Society

You can’t have an energy transition without the steel to supply the wind turbine factories.

It is though, one thing to win elections. It is something quite different to successfully govern a country… even at the best of times.

As government (national and local) borrowing costs keep increasing even as the tax take continues to fall, so the ability to fund public services also declines.

The amount of currency in circulation is falling... and that isn’t a good thing, because it doesn’t mean that consumer goodies are going to be cheaper – rather, they are going to disappear entirely.

By “defy convention” and “democratise ocean exploration,” it turned out that Rush meant “use cheap materials” and “sell trips to the bottom of the ocean to rich chumps.”

The narrative itself is based upon a widely-accepted misunderstanding of technological progress which renders the current shittyness of any technology irrelevant.

With that sort of political firepower – controlling the allocation of billions of pounds of public funds – on its side, one might anticipate that Ely would be booming. After all, if such powerful political figures cannot even look after the people who elect them, then what good are they?

This is the great unsung success of modern imperialism in its “stakeholder capitalist” disguise… it has completely neutered its opposition, even to the point of convincing its non-opponents that in some way it is on their side…

The transformation in the Labour Party’s fortunes was staggering.  In the spring of 2021, a Tory Party which had been in office for 11 years stood a good chance of extending its lead in the once unassailable “red wall.”  By the autumn of 2022 – the year of two monarchs …

I was in my teens when I came across the idea that “cool” was a bell curve.  You’re at a party, for example, and some guy picks up an acoustic guitar and gives a rendition of the latest hits… that’s cool.  Add a harmonica and you’re getting toward “peak cool” …