-slicing protocols, including:

• Use of serrated knives with calibrated protractors.
• Visualisation of the loaf as a cylinder requiring orthogonal sectioning.
• Public education campaigns under the banner: “Square slices, square meals.”

Until these measures are adopted, the kitchen will remain a laboratory of warped geometry, and toast will continue to defy the axioms of Euclid.

Bovine Thought

I was driving past a field of cows, most of which were laid down. Now, when a cow is grazing, I can imagine what's going through its mind – or whatever passes for thought in that heavy, cud-chewing head – and it would be something like: there's a nice piece of grass... and there's another nice piece of grass... I'll have that... ooh, there's another nice bit, that’s going down the hatch too.

But when it's laid down on the ground, what is it doing? What's it thinking?

That’s the bit that gets me. Because a cow standing up and eating is all action and intention – low-level intention, granted, but still something you can interpret. But a cow lying down? That’s either rest or rumination. Possibly both.

And by rumination I don’t just mean the re-chewing of its cud, though that’s going on too. I mean the kind of slow, meditative, blank-stare cogitation that might be the bovine equivalent of philosophy. Not “Is there a God?” but maybe, “Was that patch of clover actually better than the one near the fence?” Or, “If I chew this one more time, will the flavour deepen or fade?”

You look into their eyes – half-lidded, glassy, unbothered by flies – and you think: is anything at all going on in there? Or is the cow simply... being?

Here we brush up against the old problem of Cartesian dualism – the idea that mind and body are separate substances. Descartes would have had a nightmare trying to locate a res cogitans in a ruminant. "I chew, therefore I am" doesn’t quite hold the same metaphysical weight. But still – is there a sliver of cow-soul in there somewhere, or is it all biology and fermentation?

Because, honestly, there’s a point – and I’ll say this bluntly – when it starts to resemble the internal life of a Farage supporter. Nothing going on. No lights on. Just the occasional flicker of something base and primal: fear of outsiders, a vague fondness for flags, and a deep suspicion of anything complicated, like facts or joined-up thinking.

Unlike us, though, the cow isn’t pretending to be deep. It isn’t trying to justify its worldview on Facebook or misquote Churchill. It’s just lying there, mind untroubled, doing the closest thing to nothing any large mammal can do without being dead.

And that’s when it hits you: maybe cows have it right. Maybe lying down in a field after a good graze is the apex of mammalian contentment. Maybe we’re the fools – overcomplicating everything – while they’ve cracked it: eat, lie down, digest, repeat.

No spreadsheets. No news. No existential angst. Just grass... and a bit more grass... and eventually a nap.

Maybe that’s not idleness. Maybe it’s enlightenment. And crucially, unlike a Farage supporter, the cow isn’t angry about imaginary boats, waving a red cross on a white flag as if it were some sacred artefact. The bull charges at red flags – the Farage supporter just hoists theirs and waits for someone brown to appear.

Dictators on Vinyl

History is full of men who thought they could conduct entire nations like orchestras – so let’s imagine what might have happened if they’d been let loose in a record shop instead of a battlefield.

Stalin would have been the prog-rock purist, frowning through his pipe smoke while nodding along to King Crimson. Complicated time signatures, endless five-minute mellotron solos – it all has the reassuring feel of a five-year plan.

Hitler? He’d be rifling the Wagnerian section and clutching a Zeppelin album under his arm. Not for the riffs – for the bombast and the mythological references. He’d loathe the Grateful Dead, too loose, too chaotic. Improvisation was never his style.

Mussolini would be drawn to the regimented stomp of early heavy metal. A man who loved trains running on time would also demand his riffs arriving on the beat. No jazz for him – no room for improvising trumpet players in the Fascist marching band.

Napoleon might surprise us. Tucked in his bicorne, he’d lean toward Pink Floyd or The Doors – psychedelic but with a martial undertone. Something with enough revolutionary spirit to march to Moscow by, even if it ends with everyone waking up in a snowdrift.

Caesar, of course, would be blaring Queen. “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions” were written centuries too late, but he’d still have found a way to march into Gaul with Brian May’s guitar echoing across the amphitheatres.

And then Genghis Khan – the heavy metal fan avant la lettre. If throat-singing fused with distorted guitars doesn’t belong to him, who else? You can almost hear it pounding across the steppes, more effective than any war drum.

Alexander the Great rounds out the set, a cosmopolitan magpie with a taste for fusion. A Greek lyre woven into Indian sitar rock, a dash of Persian rhythm, maybe even a hint of Egyptian chant. His empire in miniature, pressed to vinyl.

All of which proves a point. Had these men spent more time head-banging and less time empire-building, history might have been a great deal less bloody – and the world’s record collections a great deal more entertaining.

The Brexit Casino

The Brexit casino never shuts. Lights blazing, slogans plastered across the walls, and a familiar voice on the tannoy promising the big win is just around the corner. The punters shuffle forward with their last few chips, convinced this time the wheel will spin their way. They’ve already blown their savings on sunlit uplands, the “easiest deal in history”, and border control that never quite materialised. But still they queue, eyes glazed, ready to be fleeced again.

It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic. This is the psychology of the scam victim who can’t admit they’ve been had. To face that truth would mean facing the humiliation of being duped, of cheering while the conman pocketed their pride. So they double down. They tell themselves it hasn’t been “done properly”, as if incompetence explains away the fraud.

Brexit wasn’t just sold as a policy. It was packaged as patriotism. A moral crusade. To admit failure now would feel like betraying their tribe, even themselves. Far easier to keep the lie alive than to look in the mirror.

And of course there’s the sunk cost. They’ve spent years arguing, voting, defending the indefensible. Walking away would mean admitting all of that was wasted. Like gamblers chasing their losses, they keep piling on, waiting for the jackpot that never comes.

The casino knows how to keep them hooked. A cheap trade deal dressed up as a triumph. A bit of Brussels-bashing. A scrap of rhetoric about boats. Just enough of a flashing light to keep them playing.

Farage, the casino boss, doesn’t need to pay out. He only needs to keep the punters believing. Deportations by the hundred thousand, tax cuts with no funding, a country reborn overnight. The promises get wilder, the punters cheer louder, and the chips keep sliding his way.

This is the cruel logic of denial. Better to believe the next spin will turn it all around than to admit the whole thing was a con. And so they queue again, wallets lighter, slogans louder, waiting for salvation that never comes. The house always wins, and Britain is left poorer every time the wheel turns.

Humbled by the Humble Zip-Tie

I detest cant, so I thought I’d test the flag-shaggers’ favourite claim – that the forests of Union Flags sprouting in towns up and down the country are noble symbols of patriotism. So I slipped into one of their Facebook haunts and posted, all wide-eyed innocence: “Oh, I love all these flags everywhere. It looks like people are really making an effort to make immigrants and refugees feel welcome.”

The response was instant and volcanic. They couldn’t help themselves. Out came the bile – not a single reply agreeing with the idea of welcome, but a torrent admitting the flags were there to intimidate. That alone torpedoes their claim of patriotism. They say it’s about pride in the country, but they reveal it’s really about warning strangers off.

And the irony? Their banners of supposed strength are being undone daily by the humble zip-tie. Wander down any high street now and you’ll see them: limp, wind-whipped scraps, edges frayed, colours bleached. The once-proud statements of “we’re in charge here” reduced to tatty reminders of a DIY job done badly. The whole craze was a moment, not a monument – a flash of noise and bluster, already unravelling into plastic rags.

Because it is peculiarly English. You don’t see the Welsh dragon nailed up in every village to scare refugees. The Scots Saltire flies in a different spirit – tied to independence, not intimidation. Even in Northern Ireland, flags have sectarian weight, but not this theatre of patriotism-as-menace. No, this outbreak of zip-tied tat is English through and through – born of Brexit insecurity, a nostalgia for vanished power, and the need to shout identity at full volume because deep down you no longer feel it.

So when they talk about love of country, remember this: their Union Flag isn’t a proud emblem. It’s a passing fad, lashed to a lamppost, already flapping itself into shreds in the wind. Patriotism doesn’t die with a bang – it dies with a fray, a fade, and a broken zip-tie.

The Farage Self-Sabotage

Farage’s latest deportation stunt is a perfect example of what I’ve long called his knack for self-sabotage. Ripping up Indefinite Leave to Remain, re-vetting people who have lived here for years, even floating deals with the Taliban - it’s not policy, it’s theatre. It terrifies moderates, alarms business, and horrifies lawyers, but it gets him what he really wants: attention, outrage, and another lap around the media circus.

That’s the point. Governing would mean detail, delivery and accountability. Farage doesn’t want any of that – why would he, when being on the outside is so much more lucrative? He makes more money flogging grievance on GB News and selling books than he ever would at a Treasury dispatch box. His business model is outrage, not outcomes.

The problem is his wealthy backers want outcomes. They want deregulation, bonfires of standards, tax cuts for themselves. They know Farage is a wrecking ball, not a builder. Yet he’s a wrecking ball with a fan club. Try to edge him aside and he won’t go quietly – he’ll split the vote, as he always has, because division is his one true talent.

That’s why Rupert Lowe has already broken away to launch his own “Restore Britain.” Lee Anderson is too much of a fool to lead anything beyond a pub lock-in. Corbyn has launched “Your Party” on Labour’s left flank. Add Greens, Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid – and suddenly the “two-party system” looks more like a smashed windscreen, shards in every direction.

And here’s where it gets dangerous. Under first-past-the-post, all this fragmentation doesn’t translate fairly into seats. Instead, we get grotesque distortions: a Labour majority built on little more than a third of the vote; a Tory rump clinging on despite collapse; millions voting for Reform, Restore Britain, Greens, or Corbyn’s lot, only to find themselves with a scattering of MPs, or none at all. We are heading into an age of hollow majorities – governments claiming sweeping authority on threadbare shares of the national vote.

That mismatch between votes cast and seats won is becoming impossible to defend. When two big blocs dominated, the stitch-up was disguised. But when everyone can see their party of choice being short-changed, the calls for proportional representation grow deafening. Ironically, it may be Farage, Lowe and Corbyn – railing against the establishment while being strangled by first-past-the-post – who end up forcing the issue.

But PR itself is no magic cure. It carries dangers of its own. It can splinter politics further into a mess of small parties. It makes coalition horse-trading the norm, with voters watching manifesto promises sacrificed behind closed doors. It can empower extremists who only scrape five percent of the vote but suddenly hold the balance of power. It can produce weaker or revolving governments – Italy being the poster child. And depending on the system, it can weaken the link between MPs and local constituencies, turning elections into a fight between party lists rather than people.

Yet even with those dangers, PR at least reflects reality. First-past-the-post produces false majorities and wasted votes. PR risks messiness, but it’s honest messiness. The real challenge is cultural – can Britain learn to treat coalition as normal politics rather than betrayal? Germany and Scandinavia manage it. Israel and Italy struggle. Where Britain would land is an open question.

Farage thinks he’s playing the arsonist who never has to face the flames. In truth, his self-sabotage is part of a broader splintering that could burn down the whole duopoly. What replaces it may not be neat – it may be unstable, compromised, and fractious – but at least it will reflect the country we’ve actually become.

Self-sabotage, after all, isn’t just Farage’s party trick. It may turn out to be the undoing of the system itself.

The GT6 Saga - Continued

I never set out to chase grams off the Mazda MX-5 crank pulley - this GT6 rebuild isn’t a Caterham build. The weight saving was incidental. What I really needed was clearance of the engine over the steering rack, and if that meant trimming a pulley, so be it. But I thought: if I’m doing that anyway, I might as well get a lightened one and kill two birds with one billet.

So I went shopping. Pulley number one, ordered from America, looked gorgeous - except it was for the BP6D VVT, not my BP4W non-VVT. A billet paperweight. It now sits proudly on Facebook Marketplace, waiting for the next optimist to make the same mistake.

Still hopeful, pulley number two arrived courtesy of a friend’s suitcase. On paper it looked perfect - lightened and supposedly the answer to my prayers. I left it on the bench, confident it would soon solve my problem, and turned instead to the ugly OEM damper.

That’s when the reality dawned. First I had to shift a crank bolt torqued up like it had been tightened by Thor himself. It took a borrowed Milwaukee impact gun rated at 1,800 Nm to crack it loose. Off came the pulley - and with it my illusions. The grooves weren’t a separate ring at all but part of a one-piece harmonic damper. Which meant my suitcase import wasn’t the solution at all, just a crank-destroying lump of aluminium with marketing spin. Useless, and too expensive to send back.

I had been misled by the 4 small bolts surrounding the main, central bolt. I thought they were holding the sheaves to the damper, but no, they were extractor bolts to aid pulling the entire kaboodle off the crank.

By then I was on the verge of despair. Maybe I’d have to shove the engine further back, which would mean tearing into the firewall and scuttle I’d already fabricated for the coil packs. The thought of undoing all that work was enough to make me wince.

And so I arrived at a more modest, sensible plan. The steering rack mounts have a little give - enough, perhaps, to slide the rack forward just a whisker and give the crank pulley the breathing room it needs. Not glamorous, not shiny, and not yet tested, but it beats wrecking the firewall or gambling the crank on a billet crank destroyer. So the original crank pulley was cleaned up, painted and loosely replaced.

With that resolved in principle, I turned my attention to the exhaust. A trip to Infinity Exhausts had me talking through a custom stainless twin system. The price? £1,800 - not cheap, but properly designed, properly welded, and built to last. In other words, a professional job rather than a box of tubing and hope. The catch is they’re not fabricating turbo manifolds at the moment. Maybe in a year’s time they’ll be back at it, which is probably just as well, because that’s about when I’ll be ready to fit the full exhaust system anyway.

So the pulley saga has ended not with shiny billet wizardry but with the plan to nudge the rack forward. And the exhaust chapter is pencilled in: £1,800 for stainless sanity, with the manifold waiting its turn. If nothing else, I’m learning that this project is a marathon, not a sprint - with more detours than I’d ever planned, and plenty of shiny dead-ends along the way.

The Age Jigsaw

As the years stack up and bits start aching, seizing or refusing to do what they’re told, I don’t tend to chalk it up to “old age.” I treat each as its own nuisance, with its own excuse. A dodgy knee here, a stiff back there, a memory that slips the leash. All isolated, all in their own little boxes.

The memory’s the same. I’ll see Noel Edmonds in my mind’s eye and for some reason the name Dale Vince floats to the surface, hanging around for a minute before it scuttles off again. A jumble of connections that once would have been sharp as a tack, now serving up odd pairings like a badly shuffled deck of cards.

But perhaps that’s the real trick of ageing – you don’t see it as a whole. You deal with the flare-ups one by one, never quite acknowledging the bigger picture they spell out. Then one day you look back and realise the jigsaw has been sitting on the table all along, quietly arranging itself into a portrait you’d rather not recognise.

I wonder how others see this. Do you treat each failing as a one-off irritation, or do you see the whole painting? Either way, the canvas keeps filling – and the gallery only has one exit.

Palestine

Critics love to sneer that “Palestine” is just a colonial label, cooked up by Romans and revived by the British. But the truth is older. The name’s root lies in the Philistines, who settled Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gath and Ekron in the 12th century BCE. By the 5th century BCE, Herodotus was already calling the region Palaistinē. When the Romans renamed Judea Syria Palaestina in 135 CE, they weren’t inventing something new – they were recycling a name already in circulation. Over time that flowed directly into the Arabic Filastīn, the word Palestinians themselves still use today.

And here’s the irony. “Philistine” later became an insult, lumped in with “Vandal” as shorthand for barbarism. In 19th-century Europe, a “Philistine” meant a boor with no culture, just as a “Vandal” meant a mindless wrecker (remind you of any politicians?). Both were caricatures. The Philistines were in fact traders with their own cities and craftsmanship, and the Vandals governed North Africa for a century. But the slurs stuck, while the actual names carried on in the language of identity.

If you want even deeper roots, look to Canaan, the Bronze Age name for the region, found in Egyptian and Near Eastern records. Palestinians still use it in poetry to assert continuity with a land that long predates Rome or Britain. The British Mandate then normalised “Palestine” on passports, coins and stamps, and today over 130 states recognise the State of Palestine.

So when detractors dismiss Palestine as a colonial fiction, they ignore the direct line from Philistine to Palaistinē to Filastīn – and they repeat the same lazy caricatures that turned ancient peoples into bywords for barbarism. The names are older than most nations at the UN. The real relic isn’t the word “Palestine” – it’s the argument against it.

Recognising Palestine

The right-wing chorus is at it again – stamping their feet because they “weren’t consulted” over Britain recognising Palestine. Spare me the indignation. Nobody asked the people in 1950 whether Britain should recognise Israel, and that was just two years after Irgun and the Stern Gang had blown up the King David Hotel, murdered British policemen, and strung up two British sergeants like butchered meat. Those killings weren’t accidental – they were aimed directly at us.

And yet Britain recognised Israel, because we understood that denying a people their statehood only fuels more bloodshed. Hamas has killed British citizens, yes – but never as a matter of policy, never because they were British. The deaths of Britons in Hamas attacks have been incidental to their wider slaughter of civilians. With Irgun, killing Britons was the objective. We still recognised Israel, because the bigger principle was statehood and peace.

Fast forward to today and the same principle applies. Labour’s 2024 manifesto pledged recognition of Palestine. Voters saw it, digested it, and still delivered Starmer a thumping majority. Recognition wasn’t a surprise wheeled out in the dead of night – it was there in black and white, and endorsed at the ballot box.

So let’s cut through the cant. If you supported Israel’s right to exist after its paramilitaries deliberately targeted British citizens, but now howl at Palestine’s recognition because Hamas exists, you’re not upholding any noble principle. You’re wallowing in hypocrisy, cherry-picking history, and pretending that democracy requires your personal permission slip.

The people were asked – at the ballot box in 2024. You just don’t like the answer.

A Christian Nation

I was listening to Radio 4 on Sunday, when a pastor popped up confidently declaring that Britain is a “Christian nation”. Really? Which century’s census is he reading from – Domesday? The idea is kept alive mostly by the far right, who’ve developed a curious form of Christianity that skips straight from Leviticus to Daily Mail headlines, with the entire New Testament quietly airbrushed out. Love thy neighbour? Only if he looks like Nigel from Clacton.

The truth is, this isn’t so much a profession of faith as it is a reaction. Christianity is being hauled out not because the pews are full, but because other religions are more visible. It’s not belief – it’s a boundary marker. A way of saying “not them” rather than “we follow Him.” The far right’s “Christian nation” is less about Jesus and more about jealousy – a cultural club badge, waved about when they see a mosque or a gurdwara.

Let’s be clear: this island wasn’t handed down on stone tablets as a Christian nation. For most of its history, the place was pagan. First it was druids, oaks, and sacrifices. Then came the Romans with their gods and the occasional lion in the arena. Christianity only started to get a foothold under Rome – then promptly fell out of fashion when the legions buggered off. The Anglo-Saxons brought Woden and Thor back into vogue, until another wave of missionaries reinvented the wheel and declared us Christian again.

So if we’re playing the “original identity” game, then technically we’re a pagan nation with a Roman interlude, an Anglo-Saxon relapse, and a Christian phase that’s now quietly ebbing into secular pluralism. Demographically, fewer than half the population even tick “Christian” these days – and actual churchgoers could all fit into Wembley with plenty of space for the hot dog stalls.

That pastor, and the far right cheerleaders who repeat him, are really just expressing a hope. A desire to freeze Britain at some misty-eyed point in the 1950s, when vicars cycled through sleepy villages and the Sunday service was the closest thing to entertainment. To call Britain a “Christian nation” now is like insisting your old school is still yours just because your initials are carved into a desk. Time moves on.

And if the far right’s version of Christianity really is Christianity, then Jesus must be wondering why he bothered with the Sermon on the Mount. They’ve clearly decided the Beatitudes are optional extras, like alloy wheels.

The Vacuum of Logic

There was a puff-piece in the Times Magazine on Saturday on James Dyson, who lives about a mile from us at Doddington Park.

Dyson has always worn his Brexit enthusiasm like a badge of honour. Sovereignty, freedom, innovation – the usual drumbeat. Yet scratch the surface and the whole thing collapses under the weight of its own illogic.

Dyson’s business never needed Brexit. His headquarters are in Singapore, his factories in Malaysia and the Philippines, his biggest markets in Asia. Brussels was never telling him where to put a production line or who he could sell a hairdryer to. He already had the sovereignty he claims Britain was denied. For him, Brexit was an irrelevance – except as a convenient stick with which to beat the EU over regulations he personally disliked, like the motor wattage limits that suited his German competitors.

That’s where the ideological gloss starts to peel. He paints Brexit as liberation, but it looks much more like self-interest. The EU rules he fought and lost against still bind his continental rivals, while he operates under looser regimes abroad. In that sense, Brexit was a clever way to hobble competitors without exposing himself to any of the pain. Patriotism had precious little to do with it.

But here’s the kicker: it isn’t just continental rivals who’ve been left floundering. UK-based manufacturers, who might once have competed with him at home or in Europe, are now shackled by Brexit red tape. They can’t export seamlessly into the EU anymore, they have to duplicate certification, and they face higher input costs thanks to disrupted supply chains and labour shortages. The supposed sovereignty dividend has worked against them, while Dyson remains untouched offshore.

The contradiction is glaring. He praises “independence” while being independent of Britain’s economic struggles. He lauds deregulation while his customers and suppliers in the UK drown in new paperwork. He insists Brexit was worth it while others pick up the bill. For Dyson plc, Brexit was never a gamble. For British exporters and farmers it’s been a slow bleed.

And yet he doesn’t back-pedal, because why would he? Ideologically, he hates the EU. Personally, he’s insulated from the costs. Admitting the obvious would mean conceding that his sovereignty sermon was hollow from the start. So he clings to the line that Britain is better off, while quietly building his fortune far from the mess he helped create.

Brexit through Dyson’s eyes is the neatest trick of all: claim sovereignty, shift your empire offshore, and let both your EU rivals and your UK competitors pay the price.

The AI Trap (III) - The Sting

First I argued the AI deal makes Britain a landlord to American oligarchs, then I showed how their server barns will gorge on our grid while we pick up the bill.

Now for the final piece of the puzzle – the Sting (as a tribute to Robert Redford). And it’s beautifully simple. We let Microsoft, Google and Nvidia pour in their billions, build their vast humming server barns in Blyth and Hertfordshire, wire them into our creaking grid, and hire a handful of engineers. Then, just when the timing is right, we nationalise the lot. No compensation, just a crisp “thanks very much.”

It’ll be privatisation in reverse. Instead of flogging off national assets at knock-down prices to foreign speculators, we let the speculators build the assets for us – then whip them away. Nadella will be left scratching his head, Musk will be too busy tweeting about Mars, and Sundar Pichai will be learning what “we regret to inform you” sounds like in Geordie.

The beauty is in the branding. It won’t be theft, it’ll be “taking back control.” Finally, Brexit pays off. A sovereign AI industry, powered by British energy (once we actually build some), staffed by British workers, and wholly owned by His Majesty’s Government. Starmer can dust off his socialist roots and declare it the greatest transfer of wealth since Attlee.

Of course, Washington might notice. The Yanks tend to get twitchy when you pinch their toys. But that’s easily managed – Trump will be mollified with a shiny bauble, made an honorary Royal complete with ermine robe and Union Flag lapel pin. Problem solved.

And yes, before anyone in MI5 or the FBI starts filing a report – this is tongue in cheek. The reality remains what I’ve already argued: Britain is being hollowed out by American oligarchs, with the jobs, profits and energy all flowing one way. But it’s nice to imagine, just for a moment, a Britain that plays the long con – and wins.

The Nuts That Never Were

I decided it was time to give the GT6 engine mounts some long-overdue attention. The extra C-plates I’d picked up from another engine were already drilled, so I thought I’d trial them — inverted, rotated 90 degrees, and generally persuaded into what looked like the desired position. The engine, of course, was sitting on a skate like a patient in traction, so this was all done with the sort of optimism usually reserved for Meccano experiments after two whiskies.

All I needed now were the nuts to hold the whole thing together. No problem, I thought, and reached for the plastic tub reassuringly labelled ENGINE MOUNTS. Opened it up… nothing. Bare. A barren wasteland. A Tupperware tomb.

After tearing the workshop apart in frustration, the penny dropped. The engine had arrived with mounts, yes, but never with nuts. I was looking for something that never existed in the first place — the engineering equivalent of a unicorn.

Not a tragedy, of course. A couple of nuts can be sourced easily enough. What bothers me more is the mounting arrangement itself. With the C-plates notched to sit over the square chassis rails, I can’t quite see how any nut will actually thread on without divine intervention or a finger slimmer than human anatomy allows. Someone has clearly managed this before, so it isn’t impossible — perhaps the trick lies in hacking a bit off the excess bolt length.

It’s one of those jobs that feels both trivial and faintly ridiculous. The kind where you stare at the thing for ten minutes, spanner in hand, wondering whether the designers were geniuses or sadists. Until I decide which, the engine will sit on its skate, looking smug, while I go shopping for nuts that never were.

What's in a Name

Back in school in the late 60s, I had a mate who called his father George. Not Dad, not Father, not even the old man, except maybe to his mates. Just George. Casually, confidently – like they were business partners or co-founders of a mildly successful record label.

Which, in a way, they almost were. George ran the local scooter emporium – a shrine to Lambrettas, chrome trim, and that particular kind of freedom only available at 45 miles an hour with your parka flapping behind you. The place smelled of two-stroke, ambition, and oil-soaked rags that had seen more clutches than your average driving instructor.

But what really made George stand out – aside from the first-name business – was the way he looked. We all thought he was the spit of Bryan Ferry. Same quiff, same cheekbones, same air of detached cool. He had the sort of presence that made you wonder whether Roxy Music was his main gig, and flogging scooters was just the sideline. We still joke about it now – "George could’ve been massive, but the shop came first."

And the name thing? That was just part of the legend. The rest of us had Dads. You didn’t call them by their first name unless you wanted to find out how far a slipper could fly. Mum, Dad, Granny, Grandad – titles, not names. Family structure was like a naval chain of command – you didn’t break it unless you fancied a mutiny.

But George wasn’t that sort of man. He didn’t need to be called Dad to be one. He was just George – solid, competent, stylish as hell, and always in motion. There was no hint of aloofness, no deliberate iconoclasm. He just was. And if his son called him by name, it wasn’t cheek – it was normal. The hierarchy had been flattened, and nobody seemed to mind.

Because that’s how family naming works:

• Above you: titles – Mum, Dad, Granny. 
• Beside you: names – Lucy, Dave, your brother who nicked your sherbet dib-dabs. 
• Below you: names you choose – your kids, the cat, the imaginary friend who only comes out at bedtime.
• Aunts and uncles? Uncle Tony, Auntie Jean – a polite halfway house for people you’re not allowed to call Steve.

So when someone calls their father George, it resets the table. Says, This household doesn’t need brass buttons and salutes. George had nothing to prove. He didn’t issue orders – he passed you the right spanner and expected you to crack on.

Looking back, I think that was his real trick. Quiet authority. No fuss. Cool without trying. A man who could change a cylinder head and then, quite believably, disappear into a smoky club to record Love Is the Drug before tea.

George didn’t play at being Bryan Ferry. He just looked like him. The rest? We happily filled in.

Stereotypes on Wheels

I’ve spent years watching what people actually buy, working part-time in a used car dealership, and you start to see patterns. It’s not scientific, but it is brutally obvious. People don’t so much pick cars as cars pick them. And when they do, they tell you far more than the buyer realises.

Take the women. There are three kinds. First, your mum or your nan. They’ll drive anything. Hand them the keys to a battered Mondeo with the roof lining hanging down, and off they’ll go to bingo without a second thought. A car is a kettle on wheels to them. You switch it on, it gets you from A to B, and if it wheezes a bit or smells faintly of wet dog, well, that’s life.

Then there’s the very clever, very attractive young woman who goes for the cutesy car. The Fiat 500, the Mini, something small and pastel-coloured with curves in all the wrong places. These are not cars, they’re teddy bears on alloys. You can almost hear them whispering lullabies when you shut the door. The Smart car sits awkwardly between categories — it can be cutesy, or it can be something your nan might drive, or even your grandad. In fact, it’s probably the only car that manages to look like a teddy bear and a mobility scooter at the same time.

Finally, the bleach-blonde contingent. Eyelashes you could shelter under in a rainstorm, lips pumped up like a dinghy, job title along the lines of “executive assistant, level two.” For them it has to be the Evoque or the Mercedes. Something with the presence of a yacht, preferably white, preferably leased. It’s less transport, more a moving Instagram filter.

But before anyone shouts “sexist” and hurls a copy of the Guardian in my face, the men are just as bad.

Category A: the BMW 3-Series man. Always a 320d, never the fast one. He buys it because he thinks it says hedge fund, but what it really says is company car park. You’ll know him by the broken parking sensor and the air of misplaced self-importance.

Category B: the Corsa lad. Usually in his twenties, exhaust big enough to frighten cattle, convinced he’s Ayrton Senna while delivering kebabs. His idea of an apex is the mini-roundabout outside Tesco. His passengers cling to the grab handles like shipwreck survivors. It inevitably ends in disaster.

Category C: the boomer Lexus Or Galaxy owner. Bought it for the reliability and the buttons the size of dinner plates. Drives it once a week to the golf club at 23 miles an hour or fills it full of junk for the tip rum (like me). If it wasn’t for him, you wouldn’t know Lexus still made cars.

Category D: the performance and prestige buyer. This is where it gets interesting. They’re after the Porsche, the Ferrari, the Aston, or at the very least the high-powered Mercedes or Audi. Not that we’ve had Ferraris or Astons through our dealership, but we’ve certainly seen the Porsches, the Mercedes and the Audis. These are the cars people buy when they want to announce that their bonus has landed and they’re not afraid to convert it into exhaust noise. And here’s where my eldest son slots in. He doesn’t bother with finance or lease paperwork - he pays in cash. He just wants the fastest car on the block, and he can afford it. It’s not about teddy bears, drainpipe exhausts, or buttons the size of dinner plates. It’s about speed, bought outright. A cheque? No. A wad of notes on the salesman’s desk. And a grin that says, “Yes, I really did just do that.”

So there you have it. Equal opportunities in stereotyping. Women with teddy bears and Instagram filters, men with delusions of grandeur, drainpipes for exhausts, buttons like dinner plates, and the occasional cash-flashing son who thinks he’s auditioning for Top Gear. Nobody escapes the polemic, and nor should they. Because the truth is, cars don’t just reveal taste - they reveal character. And sometimes, that character is written in chrome letters across the boot lid.

Designating Dissent: The Tyrant with a Crayon

Donald Trump once blurted out – in that half-chewed syntax of his – that he wanted to “designate antifa a terrorist organisation.” Now, this isn’t a new line – he’s been flogging it since 2020 like a broken lawnmower he can’t start. But the stupidity of it still deserves our full attention. Because antifa isn’t an organisation. There are no meetings. No membership cards. No bank account. It’s a mindset – the idea that fascism ought to be opposed, not flirted with.

But of course, in Trumpworld, opposing fascism is the real threat. Not fascism itself.

This wasn’t about public safety – it was about criminalising opposition. If you don’t clap hard enough, you’re a terrorist. That’s how fascists behave. And that’s exactly what Trump is – a walking, rambling, slogan-spouting fascist – just with worse tailoring and a gold toilet.

And it didn’t stop there. Fast forward to 2025, and the U.S. Department of Justice has quietly deleted a government-funded report that showed the vast majority of domestic terrorist killings since 1990 were committed by far-right extremists. Over 520 deaths. Compared to 78 by the so-called far left. This was published by the National Institute of Justice, not the Guardian or Mother Jones. It was hard data. And when it didn’t suit the narrative, it disappeared – just after the death of Charlie Kirk, whose canonisation was already being written by the same grifters who profit off the culture war he spent his life inflaming.

This is what totalitarianism looks like in its early stages: 

• Not jackboots – just erased data. 
• Not gulags – just regulatory intimidation. 
• Not firebombs – just cancellation by executive whim.

And speaking of cancellation, let’s talk about Jimmy Kimmel.

Kimmel dared to repeat Trump’s own words back at him in a satirical monologue after Kirk’s death – and for that, his show was indefinitely pulled. The FCC chairman threatened networks with fines and license reviews. ABC and its syndication partners buckled. Trump celebrated like a man who thinks satire is treason and cancellation is patriotism. So much for free speech.

Meanwhile, over on Fox News, Brian Kilmeade – one of Trump’s favourite couch-warmers – suggested that mentally ill homeless people who refuse help should be given involuntary lethal injections. Let that sink in. That’s not a sick joke or a misquote. That’s a mainstream host on a top-rated network proposing state-sponsored murder for the inconvenient. There was no FCC threat. No pulled show. No cancellation. Just a half-hearted walk-back and then silence. Because apparently killing poor people for being mentally ill is just colourful opinion now.

And still, they bang on about "cancel culture." About how free speech is under threat from the left. As if universities and drag queens are more dangerous than federal agencies deleting terror stats and networks pulling comedians off-air for telling the truth.

It’s not free speech they want. It’s freedom from accountability. Freedom to lie. Freedom to abuse. Freedom to punch down while howling in outrage if someone dares to punch back. When a late-night comic is censored for quoting Trump, but a Fox host can call for lethal injections without consequence, America is no longer in a democracy. It's a regime of selective permission. Say the right thing – get a pass. Say the wrong thing – get the boot.

The hypocrisy is so thick you could trowel it onto a wall and call it a border.

And all the while, they point at antifa, like it’s the threat. A bunch of unorganised protesters in black hoodies are branded domestic terrorists, while armed militias shoot up synagogues and Capitol steps – and get called “patriots”.

Here’s the truth:

• If your government deletes facts to protect ideology, it’s not a democracy.
• If comedians are silenced but propagandists are protected, it’s not free speech.
• If opposing fascism makes you a terrorist, then fascism is already here.

This isn’t creep. It’s gallop. And too many are too busy waving flags to see that the Constitution is being pulped right under their noses – not with laws, but with pressure, silence, and fear.

And Musk has the sheer gall to say free speech in under threat in the UK - it has already disappeared in Trump's America.

The AI Trap (II))

A couple of days ago I wrote about Britain patting itself on the back for “winning” billions in AI investment, when in reality we’re just playing landlord to America’s oligarchs. That was the sovereignty and jobs angle. But there’s another, quieter scandal lurking under the gloss - energy.

Every new AI data centre is a beast. Satya Nadella himself admits the energy use is “very high.” The truth is, these facilities will consume as much electricity as a medium-sized town. And here’s the con: there’s no requirement for Microsoft, Google or Nvidia to build the renewable power that keeps their servers cool. They plug straight into our already stretched grid – and who pays for the upgrades, the balancing, the imports when the wind isn’t blowing? You do.

We’ve heard this story before. They call it “foreign investment,” but what it really means is the public subsidising private gain. Tax breaks for the corporations at one end, higher bills for households at the other. If they want to rent our land for a data-hungry system, then they should be compelled to invest in the renewable infrastructure to feed it. Build the solar, build the wind, build the storage. Otherwise it’s just another extraction industry, only this time the ore is electricity and the mine is your wallet.

GDP numbers will get trotted out, but GDP is meaningless when it’s funnelled to the few. The AI titans get the profit, and Britain gets the power bill. Unless government demands a quid pro quo, this “Tech Prosperity Deal” is nothing more than a giant meter running in America’s favour.

And here’s the sting in the tail – by letting them gorge on our grid without matching it with renewables, we entrench fossil fuels right at the moment we need to break free of them. Energy security doesn’t come from importing more gas, it comes from owning the wind and sun above our own heads. But this deal risks locking us into yesterday’s energy, just to power tomorrow’s machines.

From Leftovers to Dinner – The £10 Trick Worth Knowing

Hay came home with a Daewoo soup jug some 6 months ago. Ten quid, second-hand, hardly the sort of purchase that promises a culinary revolution. But this one did. It looks like a cross between a kettle and a traffic cone, yet it produces soup in under half an hour. Leftover carrots, limp celery, half an onion and a potato that had started sprouting in the cupboard – in they go, along with a ladle of Hay’s homemade chicken stock (she freezes it down from the carcasses), lid on, press a button. The thing boils, whirrs, zuzzes, and out comes dinner.

The real genius is the choice – smooth or chunky. That’s not a setting, that’s a personality test. Smooth soup is urbane, cravat and waistcoat, served in a white bowl with a drizzle of something green on top. Chunky soup, on the other hand, is work boots and flannel, eaten with hunks of bread while standing at the kitchen counter. For ten pounds you get both.

And unlike so many gadgets, this one actually earns its keep. Breadmakers were going to transform our lives until everyone realised they made odd-shaped loaves and took up half the kitchen. Juicers promised glowing health until you noticed they required two hours of scrubbing for thirty seconds of juice. Yoghurt makers, pasta rollers, electric woks – all eventually migrate to the back of the cupboard, the elephant’s graveyard of unused kitchenware.


Not the ice-cream maker, mind you. That’s still churning away once a week, an honourable exception. But most of the others are long gone.

The Daewoo is different. It’s honest kit. No shiny chrome trim, no pointless Bluetooth app, just a jug and a blade that turn scraps into something hot and comforting. The stainless body looks sturdy, the orange top looks like it belongs on a building site, and together they get on with the job. You don’t fuss over it, you don’t babysit it. It burbles away and makes soup while you set the table.

The real joy is thrift. Vegetables that once would have been eyed with suspicion now get a second chance. The bottom of the fridge becomes a treasure chest, not a guilt trip. And the result tastes better than anything in a tin, probably because it comes with the satisfaction of knowing you rescued it from the compost bin.

It’s also my secret weapon on 2:7 days. Mondays and Thursdays I keep under 600 calories, and a bowl of Hay’s Daewoo soup is the cornerstone – filling, warming, and virtuous without feeling like punishment. A gadget that’s cheap, second-hand, and makes both waistlines and wallets happy? That’s rare.

So yes, Hay’s ten-pound Daewoo is the best kitchen gadget we’ve owned. Not glamorous, not new, but practical magic all the same. It may never make it into a lifestyle magazine spread, but when the weather turns and the rain sets in, it’ll be the Daewoo on the draining board that keeps us fed, smug, and just a little bit slimmer.