Video of the Day - we're getting more stupid

This is a well-researched piece about our declining attention span and intelligence. The writers connect it with the development of information technology, from printing and the telegraph to the smartphone in nearly everybody’s hand today.

The vid is worth watching even if only for the many striking and beautiful images that accompany (but rarely illustrate) the argument - are they there to test our concentration?

Alternatively Professor Edward Dutton aka The Jolly Heretic puts it down to the fact that we live in easier times so our survival is not challenged as it used to be and the “Flynn effect” (average IQ increasing over time) has gone into reverse. He talks about it in this interview. Dutton has also said elsewhere that cleverer people (except for right-wingers) breed fewer children than those who are lower in IQ.

Slugfest

It’s not the garden they raid, it’s the kitchen.

I’ve learned to clear away the cat’s plate at night so I don’t find it gossamered with slugslobber in the morning. Sometimes with Silbo Sluggins the quiet burglar still in the dish.

There’s a technique for getting rid of them humanely, I call it the slug-flick. (“Where do you go to my slugly?”) Fold a paper kitchen towel in four, pick up the slug without (ugh) touching it, roll it left and right so it curls up and stops trying to stick to the paper, then with a flick of the wrist it’s off down the garden (“I believe I can fly”) sometimes with a splat as it hits a wall but it never kills them.

They keep coming back, they know the way; does one of them act as a scout on the Chisholm Trail to our back door? Caught four the other night, different sizes, from grand master to apprentice.

Hooooooonk!!

"That mobile alert" 

"Yes, Prime Minister?" 

"Call me Andy, mate. Could one be sent selectively, like, to marginal constituencies to boost turnout in an election?" 

"Languages, emojis and flags as appropriate?" 

"Remind me what pay grade you're on at the moment, mate."

Thieving babies, singing cats and robo-rabbits

A girl toddler steals from the baby and scams her brother…

Pedro Miguel@PedroMiguel9521

Para los que no entienden por qué las mujeres dominan el mundo...

9:55 PM · Aug 6, 2026 · 2.05M Views

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387 Replies · 3.17K Reposts · 24.8K Likes

Cats just have to be the centre of attention. Watch how the girl’s face changes from thunder to sunshine.

Wholesome Side of 𝕏@itsme_urstruly

A woman was filming herself singing a vocal piece when a cat suddenly barged in, crossing right in front of the camera, and started singing in a voice tone exactly like the woman's, as if saying "I can sing well too, you know!"...

7:32 PM · Jan 21, 2026 · 4.45M Views

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608 Replies · 17K Reposts · 180K Likes

Scientists invented animatronic rabbits to lure pythons fom the swamp but things developed from there…

"Economical with the actualité": the BBC and three dead women

 “Three people were found dead aboard a small boat early on Thursday after launching from Dunkirk,” says BBC News online. There was a fourth in a separate incident: “One man died after a vessel capsized.”

The three “people”, as the BBC does not say, were women.

La Dépêche du Midi, a newspaper based in Toulouse, France reports (auto-translation):

“According to initial information gathered by Delta FM, three of them did not die by drowning… An investigation will be opened to determine the circumstances of these deaths.”

Dubai-based National News reports

“French authorities have said… three women suffered heart attacks after their boat launched…

“The women, reportedly aged about 20, 30 and 50, were brought ashore by the French emergency services, but attempts to resuscitate them failed, and all three were declared dead.

“They were on one of the so-called taxi boats operated by human-trafficking gangs that were sailed along the coast to pick up people at designated spots before attempting the crossing.”

The BBC merely says that “three unconscious people” were “found dead.”

Our national broadcaster may think it is being responsible by omitting and glossing over facts, perhaps to prevent inflammatory speculation by “far-right” commenters but as we saw with the Southport murders committed by Axel Rudakubana if the public feels it is being deceived the speculation is intensified.

Already the questions must mutiply.

Had this incident occurred on a boat travelling from Dover to France one might have expected all the surviving travellers to be arrested by British police pending investigation into suspicious deaths. Instead the French appear to have simply taken off the corpses and allowed the other migrants to proceed towards England; and to have diagnosed “heart attacks” in advance of post-mortems.

Little wonder that public trust in authority and established institutions is eroding. We cannot safely allow them to be, in Alan Clark’s 1992 phrase, “economical with the actualité.”

Starmer's Return

Good afternoon, colleagues.

Before I begin you should know that this meeting will remain completely secret. That means no off the record briefings of any kind and no private minuting or diarising. We shall need at least ten years before any of this comes out.

So far ninety-odd MPs have called for my resignation as Party leader and I have let them have it, for now. Let a hundred flowers bloom, as Mao said; unless they change their minds they may find they are cut flowers. Let September’s Conference crown Andy Queen of the May - he’s taking group selfies already - but I am still and intend to remain Prime Minister.

For why and how I now pass you over to our new Cabinet Secretary whom you all know. Everything he is about to say to you has my full backing.

Good afternoon.

We have a choice before us.

If Andy took over this would be the last Labour government for a generation, perhaps for ever. He may have made the trams run on time in Manchester but he’s aiming for Number Ten on the basis of no prior planning. The bond traders would skin him alive for his uncosted notions of seizing privatised enterprises, the markets and pension funds will tank and the country will fall into chaos.

He’s a nice guy. He likes to be liked. That is a fatal weakness. When the wolf is at the door love will fly out of the window.

You must all understand that this is a revolutionary government. We came to power in order to save the country and it’s going to happen, if we hang together.

We’ve spoken of change and fixing the foundations and most people think that means the economy. Not so. It’s about the Constitution. Everything flows from that and if we get it right the Tories are dead for good.

Look at what we have achieved already.

Take the House of Lords. In 1980 Tony Benn said create a thousand peers and abolish the House; twenty years later when Tony Blair came in he tinkered with the Lords but had no idea what to replace them with. What those two dreamed of we’ve done. The hereditaries have gone and we have a second chamber we can fill with our appointees.

Resistance has moved to the shires and we have an answer for that too. Local government reorganisation and the new unitary authorities will bury the far right under a pile of confused and apathetic voters. Rupert Lowe, to take one example, will find his base utterly diluted when East Norfolk Council comes into being. Regional politics will be about roads and bins.

And a good thing, too. Why were the people ever given the vote? In 1918 it was to prevent revolution by giving them forums to complain and squabble. We’re here to deliver that revolution and we don’t want to be bogged down with whingers and rabble rousers.

Speaking of which, the social media need to be curbed. Everybody gets to be identified and answerable and we have the tech means to put them all on their best behaviour, as Tony’s mate Larry Ellison says. As for TV and the Press, they’re pretty much on the leash already.

We’ll put a lid on the griping but we’ll also give them less to gripe about. And we’ll do it in a systematic way, not like Andy’s piecemeal populism.

Take energy. Ed is right, we are now approaching the limits to growth but Net Zero will bankrupt us even as China and India are on the rise. We have to get to sustainability by the right route so the lights don’t go out. Drilling, fracking, small nuclear reactors, anything necessary while we build the alternatives.

Ed, we’ll need your brains and diligence in a different area and sorry, you can’t refuse unless you want out altogether. If the international economy goes down and the world stops feeding and clothing us we’ve got seventy million potential victims on our hands. We have to reduce the population and your brief will be to manage net migration well into the negative. That should take the wind out of Lowe’s and Farage’s sails. Apart from anything else AI is going to destroy white collar jobs and the knock on effects of lost salaries will give us severe deflation and soaring structural unemployment. We have to find a way of keeping necessary talent and losing the useless eaters.

Now we come to the biggest resistance, the unelected money-shufflers. We have no intention of being Trussed-up by the bond traders. The reason why this gathering is later in the day is that there was a Privy Council meeting this morning as a result of which we’ve already told the City that if they fuck with us they will find out. We’ll honour any bonds already issued but we’re not going to be at the mercy of lenders and speculators. Anyone who tries it on will lose their licence to trade.

Debt growth is on track to kill us and so we’re going for Modern Monetary Theory. In future we will print our own currency, not borrow it. This will help counter the coming economic deflation.

Free trade just suits the free traders, at everyone else’s expense. Their time is over. We are adopting the approach of Alexander Hamilton’s American School: protective tariffs, infrastructure investment and a national bank that fosters productive enterprise instead of global financial crises.

One of this morning’s Orders in Council is a declaration of national emergency. A consequence is that until we are back on an even keel there will be no General Election. The public doesn’t need to know that yet and the MSM are instructed not to ask.

Social media, emails and phone communications are under intense computer-assisted surveillance and selective suppression. The intelligence services, police and armed forces are prepared to handle any attempt at fomenting discontent and sedition.

Colleagues, this our best and likely our only chance to complete the revolution. Either we will go down in history or we will go down altogether.

Individuals will shortly be called for discussions on appointments and tasking. I shall of course be assisting Sir Keir at such interviews but in any case my door is permanently open to any and all of you.

This meeting is ended. Please leave your folder on the table for collection and secure storage. Thank you.

National defence: it's the economy, stupid

Ten years before the outbreak of the First World War Sir Halford Mackinder read a paper to the Royal Geographical Society in which he related history to geography. In it he noted Britain’s strength as a sea-based empire but also that there was the growing potential for a rival among the nations of the central European landmass.

Mackinder argued that the latter would be able to boost their trade and economic power - and military capacity - by building railway networks that could do more than their river systems naturally allowed. He worried about a forthcoming clash with the British Empire.

The discussion following the reading was even more illuminating, thanks to the comments by Leo Amery, who said that as to armed conflict modern ships could carry far more troops than could trains but - and this was in 1904! - sooner or later both means of locomotion would be supplemented by air which would lessen the importance of geographical distribution.

Amery went on to say that no matter where they were situated “the successful powers will be those who have the greatest industrial basis… those people who have the industrial power and the power of invention and of science will be able to defeat all others.”

If only our government had understood this in 1914! For by then Germany’s steel production was more than twice Britain’s and industry accounted for 60 per cent of their GDP. By mid-1915 we had run out of artillery shells and had to import them from the USA on borrowed money - defaulting on our war debt to America in 1934.

War is “the sport of kings” and only the richest can afford it. We couldn’t then, even less so in 1939 and not at all today, when all three branches of our national defence are dangerously weak and two ministers have just resigned on the issue.

If we wish to be a sovereign nation providing for and protecting seventy million people we need a strong manufacturing economy, with abundant, reliable and cheap sources of energy so we can conduct international trade on profit margins that can pay for all our imports.

Instead our liberal globalist leaders have done exactly the opposite while increasing the population by mass immigration, so boosting the numbers of potential victims of economic collapse.

Our overall losses in the international trade in goods are largely offset by our income from services. However other nations - east or west of us - may eventually develop significant competition in the latter field. When that happens our net earnings may become perilously negative.

Amery warned about this also. In 1906 he published “The Fundamental Fallacies Of Free Trade,” arguing that the total volume of British trade was less important than the net international balance. He was a lifelong advocate of tariffs between the British Empire and non-Empire nations.

Our current rulers seem to think that GDP growth is the same as paying our way, but the rest of the world is not obliged to feed and clothe us.

Perhaps a final reference to Amery would be appropriate. During the wartime “Norway debate” (7 May 1940) he made a speech that helped terminate Chamberlain’s premiership, concluding with a quotation from Cromwell that might be used now to Keir Starmer, the self-declared “fixer of the foundations”:

“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go.”

The problem is law enforcement isn't tough enough

All we need is to have law that applies to everybody and is strictly enforced. They do have to be just laws that make sense to everybody, of course. But lawmakers, police and courts have to “get a grip.”

No socio-economic excuses, no cultural relativism special pleading.

It can be done because it has been done before:

The judge who stopped knife crime

Lord Carmont rocked the underworld of Glasgow in the Fifties when he began handing out long sentences for knife crime. Judges should follow his example now, says ADAM EDWARDS

• Daily Express

• 24 Jul 2008

Picture: NEWSQUEST/AP

RUTHLESS: Carmont imposed lengthy sentences on those who used blades

ONE terrible fact leapt out of the crime figures published by the Government last week: a knife attack takes place in Britain once every four minutes on average. There were 129,840 violent attacks involving a knife last year – more than 350 a day. The stark numbers bring shock and surprise – surprise that the Government has little idea what to do about them.

But a dip into fairly recent British history suggests the solution to the knife-crime epidemic is obvious.

Back in the Fifties, Glasgow was in the grip of razor gangs when Lord John Carmont, one of its leading judges, decided to do something about it.

The hawk-faced adjudicator, who died more than 40 years ago, was ruthless in his determination to rid the city of its stabbers and slashers. His answer to the wave of knifings was simply to give long jail terms to anyone caught carrying an open “cut-throat” razor.

His tough stance became known as “copping a Carmont”. From 1952, he became so notorious for punitive sentences that even today the French language still contains the phrase “faire un carmont”. The message quickly reached the gangs and carrying razors fell out of fashion. He “rocked the underworld of Glasgow”, wrote a contemporary, and stopped knife crime in its tracks.

“When I was a teenager in Glasgow, I remember the sporadic terror wreaked in the city centre’s dance halls by gangs intent on recreational violence,” says Charlie Gordon, Labour member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow Cathcart. “It took exemplary sentences issued by Lord Carmont to stop a razor-slashing culture that was growing in the city.”

Born in 1880 to a distinguished Catholic family, John Carmont was educated both in France and at the beautiful Abbey School in Fort Augustus in the Scottish Highlands. Called to the bar in 1906, he saw active service during the First World War both in the ranks and as an officer in the Black Watch.

He took silk in 1924 and established himself as one of the most formidable characters in the Scottish judiciary. He had an unusually retentive memory, could quote verbatim from legal texts and was admired for his sturdy independence of mind.

Though his sentences were harsh, he was personally “the gentlest and kindliest of men”, notes his 1965 obituary, adding that his sentences were “the logical outcome of his sense of priorities which demanded that the public was entitled to protection from the anti-social activities of the lawless”. Would that all judges had such views now.

With the constituency of Glasgow East voting in a by-election today, it is significant that the retiring MP, Labour’s David Marshall, has also spoken of the impact of Carmont’s crackdown.

In a speech on law and order, he told the Commons: “I feel sorry for the police. I give them my full support and they do splendid work but much of what they do is to some extent negated by the courts, which let down the law-abiding citizens of this country and its police force. If the courts were to make an example of some criminals, particularly those who commit acts of violence, crime would rapidly decrease.

“I cite an example from 40 or 50 years ago. Lord Carmont sentenced a few razor-slashers in Glasgow to 20 years’ imprisonment at a time when 20 years meant precisely that. Overnight, razor-slashing ceased.”

In fact, a standard Carmont sentence was one decade behind bars rather than two but Mr Marshall was on the right lines.

In the first half of the 20th century, Glasgow had an unenviable reputation for violence. The city took the brunt of the Depression in the Thirties with very high unemployment, substandard housing and poor levels of health.

The worst of the suffering was in the run-down district known as the Gorbals where, according to the writer Colin MacFarlane who was born there: “Human waste ran down the tenement stairs and filth, violence, crime, rats, poverty and drunkenness abounded.” A novel No Mean City by Alexander McArthur was published in 1935 about slum life in the Gorbals. Its anti-hero was “razor king” Johnnie Stark. The book was so grim that many libraries refused to stock it.

Glasgow and knives were inextricably linked in the public’s mind. The nickname for a slashing, for example, was known in some quarters as “a Glasgow smile”.

“By the early Fifties every gangster carried an open razor,” according to Danny Grant, a former policeman whose beat included Glasgow’s toughest districts.

When Lord Carmont, by then a senior high court judge, saw how many of Glasgow’s criminals were being sent to his court for knife crimes, he knew that the city was in the grip of a violent crime epidemic which had to be stopped.

“Carmont stated that in future anyone appearing in front of him who had been found in possession of an open razor would be sent to prison for 10 years,” says Grant. Back then, a 10-year sentence meant 10 years behind bars.

Carmont’s reputation for being tough was already well known to Glasgow criminals, as his treatment of John Ramensky attests.

Ramensky was the best-known safe blower in Scottish history, as famous for his prison breaks as for his crimes. During the Second World War, he was recruited by the military to blow up enemy buildings and steal important documents. He won the Military Medal and had been given a free pardon.

Shortly after the war, at the age of 50, Ramensky appeared before Carmont after being caught blowing a safe. He made an impassioned plea for clemency and cited his war record. He pleaded with Carmont that he had undergone more than his share of suffering. “Give me a chance, as only good can result from it,” he said in mitigation. But Carmont sentenced him to 10 years with the cold remark that “any sentence of less than 10 years would be useless”.

AS SOON as Carmont had decided to solve the blade problem, he was merciless. In one court sitting he passed sentences of up to 10 years on eight men – 52 years in all – simply for carrying razors and knives.

Those sentences had an immediate effect. For a brief period in Glasgow’s history, razors and knives vanished from its streets.

Today the plea for tougher sentences for knife crime echoes across the country.

In 2006, Charlie Gordon moved an amendment to the Criminal Justice Act going through the Scottish Parliament calling for mandatory jail sentences for possessing knives. His amendment failed.

But now he has renewed his call for automatic jail sentences for knife possession. “This is an idea whose time has come,” he said.

It is time for all MPs and judges to take note of the views of the public. It is time a new generation of violent hooligans got to know the meaning of “copping a Carmont”.

______________________________________________________

Found via https://www.pressreader.com/ and previously shown on Broad Oak Magazine in 2019.

Could the death of Henry Nowak have been avoided?

The point of training is so that you do not have to be wise after the event.

It will be fifteen months before the inquest into Henry Nowak’s death is held. By that time the goldfish attention of the media will have been turned elsewhere, but when it turns back we shall be told that lessons have been learned and someone will make sure of something.

But even now it is clear some things went wrong in the police appoach to this incident. If a young man appears physically distressed and says he has been stabbed, would you check carefully rather than tell him (as recorded) “You’ve been stabbed? Whereabouts? I don’t think so, mate”?

The pathologist at the murder trial said that Nowak’s wounds were not survivable. That is a professional opinion but not the only possible one, as we shall see. Had the lad been taken to the nearby trauma department within what is known as the “golden hour” who knows?

If he could have been saved the way the police reacted may have reduced his chances. A doctor who is trained in combat medicine has seen the bodycam footage and read the autopsy report. He thinks that Nowak’s cut clavicular vein might have clotted as a natural defence but the rough handling and the process of handcuffing could have reopened the wound and that may be why the victim then bled out and lost consciousness three minutes later.

Basil the Great@BasilTheGreat

🚨BREAKING: SPECIALIST DOCTOR SAYS HENRY NOWAK COULD HAVE LIVED IF NOT FOR POLICE In summary: - Henry was alive when they arrived and likely clotted - Aggressive police intervention likely tore clot - Major Trauma department was minutes away from scene - Judge and Pathologist

1:53 PM · Jun 4, 2026 · 1.62M Views

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1.46K Replies · 16.9K Reposts · 55.7K Likes

If paramedics had arrived first on the scene, Henry’s chances of survival would have been as high as 50%, says Dr Magier according to “Basil the Great.”

Were these police officers not trained in dealing with stabbing injuries? There are around 50.000 such incidents annually in England and Wales and we now often see a “bleed control kit” next to a defibrillator in public places. Or is it that anti-racism training biased the officers to make a fatal assumption, bearing in mind that the killer’s brother called the police to say it was a racist attack by Nowak and that no weapons had been involved?

The possibility of prevention goes back further. There were signs that if correctly read should have flagged Vickrum Digwa for monitoring - in fact his father and brother too. The family had collected an array of weapons and brother Gurpreet brandished a sword in a different road rage incident. The killer was already known to police, had stolen weapons from a gurdwara (Sikh temple) whose leaders described him as “argumentative with the congregation and confrontational.”

Perhaps there should be less reporting of infants to Prevent for potentially racist comments and more careful noting of genuine danger signals. Perhaps old-fashioned beat policing would have been able to use the local community knowledge and judgment of officers instead of the current reactive system that uses them as the bin men of crime, cleaning up after the event has happened.

And perhaps we should then not have a febrile people lashing out around them because of systemic governmental failure to protect us. We should not have to see political speakers in a wild bidding war to see how many first and second generation immigrants should be deported.

Rather than the divisive and inflammatory “two-tier” policing and justice (denied to be such by the present PM) we might benefit from a return to the pre-2002 attestation for constables. The wording used to be:

I, [name] of [place], do solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm that I will well and truly serve Our Sovereign Lady the Queen in the office of constable, without favour or affection, malice or ill will; and that I will to the best of my power cause the peace to be kept and preserved, and prevent all offences against the persons and properties of Her Majesty’s subjects; and that while I continue to hold the said office I will to the best of my skill and knowledge discharge all the duties thereof faithfully according to law.

Back on the beat!

Data Centres: Castles of Subjection

We’ve watched as industrial jobs have been scythed away and young people face life as shelf-stackers or on the dole.

Now technology is coming for the knowledge workers and many in the middle classes will feel the cold wind of insecurity blowing around their ankles. Quasi-intelligent machines with vast memory banks will take over many functions where experts and skilled managers used to be needed.

There is a building boom in “data centres.” The State of Ohio has 250 of them planned or under construction; Texas has 962.

They also have the capacity, and it will be used, to monitor and control the people and shut down dissent. Technology multi-billionaire Larry Ellison, chairman of software company Oracle, said in 2024:

“Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on.”

They are like the chain of castles (the “Ring of Iron”) built by Edward I in Wales, to keep the Welsh down. Their modern equivalent will be needed to oppress a people increasingly poorer and less free.

In the two years before that Ellison’s personal foundation invested $130 million in the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI) and has pledged $218 million since then. Blair is a firm advocate for digital ID and has been photographed “living the dream” on Ellison’s yacht “Rising Sun”:

(Picture from Alamy via this Substack article)

Blair is a fantastic narcissist:

(Image: GQ magazine 2 May 2021)

- but there is no reason why we should be cast in his Matrix-type dreams (do PM Keir Starmer and Labour not share them?) and every reason not to.

China's financial "China Syndrome"

The YouTube video below, viewed today, is disturbing in its implications not only for China but for our interconnected world economy.

According to the presenter China’s debt-to-GDP is far higher than commonly understood (c. 50%), because we must also take into account local government debt and debt taken on by corporate business. The national government is progressively absorbing quantities of the last two in order to disguise their potential bankruptcy.

The total debt load is equivalent to over 300% of GDP. At the same time China’s foreign debtors are running into difficulty and they may fail to service the loans China granted them.

The economy that has seen such dazzling growth has been supported by revenues from land sales and they have declined sharply. Internal consumer demand and international trade are also affected by worry and pessimism.

In the 1979 disaster movie “The China Syndrome” a nuclear power station malfunctions and threatens a meltdown (the title exaggeratedly implies a really deep one!) Already ballooning debt plagues the US, UK and many other developed countries. Maybe China will encounter a financial crisis it cannot hide or overcome; but maybe a collapse elsewhere could be the trigger instead.

For us the lesson is not to gloat at Beijing’s problems but to hope for the best and to prepare to retrench.

Labour law and "human-heartedness"

Our current Prime Minister is fond of using law as an expression of his autocratic power. A recent government press release states:

Eleven foreign far-right agitators intent on coming to the UK to spew their extremist views have been blocked from entering the country, as the Prime Minister takes action to protect British communities from vile hate.

Note the intemperate emotive language: “spew” and “vile.” This is not merely cool-headed administration but propaganda. It goes on in similar tone:

… violent thugs who spew hatred on our streets will face the full force of the law.

Among the banned speakers are a Polish MEP and a member of the Belgian Parliament. This does not sit well with Starmer’s assertion to the US President and Vice-President last year that he is proud of our tradition of free speech:

We all remember the case of Lucy Connolly but the Europe to which the PM wants to draw nearer can be even harsher to dissidents. Last year a German pensioner was investigated for calling Chancellor Friedrich Merz ‘Pinocchio’ on social media. Under Article 188 of the German Criminal Code a politically damaging criticism can be punished by up to five years in prison.

In 2024 the European Union itself extended the list of EU crimes to “hate speech” and “hate crime”; the potential for stretching this to include expressions of anger aroused by the negative consequences of mass immigration is obvious. Nevertheless two months ago the EU Parliament voted for tougher measures against illegal migrants, with deportation to “return hubs” outside the bloc.

The thing about “reactionaries” is that they are often reacting to something. Where does the fault lie?

We are entering what may become an age of social instability and it brings to mind China’s “Spring and Autumn” period a couple of thousand years ago. During this time the great teacher Confucius (born “Kong Qiu”) lived and taught his principles, which are based on “ren,” empathic “human-heartedness.”

A different approach to his was “Legalism” whereby order should be maintained by incentives and draconian punishments. Master Kong observed:

“If the people be led by laws, and uniformity sought to be given them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment, but have no sense of shame. If they be led by virtue, and uniformity sought to be given them by the rules of propriety, they will have the sense of the shame, and moreover will become good.”

For Confucius social harmony is promoted by the personal example of individuals who are benevolent and have mastered their own passions.

Here Sir Keir fails, not only in his use of language in public messaging but shouting in the House of Commons and hitting the Speaker’s chair when reprimanded for his persistent failure to answer Opposition questions. If certain rumours are true his lack of self-control has also been expressed in other, grosser ways.

If the Kingdom is to be restored to peace and prosperity we shall need fewer damaging and divisive policies forced through in a tyrannical way, and more “ren” from our leaders.

Revival: what horses can teach us

 A marvellous video tells how China is reversing the progress of a desert that was heading towards Beijing.

At first they planted great numbers of trees, which sucked water out of the ground until the water table sank so far the roots couldn’t reach and the trees died.

Then they tried introducing an ancient wild breed of horse - Przewalski’s. This stocky creature broke the barren crust of topsoil with its hooves, allowing rainwater to gather in puddles and seep into the lower ground. Plants came out of suspended animation. As the horses roamed they spread seeds carried on their hooves and in their dung. Insects colonised the greening area and a complex ecosystem began to re-form.

Isn’t this a metaphor for the failure of top-down bureaucratic planning of a command economy and the success, allowed the opportunity, of the “animal spirits” of private enterprise?

The vote-rigging that never was? (Birmingham)

 The final ward to declare its result in last Thursday’s local elections in Birmingham was Glebe Farm and Tile Cross. At stake were two council seats.

The Labour leader of Birmingham Council, John Cotton, was ousted. The two new councillors were Jess Ankrett (Reform UK) and Shehryar Kayani (Workers Party of Britain.)

It was close. There were two recounts on Saturday (no change announced) but on Monday (it is said) seven new ballots were discovered. Rumour had it that the margin between Kayani and Cotton was only six votes and the extra seven were all for Labour and would have returned Cotton. Here is the controversial former diplomat Craig Murray jumping on the bandwagon:

A Birmingham seat is being recounted for the third time.

The Workers Party won the first count by 6 votes. They won the second count by 6 votes.

Then the Returning Officer - who is of course an employee of Labour run Birmingham City Council - “Found” seven Labour votes that had gone astray.

Here is former Labour MP and now Workers Party leader George Galloway furiously responding to the allegation by “Losrafascartel”:

If we are cheated of this famous victory Legal Action will follow immediately @WorkersPartyGB

But the official return shows that although there was (ultimately, if not before the recounts) a six-vote gap it was between Kayani of the Workers Party and (third in the list) Satnam Tank of Reform. Had the new seven ballots all been for one or both Labour candidates it would not have made the slightest difference to the outcome:

It’s not been established who asked for the recount, but given the results it could easily have been on behalf of Reform.

These are feverish times. As I write we still don’t know whether the Prime Minister himself will stay or go.

It's not just about Starmer

Even veteran journalists can get things hopelessly wrong: “In a democracy we get the politicians we deserve,” said the Daily Mail’s Andrew Neil last week.

This is not a democracy, it’s a constitutional monarchy. The franchise was extended in 1918 to prevent Communist revolution and since then there has been intense effort to misguide and distract the public via mass media.

“The people have spoken—the bastards” said a US Senate hopeful 60 years ago and when much later they spoke for Trump - twice - all hell was let loose. They simply don’t know what’s good for them. They have to be managed.

Early results from yesterday’s UK elections suggest that the Greens have split off votes from Labour and let Reform come through on the First Past The Post system. “But why don’t Labour enact electoral reform to stop this from happening?” asked the Guardian’s Owen Jones, but he opposed the Alternative Vote in the 2011 referendum because it might help a third party.

What matters to him and so many others is the outcome, not the process.

And if the outcome is the wrong one, the apparatchiks have to put it right. The country voted for Brexit; the politicians undermined it. There was a General Election to break the logjam. The Bill was passed perforce but the subversion continued. Now we have Labour pursuing a damaging “dynamic alignment” with the EU’s laws; if that follows the trajectory of our membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism we could all end up singing in the bath.

Some commentators think Starmer stands for nothing. Again this is completely wrong and misleads people into believing that getting rid of Sir Keir will solve our problems. He does have an agenda and it’s not just his; it is a continuation of the Left’s long-running program to destroy our “democracy” so completely that a Conservative government can never return. He has said so in terms:

“We’re trying not just to defeat the Tories, but to defeat their entire way of doing politics.”

In that same speech he then proposes to unite the country!

Starmer has picked up the baton from his mentor Blair. Emasculate the House of Lords, devolve power away from Westminster via a forest of quangos and surrender to EU rule-making, split the country into sub-nations and regions, amalgamate local councils into entities so large that they mean nothing much to the voters (especially when local TV and papers report so little.) Use mass immigration to promote “diversity” but not so much because diversity per se is valuable as it is a weapon to smash the British cultural unity that has taken centuries and blood-sodden fields to develop.

And of course abolish the monarchy, the obstacle identified at the end of the fiery right-on 1976 TV series “Bill Brand”; our unifying symbols must be destroyed, as before when Cromwell sold broke and melted the royal regalia. The first muted trumpet call of the current battle was on 17 July 2024 when the Lord Chancellor Shabana Mahmood turned her back on the Monarch after handing him his speech; that deliberate discourtesy was introduced by the Blair government back in 1998. The King blinked: he had not missed its import.

Everybody hates democracy. In the 1980s the Tory leader of Westminster Council introduced a scheme to sell off its council houses to build Labour out of the area. In the US there has long been gerrymandering by both sides to game the voting in their favour and the competition is intensifying, as Lionel Shriver discusses in this week’s Spectator magazine.

National harmony does not depend on unity of opinion. Every time someone says “hey gang, let’s all…” a fight begins. There is no “all”; peace is founded on a great number of issues where we agree to disagree. Unless we can get political and religious militants (of various kinds) to accept that then the “diversity” project will backfire dramatically.

Most of human happiness does not come out of debating rooms. It lies in personal relationships, work that does not smash them up with its demands, adequate comfort and security and if desired the opportunity to better oneself or one’s offspring through additional striving.

Where is a gardener government wise enough to plant, weed and stand back?

How top-down, big-picture political schemes ruin us

 Birmingham used to be called the City of a Thousand Trades. It had a large skilled workforce and a diversified industrial base, with many small businesses so that if one failed there were nearby competitors to take over.

In 1945 a new Government came in with Big Ideas. One was to provide more employment around the regions by restricting growth in areas that were already successful. The Distribution of Industry Act required central government permission to build or expand a factory by more than 5,000 square feet (465 square metres.) This forced development to be sited elsewhere.

The big-picture intention may have been good, but one consequence was that Birmingham was handicapped like a horse that wins too many races. The city where I live became over-dependent on a limited number of enterprises, especially car manufacture, and when global competition and economic recession hit we suffered.

China has learned from our ivory-tower political stupidity. Its industry clusters with their synergy have made the country a world-beater.

Now Britain has another high-handed grand-plan national administration determined to distribute wealth production, diluting and weakening our productive capacity. Add to that the back-to-Eden fantasy of high-cost and unreliable “sustainable” energy creation and we have a whole nation headed for the doldrums.

Like schools, Parliament need to send its Members on “work experience” before they presume to run the economy.

For more about the introduction and effects of Industrial Development Certificates please read this excellent article in the Birmingham Dispatch and/or watch the video below:

Not The PMQs - 29th April 2026

He’s awful but you can’t get rid of him.

Yesterday’s PMQs, which took place after some attempt to prorogue Parliament in time to cancel them were a symphony of sycophancy from the Labour backbenchers and Opposition was as usual drowned out by boasting and counterattack. The Speaker kept his counsel as far as the PM was concerned; only Iqbal Mohamed orating on Palestinian “genocide” was cut short.

We await the release of Mandelbrouhaha documents as per the Humble Address, or whatever remain unshredded after some spurious Great Tea Trolley Disaster; Starmer’s former henchman McSweeney has been slow-roasted in Parliament but so what; the trial of the “Ukrainian rent boy” arsonists (allegedly) has begun this week to a deafening silence from the mainstream media despite the apparent lack of a D-notice; yesterday a motion to refer the PM to the standards committee was voted down by his army of myrmidons.

His enormous majority in the House gave him absolute power in 2024 on a technicality - validated by one-fifth of the electorate, one-third of votes cast - and by Saint George he’s going to keep it.

In the 2011 referendum the two major parties, now deservedly moribund, colluded to howl down the chance of a better voting system because they were happy with Buggins’ turn at government as the people lurched from one sour disappointment to another. Now it’s “a plague o’ both your houses!” but we innocent Thebans must suffer a plague of misfortunes because of the malfeasance of the Great Ones.

Only disaster can save us.

But not just a disaster for Starmer. Even if he goes, the sickness stays.

It is a mind-virus: “affairs are now soul size.” We have to “squeeze the universe into a ball / To roll it towards some overwhelming question”:

“What is Man?”

Philosophy is not merely academic. Ideas kill.

If we define ourselves - our narrative - in the wrong way, calamity follows. For socialism the key issue is equality. A biography of Chairman Mao says that when he was told nuclear war would kill a third of humanity he replied, “Good, then there will be no more classes.”

We’re watching this obsession burn through our community now. Its logic is insane.

Individuals do not matter, only the masses, who are composed of individuals. Equality is the goal, but meanwhile an elite is needed to “educate” and lead the people. Democracy is an obstacle; it is the voice of the masses, but they are ignorant and excitable. They can be kept that way by biased schooling and the mass media.

Man’s only identity and justification for his existence is economic. The implications are lethal - here is the writer George Bernard Shaw:

Note that he said this in March 1931 when Britain was in the depths of the Depression and the unemployment rate was over twenty per cent.

Shaw was an early member of the socialist Fabian Society, which became interested in “eugenics”, a term coined by Sir Francis Galton to mean the genetic improvement of the human “stock.” That last word suggests the need for a controlling elite like that of farmers breeding cattle and indeed Sweden passed a law in 1934 that authorised the compulsory sterilisation of thousands of its citizens.

For all the talk of human rights, people do not matter. We are a collection of nothings who have no fundamental identity. Whatever self-concept binds us together must be destroyed - history, religion, culture, race. New Labour’s socialism is existentialist: we are, before we decide what we are, and the result of any such decision is an illusion.

Note by the way that although Sartre’s monumental work concluded that “Man is a useless passion” he advocated authenticity and courage - which are values. To be consistent he should have accepted that to be a lying, self-deluding coward is equally valid. He said freedom was purely a matter for individuals but became seduced by Marxism and during the May 1968 Paris riots he supported the student movement by arguing that freedom could be realized collectively.

What are the consequences of the nihilism that is plaguing Britain?

Now, any child can be killed in the womb, up to the moment of birth.

At the other end of life, there is “assisted dying,” supposedly for people predicted to die within a few months but in Canada and elsewhere we see already how the program may be extended; Shaw, thou shouldst be living at this hour.

The Bill to legalise “assisted dying” has fallen in the House of Lords, but campaigners are talking of using the Parliament Act to force it through. If this succeeds, it will the end of Upper House resistance in any matter; for the Commons, “The very firstlings of my heart shall be / The firstlings of my hand” as the Scottish tyrant put it. We will be driving a fast car without brakes or steering.

What is the purpose of our being alive between these two points? To pay taxes and validate the rule of our superiors, perhaps.