Enter the Commissars

I return from a hol to find ... the Commissars Commissioners that are to run Croydon have been installed, and already started calling the shots.  Some background.

In the late 2010s Croydon, a marginal borough that has yo-yo'd between Tory and Labour since the 1960s, fell into the hands of a baleful Labour regime.  At the time we had the "Cabinet" system in place and the Leader of the Council, a paradigm case of the 'four-letter man' as my father would have termed him, ran both his cabinet and indeed the whole borough as a personal fiefdom.  Well, when you have a dictator, you'd better hope his judgement is good.  This man's judgement was appalling (for present purposes we needn't get into the cronyism and third-world-style corruption that went with it) and he duly bankrupted the borough - literally.  (Total incompetence married to property speculation, you won't be surprised to learn.)

In order to clean this out politically, residents petitioned successfully for a switch to the "Mayoral" system: the resulting referendum was a resounding win for the new system and in due course a Tory was elected Executive Mayor.  I've recounted some of this story before, and this chap  & his regime turned out to be more diligent and dynamic than I'd feared might be the case when I wrote about it last.

But his task was always gargantuan, since most of the (remaining) council services are required to be provided by statute, so where can seriously big cuts be found, and debt repaid?  The brough remains technically bankrupt, though "essential services" are being maintained, as the law requires.

Anyhow, whether for procedural or narrowly political** reasons, Starmer's government has decided to send in the commissioners.  This is a baleful development.  We live in an age where democracy seems to be falling out of favour, but experience of the alternatives might cause some to revisit that argument.  If not elected governance, what do you get?  Dictatorship, or commissioners at every level.  The priesthood.  Unelected; unaccountable; un-ejectable.  

More from South London in due course.

ND

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**Several leading Croydon Labour movers and shakers currently hold positions in Starmer's coterie, and the suspicion must be that they plan this as a maneouvre to get a Labour mayor elected in the borough next year. 

Naming Corbyn's New Party

So old gaffer Corbyn is inviting suggestions for names for his and Zarah Sultana's new leftie-Islamist micro-party.  He wants it to be "short, inclusive, and effective in bringing people in".

First thoughts must surely be:

• The People's Popular Front for the Liberation of Bedsitland
• The Popular Front for the People's Liberation of Bedsitland
• The Bedsitland People's Popular Liberation Front
• The Popular Liberation Front for the People of Bedsitland

One of those should surely be inclusive: they all cover the main ground.  But he's right that 'short' is also probably necessary to be effective in the age of TikTok when attention-spans, not to mention reading ages, might not run to a name with nine words.  We all remember how effective "Respect" was.

Bearing that in mind, and other salient factors, on balance I feel they should go with

• 'Splitters'

That has a nice, catchy ring to it, plus some deep and relevant political baggage for those of an historical bent.  Come to think about it, that's probably Sultana under that fetching black garb - and indeed Jeremy himself in the final few frames of this famous Party Political Broadcast ...

ND

Working From Home. WTF, is this still an issue?

A fear of being ordered back to the office is having an impact on workers’ wellbeing, according to a poll, after a string of companies issued return-to-office mandates. More than a third (38%) of workers surveyed said recent news stories about companies hardening their stance on office attendance had negatively affected their wellbeing 

Is this still an issue?  Stay flexible, certainly, and make best use of technology.  That said, get everyone back into the office ASAP, for the bulk of their working time.  How else are the youngsters to learn, whatever is their trade?  How else is proper human contact and continuous learning at all ages - the bedrock of practical human existence - to be maintained?  We are social animals**, and let no one think otherwise; nor any right-thinking organisation that proposes to survive as a viable, thriving, enduring enterprise. 

Anyone wedded to wholesale homeworking is begging to be AI'd out of existence, and rapidly, too.  On a purely Drawinian basis, any organisation continuing to tolerate it is not destined to flourish.  

Or it's a government department, of course ...

ND

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** OK, we all know exceptions ...

UK Biobank - quite the national jewel

Many years ago at dinner I was sitting next to [shameless name-drop alert] Elliot Richardson.  We were talking about the limits of the proper roles for government, and he suggested that one of the few legitimate activities government could engage in was the mass collection and provision of fundamental data, using the powers to collect data that only government ever really has.  UK Biobank, though now essentially privatised under Oxford University, might be though of as one such public endeavour.

For those who've never heard of it, it was set up 20 years ago, with private sector as well as public sector stakeholders from the start.  But its links with the NHS are so central to its work, I think it's fair to describe it as a public venture.   500,000 initial volunteers in the age-range 40-69 went through a day's initial screening on all manner of bodily parameters, with occasional follow-up studies subsequently (via questionnaire) and - here's the critical bit - ongoing tracking of their subsequent medical histories from the NHS.  It so happens I was one of the randomly-invited pool[1], and have followed developments with interest.  Obviously we are dying off a bit over time (and emigrating beyond the reach of the NHS), but the extant pool is still very large.

Bona fide scholars from anywhere in the world can apply for access to the gargantuan data-set, with details of their proposed study, large numbers of which have been conducted.  A while back I attended a presentation on what can be achieved with such a large database, and it's impressive.  In terms of statistical significant and validity, the difference between a sample of (say) 10,000 on a particular issue is  greater than two orders of magnitude better than a sample of 100.

The latest project has been to conduct very thorough whole-body and cerebral scanning of 100,000 participants, coupled with lengthy cognitive testing on the same day, and two weeks of heart monitoring thereafter.  This is scanning on an industrial scale, and the efficiency of their process was impressive: I've just taken part in that myself.  It was very interesting, and some of it fun, albeit that sadly you don't get given your cognitive results.

The whole thing is highly regarded world-wide, as well it might be.  A few years ago the Chinese mooted doing one of their own, but so far as I know there's been no follow-through.   This is the kind of thing we (still) do uniquely well.   

ND

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[1] I say 'random', but of course the pool was designed to be a representative cross-section of the UK population. 

Votes for 16-17's: very bad politics on autopilot

Well, it was in their manifesto.  But I seriously though it might be one they'd quietly forget.  I happen to know that there are people in Starmer's policy team that think giving votes to 16-17's is a Really Bad Idea.  And it is.

This is the same cohort that progressives traditionally seek to exempt from criminal responsibility or the right to join the Armed Forces.  Would they like to be arrested by a 16-year-old copper?  Or tried by a 16-year old magistrate?

Of course, there's a naive body of progressive / leftist thinking that somehow assumes da yoof is inevitably more progressive than their seniors.  Recent empirical evidence suggests otherwise - in some cases, blood-chillingly so - & thus it isn't even particularly self-serving, though without the slightest doubt it's  intended to be.  Actually what da yoof is, is easily swayed** by whatever is the latest viral TikTok meme, which will naturally come out of nowhere just days before the election, spread like wildfire, and not leave any time for political countermeasures.

And - irony of ironies - it is many, many more times likely to be generated by Andrew Tate (or indeed Nigel Farage) than by Kier Starmer.

So: while we may be sure this looked like a brilliant idea five years ago - a Labour-voting ratchet for all time - it looks utterly, utterly stupid now: Starmer is just going through the motions blindly, on autopilot without consideration of what's going on.  Because of course it comes just as the structure of 'traditional' British politics is being buffeted mercilessly by the four winds.  We don't even need to mention the appalling Tate: has Starmer not realised that any of the Greens, the new lefty party, the Islamist 'independents', Reform - even, just possibly, Ed 'Mr Blobby' Davey - are likely to wipe the floor with him in this age group?

Does politics get any more crass?

ND

[1] I attended a talk by the very thoughtful and erudite producer of a reality TV show (seriously!).  He said that there is a long-running survey conducted by Gallup or one of the venerable polling agencies, that has for decades asked the same batch of questions to each new cohort of young adults.  One of the questions is: in very serious matters where you're in doubt as to what you should do, who do you turn to?  Up until GenZ, the answers have always been:  my parents / older family members I look up to / elders in the community I trust / teachers / people in authority / professional people etc etc.  But not GenZ, for whom the answer is: my friends.  And modern life being what it is, that generally means: whatever meme my friend-group is currently in thrall to.  This is appalling, end-of-civilisation stuff.

[2] A friend of mine gave a talk to a secondary school recently.  Before he went in to the hall, he was begged by the teachers, not under any circumstances to engage with anything from the kids relating to Andrew Tate.  That's how bad this is. 

Justice & efficiency: Marten/Gordon & other cases

Tabloid stuff, I know: but accounts of the Marten/Gordon trial make extraordinary reading.  There was a way of handling such people in days of yore: they would be declared Outlaws, and lose the usual privileges afforded to run-of-the-mill wrong'uns by the justice system.  'Scofflaw' is another evocative term, though generally applied to much lesser nonsenses than this one.

Although the judge in the M/G case seems to be an experienced one, it's hard not to feel the court wasn't sufficiently brisk when first confronted with their outrageous behaviour.  The consequence was many more months of the same: (and will there be an Appeal to come?)  I'm no criminal justice expert, but I believe that wholly uncooperative defendants can be tried in absentia - correct me if I'm wrong.  Unsurprisingly, this is only a last recourse.  But if justice requires a degree of accommodation to chaotic behaviour on the party of unhinged or even malicious defendants, well, there has surely to be a limit. 

And Contempt of Court is definitely a Thing.  A couple of years ago I was on the jury for a prolonged murder trial at the Old Bailey (in essence, gang warfare).  One of the defendants in particular was fairly uncooperative (on nothing like the scale of M/G, but he was still clearly taking this piss, and caused some gratuitous delays in proceedings.   One of the (several) QCs involved - there were three defendants - called him an "annoying little bugger", which the judge chose not to hear.  But overall the judge was having none of it and kept fairly good order (until the 'guilty' verdicts were read out, which was followed by a couple of minutes of rather scary mayhem).  

By way of example of what a judge can do: in the case in question, a family member of one of the victims (who were, *ahem*, no angels themselves, though nobody deserves to be knifed to death in the street) was caught filming the proceedings in court!  This, as everyone entering court is told, is strictly a "go straight to gaol" matter, which is exactly what happened: matey was gaoled on the spot.  

Contempt of Court is a Thing - and so is Summary Justice.       

ND

Miliband "tells the truth" (sic)

Yes, it's the Silly Season, and the hot weather has gone to somebody's head.

On Monday ... Ed Miliband is to explicitly call out politicians who reject net zero policies for betraying future generations in an unprecedented update to parliament about the state of the climate crisis, which he is calling “an exercise in radical truth-telling” ... In what is planned to be an annual event, [he] will make a “state of the climate” address to the Commons setting out the findings of a new Met Office-led report that says the UK is already facing extreme weather and its effects. “I feel a deep sense of responsibility to the British people to tell them the truth about what we know about the climate and nature crisis.  I want this to become an annual statement where it’s an exercise in radical truth-telling about the state of the climate and nature."

If he's for the chop, he's decided to go down fighting.  Well, let's see what he comes up with.  I'm thinking we might have something to say about this. 

ND

UPDATE: well, nothing to see here! - what a bizarre outpouring of hot air that pre-briefing was. "An exercise in radical truth-telling", my arse: the much-vaunted "Statement" is completely empty.  (Check for yourself: it's 30 second's reading at most)  Another day in the crusading life of Mili.

AFTERTHOUGHT:  In fact, it's so vacuous, I'm half-inclined to wonder whether he was reined back on something more "substantial" he'd intended to say ...    

Macron's Cunning Plan, parts 14 & 15

So as well as completing the stitch-up over Sizewell and Hinkley (as discussed here many, many times), there's Macron's new "one out, one in" plan for the small boats.

Let's see if I've got this right.

So for every illegal that arrives on these shore that we send straight back, we must grant asylum to a "genuine" one.

But as we know, many of these people keep setting out, over and over again, until they succeed.

So. on a ratchet basis, one single illegal can be 'recycled' endlessly, to offload as many "genuines" from France as they are quickly able to turn him around for another crossing .. .. ?

Oh come on, Starmer can't be that stupid .. can he?  Please?

ND

Blog stats update: tell me this isn't AI-coordinated ...

 OK, here's another graph to go with last time's: this is hourly data at the peak of the recent surge.

• That steady 6k per hour was absolutely typical of several peak days in a row;
• The within-day spread of "locations" from which those hits came was very much as per the table I posted last time.

Given how egregiously high that "readership" was, it speaks to me of both a (prolonged) automated web-crawling episode AND one that deliberately uses "readers" spread across all those locations in a coordinated manner.  In other words, taken as a totality, it's a single "visit".

(It's subsided now, although only to daily levels that would have been rare in earlier years.  This being the case, my decision not to bother trying to harness the surge for ad revenues has not troubled me.)

You gotta admit, all this is somewhat interesting!  So I shall still be looking for an authoritative explanation.

ND 

Extraordinary C@W blog stats: AI 'training' at work?

We had a short review of the increasingly 'cosmopolitan' nature of C@W readership a while back: I set a little quiz inviting guesses as to the 2024 breakdown of hits, to which the answers were, in descending order -  

1. Hong Kong
2. China
3. USA
4. Singapore
5. UK

Well, guess what: since then, the readership stats have shot up, going stratospheric in the last month.  Here's the plot for the last 3 months:

And the countries?

1. Brazil
2. USA
3. India
4. Japan
5. Bangladesh
6. UK

I have an acquaintance who also runs a blog: he's seen something similar, though the numbers are not so extreme and Vietnam features at the top of his list.  The best explanation he can come up with is that the blogs are being used to train LLMs !

Any other suggestions?

Heaven help the "AI" that results from nearly 20 years of C@W.  I suppose we should be flattered ...

ND 

PS: in the circumstances, I thought about re-engaging with Google 'Adsense' to make a bob or two out of advertising to the increased readership.  But (a) the reader-experience isn't much improved by ads; and (b) the small print is so extensive and restrictive, I'll bet Google would rule that we've somehow been artificially boosting readership with bots, and that we wouldn't qualify.

Aren't you grateful?