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This low trust society stuff

So, I took a car off to a garage to get it fixed. 3 months back. Kept calling, asking for it back. Oh, I’m in hospital, I’m ill, I’ll bring it around etc.

Finally go to the police. No, not really reporting it stolen, not yet, but I’d like some help getting it back. Some back and forth (my Portuguese, their English, we got there) and why not, say, the police phone the bloke who has it and mutter something about really, time to return it.

So, they ask a bit more and I say it’s this fat Indian bloke, with a beard.

Ah, him! He’s living in a car behind Cafe P. We know him.

Cafe P is 1 km from my house. But in a little back street, you’d not see it without knowing what you’re looking for.

So, the Indian mechanic (he used to work for the garage I’d used before, the garage closed) had been living in my car for three months. While fobbing me off.

Ho well, there’s a lesson for Timmy. As it happens a bloke I know around here, vaguely, saw this going on, came over to chat. Drove me off to another local garage where we organised that the repair work will be done, the MoT etc. Drove me back, we picked up the key from the police who had got it from the Indian, flat battery. Another bloke raced off, got leads, came back, started the car up. Off we drove to the garage, dropped the car off, first bloke then dropped me home.

OK, etc, etc. Low trust society – the Indian. High trust, the local P.

Interesting little lesson.

Anyway, the last bit, and I swear blind I am not making this up. As I’m leaving the Indian leans over and says “If you need more work done on your car just let me know.”

No fucking shame about it at all.

Joyous no, really joyous

For these purposes, the Office for National Statistics has defined “unaffordable” as requiring that a person spend more than thirty per cent of gross pay on housing.

It makes no sense at all that people doing essential work cannot afford to live in a place of their own – even if it is very small.

The government wonders why young people are alienated. This is, amongst many things, the reason why.

OK, seems fair enough so far.

And the answer is not to build ever more new houses.

Well, isn’t this a lovely new economics? Increasing supply does not reduce prices!

There are two answers. One is to tax residential property, at least in final disposal, because it is the under-taxation of home ownership and the continuing generosity of tax reliefs for buy-to-let, which continues to deny young people the chance to have an affordable place to live.

But MOAR TAX will reduce prices.

The lithium boom is now over so surely it’s got cheap enough again to solve Spud’s problems?

Eh?

Breaches of the DMA can result in companies being fined 10% of worldwide revenue, or 20% if they reoffend. Based on Apple’s 2024 revenue of $391bn (£301bn), the maximum fine would be nearly $80bn.
…
The commission told Apple it must make its operating systems available to devices made by competitors, such as smartphones and wireless headphones, or else face the prospect of investigations and fines.

Apple must allow competitors to use/sell/load iOS? Or be fined $80 billion?

What?

Woot! Woot!

Greenpeace must pay at least $660m over Dakota pipeline protests, says jury
Non-profit, which will appeal decision, says lawsuits like this are aimed at ‘destroying the right to peaceful protest’

That’ll larn ’em.

Ooooh! A plan!

Scotland’s last remaining oil refinery could be used to turn pine trees into petrol under a £225m taxpayer-funded plan proposed by Ed Miliband.

Under the scheme, timber harvested in Scotland would be taken to the site of the Grangemouth refinery to be “fermented” into bioethanol for blending into fuel, or used to produce chemicals and cosmetics.

It’s a shit plan but this is Ed of course. Also, we know it’s a shit plan because it’s to be taxpayer-funded. A good plan would be done without that drain on our wallets.

Ah! Opportunity!

Donald Trump’s attacks on lawyers risk undermining Britain’s legal system, the Law Society of England and Wales has warned.

Richard Atkinson, the head of the 200-year-old professional body, has criticised the US president’s recent crackdown on some of America’s biggest law firms over their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.

He said the US government’s decision to investigate law firms on the basis of their DEI programmes represented “a flagrant disregard for the fundamental principle of the rule of law”, which serves as the “bedrock of freedom and justice worldwide”.

Mr Atkinson said: “The Law Society stands by our US colleagues being targeted by the US government in respect of their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Middling performer kicked out to grass in the professional insitute sees opportunity for grandstanding.

Takes it.

We’ll have film at 11.

This is more than a little exaggeration

Since winning bronze at last year’s Paris Olympics with the United States sevens team, Ilona Maher has embarked on a never-ending roller-coaster ride.

She has graced red carpets, dazzled on chat shows, won industry awards and acquired a growing portfolio of sponsorship deals, all of which have elevated her to a supersonic level of stardom. Not since Jonah Lomu burst onto the scene with his headline performances for New Zealand in the mid-Nineties has the world been this infatuated with a rugby player.

Not really, no.

Ilona Maher: Rugby’s biggest star since Jonah Lomu

Big fish, small pond, yes. Supersonic stardom? That’s overegging it more than a little…..

These tossers c’n fuck off ‘n’ all

Climate change can be used to teach children about race, a national curriculum review has been told.

Global warming should be used to allow teachers and pupils to “explore conversations about race”, according to the Runnymede Trust.

The race equality think tank told a review into the curriculum commissioned by Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, that such discussions would allow pupils to discuss more openly the impact of race on them and its relationship to “wider society”.

We’ll introduce such propagandising grift to the curriculum once we’ve returned to a system that gets every 12 year old up to functional literacy and numeracy, shall we? Even, have this shit as a little add on once that is done rather than the core function of the education sector?

This might not be going far enough

Young men are being drawn to toxic masculinity because schools are not “boy-positive”, a report has claimed.

Research by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) has found men are being left behind in society because they underachieve at school.

It estimated that about half a million men have missed out on higher education in the past decade.

The report warns of the risk that these “undereducated men” will be driven towards “political extremes” if male underachievement in schools is not resolved.

The masculine virtues – and yes, there are some – are not really appreciated by hte current set up of society. This is why so many young men – OK, boys – are drugged up to the eyeballs so thatthey don;t act in a way that previous generations would accept as boys simply being boys.

There’s nothing intellectually wrong with a feminised society – it just doesn’t have boy shaped holes in it. Which is a problem when 50% of the people entering that society are going to be boys.

Yes, yes, obviously it’s possible to go to far – Tate! = with this but there’s a goodly amount of truth to it all the same.

Oh Aye?

A Bangladeshi court has issued a travel ban on Tulip Siddiq, the former Treasury minister.

The former Treasury minister, who is currently living in the UK, would not be allowed to leave Bangladesh if she entered the country.

The court also ordered the seizure of a flat in Dhaka previously owned by the Labour MP before she transferred it to her sister.

All, wholly, allegations and nothing more, of course. But also the UK’s anti-corruption minister at one point…..

Myself, I’d warn Gazza

This has not been Gary’s position to date, and I warmly welcome the change of heart because I think it is necessary and because it makes the prospect of effecting change very much higher.

It also creates a much stronger common ground between us because we both absolutely agree that inequality is the fundamental cause of many of our problems in the UK and that government action to tackle this is essential, with taxation being by far the most effective tool available for this purpose.

If The Sage of Ely thinks you’re onto something then you should realise that you’re wrong.

Rhiannon

Post-traumatic stress disorder – a diagnosis I have had in the past – is another one of those conditions people like to claim isn’t real.

Oh. Rilly?

Is “overdiagnosis” the new culture-war buzzword of choice? I had been wondering this for a while, and then Wes Streeting claimed on Sunday that there is an “overdiagnosis” of some mental health conditions. Now I am certain it is.

I first noticed the term being used in relation to anxiety and depression, then attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and most recently autism. Two books on overdiagnosis, Suzanne O’Sullivan’s The Age of Diagnosis and Searching for Normal by Sami Timimi, have garnered attention across the media, adding fuel to a new fire that we might characterise as “Bloody everyone has a label these days, don’t they?”.

This is not to say that these authors and medical professionals don’t have valid points, or that the medicalisation of societal issues isn’t of concern. We all know how “therapy speak” has leached into public discourse, how teens are now throwing around terms such as “trauma response” and “stimming” – lifted from earnest TikToks – with a confidence that must seem startling to some of their elders, who grew up with the idea that you only went to a shrink or a counsellor if there was something “wrong” with you, or you were about to get divorced.

As the lady once shouted at me in outrage, she’s a national columnist at The Guardian, doncha’ know? Thoroughly middle class bint on a good whack and with media fame!

PTSD?

So, well, how much is this?

I am a single father and get personal independence payments (Pip). I have mental health issues and was diagnosed with autism towards the end of the Covid pandemic. I also receive universal credit, getting the limited capability for work-related activity element, which, we now know, will be cut for new claimants and frozen for existing ones like me. As inflation continues to rise, the freeze will mean that my income falls and I’m left struggling even harder to make ends meet.

How much will someone in that position actually be getting? For of course The G doesn;t give us that number. So, how much is it?

Typical Guardian fuckwit

What does Maga-land look like? Let me show you America’s unbeautiful suburban sprawl
Alexander Hurst

I drove 2,000 miles with a French friend across my home country – and saw the endless nowhere land that is the crucible of Trumpism

“But Dear God, do you see what happens when the proles have their own money they can spend as they like? They want houses with gardens, a patio deck, a pool! Shops full of things, cars so they can go wherever, anywhen! This is why we have to take control, force them back into hovels where they’ll be happy nibbling their raw turnip.

After all, if they, the working class, get all that then what market will there be for our own status as bourgeois?”

That is Hurst’s point. And he can fuck off along with that horse he rode in on.

Robert Reich really is a ghastly little shit

To friends of democracy around the world: we need your help.

You know that the Trump regime is brutally attacking US democracy. Most of us did not vote for Donald Trump (half of us didn’t even vote in the 2024 election). But he feels he has a mandate to take a wrecking ball to the constitution.

Like most bullies, the regime can be constrained only if everyone stands up to the bullying – including you.

First, if you are considering a trip to the United States, please reconsider. Why reward Trump’s America with your tourist dollars?

Spending by non-Americans in the United States is a significant source of tax revenue and a major “export” of this nation. There’s no reason for you to indirectly support Trump’s economy.

Yep. He wants those minimum wage workers at Disneyland/world laid off because Orange Man Bad won a free and fair election.

Putrid little shit.

Not sure this shows what the journo thinks it does

An analyst has been accused of using working-from-home rules to make nearly £1 million from insider trading.

Redinel Korfuzi, 37, a former Janus Henderson research analyst, denies money laundering and conspiracy to commit insider dealing.

OK, naughty boy etc etc.

They are said to have netted £963,000 in relation to 11 companies’ shares including Daimler, Jet2 and THG and Russian tech firm Mail.ru, now known as VK. Mr Korfuzi is accused of misusing confidential information on these companies.

Jamie Ross, who worked with Mr Korfuzi at Janus Henderson on European equities, …………The fund manager was then taken through a list of the potential transactions through which Korfuzi is said to have profited through confidential information.

Asked about a transaction involving Mail.ru, a personal email service, between September 22 and October 2, 2020, Mr Ross said he had “initial interest” in the transaction but “would have quickly lost that interest when I found out the aim of the company”.

Mr Forster asked: “In terms of Mr Korfuzi’s interest, would you have expected him to show much interest in this, in your view of it?”

Mr Ross replied: “It would have been very clear to him this was not something I would have sanctioned, and was an investment I would not have been interested in.”

The prosecutor then asked Mr Ross about a transaction involving Jet2, between February 4 and February 12, 2021. Mr Ross replied that Janus Henderson did not have a position on the package holiday company, adding that the proposed transaction would not have interested him at all.

Yes, of course this is all going to be more complicated etc. But so far the coworker/manager seems to be saying that whatever he did with those two companies wasn’t insider – or at lesat, not abuse of the Janus position because they didn’t have an interest.

Cheap promise really

Donald Trump has pledged to reverse America’s anti-fossil fuel policy and open hundreds more coal-fired power plants in an effort to make US industry more competitive with China.

He wants to halt the closures of coal plants – the “dirtiest” form of power generation – driven by environmental regulations, that have shut down hundreds of power stations and which threaten 120 more.

Everyone thinking of spending money is fully aware that the next administration might not look so kindly upon coal plants. Given the price of frack natural gas I’m not sure there’s all that much in it between the two forms anyway.

That extant plants should not be forced to close early, yes, both that’ll happen and should also happen. But new ones? I think they’ll be in short supply TBH.

Ah, this is the political definition of nothing then?

Rachel Reeves’ National Insurance tax raid will not raise “a single penny” for public services, according to analysis by the shadow chancellor.

Businesses were hit with an increase in employers’ NI from 13.8 per cent to 15 per cent in October’s Budget, with the aim of raising £25.7 billion a year.

But Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor, claimed the Chancellor’s “economic mismanagement” meant all the expected money either was not raised in the first place or has been frittered away.

So, some will indeed be raised it’ll just not be spent upon what you think it should be?

He said: “The Chancellor promised £25 billion from her jobs tax, but we’re likely to end up with less money for our public services because of Labour’s economic mismanagement.

Much of the mismanagement would have happened without the tax, no?

We need to know the year here

From Western Bloke (formerly Bloke on M4):

I saw Billy Ocean live. I wouldn’t describe myself as a big fan, but the gig was at the park near me and not very expensive, so I went and he was great.

OK. So which year was that? For we’ve also a recently arrived commentator around here, Norman. Who played in Billy Ocean’s touring band. So, did one commentator see the other live?

Oh, right

The overwhelming impression left by all this is that the DWP is making a change not justified by evidence to support a demand for cuts from HM Treasury that cannot be supported by estimated beneficial evidence of gains resulting from the action.

This is austerity, in other words, imposed by choice on – as The Guardian describes them – some of the UK’s most severely disabled people.

I hope that judicial review is brought. I’ll be chipping in towards the costs if it happens. Bullies picking on the most vulnerable deserve to be challenged.

So electoral politics doesn’t have the power to vary things then. Good to know.