There's something in the water in Cambridgeshire

South Cambridgeshire District Council launched a trial in January 2023, giving its staff the option of working a four day week with full pay whilst maintaining 100% productivity.

So how did that go? Brilliant, say the staff. Quelle surprise.

Of course, there have been studies. Lots of them, by universities. The council claims £400,000 p.a. savings and is proposing to make the policy permanent at a meeting this month.

You can have as many studies as you want but surely common sense suggests this is nonsense? If you can work hard for 4 days, why not work as hard on the 5th day and radically improve output? If you can get all your work done in 4 days, why not do it in 3? Or do a couple of 24 hour shifts and take the rest of the week off? What if all these employees work extra hard for 4 days a week for a couple of months then revert to their previous productivity rate, still enjoying Free Fridays and going fishing?

This is gloriously mad.

The working class believed that the Labour Party was on their side

I derived the title of this essay from a quote by Lord (Maurice) Glasman, a guru of Blue Labour. The quote came in an interview with Tom Newton Dunn for the Times: “The working class believed for over a hundred years that the Labour Party was fundamentally on their side. And now they think we’re not”. 

But this is not initially about Glasman; it’s about JD Vance. Vance was apparently aware of Blue Labour - I’m not sure how - and sent a copy of his Hillbilly Elegy memoir to Glasman asking, according to the article, “whether he thought America’s Democratic Party could be rebuilt in the same light as Blue Labour.”** Subsequently Glasman became the only Labour politician to be invited to Trump's inauguration, at the personal invite of Vance. This peaked my interest; I’ve always been interested in political thinkers and particularly in radicals, of all colours. I have to admit I’d not been aware of Blue Labour and, until the last seven months, of Vance. I often feel my blog relies too much on flippancy and perhaps that should be balanced by serious thought. So I made a plan.

Step 1: read Vance’s book. So I did. Written in 2016 (when he was 31) it's a very moving account of his childhood and early adulthood in Kentucky - part of America's "Rust Belt": the deindustrialised MidWest/South. He uses the term hillbilly throughout the book almost as a badge of pride; they are his people. His upbringing was just about the most chaotic you could imagine. Dysfunctional mother, absent father, a succession of father figures of varying reliability, a maternal grandmother who, though steadfast and loving, was in Vance’s own words a gun-toting “lunatic” meant that he had zero stability and a developing bafflement as to how adults were supposed to behave.

The statistics tell you that kids like me face a grim future—that if they’re lucky, they’ll manage to avoid welfare; and if they’re unlucky, they’ll die of a heroin overdose, as happened to dozens in my small hometown just last year. I was one of those kids with a grim future. I almost failed out of high school. I nearly gave in to the deep anger and resentment harbored by everyone around me. Today people look at me, at my job and my Ivy League credentials, and assume that I’m some sort of genius, that only a truly extraordinary person could have made it to where I am today. With all due respect to those people, I think that theory is a load of bullshit. Whatever talents I have, I almost squandered until a handful of loving people rescued me. That is the real story of my life, and that is why I wrote this book.

It’s a torrid tale of fear - that he’d be left alone; that he'd amount to nothing; that he'd never get out of the nightmare.

He was saved, first by his sister Lindsay, five years older but more often than not the "only adult in the room", and then by the Marines: "From Middletown’s world of small expectations to the constant chaos of our home, life had taught me that I had no control. Mamaw and Papaw [beloved hillbilly maternal grandparents] had saved me from succumbing entirely to that notion, and the Marine Corps broke new ground. If I had learned helplessness at home, the Marines were teaching learned willfulness."

After the Marines came two years of college at Ohio State and then Yale Law School where he met future wife Usha ("my Yale spirit guide"). Called to the bar, marriage, fatherhood. Welcome to the world, but never forgetting:

I may be white, but I do not identify with the WASPs of the Northeast. Instead, I identify with the millions of working-class white Americans of Scots-Irish descent who have no college degree. To these folks, poverty is the family tradition—their ancestors were day laborers in the Southern slave economy, sharecroppers after that, coal miners after that, and machinists and millworkers during more recent times. Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends, and family.

In 2018, Vance added an Afterword to the book, giving us a clue to how his political awareness developed.

I tried to lay my cards explicitly on the table in one of the later chapters of the book: I am a conservative, one who doubts that the 1960s approach to welfare has made it easier for our country’s poor children to achieve their dreams. But those of us on the Right are deluding ourselves if we fail to acknowledge that it did accomplish something else: it prevented a lot of suffering, and made it possible for people like Mamaw to access food and medicine when they were too poor, too old, or too sick to buy it themselves. This ain’t nothing. To me, the fundamental question of our domestic politics over the next generation is how to continue to protect our society’s less fortunate while simultaneously enabling advancement and mobility for everyone.

I've usually argued that my own party has to abandon the dogmas of the 1990s and actually offer something of substance to working- and middle-class Americans. And despite all of my reservations about Donald Trump (I ended up voting third party), there were parts of his candidacy that really spoke to me: from his disdain for the “elites” and criticism of foreign policy blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan to his recognition that the Republican Party had done too little for its increasingly working- and middle-class base.

After graduating from Yale he practised corporate law, worked as a Senate aide and became a venture capitalist, a Senator in 2023, Vice-President in 2025. Not exactly a normal life path for a hillbilly but, despite some critics, I see no reason in this book to doubt his genuineness.

Step 2: check out bluelabour.org. I did that too, but it's hard to see through the flummery. 

About

Blue Labour is a force within the Labour Party committed to the politics of the common good. Our socialism is both radical and conservative. It is a politics about the work we do, the people we love, and the places to which we belong. 

Our starting point is the democratic renewal of our country. Blue Labour’s goal is a democratic self-governing society built upon the participation of its citizens in the exercise of power and its accountability. 

Our politics is a challenge to the liberal consensus of the capitalist order, but it does not belong to the revolutionary left. Its inheritance is the labour tradition.

It's hard to argue about any of this because it's just vacuous phraseology. Or maybe I'm too stupid to understand. Newton Dunn describes this as "economically left-wing and socially on the right". Maybe he should write their copy. Moving on:

Blue Labour began as a challenge to the liberal consensus of the capitalist order. Democracy was becoming an oligarchy with the liberal left in control of culture and the liberal right in control of the economy. 

Both Labour and the Conservatives shared a liberal contractual view of society. Instead of mutual loyalties binding human beings into families, groups and nations, Labour saw the individual and the state, the Conservatives saw the individual and the market. Neither spoke about the families and neighbourhoods we are born into, nor about our cultural and religious inheritances. Both overlooked the most basic bonds that hold individuals together in a society. 

In the 2019 general election the liberal consensus was broken. We are entering a new political era. However both parties are products of the liberal settlement. They remain substantially unchanged and so unprepared for the challenges ahead. 

The Blue in Blue Labour expresses our disenchantment with the progressive politics of the last few decades. Things do not always get better. Human life is dependent upon forces greater than our own selves. There will never be an end to human pain and suffering, but it can be made less. Politics is about hope and great achievements, but it is also about failure and tragedy.

This sounds awfully like Reform's (and MAGA's) nostalgic rhetoric. Anti-globalism, anti-statism, anti-growth, lots of antis. Glasman claims "I didn't realise the importance of 'again' in Make America Great Again until I went to Trump's inauguration".

I tried hard to find a policy outline for Blue Labour on their truly awful website. The nearest I could come to is this (forgive the lack of brevity):

Labour must rebuild our national economy. 

1.     Britain must reverse decades of deindustrialisation, to rebuild working-class communities and secure our national security in a new era of global uncertainty. There can be no rearmament without reindustrialisation, and no reindustrialisation without cheap energy. We need cheap, clean energy to bring down industrial energy prices, industrial policy to support industries of critical national importance, and regional policy to ensure all of Britain benefits.  

2.     Austerity was a disaster that hollowed out our state capacity and left communities abandoned. Years of historically low interest rates were wasted by Tory governments who refused to invest in the future and we are now paying the price. We should scrap the fiscal rules, in which economic sense and democratic politics are subordinate to faulty OBR forecasts, and invest in infrastructure and the public realm.

3.     Successive governments have sold off our public services and national assets and utilities, leaving us vulnerable and dependent on others. Privatisation has all too often led to extraction, mismanagement and waste. We should reconsider public ownership for public services like rail, utilities like water, and critical industries like steel.

4.     Buying an ordinary family house has become a struggle for even those on good salaries, excluding many young people from adulthood and parenthood. We have not built nearly enough houses, while immigration has radically increased demand. Government must enable more housebuilding, with the explicit objective of reducing house prices and rent as a proportion of incomes.

5.     Our tax system needs reform to reflect new realities, including that most value is tied up in land and assets rather than income. We should consider taxes on assets, and updating council tax bands to ensure it no longer disproportionately hits those in poorer parts of the country. 

Labour must restore the integrity of the sovereign nation. 

1.     Immigration is not a distraction or a culture war issue; it is the most fundamental of political questions, a cause of social fragmentation, and the basis of our broken political economy. We should drastically reduce immigration, reducing low-skill immigration by significantly raising salary thresholds; closing the corrupt student visa mill system; and ending the exploitation of the asylum system, if necessary prioritising domestic democratic politics over the rule of international lawyers. 

2.     Crime and antisocial behaviour are contributing to a sense that public order is breaking down, with working-class communities usually the victims. We must restore the trust and authority of our police force, clarifying its increasingly blurred mission, so that it can focus on the small number of repeat offenders who are responsible for the vast majority of crime. 

3.     We are proud of our multiracial democracy and we utterly reject divisive identity politics, which undermines the bonds of solidarity between those of different sexes, races and nationalities. We should legislate to root out DEI in hiring practices, sentencing decisions, and wherever else we find it in our public bodies.

Labour must restore the integrity of the state.

1.     The government does not run this country. We have handed over too much control to unaccountable QUANGOs and increasingly powerful courts with the power to block government policy. We should return decision-making to parliament, limiting the endlessly expanding power of judicial review and reforming or closing QUANGOs which make decisions which properly belong to the realm of democratic politics.

2.     The British state is bigger but less effective than ever. The prime minister is right that the civil service is sclerotic and needs reform, but we also need to end the scam of consultants ripping off the government and wasting huge sums of public money. We should restore state capacity by reforming our civil service and ending the corporate commissioning and consultancy racket. 

Labour’s covenant begins with these three political tasks. Their achievement will define the government’s ‘decade of renewal’ and shape the future of the country.

In amongst the generalisations there are probably some ideas that are worth considering but the biggest problem that isn't answered is "what then?" We get rid of half the civil service, net zero, immigration, the ECHR, fiscal rules; and what's left? Of course I recognise that we live in an era of disaffection, of low or no faith in governments and the signs are that those lead voters (or perhaps insurrectionists) to put their trust in those promising simplistic solutions. Unless I am misunderstanding Blue Labour I can't take this seriously.

I'm going to give the final word to JD Vance:

To return to the issue that motivated me to write this book, doing better requires that we acknowledge the role of culture. As the liberal senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan argued, “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society.” I agree, and my view that there will never be a purely government-based solution to the problems I write about has remained largely unchanged since Hillbilly Elegy came out. That said, I’m hardly a policy skeptic, and I think there is much more our governments could do to address these problems. Better policy requires better politics, however, and like many people, I find new reasons each day to wonder whether our politics are remotely up to the challenge. [and to repeat] To me, the fundamental question of our domestic politics over the next generation is how to continue to protect our society’s less fortunate while simultaneously enabling advancement and mobility for everyone.

Thankyou for taking the time to read my ramblings. I don't pretend to have solutions to the world's problems but am always willing to hear and read the views of others, of all persuasions.

** Glasman replied that the "ever more woke" Democrats were a lost cause.

Article 5

President Trump said yesterday that the key component of the NATO treaty - Article 5 - "depends on your definition...there's numerous definitions of Article 5, right?"

This of course is heresy to Western politicians and media, who have always assumed that the definition is clear that "an attack on one of us will be met by all the rest coming to our defence militarily". I recently listened to a podcast produced by Deborah Haynes for Sky News called The Wargame. There are five episodes and the scenario of an attack by Russia on the UK is acted out by a number of recently active politicians - Ben Wallace as Prime Minister, Jack Straw as Foreign Secretary, Amber Rudd as Home Secretary, Jim Murphy as Chancellor and others - and military experts. They meet in one room and a group representing Russia in other. Action takes place in real time.

The scenario starts with an attack on the Murmansk naval base in Northern Russia, probably by Chechen rebels but perhaps even by the Russians themselves. Russia of course accuses the Brits of doing it and threatens reprisals. And so on. Once Russian ships fire missiles at us, we naturally assume article 5 will be evoked and the Americans, French, Germans will weigh in with their planes, ships and special forces. But no. The American President calls on both sides to stop their "aggressive" actions. Eventually the Norwegians and Poles offer some kind of air support. And that's it.

I'm not going to bore you with anything more about the podcast except to say that it has (political?) agendas which become apparent:

• The UK's military is woefully weak
• Article 5 isn't worth the paper it's written on

To be fair, Haynes says right from the start that the situation has a 1% chance of actually happening. So we can take it with a pinch of salt, or we can consider the "truth" it exposes.

Let's have a look at the actual text of Article 5:

The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to restore and maintain international peace and security.

So it's "each of them...will assist...by taking...such action as it deems necessary". Not a very solid commitment. I suppose it comes down to trust. In previous US presidential incarnations there was an implicit confidence in Europe's reliance on the Americans to come to our rescue. I'm not sure there's any such confidence in the future after Trump's two terms are over; even a Democrat president might well think differently about Europe than we might imagine.

Then there's "in Europe or North America". So Iran's attack on a US base in Qatar doesn't count, nor would an attack on our aircraft carrier if it's in the Pacific, off the coast of Taiwan.

It makes you wonder whether Trump is right; it's all in the interpretation.

Shut up or suck up

How to deal with the 47th President of the United States? It's a problem national leaders have grappled with for six months now. It's gone from fawning (Starmer, Alexander Stubb) through mature assertion (Macron, Carney) to bemusement (Ramaphosa, "death, death, death") and belligerence (Zelensky, "you're gambling with World War III...it's going to be great television"). It doesn't appear to make any difference. Starmer's cringeworthy production of a letter from the King out of his pocket like a magician got us a tariff reduction to 10%. Here's how the others did:

Finland: 10% (no letter, no king)

France: 10% (no letter, definitely no king)

Canada: 25% (no letter, same king, no state visit)

South Africa: 35% (poor Cyril)

Ukraine: 10% (no letter, no punishment)

Today we saw the übermensch of cringe, Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte laying down the red carpet and prostrating (castrating?) himself on it in front of President God with this extraordinarily obsequious message:

Mr President, dear Donald,

Congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran, that was truly extraordinary, and something no-one else dared to do. It makes us all safer.

You are flying into another big success in The Hague this evening. It was not easy but we've got them all signed onto 5 percent!

Donald, you have driven us to a really, really important moment for America and Europe, and the world. You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done.

Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win.

Safe travels and see you at His Majesty's dinner!

- Mark Rutte

Ugh. Pass me the sick bucket. He gets paid €317,000 a year tax free for this bag of wind.

Supermajorities

23. That's the size of the majority as the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill (also known as the "Assisted Dying Bill") passed its Third Reading in the House of Commons. Voted For: 314, Against:291, Didn't Vote: probably around 37 once you exclude the Speaker and the 7 Sinn Fein members.

I do wonder whether such a narrow victory (less than 4%) is sufficient to endorse a highly contentious change to life in the UK. I always thought that the Brexit referendum, as a constitutional issue, should have required some kind of supermajority in order to pass. Typically in constitutional matters of all kinds - the constitution of your local tennis club, for example - something like a two-thirds majority is required to succeed. It's a protection against short term changes in people's opinions, unexpected consequences and even voter persuasion/manipulation. The Assisted Dying Bill is not a constitutional issue, it doesn't change the way our country is run but it fundamentally affects an aspect of our way of life, of our culture, maybe our understanding of our humanity. Most of all, once the change is made it's extremely difficult to reverse even if the consequences prove to be perverse (as some would say of Brexit).

I have always been ambivalent about this Bill, mostly because I cannot separate my own feelings on it (which I genuinely can't anticipate) from the "greater good" arguments which seem to emphasise the benefits for perhaps small numbers of people. It's the thought that I simply don't know how this will work in practice that would have me vote against it were I an MP. That isn't to say I'm against all change; I'm happy to see fundamental (in the sense that it is almost certainly irreversible) change if there is a huge proportion of informed opinion (and therefore, in Parliament, votes) in favour.

Most of what our elected representatives vote on is transactional: increase this tax now, we can change it later if fiscal circumstances change or a new government is voted in. A majority of 1 is OK. But generational change is different and in my opinion requires much greater support. Not 100%, that's not realistic and open to manipulation but some kind of supermajority that guarantees near-permanent approval, near-certainty that this is the right thing to do and future generations of MPs will almost certainly not seek to revoke it.

There are different kinds of supermajority definitions including combinations of minimum turnout, overall majorities of those eligible to vote (this Bill would have required 326 to pass on that measure), two-thirds or three-quarter majorities. In a UK-wide referendum, for example, it would be reasonable to require the majority consent of each of the four nations for fundamental change. Ask the SNP! I don't think our politicians give sufficient consideration to the mechanics of our (unwritten) constitution. It feel like "winging it" is a British tradition that we cherish.

I just don't think 23 is enough to wing it.

Remoralising

Zia Yusuf, the Reform UK chairman (at the time) said, in the aftermath of the party's strong showing in the recent local elections, that young people were being taught to "hate their country", they needed a "sense of pride" about the UK, as he said his party's mission would be to "remoralise" young people.

It's 30 or so years since I was a teacher, and I've never taught in a primary school, so I have no idea what pupils are taught nowadays but common sense would suggest that hating their country isn't part of it. Nor is stimulating a sense of pride in their country. More likely is that teachers are performing their duties to open their students' minds through thoughtful examination and analysis of facts.

There are two issues here. Firstly factual accuracy and context; the job of education is not to close people's minds but to present and explore in a balanced way the history of your own country, say. But there is also the hidden truth that the United Kingdom is a multiracial and multicultural society and not all of a school's pupils will regard the UK as "their" country. Is it not reasonable that young people whose families have strong Asian heritage should be encouraged to have pride in the lands of their parents as well as the land in which they were born? I suppose I should take Yusuf at his word; he didn't say pride about the UK exclusively.

But why pride at all? I'm British, having been born here of British parents, but I can't honestly say I feel proud to be British, any more than to be a European or a citizen of the world. I don't remember at school the issue of pride in my country came up at all. Maybe I missed that class; my secondary school History teacher was the most unpleasant person who ever taught me, and I failed his subject miserably.

I could talk about football here but not all my readers are interested so I'll go for cricket instead. Remember Norman Tebbit and his "cricket test"? I think it was in the 1990s that he used the phrase to suggest that it was necessary for South Asian and other immigrants to the UK to support England against, say, India in a test match. If they "failed" the test, they were insufficiently assimilated (his word, not mine).

Of course it's not unreasonable to expect immigrants to respect the culture and values of a country in which they choose to live. To learn the language, abide by both laws and customs, absorb and understand the history of their new country and, above all, integrate. Maybe inter-marry. Retain pride in both old and new heritages.

I had begun floundering here, because immigration is such a complex and treacherous issue to debate. Then along came Emma Duncan. She is a regular columnist in the Times, where she writes mostly on economic issues from - in my opinion - a centre right perspective. Today she wrote about Parallel Histories, an educational charity. She describes their teaching of controversial history using a dual-narrative methodology. A teenager states "the repeated refusal by Palestinian groups to accept the existence of Israel is a major obstacle to peace. There cannot be a negotiation when one side refuses to accept the other's existence." The student is then required to change sides and articulate contrary views: "Israel has to be accountable for its actions. Until then there will be no peace, just a surrender and the people of Palestine will never accept surrender disguised as diplomacy."

This sounds to me a better type of education than dog whistles about pride and hate.

Flight BA149

From time to time I explore the offerings on the Sky Documentaries channel. Last night I watched Flight 149: Hostage of War. There was a thorough review in the Guardian a few days ago so I'm just going to focus on a few essential points. It is centred around events on 2 August 1990, a date best known for the start of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

My default position for "revelations" of secret government plots is scepticism. Nevertheless some known facts exist:

• British Airways flight 149 left London Heathrow at 19:05 BST on 1 August 1990 en route to Kuala Lumpur with stops scheduled in Kuwait and Madras (now Chennai). The flight had been delayed from its original departure time of 18:00.
• The flight touched down in Kuwait at 04:13 local time on 2 August, by which time Iraq's invasion had begun.
• Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher stated in Parliament that the flight had landed before the invasion began. In 2021, however Foreign Office papers were declassified and released and showed that the UK government was not only aware that of the invasion before the flight's arrival time in Kuwait but that they "allowed" the flight to take off from London knowing that there was a risk the invasion would take place imminently. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss confirmed that the government had misled British Airways by not passing on a warning about the invasion.

I'm going to skip over the horrendous depictions of Iraqi behaviour in the film and move to the key assertion behind its focus on the class action being taken on behalf of 95 of the passengers against the UK government and British Airways, which is that there are suggestions that a "military looking" group of young men boarded late in London, deplaned first in Kuwait and may not have been included in the passenger manifest (which would have been illegal under UK law). 

The inference posed by the programme makers is that it's possible that the UK government had a group of special forces operatives (referred to as The Increment, a supposed group of former SAS soldiers and MI6 officers) added to the flight in order to operate undercover in Kuwait. On 2 October 1992, in response to a question on the issue, now-PM John Major said "I can confirm, however, that there were no British military personnel on board the flight". Of course, if the Increment exists and is a group of ex-military, this would have been a truthful statement.

Following a BBC documentary about the flight in 2007, there have been a number of claims from "reliable sources" that something of the kind actually occurred.

My inherent scepticism allows that (a) it's a plausible explanation (b) that it's equally likely to be untrue (c) even if it's true, isn't that what you'd expect a responsible government, about to go war, to do? (d) there are sometimes legitimate reasons for governments to lie (e) it may sometimes, for the "greater good", be possible to argue that sacrificing the liberty, and even perhaps the lives, of 367 innocent passengers in order to further the long term defeat of a ruthless dictator. As you can see, although it's a really well produced and purposeful film, I don't easily buy into the easy conspiracy theory, attractive and entertaining though it is.

I look forward to hearing of your opinions, if you watch it.

Long life or good life?

The Times recently had the following headline:

Weight-loss drug hailed as key to a longer life

I read the article. Sounds great, doesn't it? But there is no discussion as to whether living longer is a good idea.

I should say that personally I'd like to live as long as I can, mental and physical health permitting. But could that be at the expense of my grandchildren? 

As it stands, my 45 year old younger son will qualify for a state pension at the age of 68 (I got mine at 65). By the time he gets there, the date will probably have been moved higher. The longer people live, the longer they will have to work. It's not certain that ability to work - with brain or body - will match that. It's reasonable to assume that, in later years of life, healthcare costs will continue to be a burden on the country's finances.

Pensioner spending constituted 7.4% of UK GDP for the year ending March 2024. Long term forecasts are for pensioner spending to be 9.4% of GDP by 2063. At the same time it has become harder for our young people to get on the road to owning their own houses. The average age of first-time buyers was 30 to 31 in 2007, estimated to be around 33 to 34 now. But before 1990 the average was around 27. Wouldn't we like our grandchildren to get back to that?

By the way, a diversion: I asked ChatGPT for this data and its summary was:

before about 1990, the average age of a UK first-time buyer was below 30. Now, you're often pushing mid-30s, and without inherited wealth or family help, it’s bloody hard going.

Let me know if you want charts or exact numbers over time – the data exists but it's scattered across different housing surveys.

"bloody hard going"? Has ChatGPT got angry? I think that may have something to do with some experimentation I did with its settings. But "the data exists but it's scattered across different housing surveys" suggests it's a lot better than Google search - - or DuckDuckGo - at finding data. I said "do it" and it gave me data going back to 1960 when the average first-time buyer was 24 years old; it revealed its sources and the main source up to 2013 was the Post Office. I don't really understand that and asked ChatGPT why that was and it gave me a long convoluted answer about source data and collected data, which I won't bore you with.

As a country, we may have gone in the wrong direction and are continuing to do so. And it could get worse because pensioners turn out to vote and young people are increasingly unlikely to do so (76.4% of 18-24 year olds voted in 1964, 37% in 2024), meaning there's no incentive for politicians to move the dial towards the young, if they want to get elected. The young (even those who are now middle aged) have been hit with tuition fee debts, soaring house prices, increases in deposit requirements for mortgages and insecure work contracts while the old get inflation-proof pension increases. Is it any wonder we have a mental health crisis?

Our current government wants to give 16 and 17 year olds the vote. Don't expect them to turn out to vote for you unless you can show a long-term plan, a promise of a better future. Forget live-longer drugs; give today's youth some hope of a better tomorrow.

Cornish democracy

There was recently an election for the local council in Cornwall. These were the results:

Party	Councillors	% councillors	Votes	% votes
Reform UK	28	32.2	47846	29.1
Liberal Democrats	26	29.9	40259	24.5
Independents	16	18.4	22564	13.7
Conservative	7	8.0	25881	15.7
Labour	4	4.6	15100	9.2
Greens	3	3.4	6524	4.0
Mebyon Kernow	3	3.4	6408	3.9

So, who should run the council? A governing group would need 44 councillors for an overall majority. The exact number of Reform + Independents. Or maybe Reform + Conservatives + a few Independents.

As it turned out, no-one was willing to work with Reform. The Independents proposed a Liberal Democrat as leader and he won the support of 53 councillors with 23 abstentions. The remainder registered as Not Voted. Which I would have thought is the same as abstaining but maybe they couldn't get out of bed.

A cabinet was elected, comprising 4 LibDems and 4 Independents.

Is this how democracy is supposed to work? A party that has the largest number of councillors and was voted for by nearly a third of those who voted gets zero say in council policy for the next however many years?

It's a stitch-up, not democracy. Does anyone care?

Youth mobility

The proposed youth mobility scheme (which the Government calls a Youth Experience Scheme) between the UK and the EU excites the Brexiteers into a frenzy. "Free movement via the back door" and the like.

Let's study a bit of context here. Do you know how many countries that the UK has youth mobility agreements with already? It's 13, ranging from Australia where the annual quota is 40,000 to Andorra, where it's 100. (Surely Andorra is part of the EU? Apparently not; maybe they had an Andoxit). I imagine you might guess Canada and New Zealand as Commonwealth partners in such schemes but Uruguay? Where has that come from?

You'd have imagined that these deals would have been concluded by previous Labour governments. Not so, the Australia deal was negotiated by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as part of the rush to get credit for post-Brexit trade deals. As were those with New Zealand, Japan and many others, mostly I think as rollovers from previous EU deals with those countries. So none of this is new.

The details in these schemes show that they are typically for 18 to 35 year olds and limited to two years, although the Australia, New Zealand and Canada deals from January 2024 (Conservative government) allowed an extension of the two year visa by a further year. There is a requirement to have £2,350 in savings, pay a £776 healthcare surcharge - which I suppose entitles you to use the NHS - and an application fee of £319. So it's not cheap. You are entitled to work (and therefore pay taxes), be self-employed and set up a company (although not with employees) and study but not to bring family members or claim any public funds (benefits). The schemes are always reciprocal so the details are similar in other countries; in Australia it's called a Working Holiday Maker programme.

Because the length of stay is greater than one year, the incoming "youths" (can you really call a 35 year old a youth?) are included in the migration figures of the inbound country. Theoretically the impact on net migration is zero, provided numbers are in balance.  Are they typically in balance? I asked ChatGPT for some data for 2023. 

In 2023, approximately 23,000 individuals entered the United Kingdom under the Youth Mobility Scheme. The majority of these participants originated in Australia (9,900) and New Zealand (5,300). Regarding outbound participation, precise figures for UK citizens taking part in reciprocal youth mobility schemes abroad are not readily available. However, estimates suggest that in 2023 more than 26,000 young Britons participated in Australia's Working Holiday Maker program and an additional 8,000 engaged in New Zealand's equivalent scheme. These numbers indicate that the UK experienced a new outflow of youth mobility participants during that year.

We can conclude from all of this that:

• the numbers are small
• it's at least as likely as not that reciprocity means the net impact on UK net migration is minimal
• it's not cheap to do this, with considerable sums up front for visas, savings requirements and travel costs a good few thousands of pounds/dollars

In no way does this constitute "free movement". The Brexiteers need not worry on that score. However, it's likely that the scheme for our near neighbours in the EU (population 450 million, travel relatively easy and low cost, as against Australia, population 27 million, travel high cost) will be a different beast and could easily see 100,000 Youth Experience Scheme visitors arriving every year and, although a similar number will go the other way, those people will require housing, health care and other benefits. So it may be appropriate to have concerns.

My final point is about inequality. There are good reasons to characterise these schemes in practice as middle-class, for the better educated, with financial impediments to lower-paid, unskilled workers. I asked ChatGPT "is there any evidence to suggest youth mobility schemes are mostly for the educated middle class?"

Yes, there is strong evidence suggesting that YMS are disproportionately accessed by the educated middle class...this is supported by both academic research and government data [other sources: OECD and British Council].........Youth Mobility Schemes are not equally accessible. While they are technically open to many, the financial, linguistic and cultural capital required to participate results in a clear skew towards the educated middle class 

So there should be concern about that, not least politically where opposition to the schemes may come principally from political parties whose voter base has a high proportion that don't fit the requirements. The proposed scheme has not yet been fleshed out. When we know more, I'll have more to say.

The Bleedin' Obvious

There are some ideas that are so obviously stupid that it's not worth the effort setting out the arguments. Like sending asylum seekers to Rwanda. And Government-appointed football regulators.

The Government's White Paper is driven by a "fan led review". Have you ever seen a football fan, Mr Sunak**? These are morons who, bare chested in the middle of winter, stand up - blocking the view of those seated behind them - and yell obscenities at the opposition (and sometimes their own) players and the officials*. Obviously they should regulate football.

Governments wouldn't dream of interfering in other private businesses. Football isn't special. It's not a cultural icon that needs protection, like the Royal Opera House (don't get me onto that). Go and regulate an industry that's out of control, like electricity providers.

There may be an upside, though. When Kier Starmer, an Arsenal season ticket holder, becomes PM, he might appoint Jeremy Corbyn - another - to be Sports Minister, thus enabling a Golden Age of Gunners success. Let's do it!

* This pretty much accurately describes me in front of the TV watching football. Without the bare chest, obviously. Many years ago I stopped taking my young sons to football matches, because of the foul language and obnoxious behaviour. That of the fans too.

** I'm guessing that's a No.

Onshore Wind Farms

I'd have one in my garden if I had room. A wind turbine. I most definitely would not have a mini nuclear reactor.

I read recently that the UK government's energy review might include a proposal for people willing to live within sight of a wind turbine to get reduced, or free, electricity. I'm up for that; where do I sign up? Many people (mostly Conservative MPs) regard them as unsightly [UK transport secretary Grant Schapps yesterday: "eyesores"] but I actually think they are rather elegant. If a wind turbine were a sculpture, we'd all admire the beautiful lines with their slow, soothing rotation. There are a couple close to the A390 near me and when I see them as I drive through, it lifts my spirits. Could I have one with built-in calming music, please? And in pale green.

Ed Miliband, shadow climate change secretary yesterday described onshore wind as the "cheapest power available" but the government has had a moratorium on it since 2015.

Whereas the UK's nuclear reactor builds in recent decades have been disastrous in terms of cost overruns and poor price deals, and a full-scale conventional reactor takes years to build, the prospect for small modular reactors (SMRs) to provide power cheaper and sooner is apparently promising.

Our country's energy policy is frankly a mess. I am viscerally against nuclear power, because of the potential for catastrophe

but maybe SMRs (which presumably, being smaller, are potentially less catastrophic) could persuade me that the trade-off in terms of viability vs safety is worth it. One thing we should never be doing, in my opinion, is outsourcing our infrastructure ownership or operation to foreign companies. Not just Russia and China but France too. And new energy generation sources are now urgent.

I'm still not having one anywhere near me, though.

Why Are We So Angry?

We seem to have been living for years in a state of anger. Looking at the USA political scene from the outside, the country appears not only divided but in a particularly bitter and angry way since the lead up to the 2016 presidential election. At home in the UK, the 2016 Brexit referendum stirred a great deal of acrimony and that state persisted perhaps longer than it should have. This is not the usual partisan politics, it's a cacophonous battleground.

We seem to be permanently angry. With Downing Street parties, Prince Andrew, a footballer kicking a cat, John Bercow, Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion protests, footballers who take the knee, others who don't take the knee, statues, immigrants....... now Vladimir Putin is centre stage in our anger universe. And his oligarchical cronies who have the nerve to buy a mansion in Kensington or a football club in Chelsea. 

It's exhausting. And, I would argue, debilitating. Any psychologist would warn us, on a personal level, of the harmful effects of anger - whether momentary or permanent - and the need to deal with it. It feels obvious to me that it's the same on a national level. By which I mean that an angry country - and its citizenry -  is likely to be unhealthily divided, unproductive, displaying low self-esteem and confidence, and lacking clarity and focus. It's a recipe for stagnation at best, decline at worst.

I can't watch the TV news bulletins......yesterday's Times had its first 13 pages devoted to the war in Ukraine. I'm not for one moment denying the seriousness for that country; my issue is that the populace of Britain is being wound up to be angry. By the media, almost as an arm of the state. "People of the United Kingdom, you must be angry!". We've had it before: most recently those parties, endlessly, day after day. 

I don't want to be angry, and I don't welcome the suggestion that I should feel anger. Maybe I should build a calming playlist on Spotify. That might do it.

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” [Mark Twain]

“Angry people are not always wise.” [Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice]

The Spell of the capital

Capital cities cast a spell over their countries. They are magnets, drawing to them money, culture, tourism, commerce and, in the case of London, Russian oligarchs and their 'unexplained' wealth (see Catherine Belton's Putin's People for her explanations), houses, yachts and the GRU. And now sanctions. Because of a country whose capital city's name has undergone a makeover. All my long life I have known that Ukraine's capital is Kiev. No longer. It's now Kyiv. Why?

I learned in school that the capital of China was Peking. We had to start using Beijing as its name in about 1979. I know, that's a post-colonial transliteration thing but worth mentioning. Maybe Kyiv is too.

Ho Chi Minh City used to be known as Saigon until the locals heard the musical Miss Saigon and hated it. Claude-Michel Schönberg flatly refused to rename it Miss Ho Chi Minh City. OK, it's not the capital; just thought you'd like to know.

I'm tempted to sneer at the fact that New Delhi is no longer new but it appears that ND is a district within what Wikipedia calls the 'megacity' of Delhi.

Capital cities seem to be a root cause of inequality within a country. What if we (the UK) declared that from now on Middlesbrough is our capital? Would that city shoot from #1 in the 'most deprived places in the UK' list of the highly esteemed Daily Mirror right up to #1 in their 'least deprived' list? Surely worth a go. If it works, we could move the capital around the country every ten years [this happens in Dido's Phoenicia in Civilization VI] and reap the benefits of capitalisation. Memo to Michael Gove, Secretary of State responsible for the government's 'levelling up' strategy.

Anyway, I'm off to the opera in Middlesbrough, followed tomorrow by a visit to the Middlesbrough Tate and dinner at the Middlesbrough Ritz. See, it's working already.

Oh and no, I'm not meaning to make light of the lot of the people of Ukraine - or those of other currently war-torn countries: Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Myanmar (let me know if I have omitted your country).

Federalist Paper No. 9

The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection is the title of No. 9 in the series of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, eventually titled the Federalist Papers and setting the foundation of the United States constitution. In No.9 Hamilton argues "A FIRM Union will be of the utmost moment to the peace and liberty of the States, as a barrier against domestic faction and insurrection", interpreted by some as an argument against political parties. P. J. O'Rourke [see below] claims that Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, presages the 'tyranny' of today's two political parties in the US. Madison wrote ("with eerie prescience ... [describing] our Democratic and Republican presidential primaries and caucuses 228 years into the future", according to O'Rourke):

So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.

It seems the Founding Fathers were generally not in favour of political parties. According to history.com, in an essay by Sarah Pruitt entitled The Founding Fathers Feared Political Factions Would Tear the Nation Apart, Alexander Hamilton once called political parties “the most fatal disease” of popular governments. According to O'Rourke, Thomas Jefferson claimed to oppose political parties and George Washington "detested political parties and didn't belong to one". 

I learned all this from a book I'm reading entitled How the Hell Did This Happen? by the afore-mentioned P. J. O'Rourke, of whom I hadn't heard until he died recently. Whereupon a number of political columnists whose writings I enjoy lauded him and quoted from his works. O'Rourke was a "political satirist" who wrote pieces - of a style of mini essays or (as I would say) blog posts - for various American publications.

How the Hell Did This Happen? - subtitled A Cautionary Tale of American Democracy - is a collection of 30 such pieces on the subject of the 2016 Presidential Election, from the early primaries until the election itself. This was the Trump vs Clinton election, which both candidates won - Hillary simply got more votes than Donald but apparently that wasn't good enough.

O'Rourke himself is a Republican supporter, although from what he describes as the "sane and moderate" wing of the party (In a later book he talks of being, politically, of the 'far-middle'). He mercilessly mocks the candidates of both parties who line up to attempt to win their party's nomination. As far as the Republican candidates are concerned, it's a bit like Jeff Daniels mouthing Aaron Sorkin's anti Tea Party rants in The Newsroom.

Perry, Santorum, Walker, Webb, Chafee, Pataki, Huckabee, Jindal, Graham, O'Malley, Paul, Fiorina, Biden, Bush, Christie, Carson, Rubio, Cruz, Kasich, Sanders, Clinton and Trump. That's not a list of presidential candidates. That's the worst law firm in the world.

Rubio is the least insane candidate (low bar) with the best chance (faint hope) of actually beating Hillary.

... typical of modern Americans is Trump's bad taste ... he puts his own individual stamp on gaucherie.

... the candidate who was so far ahead of Hillary that we didn't know who it was yet was the screwy-kablooey commander of the Vermont-Cong, Senator Bernie Sanders.

Claiming, as [Mike] Huckabee did on July 26, that the president of the United States "will take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven" is not a cogent critique of the Iran nuclear deal however bad the deal is.

[Biden] told the House Democratic Caucus, "If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, there's still a 30% chance we're going to get it wrong".

Maybe Carly Fiorina could run America the way she ran Hewlett-Packard ... Between July 1999 and February 2005, when Carly was CEO, H-P's stock price fell 65 per cent.

Members of the electorate would go into the ballot booth, see the two names Clinton and Bush and think to themselves "Gosh, I'm getting forgetful. I did this already".

This is a very entertaining, amusing and beautifully written book. Not a page goes by without a reminder of how witty and insightful the author is. These are pieces I wish I could have written.

In the final pages, The Revolt Against The Elites, O'Rourke discusses how we (it applies not just to the USA) are "daunted at the pace of material change, unnerved over social transfigurations,  fretful about economic instability, and terrified by terrorism." He concludes ...

Fear is a bad schoolmarm. We've got a monster at the blackboard. How can we learn even 1 + 1 when all we can think is, "EEEK! Teacher is huge and slimy and has tentacles and two ugly heads!"

So we turn to the big, stupid bully at the back of the classroom. 

Reader suggestions sought

Consider this.

Boris Johnson, an innately radical politician, leads an innately conservative party.

Keir Starmer, an innately conservative politician, leads an innately radical party.

It makes no sense. They should swap. Then what ...?

You're probably right, Paul

Last July I went to my local furniture store to find a new mattress. I came out having ordered a full package of bed, mattress and headboard. Which says much for (a) their marketing tactics and (b) my gullibility. A few weeks later came the delivery, which was fine except ... no headboard . Fast forward a few months and the headboard arrived but unfortunately wasn't the correct one. Thence to November: another headboard which ... had the wrong screw holes. Today (nearly 7 months after my order) yet another replacement arrived and ... you've got it, it was the wrong colour. As it happens I don't think I would have noticed if the delivery guys hadn't pointed it out, so I said "that's fine; I'll take it".

Anyway, I'm not going to tell you about that, as this is a serious blog not a diary of the details of my unremarkable and mundane life. Instead I'm going to talk about Paul Keating who was born 2 days after me. The former Australian Prime Minister recently grandly announced his opinion that Britain “suffers delusions of grandeur and relevance deprivation”.

I think that's probably true. Further, I thought it long before he did. Not saying he's been influenced by my blog but you never know. If you're out there Paul give us a comment. Now Keating is a long-standing supporter of an Australian republic, so perhaps you'd expect that from him. On this occasion he was incensed by remarks by UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss that China could engage in military aggression in the Pacific as "nothing short of demented".

"The reality is Britain does not add up to a row of beans when it comes to East Asia. Britain took its main battle fleet out of East Asia in 1904 and finally packed it in with its ‘East of Suez’ policy in the 1970s. And it has never been back."

The truth, of course, is that Britain has always been guilty of overreach. Post-Empire we are a small country with a much diminished military and a couple of big bang nukes which no sane Prime Minister would ever use. Perfidious Albion is the master of bluster and bluff. Vladimir Putin will be shaking in his boots.

Government ministers are terribly fond of saying that "Britain is the best ... the UK was the first ..." in a vain attempt to believe we are still important in the world. "Best soft power ... national health service which is the envy of the world ... the Premier League is the best in Europe ...  leading the way ..." It's embarrassing. And mostly incorrect. Most of all, it's patronising to the rest of the world.

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a disorder where people with this condition have an inflated idea of themselves and a need for lots of attention from other people. Sounds like us as a nation? No wonder no-one likes us ("bloody patronising poms"). Time to settle down, people, know our place and ... get rich. Like the Swiss.

I quite like my country; I'm happy living here, although I believe that, all other things being equal, I'd be just as happy in many of the world's countries. By any definition of a patriot, I am probably not one. The Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore, the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (in 1913) wrote "I am willing to serve my country, but my worship I reserve for Right which is far greater than my country. To worship my country as a god is to bring a curse upon it."

Looking forward to sitting up against my headboard tonight, reading a book which I shall tell you about shortly.

With whom are we most angry?

Maybe contemptuous of, rather than angry with ...

Novax Djokovic?

The Serbian Government?

Boris and Carrie?

His Royal Humbug who marched his troops up to the top of the hill?

The inventor of the Platinum Pudding idea?

I'm going for Martin Reynolds, the principal private secretary to the Prime Minister. His crime? Being stingy. "Bring your own booze"? What kind of party host does that? A mean one, that's who.

And no, that's not a misprint, Novax.

Three votes

Obviously all those political bloggers out there will be analysing the result of the UK's North Shropshire parliamentary by-election. Speculating and raising questions such as:

• Is this a typical mid term by-election where voters like to give the government of the day a good kicking and then revert to their usual loyalty in a general election?
• Is a margin of nearly 6,000 votes (Lib Dem over Conservative) much greater than the expected tight call?
• Are the Lib Dems back?
• Is Boris a gonner?
• Is Labour irrelevant in this kind of rural constituency?
• Did Reform UK and UKIP takes votes totally from the Conservatives?
• Surely the "Party Party" candidate should have won this contest hands down?

Not me.

I'm much more interested in Yolande Kenward.

Yolande, standing for election without any party affiliation, received three votes.

Putting this into perspective, to be accepted as a candidate in a parliamentary election, you need to (politically ambitious readers need to know this):

• be a British or Irish citizen, or from certain Commonwealth countries
• be over 18
• not be in the police, the military, civil service or judiciary
• not be bankrupt
• pay £500 deposit
• be nominated by 10 registered voters in the  constituency

If you get at least 5% of the votes cast - that would have been 1,901 in this by-election - you will get your £500 back.

Yolande founded the Patient Support Trust in 2000. Its aims are broadly to support the NHS as a fully publicly funded, free service with particular emphasis on the rights of patients, especially children. She has stood for election to various bodies, and in various constituencies, previously in what seems to be a concerted effort to publicise her causes.

Yolande appears not to be resident in North Shropshire - she hails from Maidstone in Kent - so the 10 nominations don't include her. So she has 10 mates, seven of whom deserted her when the actual votes were cast. Shame on you deceivers!

At £500 a pop, garnering next to no support, it seems an expensive way to use your advertising budget. You won't catch me doing it any time soon.

Do turkeys vote for Christmas?

There is a question in the wind: should MPs be allowed to have another job at the same time? And who is going to decide the answer to that? You've got it - the MPs themselves! What do you think they will decide? Do turkeys vote for Christmas?

If the major supermarkets got together to agree the selling prices of their goods, that would be a cartel and would be referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. If all the local plumbers colluded to set rates, we wouldn't allow it; we'd find someone else to do the job.

MPs already have two jobs: as constituency MPs and as legislators. It has long been my view that these functions should be separated. There is no reason why someone who listens to their constituents and helps to solve their problems should be a representative of a political party. It's a non partisan role. We should elect these people solely to perform that function; they should be independent of party and should have the constitutional right to meet Government Ministers to represent the views, issue and problems of the people of their areas. Being elected as a legislator, on the other hand, would follow the current practice. But we wouldn't need so many of them; just enough to populate Ministerial offices and their opposition counterparts, together with the membership of select committees. Given that the resulting fewer people involved - say 250 instead of the current 650 - would all be busy doing their legislative work, it would be legitimate to ban them taking second jobs.

One of the arguments about MPs (basic salary: £81,932 p.a.) having a second job is that some of those, for instance qualified doctors spending some time each week helping out the understaffed NHS, are more worthy than the obviously freeloading consultants, barristers and the like. I say No! If you want to be a doctor, be one and don't become an MP. One or the other. This is the 21st century, people!

If you say "only certain types of second jobs" or "yes but limited in some way" you create loopholes which will inevitably be used.

Another argument is that doing outside work makes you more rounded, better informed and more effective members of our political community. What, like the current lot? Yeah, that's working well.

"Lots of professional people wouldn't want to become MPs if they couldn't continue in their professions". Good riddance then.

So if MPs are too personally involved to be able to honestly vote on the question of second jobs, who should decide? We should. I'd go for a quick, binding referendum: "Should MPs have second jobs? Yes or No". If the answer is Yes, a supplementary referendum to determine the limits would be held and the results would be binding. We would need a Parliamentary Bill to:

• Make the outcomes of such referendums binding
• Allow supplementary referendums, dependent on the outcome of a primary referendum
• Issue all households with a Referendum Voting Machine so that they could be held almost instantaneously

Cloud cuckoo land? In the USA, lots of states have referendums and various other instruments for citizens to decide on important issues. If we want to do it, we can do so. Get on with it!