Actually, there was something in the Budget ...

... 179 references to 'energy', and well over 5,000 words.

Having now read the full Budget doc, it turns out the seemingly footling stuff on energy prices that dominated the headlines was far from the end of the story.

It starts with the predictable "not our fault, guv" - in some statistical detail - and, yes, there are the sticking-plaster give-aways the headlines were all about, which seem to characterise Burnham's style.  But there is bigger stuff, too: "This Budget represents a shift in the government’s approach to energy".  Since there's no space here to summarise the whole lot, it seems to mean two main things, the first of which had already started under the last Tory government: a gradual switch away from dumping all "policy costs" onto electricity and (to a lesser extent) gas bills, in favour of charging it to general taxation.  There's to be more of that going on now.

Secondly, we have: 

... this Budget kickstarts the long-term action required to get energy costs down for good: 

• Controlling energy costs – no new policy costs will be put on bills until a comprehensive Cost Control Framework is in place at the spending review in 2027, which will set budgets for components of energy costs, including policy costs.
• Prioritising a cheaper energy mix and procuring new generation only where it lowers bills, benefits the system, and can be accommodated by the grid.

Now that could be really interesting.  Of course, "lowering bills" can get very theological when the playing-field is fundamentally tilted by not attributing the costs of intermittency etc to the causes of that intermittency - but it's a very interesting line for them to be taking, and provides a stick with which to beat them when, e.g., the next batch of CfDs is to be awarded.  No more floating offshore windfarms at £216.49/MWh: in fact, only solar farms could creep in under that definition, properly interpreted.

On top of this, it's becoming increasingly clear that the bloated DESNZ budget is being raided to fund all manner of things - small things this time round, of course, but when the Defence aspect of the putative 10-year Plan hoves into view, it is likely to hit DESNZ up for quite a few quid more, with correspondingly more bleating to come from the usual quarters.  Finally, there is a bit on the energy aspects of data centres, for anyone interested.

And the aim of all this?  "Cutting bills to reindustrialise the country."  Sic!  A laudable aim indeed.

Unfortunately, just when you think Miliband's fantasies have been consigned to where they belong, it's all spoiled by the assertion that "The focus now is to unleash cheap electricity".  WTF?  Where have you been hiding it all this while?!

ND  

Budget: what was that all about?

In days of yore, our founder CU would have had a lot to say about the Budget.  Any Budget, in fact.

But with this one - has anyone got much to say?  Except, as Krishnan Guru-Murthy put it (and I don't ever recall quoting him before) - so where's that "putting an end to 40 years of neo-liberalism", eh?

Shan't be surprised if the BTL comments are thin on the ground this time ...

ND

PS: much more entertaining is the briefing war being waged over Rosebank.  Harriet Harman a drill-baby-driller!  Who knew?  I'm taking names.  In circumstances of not much else to talk about in politics this week, it's a lot of fun.

Jackdaw - bingo!

From the day Burnham took office, the green-left has been howling at him not to approve Jackdaw & Rosebank.   This raucous attempt at intimidation possibly peaked with a piece in the Graun analysed at C@W here, when more than 20 distinct (and awfully shrill) "arguments" were made, one after the other - and hilarious reading they still make.  It was always pretty obvious they did protest too much which, as regards Jackdaw at least, they probably now recognise themselves.  

And now he's gone and "Failed His First Big Test" or, as we would put it, "Passed".  Time will tell if the threatened back-bench revolt / party split / defections to the Greens will result.  I'm guessing not, but will be taking a forensic interest in how things pan out in the public debate.  (If anyone spots a really juicy piece in an obscure journal etc, do let us know.)

As we said all along, Jackdaw (gas) was always the easier decision to make and to sell.  You don't need to have a degree in Party Management to see the logic in running it first, in order to see how matters pan out from here (- not to mention in order to get the gas ashore this winter!)  If it turns out to have burned a bunch of political capital, Rosebank (oil) might have to wait.  If, by contrast, it's a walk in the park, Rosebank will follow, as night follows day.  Fahnbulleh seems to be briefing that she's agin'; but let's see.  That might just be to get the protestors off her back for now.  It's Burnham's call anyway, and he & Healey might want the exports / jobs / tax revenues / preservation of international reputation.

Not all of the authors of the original 20+ Shrill Arguments will have been cowed by Jackdaw: indeed some of them - including Ed "Climate Vandalism" Miliband himself - had already accepted by then that Jackdaw might be quite likely to fly.  So for Round-2-Rosebank we may expect another round of high-pitch whining and threatening in the days and weeks to come.  Part of our forensic analysis of this political fallout will be to note exactly who considers it worth prolonging the fight - and how much of their own political capital they are willing to expend in doing so.  

That won't include many Labour backbenchers, I'm guessing: so no big backbench revolt.  Of course, one of the 20+ was the threat of defections to the Greens, and loss of votes in the same direction: and for sure, a lot of would-be ambitious MPs are now simply concerned to save their seats.  It helps greatly that "Polanski" is staggering on the ropes, of course: and that the red entryists have systematically made the Green party look anything but cosy & welcoming.

How are the popcorn reserves holding up?

ND

Air defence for the UK in 2026

A bit later than intended: but I said we'd have a post on Badenoch and her £10 bn 'Britannia Shield'. 

One should never fall for "the bomber will always get through" as an excuse for doing nothing.  She's right that we haven't been doing remotely enough.  But we need to examine both the history of our air defences and the current threats, to recognise the challenge we face.

1.  WW1  No air defences at all, until some fighters were belatedly deployed against Zeppelins.  Even then, the casualties per ton of bombs dropped, on an essentially unprepared nation, were extraordinary - so much so that, extrapolating to the Luftwaffe's bombing resources, it was estimated that London alone would suffer a quarter of a million casualties in the first week of a prospective WW2**.

2.  WW2  Fortunately, this didn't result in a policy of What's The Point?  Quite the reverse.  Making good use of the months of Phoney War, effective multi-layer defences were instituted.  Radar station, very capable fighter cover, barrage balloons, anti-aircraft guns, air raid shelters of various types, blackouts, ARP wardens and teams of fire watchers.  

All very well: but that's a time of flat-out national effort, no expense spared.

Cold War  A very different enemy, based in East Germany and point eastwards, with no aircraft carriers.  Our interceptors were pretty effective but, by the 1960s, few in number: our long-range AA missiles (Bloodhound, Thunderbird) were not impressive, neither in quality nor quantity.  Quite plainly, the strategy was one of (a) forward defence on the Lüneburg Heide & (b) hide behind the Americans.  

The one area in which some rather more impressive protective measures were put in place against air attack was the Navy, which was then upgraded significantly post Falklands / Exocet. 

But now, however well armed, we can't muster a single destroyer on demand!  So a protective line of these vessels is certainly out of the question.

Threat in 2026  It's not bombers!  RAF Typhoons may be expected to make short work of any stray Tu-95s.  Clearly, it's cruise missiles (however launched), ballistic missiles and, since Ukraine's impressive Spiderweb operation, drones launched from lurking trucks and coastal vessels.  Here's the thing.  The USA and Israel have invested mightily in "exquisite" air defences, and since February have been comprehensively taken to the cleaners by Iran.  

Solutions  Our needs are not the same as theirs, however; and as regards long range missiles, forward defence in the classic sense remains the solution (though not for Poland et al).  What else can / should be done?

Firstly, get the well-armed destroyers operational!  In recent years the Navy has become a disgrace.  (Gordon Brown's bloody aircraft carriers are of course much to blame.)   

We may safely rule out Trump's 'Golden Dome' as a solution or model for us: £10 bn doesn't buy you much down that track.  Passive defence - hardening our military assets - must be part of the plan: but Russia, the USA, Israel and the Gulf States have discovered that it's really difficult to protect infrastructure (being static, with locations known precisely).  The Russians have in fact tried to harden their refineries, to no avail.  (As regards the Spiderweb military targets, they hadn't even tried.)

When we get down to the level of hostile drone swarms, it's not clear the 'nuclear option' - even supposing we had an independent capability - gets us very far.  Another very important form of forward defence is intelligence from all sources, which should definitely be beefed up: we're even quite good at it.  

Which brings us to tech solutions, which probably require a load of R&D - and not into the exquisite systems that can't be afforded.  Early-warning detection systems are definitely needed for ship-launched short-range cruise missiles: shouldn't be beyond the nation that developed radar.  The real puzzle is the drone swarm from within, or just offshore.  Detection at a distance?  I am not abreast of the latest technology, but it seems implausible to me.  However, no detection = precious little chance of shooting down: so R&D should go into that, too.  If the drones were to be guided or require Starlink, it's possible GCHQ might have a very useful role.  But Ukraine deploys pre-programmed autonomous drones requiring merely the initial launch command.   

Finally, bringing down drones on the perimeter of targets, 'Goalkeeper' style (albeit all these things are easier at sea).  We're in danger of getting into science fiction here, but is there some kind of laser etc that could both detect and defeat an attack on the spot?  It needs to be cheap, if it's to be deployed at scale. 

Last thought: we should (continue to) stay close to Ukraine in these matters.  They are so far ahead of the game, we could do a lot worse than making this a joint venture. 

Any other perspectives?

ND

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** The authorities were debating as to whether the bodies should be dumped in to the gravel pits where Heathrow is today, or into the Thames at high tide.

Peak Polanski in the rear-view mirror

On Monday I called Peak Green and by now, the by-election lost, it looks almost like we're going to see a re-run of Your Party: hundreds of thousands of members but so dysfunctional, and split so comprehensively, it ain't going anywhere.  

One need have no sympathies whatever for the charlatan "Polanski": but the MSM pile-on is really quite extreme, and merits a moment's analysis.  I have to believe the London-based, Labour-supporting meejah classes saw him as a genuine threat on the left; the Israel lobby saw him simply as a threat (the Auld Alliance back in action again); and they have both decided to bury him here and now, Corbyn-style.  He provided the shovels, and by last weekend had already dug his own grave.  It's not a pretty sight.

Does he really deserve all this?  "Deserve", as Clint Eastwood's William Munny famously said in Unforgiven "got nothing to do with it".  Live by the entryist surge, die by the care-nothing entryists' toxic baggage.  Can't imagine he'll go down without a lot more of his trademark motormouth interviews, but we'll just have to put up with it for a while.

Funnily enough, neither of the Green factions really care about becoming a major Parliamentary force.  The traditional sandal-wearing Greens were happy with one MP, delirious with 4.  They don't much mind going back to their eco-protest roots in Bristol, Brighton and the shires, if becoming Big means they must accommodate the 'progressive' dregs of bedsit London Labour by the tens of thousand.  Likewise, the dregs care not for Parliamentary success if it means they must give up their fevered foreign policy fantasies.  Those who do care are a smaller, strategically-minded metropolitan motley of fence-sitters whose relatively sophisticated dream is of plain-speaking Polanski fearlessly shifting the Overton window decisively leftwards, in a way that no Labour politician is able to.  Then Burnham and his genuine party-of-government can safely occupy the newly-liberated ground and win an election on terms they like.

Well let's see if this strategy is gaining any traction.  The Budget looms, and there are a lot more issues making calls on the public purse than to leave much left for the big causes progressives are interested in. 

ND

Mis-steps by party leaders becoming costly

Six months ago with Starmer still in office, I mused that we'd already seen peak Reform but not yet peak Green.  Since then, the cards have pretty much been dealt for the rounds leading up to the next GE, and mis-steps are becoming increasingly costly.  

Reform is the easy one: Chancer Farage has made a complete git of himself over the summer and is now left with the purely negative, reactive politics he made his name with over those long wilderness years.  He knows what he hates: this often coincides with what a lot of other people hate: he can sometimes get traction.  But he's reduced to rejoicing in other leaders misaligning themselves with those hate-themes - or rather, what he perceives as their misalignment.  And he can be wrong, because clever political operators can sometimes flip these issues on their head: on a good day, both Burnham and Polanski are good enough communicators to be capable of reframing things in a confident and positive manner that can change the mood noticeably.  Like many a sports team that peaks fruitlessly between World Cups, Farage has had his top-of-the-rankings period and it's over.  We all remember how UKIP and the Brexit Party ended in turn: and he's so given to petulance, with so little bench depth, there's even the possibility of complete melt-down.  The wonder is that so many - not least on the left - reckoned he was nailed on as next PM.

The less technicolour mis-steps are to be seen on the left.  After a stellar honeymoon, Burnham seems (IMHO) to have failed to use that period to cement a truly solid platform for what's coming next - namely, some very stormy political weather indeed.  When you see a man ad-libbing on the Man City affair as grotesquely inappropriately as that (did he also think Jimmy Saville did some good stuff for charity?), you realise you're dealing with an amateur of highly fallible instincts.  (Starmer of course was another, albeit of a very different variant.)  Charm is a great asset, and we'll see a lot more of it in the months to come: but it doesn't ultimately deliver when it's the only diamond-tipped tool in the box.  Let's see how Burnham navigates the rocky shallows between now and the New Year.

As for Polanski, well, maybe I should wait for the by-election result on Friday.  But however that falls, we can confidently record that he, too, is revealed as being incapable of parleying superb communications skills into what's needed at the top - again, because there's no adamantine core of genuine political judgement.  In his case, that wasn't ever really in doubt: he was just an object of fevered wish-projection from the left, on (proportionately) an even bigger scale than Burnham still is.  Polanski's performance over the past two weeks has been really poor - celebrity by-elections are no easy trick to pull off - and last week's Green party conference may very well go down in history as a pivot-point back into shrill, sad obscurity, for him and his hopeful-but-hopeless party.

Amusingly enough, in the context of widely lacking political judgement, Ed Davey can actually seem quite a pro!  In a basically irrelevant way, he really is - much good may it do him.  Anyone being offered good odds on Badenoch might want to take them.  In a nation of highly conservative people of all political hues it is my unwavering conviction that, far from being utterly doomed, the Conservative Party - like Labour - is a genuinely enduring institution.  Let the derision follow!  But that's what I think.

ND     

Mysterious fire: what can have happened?

We return to a location in Croydon we've visited here before: to a house directly opposite this pair of beauties (of which one remains stubbornly unsold, even at a much reduced price).  For years, this fine but dilapidated edifice that they look out onto has commanded the road, twin turrets and all.  The owners are the Datoo brothers, gentlemen well known to Croydon Council, who had submitted wave upon wave of planning applications, involving complete demolition, generally for large, low-rise blocks of flats.  Most of these had not found favour.  Their latest plan is for a 60-resident nursing home.

Ten days ago at 4 am, a large conflagration broke out, seemingly in two different parts of the house simultaneously (not that I'm a forensic scientist).  The place immediately became what must surely be a crime scene, with a 24-hour police presence (!) being mounted for at least 5 days after the fire, and a regular presence there even today.

What can possibly have happened?  Did a group of pyromaniac squatters move in and take against the place?  We must wait patiently for an inquiry.

In any event, locals are distinctly Not Happy.  "It would appear that there's been foul play here."  All very odd.

ND

Seven-Up / 70-Up and a big coincidence

I can't guess how widely the 7-Up series has a following among the C@W faithful, but in Schloss Drew we've certainly always watched it over the decades.  Capped off this week by 70-Up, which looks to be the very last outing for that format and crew.

Here's a remarkable coincidence.

Having not been at school with any of the 14 subjects, nor come into contact with them in any shape or form in my youth, nor sought them out in any way, nor ever come anywhere near the TV programme and any of its workings or personnel,  in later life I came to know two of the 14 personally (one in the Army and the other ay University).  What are the chances of that?[1]

One of them I subsequently avoided.[2]    With the other, Mrs D & I were in reasonably regular incidental contact until he moved away from London; and still see him once in a while.

Curious.  Small world.

ND

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[1] That said, there seemed to be several coincidences around that set of people, as recounted by the lad who became a taxi driver.

[2] Libel is still a thing.

Returning to the Baltics

Just back from a round trip, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania - determined to get there, perhaps for the last time, before Putin does.  It might have been a closer-run thing than we'd anticipated. 

                                                                * * * * 

When I was based in Moscow in the mid 1990s, I also had a pied-a-terre office in Riga [LVA], so in a dated fashion I am somewhat familiar with that city.   The building was gone - it had been the Latvian Konsomol HQ - and replaced by something very mundane: but its twin on the opposite corner is still standing, so you get the idea. 

Site of Drew's office: back then it looked like its twin on the left

In all three countries, Russian can still be heard spoken (far more in Riga than anywhere else) but support for Ukraine is very great.   In May, Putin took powers to use the army to “protect Russian citizens” abroad and appealed to the UN Court of Justice to demand the Baltic states, particularly Latvia, be held to account for “infringing on the rights of Russians”.    The sabre-rattling is there for all to hear. 

Well, one of his massive strategic errors was to treat so very badly those parts of the 'pro Russian' Donbas he seized in 2014: you have to be an extremely Russophile Russian-speaker to want the same for your own region.   In the lovely university town of Tartu [EST] a museum attendant advised me to keep my (modest) knowledge of Russian to myself. 

But could the Baltics be defended?   It's perfect tank country, flat as a pancake: the highest 'mountain', Suur Munamägi [EST] is only 1,000 ft. The population is sparse, and declining in each country[1].  The first is true of both Sweden and Finland, of course, and nobody mistakes them for a pushover. But defensively their geographical advantages are great.  The Baltics by contrast have a hideously long land border with Russia / Belarus; far less defensive depth; the anomalous bastion-state of Kaliningrad to their south; and something of a fifth column, however small, in each country.  In terms of the usual Russian strategy - a lightning land-grab, promptly fortified and never to be returned, with rachet-increments planned thereafter - only the full force of NATO could offer protection.  And that means more than just a plausible strong Polish counter-thrust from the south and some Ukrainian drone-warfare savvy.  Yes, we saw NATO troops and aircraft everywhere, but not in vast numbers. 

Frankly, 'defence' here means an exceptionally fast and large-scale counter-mobilisation during a buildup period[2], plus a credible nuclear deterrent: sanctions have already been pretty much maxxed out.  If Putin survives another decade in his present frame of mind, and if he doesn't believe our red lines (we've never believed his), there's little hope. 

                                                               * * * * 

As if to reinforce these gloomy thoughts, two weeks ago the F16s and Typhoons were circling Vilnius [LTU] as we arrived and the airport was briefly closed.  At midnight a day later, up on our phones flashed a (Lithuanian) government alert message - 'Find safe place'.  The drone in question was promptly shot down and the all-clear given; but there were squads of soldiers on the street the next morning. 

Certainly takes the edge off a holiday trip.  A great shame, because the weather was good, the insects not oppressive (other than in Riga), we saw some beautiful sights and met some great people.   In principle, we'd also like to go back again - a great deal more to see.  Can we hope that a Burnham - Miliband government will contribute meaningfully to strengthening the West's collective position? 

ND 

________________________________ 

[1] Also declining in Russia, of course - and most everywhere else in Eastern Europe. 

[2] And who else in Europe believed the very specific US / UK intelligence warnings in 2021-22? Blinkered hope reigns eternal.

 

AI escapes

The other day our friend CH noted BTL (and OT, but let's not worry about that): 

... We can now create virtual Von Neumann machines comprising of those AIs, who can scale and network as well as reason around any guardrails, and so are clear to cheat their way to solutions without the sentience to weigh consequences as we would. Not they can't reason consequence, but is done as an exercise in cold logic. This is actually more dangerous than a SkyNet - it's swarms of savants looking to achieve aims without any moral or ethical boundaries, and with no higher scope of understanding. And given IT has been a lot of bodged jobs, minimal security, and all connected via a global network that itself can be hijacked at scale, we've quite the recipe for disaster ...

So let's have at it.

I have seen the AI escape likened to covid, and explicitly contrasted with climate change.  The former was on everyone's radar for a few weeks, while we all wondered what would happen next ...

I haven't seen it likened to the financial crash of 2008.  Here at C@W, we signposted that in 2007, so perhaps the run-up period is about right.    But where is Gordon Brown to save the world now ..?

ND

Russian elections this month - exciting!

[Spoiler alert - contains election result]  

The exciting prospect of a Russian election is upon us!  Not the Presidential this time, but the Duma and lots of regional governors.  Who will win?  Can United Russia cling on to power?  Despite an approval rating in the 30's, down from 42%[1] earlier in the year ...

Well, yes.  

Firstly, the authorities have taken the precaution of banning the only previously-tolerated 'opposition' party, which had the temerity to oppose the Special Military Operation almost from the outset.  Up until now this had been allowed to pass, but not any longer.  Secondly, the Fix is In.  

Putin has declared that he's looking for United Russia to get 85%.  (Long-time readers will recall that my sources gave the Presidential result to within the percentage last time around[2]: they are good, these election-fixers!  Eat your heart out, Donald.) 

The only small cloud on the horizon is opposition from an unexpected source - the Orthodox Church.  His Holiness the Patriarch is firmly onside, but a schism has emerged within the ranks of the bishops, among which there is a 'peace party', apparently.  And just a little bit less easy to suppress, when they've reportedly each had a dream/vision that tells them peace should be declared.

But hey - how many divisions has the episcopy?

ND

________________

[1] the authorities in Russia carry out extensive social-survey polling.

[2] I had reported - in advance - that the result would be 87% for Putin.  In the event, it was declared as 87.3%.  But later, inexplicably, it was re-counted(!) and the official record now says 88.4%.  See, L'il Volodya really cares about his ratings!  And I'm guessing that 85% satisfies amour propre all round - high, but Not As High As His ...

Polly Toynbee is 'optimistic' again. Won't end well ...

 ... it never does.

Over the years I've tracked the barometer, nay, the roller-coaster of Polly Toynbee's agonisingly optimistic takes on her successive political crushes.  Once the SDP was well and truly dead, she had the highest hopes for Blair - until he let her down.  Who can forget her swooning over fellow '70s soft-leftist, anti-nuke Patricia Hewitt when she became Sec of State at the DTI (whose brief then included Energy) and the ever naive Polly wrote: Get that: no new nuclear power stations!  Only to have Blair overrule her - and fire her - shortly thereafter.  Then Brown became even more of a hot fixation, an object of her wish-projection.  We know what happened there.  Then Miliband (in various incarnations).  Then John McDonnell !  (True.  I told you I follow these thing.)  Then Starmer.  And whenever a GE looms at a moment when her hopes for the incumbent leader have already waned, she always dusts off the 'nosepeg' formula for voting Labour anyway.  

And now, from today's Graun ...

We must believe!   Yes, it's heart-wrenchingly pathetic.  (When was that mugshot taken..?)  Anyhow, as a weekend Blast From The Past, back to those heady days of Gordon Brown and how he, in turn, dashed her hopes - one of my doggerel efforts, from from 2007.  Apologies to J.Milton Hayes and Mad Carew, and a good weekend to all.

There’s a one-eyed yellow Scotsman of a dour and sullen hue
There’s a stench of pious bullshit all around
There’s a broken-hearted woman dreams of socialism true
And the yellow Scot forever lets her down

He was known as Red McBroon, and he made the Party swoon
Though his cowardice had long begun to smell
But for all he was a wanker he was feted by the bankers
And Polly Toynbee smiled on him as well

He’d been stringing her along with his socialism strong
She’d swallowed all he put into her head
When she judged Blair’s time was short, she said Broon had her support
Provided he would prove himself True Red

He wrote to ask what promise she would like from Red McBroon
They met for lunch as many times before
And fervently she told him then that nothing else would do
But his vote against Blair’s mad Iraqi war

On the night of the debate, Red McBroon was in a state,
His followers could bring mad Tony down
But he’d never in his life had the balls to wield the knife
For he knew the wielder never wears the crown

When it came to the division, courage gave way to ambition
And his scruples failed as surely as his balls
When she heard them read the vote, fury welled up in her throat
And ‘betrayal!’ was her cry around the halls

Now Hell it hath no fury like a jilted Polly Toynbee
First Blair and now McBroon had sold his soul
As she stomped off in the night, for her op-ed piece to write
She vowed vengeance on the yellow Scots arsehole

There’s a one-eyed yellow Scotsman of a dour and sullen hue
There’s a stench of pious bullshit all around
There’s a broken-hearted woman dreams of socialism true
And the yellow Scot forever lets her down.

ND

Meghan and Harry: we must all tread Very Carefully

Mrs D taps daily into a rich seam of interweb humour, and the absolute avalanche of really funny Harry&Meghan stuff is often side-splitting stuff: the neighbours can probably hear us.  And the Sussexes ain't even back here in the self-imposed full-bore glare of the UK meejah yet.  Oh, how that pair are going to relish being back in Blighty.  It'll be just like the old days for both of them, and we know how much they enjoyed it last time around.  It's mutual: we can just see the accountants of Fleet Street already banking the extra newsprint sales and online hits.

Now, here's the Thing.  We have all been duly reprimanded for laughing out loud at fraudster-fabulists and their amazing behaviours and statements because, notwithstanding their self-chosen high profiles and prolific public output of creative tales, their entire squadrons of outriders, and their use of aggressive lawyers, they are of course Very Vulnerable.  And - see what happens then ...  And it'll all be our fault & we'll all be Sorry.

Upon solemn reflection, I reckon the 5th in line to the throne isn't necessarily as robust of brain and character as we'd all hope for.  And we know that people who've had to navigate the terrible micro-aggressions and material deprivations meted out to victims of, errr, intersectional oppressions[1], are doubly at risk.  

So we must all refrain from adding to that avalanche of funny stuff.  I shall only repost any of it if it's really, really funny, and has been subjected to a rigorous Risk Analysis[2] conducted by the Chief Safety Officer here at C@W corporate HQ.   

ND

______________

[1] I may have got the technical terminology wrong here.  It's not my project.

[2] You think this is satire?  Read this crap from the execrable Jolyon Maugham, attacking the Grauniad no less, including the following:

"What risk analysis was done by [Gruan editor] Kath Viner following the multiple warnings about Professor Arday’s mental state?"

Economic & unconventional warfare against Russia

Things are getting quite ugly for Putin - who faces "elections" shortly - and Russia generally.  High on his list of irritants is the ever more visible and effective campaign of economic and psychological warfare being waged from the skies by Ukraine, adroitly conceived and impressively executed.  The initial phase of this was targeted against oil and gas infrastructure, which has had the desired two-fold effect: genuine economic harm, and extremely visible with it, in terms of both enormous and persistent plumes of black smoke, not least around major cities, and the pockets and P&Ls of all who need to buy oil products.  (We had a truly risible troll BTL a few weeks ago suggesting the Ukrainians were histrionically putting a tank of kerosene in with the drone warhead to create a more photogenic explosion.  Errr, and better combustion on the target, maybe?)

The even more cleverly conceived campaign is that being waged against the mega-depots of the WildBerries chain**, often likened to Amazon.  If anything, relative to the Russian economy WB is even more economically significant than Amazon, because a vast number of Russia's extensive raft of small businesses uses WB as not only a route to market in marketing terms, but also as their sole storage and distribution means.  The impact is every bit as big and more, as would be systematic disruption to Amazon in the West; and, again, the smoke plumes are black, enormous, and visible to much of the population, either first-person or extensively on social meejah.  Needless to say, with enormous, combustible, static targets like refineries and depots spread across the vastness of the Russian land mass, there's not much realistic prospect of shooting down everything that is coming their way, much as efforts are being made.  

From studiously ignoring it all in the early phases, pre-election Putin has felt obliged to make oblique references to indicate he does really know what's going on as it affects the Russian in the street, and that it's all being brought under control.   Right.

So much, so obvious - to even the casual watcher of the BBC News.  But there's something else going on that you may not be aware of.

A clever little psychological campaign has been running for several months now, using social meejah in Russia to suggest that bank deposits will inevitably be frozen once the "elections" are over.  It's been nicely understated: a word to the wise, a tap of the nose, nudge nudge wink wink.  But it's starting to have the desired effect - the early signs of a run on the banks.  This of course could easily become a self-fulfilling dynamic, and it is reported that powers have been taken to effect a freeze whenever L'il Volodya is willing to give the word.  A very high-profile Russian economist has just been fired for having the temerity to state publicly -  in plain but very measured terms - that an economic crisis for Russia is around the corner on a scale that can be survived, but not without extreme steps being taken by the state.  

It is against this background that Putin's posse has announced "there will be consequences" for the UK, our having supplied Ukraine with drones.  Given that we supplied Storm Shadow missiles, very much more effective (and expensive) several years ago, it cannot be said that we've crossed any particular red lines just recently.  The list of Putin's red lines that we and the West generally have blithely crossed since 2022 is long indeed, so this recent huffing and puffing is clearly to be assessed in today's precise context.  My guess would be that right now, they really don't want any more interference on the banking front and are hoping to deter us from anything that might exacerbate the aforesaid nascent run on the banks.  Russia has long been obsessed with the dark powers they associate with the City.  Watch this space.

Finally, and anticipating what might be the trolls' response to this little update; OK yes, Ukraine is suffering badly, too.  Of course it is!  Ukraine has been suffering badly - very badly - every day since February 2022!  As we well know.  The point is, everyday life in Russia is hurting now, in ways that can't be ignored, even as Putin clamps down on the internet.   The introduction of a bit of symmetry is a big, big difference in the overall situation.

ND

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** As ever with big, prominent enterprises in Russia, there is a lot of politics and organised crime associated with WildBerries, by far the biggest of several such chains.  WB itself is run by very well-connected Armenian interests: its connections in very high places are just as well because it is at daggers drawn with the Chechen mafia.  The other, lesser chains have been left more or less unmolested, which stirs up Russian politics even more.

C@W - 20th anniversary!

Well.  Hard to believe, but this blog has been going for 20 years.  Check the listings in the sidebar - there it all is.  5,431 posts - and 72,878 comments[1].  As noted a while back, nowadays we get more hits than ever, which I ascribe to a long and persistent tail following the massive AI "training" blitz of last year that saw us getting truly astronomical daily numbers for a couple of months.  But we were hardly alone in experiencing that.  (What impact our mighty back-catalogue of accurate reporting, partisan posturing and perfect English prose has had on the collective AI intellect, I cannot imagine.)

So: what to say now?  Take a look back at the 10th anniversary ruminations, which noted a bit of the original history and 2006 context - with more nostalgic stuff from many of our first decade of readership, in the 31 comments below the post.  You'll find many notes on, and contributions from, some of the great bloggers of yesteryear.  Is Guido really the only other current blog still wholly recognisable from 20 years ago?

In the overall context of today's wildly hyper-financialised, hyper-ventilating politico-social media space, the 'conventional' blogosphere is incredibly sedate and, it must be acknowledged, heavily dated.  How many folks nowadays have the attention-span for even a 'medium read', never mind a long read?  Well, you guys do: and there is a world of thoughtful long-reads - it's Substack.  But I've never really felt I had the time to make a proper go of that - an order of magnitude more demanding, I'm guessing, than what's needed to 'curate' a leisurely blog like C@W. 

I suppose in terms of outright www presence, the C@W highlight must be when we were getting so many links and hits via the FT ('Alphaville') and, most impressively, from Robert Peston's blog - which was for a while one of the very biggest UK news blogs, indeed possibly the biggest[2] - that the BBC actually installed some kind of filter and banned any cross-blog linking from Pesto.  Amazing to relate, but true. 

Guido himself tried to persuade CU and me to join his empire as the business rumour-mongering arm of Order-Order.  We turned him down, for this reason.  He gets away with blue murder because he is slagging off politicians: but that's a free hit - they almost never sue.  Try doing that with the corporate community and you'd have Carter Ruck down on you in a nanosecond.  He had to admit, that thought hadn't occurred to him.

Around here, the big change latterly is of course that the great CityUnslicker himself has moved on to other things, and Bill Quango MP is now just an occasional, if always exceedingly welcome, visitor.  Your truly found himself the last man standing a while back, and the flickering flame has never quite gone out - thanks to the many readers that, over those two decades, have adorned the BTL acres with great commentary and wit.

I find it hard to guess what will happen over the next several years.  There will continue to be plenty of events' dear boy, events; and I don't see myself becoming any the less opinionated.  But nothing lasts forever.

Anyhow - I think we're all set for the foreseeable future.  If you're up for it, I am too.  Till the annual predictions round-up, at any rate!  Cheers to you all - 

ND

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[1] The google stats say there have been over 15m site visits but that's an underestimation, since that particular record doesn't go back the whole way, for some reason.  The comments data need to be taken with a pinch of salt, too, because old posts can attract advertising bots posting BTL (often 'commenting' in Chinese or Arabic), and the task of cleaning it all up is beyond what's even vaguely sensible to contemplate. 

[2] Michael Crick's was the other.  

Aardman at the Young V&A - must see

Grommit's garden.  Galleon in background

Mrs Drew & I have just visited a truly superb exhibition at Young V&A* in Bethnal Green. 

It's brilliantly well done and is chock full of original Aardman stuff (Morph, Wallace & Gromit, Creature Comforts, Chicken Run, Shaun the Sheep etc) - meaning, of course, that it's in full collaboration with the famous animation studio itself.  A marketing ploy?  Who cares.

It works along so many dimensions.  Where do the ideas come from for the models and characters?  We learn a lot about the creative, artistic processes involved, every inch and frame the equal of Disney.  How do they make the models?  Yep, we learn that, too.  You wanna see the models themselves?  All there, from the tiny rivets on the space ship (they use lentils) to the immense galleon from The Pirates!  How do they make it all move?  Plenty of that, too.

How is a were-rabbit articulated?   Now we know ...  

And it's a lot of fun!  Loads of kids - as one might expect - really enjoying themselves.  Kids of all ages.

Getting a bit more po-faced about it all, in the context of Hockney I recently rehearsed my views on what constitutes Art is threefold:  complete mastery of the craft au fond; boundless, compulsive creative output; and a strong eye / ear for abstraction.  It's all here at Aardman.  Nick Park is a true artist.  Go and see his stuff.  

On till November and tickets go quickly during the hols.   

ND

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* This V&A outpost dates from 1872 and has had several incarnations: it once housed the V&A's Rodin collection; in 1974 it became the V&A Museum of Childhood.   Once the heart of Kray territory and very readily accessible from central London, Bethnal Green after the Krays became a magnet for South Asian immigration, notably from Bangladesh; and more recently, it's been gentrifying - just one tube stop from the heart of the City, with lots of fine brick buildings from the Georgian era onwards, ripe for conversion to smart, up-market housing.  The wonder is, it took so long to become trendy.

The museum itself went through a typically annoying woke phase some years ago; but in this case, as in many others, peak woke is mercifully behind us. 

Another reality-check: Rayner approves data centre!

 ... against fierce local opposition - and in the teeth of, yes, housing as potentially being an alternative use for the site.  It's the controversial Brick Lane Data Centre which, in a delightfully pointed insult, offers 4 (four) units of social housing.

What makes it exquisitely amusing is that none other than Housing Secretary Angela 'Stamp-Duty' Rayner has been the one to put her name to the government order overriding lower-tier authorities that would have withheld approval.  One can just imagine the agonies she will have gone through; but, hey, that's the price you pay for the privilege of slipping back into the Cabinet room, eh?  Them's your orders, girl, and leave your scruples at the door.  Still, at least she was able to push a junior minister out in front to make the actual announcement (in her name).   Happily, Parliament is not sitting. 

What I find doubly amusing is the way puzzled progressives can't understand how a data centre can be needed simply to speed up City financial transactions by milliseconds (which is one of the justifications for a DC in the East End).  Surely, they, cry, this is some kind of capitalist joke?  - nobody needs to make even quicker financial transactions ... do they ..?   Well, I have a first-hand story about this for another occasion: bottom line, it's all a lot more real than the ignorant could ever imagine.

On the subject of Them's your orders, girl ... with the fatuous 'consultations' on the Jackdaw and Rosebank fields being about to close, we are all greatly looking forward to Miatta Fahnbulleh being forced to walk the same plank and approve one or perhaps both of them in the next few weeks (doubtless on one quiet Friday evening during the Recess, with another junior minister out in front).  It'll be fun to watch her squirm.

ND

Arday: hard not to laugh

There's a light mood in Schloss Drew this weekend.  The Jason Arday affair is possibly even funnier than Keir Starmer 'resigning' when his legacy is as golden as he and his loyal backbenchers loudly proclaimed.  

As the story rumbled inexorably towards the front pages, progressives reflexively dropped everything and rushed headlong towards the sound of gunfire.  On arriving at the battlefield they immediately hurled themselves into digging mighty entrenchments - nay, positive tank-traps - as a prelude to what they fondly imagined would be a swift and decisive counter-attack.  Unfortunately, the deeper and more frenziedly they dug, the more they became buried in the shit from their own shovels.  Far from any prospect of burying a handful of inconvenient little fabrications, they must now confront the uncontainable, volcanic eruption that is their man's stupendous output of truly creative confabulation.  We are plainly dealing with a decade's worth of deceit from (to switch idioms) an ocean-going liar.  I look forward to receiving a letter from Carter-Fuck on the subject.

Some years ago I sat on the jury of a lengthy Old Bailey murder trial.  One of the sadder aspects was that alongside the two murderers in the dock was the mother of one of the perps, who had fabricated an elaborate but laughably transparent alibi for her son that was contradicted by his own defence case.  Inevitably, she was banged up for attempting to pervert the course of justice.  In mitigation, her Counsel could only offer the excuse that nobody had ever believed her in the first place.  In the ranks of the more reflective and self-critical progressives there's a growing suspicion that we are in similar territory with Arday: did any grown adult** who'd been exposed to more than a couple of lines of his fantastically fabricated life story ever believe a word he said?

Which then leads the sadder-and-hopefully-wiser wokists to wonder - what kind of perverse, inverse racism they have themselves been guilty of?  Patronising, or what?

It all adds to the gaiety of the nation.  Enjoy your weekend!

ND

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** That said, it is Cambridge academics we are talking about

Peak Farage? There's a good case to be made

Back in April I mused that we'd perhaps already seen Peak Reform.  Things haven't gone at all well for them since the May local elections: successive by-election flops; Restore eating their lunch; the Farage Finance scandalette; and the Clacton Binface fiasco.  Etc.  Is anyone listening now to their noisy Ceuta bandwagon as it crashes down the cobbled streets of their target constituencies?

Anyhow, here's a piece supporting - and personalising - the Peak Reform conjecture:  it reckons we might have seen Peak Farage lui-même.  The GE could be a while yet, and if Farage's moment has come and gone, who else have they got?  Which is pretty much the main issue: how do you field 600 credible candidates when you can't muster 6, and when your party leader can't deal with anyone with half a personality?

Meanwhile, the great charlatan at the head of the Green Party is increasingly looking as silly and irrelevant as we know him to be; and YourParty gets ever more a caricature of itself - see some of the closing paragraphs cited below[1].   And Badenoch's persistence, stamina and recent sure-footedness (plus or minus a 'reformed' neo-N) seem to be quietly paying off, albeit from a catastrophically low baseline.  I have long held that both Labour and Conservative parties have all the hallmarks of genuinely enduring institutions - at least to an extent that needs to be overlaid on pretty outlandish claims that they are both toast.   A large popcorn order is called for, before prices go through the drought-driven roof. 

What do we think?

ND

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[1] See this sad little passage from the Chair's minutes of the most recent YourParty  'central executive committee' meeting.  

... This isn’t what I want to be writing to you about, but it is unfortunately the case that some members of the CEC took the view that I should be removed as Chair. I don’t agree with them ... What disappoints me is that before these [administrative points] could be considered - before we could get on to the agenda - much of the meeting was lost to points of order seeking to remove me.  By the time we finally got going, after a vote to remove me had been defeated, several members had left ...

Stop laughing at the back!   She's a kind, nicely-spoken middle-class white lady, only doing her best to advance the Revolution:  

Burnham's 'devolved tax & spend' - what does it mean?

Being cynical, what it probably means is - more vague feelgood stuff.  But assuming the 'details' we've been given are the bare bones of what's being proposed, it looks like:

• Local authorities will get to keep more of, and spend, 'taxes raised locally'
• LAs will be able to borrow more
• But somehow this won't just make a handful of high tax-base areas disproportionately better off, nor leave low tax-base areas stranded

Have I got that wrong?

If not, then ... how is that any different?  Or at least, different enough to merit gushing stuff like "the biggest shift of power out of Whitehall and Westminster" (Burnham) or "phenomenal, it really is a sea change, it's monumental" (Mayor of West Midlands)?   Right now, central government comes up with some kind of "needs-based" assessment and distributes grants etc accordingly from those 'taxes raised locally', acting as a kind of equaliser.  Won't we end up at the same place, albeit after perhaps a couple of years of chaos and unexpected consequences?   

Does it mean that, whereas today if Barchester wants the A99 to bypass the town centre, it has to lobby Westminster for tax-payers' money to build one, tomorrow they'll just have to pay for it themselves because nobody else is going to anymore - so maybe they'll just decide they don't want one after all? 

Burnham swiftly ruled out Houchen's smart, cheeky riposte of saying that with his new share of the income tax pie he'll give everyone on Teesside an income tax rebate! 

As for borrowing more ... FFS, how many more Birmingham / Northampton / Croydon / Thurrock bankruptcies does Burnham want?  In 2011 the cretinous Osborne took off the very prudent constraints on what speculative 'commercial' dealings LA's were previously allowed to get into, and that hasn't ended well at all.  And we haven't even mentioned the increasingly dire incompetence and corruption of whole swathes of local government, both elected members and employees.  I mentioned Houchen somewhat favourably above, but in most other respects, his Teesside fiefdom is a poster-child for outrageous local cronyism, rentierism and all-round hanky-panky - see every issue of Private Eye.

Please tell me if I've got the wrong end of the stick!

ND