Farmers, who tugged their forelocks and voted for Brexit though it cut them off from their markets, their low-cost labour force and their subsidies, are now protesting a government tax change that prevents their land being used as a financial instrument to facilitate tax avoidance by the ultra-rich.

I’m typing with my ancient Logitech K380. It’s a much nicer keyboard than you’d expect from the design and for the price. It’s also lasted well, and has insanely good battery life.

The right has offered its successor to the neoliberal order, and that is fascism. What will the left offer? Better managed fascism? Sad times.

Apparently Rachel Reeves is a social democrat. As a fully paid up member of the “words mean something” party, I’m here to tell you she’s not a social democrat but a neoliberal. Maybe more “ordoliberal” than “state capacity libertarian” (aka fascist), …

Daylight saving time is over, and it’s dark when I finish work. So I haven’t seen local moorhens at Telehouse pond: Magic, Mystic and the Pilot.

An over the air firmware update bricked my dishwasher.

No laughing matter: John Harris makes has a good piece in the Guardian on the risks of underestimating the hard right. in contrast to Badenoch and Jenrick’s brazen posturing about “culture” and national identity, Labour’s leader and senior figures lack the confidence and political chops to make …

Newspaper editors seem to love this Labour freebies story because it gives them an excuse to print a picture of a minimally clad Taylor Swift every day.

The corrupting influence of money on politics is rarely more vividly illustrated than by the Labour front bench attempting to defend willingly reducing themselves to Lord Alli’s literal playthings. Rayner rejects claims she broke donations rules

Mucking around with the Mb API. Some improvements.

Vain, imprudent, lacking both judgement and a moral compass. Starmer, like many a modern politician, is determined to “prove” modern public choice theory. Starmer’s £100,000 in tickets and gifts more than any other recent party leader

“Eee bah gum, pet. Labour have condemned us to freeze to death this winter, but at least that Sir Keir Starmer is working with the neofascists to keep the foreigners out,” said no one in the Red Wall. Giorgia Meloni: Starmer showed great interest in our Albania migration deal

Presumably, “black hole, we’re doomed!” has been focus-grouped. Who are this bloc of centrist masochists? Why don’t they have a cutesy media monicker?

Over the summer there’s been a change in East London mores: people no longer press the button on the pelican crossings, and leave their baskets for staff to collect on the self-checkouts.

The government planned to gut the NHS and flog the entrails of to private equity. The “black hole” is a smokescreen.

Rachel Reeves is positioning herself as the centrist dad’s Liz Truss.

The Chancellor, of all people, “secures” an £8b AWS datacentre that will “support around 14,000 jobs per year” - the most sustainable of which being the delivery riders bringing the lattes to the journalists at the photo-ops and the spads holding the politico’s …

A ‘tough’ government would be taking power and money from the rich, not mugging pensioners for their winter fuel money or taxing poor families for having kids.

If Britain is broken, why does government fiddle with the dials? If the machine is kaput you fix the machine. You don’t play with the settings.

In the polities of neoliberal meritocracy, elected politicians consider ordinary folk non-player characters. If you try to engage with politicians you soon realise the reverse is true. The politicians speak in robotic slogans scripted by shadowy players working for the oligarchy to rig the game.

My question for the Labour Treasury team is, if the bond markets are running the country, why are we paying you to do it, particularly when you claim money is tight?

The government either takes us for fools or are so completely clueless about economics that they should be nowhere near the levers of power. Economy could have crashed if winter fuel payments for pensioners weren’t cut, Labour minister claims

The Parliament of Crows: I live in east London and I often walk down Bow Creek from Bow Locks to the A13 via Cody Dock. In all these years, I’ve only seen the parliament of crows once. It was a warm afternoon, and the tide was low, exposing a beach at Bow riverside as the river doubles back towards the A13. …

How do you know you’re going deaf in one ear? Your AirPods consistently run down in one ear faster than the other.

As AI fever grips public services, there’s a lot of talk about AI replacing professionals. Professionals accept liability. Something there is absolutely no chance of an AI company doing.

When politicians say they will be “tough on immigration” it’s a tell. They are letting you know they have no intention of creating a fairer economy that works for the rest of us. They won’t do anything about the housing crisis, waiting lists or collapsing public services. …

Riding the rainbow train this morning.

It is an irony of our times that the professional and managerial caste who manage “teh economeh” on behalf of the oligarchy know nothing of economics. Indeed many undertake elite education precisely to entrench their ignorance.

Not sure if the pigeons are fans of minimalism or just like numbers. Anyhow, I play them “Einstein on the Beach” most evenings.

A successful Labour government needs a commitment to social justice. A technocratic government of slight ambition needs a good understanding of macroeconomics. If you have neither, here is what is left. Rachel Reeves planning to raise taxes and cut spending in October budget

I’ve never understood why governments are so interested in the opinions of corporations and the oligarchy. These will be the first people to fly out and set up shop elsewhere once they’ve shat the bed. Why not talk to the folks who’ll be staying to clean up the mess?

Cold snap bonus: Rachel Reeves will only have to kill 250k pensioners over a cold winter to save as much again as her winter fuel payment cut. www.theguardian.com/politics/…

Bought a black Echo Pop during some sort of Prime discount thing. It came with a white power supply. It shows up on my Amazon account as a white Echo Pop. For the handful of other Echo devices I have, they show up with the right colour.

Super depressing to watch liberal democracies give up without a fight. Elites are like, “Well, there’s no alternative, so if people don’t like being poorer with shittier public services, they can just go fash”. Finance and business is like, “Fascism is low taxes. …

The impending collapse of the criminal justice system in the UK is the signal indicator of the true reactionary nature of neoliberalism in Britain. The “nightwatchman state” is withdrawn only from the masses. The political elite are better guarded than ever, and the rich have private …

Is Rachel Reeves a poor communicator constrained by Labour’s Tory-lite, don’t frighten the horses messaging, or is there something more fundamentally problematic there?

Big fire in Canning Town this morning

The election campaign really shows up the dire state of British political journalism.

Paula Vennells sure was paid an awful lot of money for not having a clue what was going on during her tenure as CEO of the Post Office. Paula Vennells breaks down as she tells Post Office inquiry she was misled

In 10 years time who will deliver the lattes once AI has made human labour obsolete?

I love economists. Always so cute in their naïve, incelish smugness, and always so reliably wrong.

You’d think that if the UK government really wanted to “stop the boats”, they’d stop the City laundering the proceeds of the ticket sales.

It’s almost as if everything that politicians back is a bad idea. This is your cognitive elite in action. Also, and incidentally, does anyone know why construction sites in China are always fenced in blue? Small modular reactors don’t add up as a viable energy source

A glitch in the Matrix

Have I got this straight? A lawyer who is defending Trump for the money is using an attack line of accusing a porn actress of doing it for the money.

Here’s where we’re at in Britain. The Tories are high on their own supply, but they don’t know how fucked-up they are because their friends in the propaganda wing (that is what is often called, without irony, “the media”) keep offering them another toke from the bong.

TIL that “May the 4th” for English speakers doesn’t generally refer to the 五四运动, but some sort of lame Star Wars joke. I feel stupid.

Great day for London. Nasty, divisive culture-wars politics comprehensively rejected. And the swifts are back.

Rentier Capitalism by Brett Christophers: an unputdownable read

Bubble tea in Stratford

My hometown: dancing under the overpass

Drift down to the beach

A community event in Custom House (from some years ago)

Surprise to see this coot here on the pavement at Poplar Marina

There’s a colony of wagtails at Westfield in Stratford. They’ve bounced back since the pandemic.

Critters

Down to the spine

Park light at Canary Wharf

Dreamy dusk at the Docks

Blue flag, blue sky

Mountain sunrise

Ice coffee and other things

Birthday favour

East London transport trifecta on the way home this evening. Trains cancelled because of trespassers on the tracks. When a train finally got through we managed one stop before someone pulled the emergency egress lever. Then a brawl broke out in the carriage…

Moody skies over North Greenwich

The transcendence of the rider - no time to park your Lime bike in the Rapture

Flâneur or psychogeographer of the liminal space of the submerged memory-city? (h/t Tom Gauld)

Small to large offices to let

Prickly pear cactus in the Botanic Garden in Copenhagen

Late capitalism - it didn’t take a nuclear war

A page from the calendar

Of all the second languages Tower Hamlets Council would include in notices, German is most unexpected: only 2.1% of its population was born in Germany.

The magic went away

Morning sky over Hackney Central station

No train on the tracks

Crispy bagged salad

Fire prevention

In the well-being corner of Canary Wharf, the over-monied can pay to be locked in a freezer

East End sakura This tree is in Vallance Road Gardens, Whitechapel, in London’s East End. The last V2 to strike London during WW2 hit on the north side of this park, destroying a social housing block there, killing 132.

Pigeons enjoy a characteristic East End meal

Windy afternoon for the coots on Telehouse Pond

Ageism. It’s the last acceptable prejudice, isn’t it? The prejudice you can have and still be woke.

Do you see the moorhen, serene on her nest, amongst all the trash?

The beginnings of foliage

Chicken bucket

Forgotten card

Spring flowers at the Trinity Community Centre in Canning Town

Toy duck at Cody Dock

Say AGI isn’t hype to dazzle customers and bamboozle regulators, but something the AI bros believe in and are working towards. They are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to create the enslaved digital entities they plan rent out to do the world’s bullshit jobs. They could invest …

Interesting Owen Jones piece in the Guardian today. Worth a look. The line-up of British politics right now is right-nationalist/cod-right-nationalist/right-libertarian (Reform/Conservative Party), and conservative/centre-right (Labour). The Tories’ chance of winning is infinitesimally small. What …

Apologies for the inconvenience

What does Altman mean by “very subtle societal misalignments”? Valley gibberish, or does he have something in mind? english.elpais.com/technolog…

Heterodox macroeconomist and campaigner Richard Murphy has produced a Taxing Wealth 2024 report to show how wealth can be taxed fairly in comparison to wages. His worked example restating Rishi Sunak’s tax bill is bang on. Rishi Sunak’s tax for 2022/23: a Taxing Wealth Report 2024 case study: …

UK prime minister Rishi Sunak paid around 23% tax on £2.2M income because most of his income is capital gains and dividends. Investment income enjoys a huge tax subsidy. Had Sunak “earned” a £2.2M wage, he’d have paid roughly 56% tax1 including student loan repayment. back of the …

So far this year - as of 4 February 2024 - on my daily walks, and every single day since 1 January, at least one car has run red lights on a pedestrian crossing.

Wryly amused at our blundering elite who spent the last 45 years doing more damage to our productive industrial infrastructure than Hitler lecture us that we are moving from a post-war to a pre-war status.

Well, well, well. The other shoe drops. Activist who led ouster of Harvard president linked to ‘scientific racism’ journal

The UK political class has used WhatsApp to avoid democratic scrutiny. They weren’t bamboozled by the tech or confounded by advice from their private office. They knew what they were doing. They knew it was wrong. They did it anyway.

Funny how aging TINA neoliberals accuse the kids of being intolerant of diverse opinions

An occasional series of East London chicken shops. Peck! Peck! by Sutton and Sons, Graham Road, Hackney, London E8. Sutton and Sons is a chain of North-East London chip shops.

It seems to me British politics reached its nadir some time ago. And now, various Tory wannabees are wrestling in the muddy slops below the bottom of the barrel.

Average car insurance cost in UK nears £1,000 after prices rise 58% “Like a lot of our expenses, car insurance is getting more costly. And this is likely to be the case for some time. Claiming is one of the biggest factors when it comes to insurers pricing up policies. And with the cost of paying …

Technicians commission one of the Winter Lights exhibits at Westferry Circus.

X-risk: when the techno-optimists' AI tells them we need to reduce inequality and establish social democracy.

An occasional series of East London chicken shops. Frisco’s, Beckton Road, Canning Town, London E16. The streaks are wind-blown snow.

An occasional series of East London chicken shops. Seoul Bird with a branch of Wagamama above, in Jubilee Place, Canary Wharf, London E14.

Masala apple pie: A nice warming apple pie for when the weather gets colder. Ingredients 1 teaspoon of chai masala powder. (If you live in the UK, you could do worse than Waitrose sweet garam masala in the Cooks Ingredients range) 2 teaspoons of sweet potato flour. (You’ll find this at East Asian grocers, or …

Happy new year. It’s been a cost of living crisis fireworks display so the pigeons are frightened but not totally insane with fear.

2024 approaches. The fireworks are ramping up, and the pigeons are getting unsettled.

Is it possible to create an arbitrary bookmark - not bookmark a post - using the microdotblog API? @help

I thought 15C was too warm for snow at Christmas, then looked up and saw it was a tree in blossom.

TikTok is evil beyond redemption. Its community safety is a sham, and it seeks to profit from misery and suffering. This cannot escape its employees and enablers. If you work for or do business with TikTok, make quitting your new year’s resolution. The choices we make matter.

Friends and followers, we have the winners for the winter solstice 🆆⚓️ on 🛞🛞competition.

Oh. The Substack clowns have de-cloaked. And to no one’s surprise they’re the RealNazis™. If you’re not bailing right now, then, we see you - we know what you are.

Should you ever find yourself sarf of the river in need of a decent lunch, you could do a lot worse than Marcella on Deptford High Street. Good food, interesting wines, friendly staff. marcella.london

Principled Tories? Uh-uh. No. Nope. There are none. Relief for Rishi Sunak as Rwanda bill passes first vote in Commons

Here’s the thing about neoliberals: they would rather “go fash” than tax the rich and build affordable housing

Political and financial journalists should be clear as to whether they are writing about the “market” or “Mah-Ket”, the infallible god of the Neoliberals.

The idea that Sunak and the Tories gave two tosses about the jobs of hospitality workers is laughable. Property portfolios of city centre landlords more like.

A lasting legacy of neoliberalism is that in place of solidarity it has created a culture of belligerent victimhood.

The obvious, rarely stated. Policy is more responsive to preferences of the well-heeled than of the worse off, and people know this - but it [is] a blind spot for most politicians Next UK election set to be most unequal in 60 years, study finds

The people who build and operate TikTok are ghouls.

How will Labour leader and earnest Thatcherite Keir Starmer outdo the Tories’ cruel “no families for foreign care workers” proposal? Indentured labour? Plan to cut immigration raises fears of NHS staff shortages

Christmas Menu - first of the second thoughts For Christmas Day, I’m thinking a starter of wild mushrooms preserved in olive oil, silken beancurd with chopped capers and dukkah, lamb’s lettuce alongside the friselle salad. The original: Christmas Menus 2023 First Draft

Christmas Menus 2023 First Draft: First cut of menus for Christmas 2023. Work in progress. Main meal only. Vegetarian. Christmas Eve dinner to Boxing Day. Christmas Eve Food Sugared, chocolate-coated, gilded, and silvered Brazil nuts and almonds Chickpeas and cannellini beans with hispi cabbage and cavolo nero Frangipane Soft …

So, last week’s OpenAI chicken coup was a grift to hype their Q* product.

Few things say global Britain more than a freight train of empty FreightLiners trundling to Tilbury.

More more puzzling still is why this cabbage is called a hispi cabbage in restaurants and a sweetheart cabbage in supermarkets. Why the humble hispi cabbage is the new cauliflower steak

The OpenAI game of thrones reminds us that in the broösphere you will be replaced by AI, not them.

Interesting that OpenAI’s backers and funders are keen to hang on to insubstantial TED-talker Sam Altman: it suggests that OpenAI in fact have nothing.

I wonder what causes the painful broken glass in the ears treble that I hear when listening to digital music. Is it my ageing ears, crap equipment, or the wrong settings? Or have people got used to sharp but lifeless, shallow and un-nuanced highs in pursuit of thumping bass?

A tugboat pulls a large float advertising pesto (of all things) past the O2.

Tories to ban themselves under new extremism proposals. Revealed: plan to brand anyone ‘undermining’ UK as extremist

Britain’s elite institutions appear to be spectacularly incapable of producing a governing class able to run a modern country. Perhaps this explains the dominant reactionary thread that is woven through an establishment that aspires to rule the past.

Okta, the new way to spell disingenuous cowboys. Joking apart - whole governments trust identities to these muppets.

Working from home? Here’s a tip. Get yourself a cuckoo clock. Muji sell nice modern-style ones.

The Covid Inquiry so far - journalism and Oxbridge need a long period of sober reflection.

I was at a good Newham community event today on their People Powered Places strand. It got me thinking about transformative people. I had a (sad, ageing GenXer behind the curve) epiphany: I’ve been privileged to know some transformative people, and 9 out of 10 - I say again: 9 out of 10 - are …

Bluesky asked me for my date of birth, but will only let me enter a date that is 1,000 years older than I admit to being.

The Economy: Over the years in the UK, “the economy” has become the central obsession of politicians. Not education or healthcare, not aspiration or a better life for “hardworking families”. So important is “the Economy” that politicians work tirelessly to cede all control of it: to multinational corporations …

The BA app for iPad is excruciatingly useless. All it presents is a screen to book a flight. No other options. If I enter a destination to book, nothing happens. Great work, British Airways!

Britain’s housing crisis needs radical action not Labour’s technocratic small beer. Labour would oversee ‘biggest boost in affordable housing in a generation’

Having impoverished the country and precipitated a housing crisis, the Tories can’t kick off a culture war between homeowners and renters because no one can afford either. Instead in bargain basement Britain we get a government-sponsored culture war between car drivers and the rest of us.

My tip to people trafficking entrepreneurs struggling with burdensome government regulation: make a lot of noise about using AI and don’t forget the generous donations to the Tory party.

I’m doing the Hackney Legal Walk on Saturday to raise money for Citizens Advice. Their advice helps people assert their rights, leading to over £2M income gained by residents of East London in July and August alone. londonlegalsupporttrust.enthuse.com/pf/citize…

More proof should you need it that the Tories think you are stupid. Rishi Sunak considering inheritance tax cut, report says

Hello younger voters👋. You’ve heard that politics doesn’t offer you anything because you don’t vote. That’s only half the story. Politicians didn’t pay attention to deplorables or Brexiters until they voted the wrong way. You don’t need go fuck-barking, but do put …

What is remarkable about this is not that almost 80% of the electorate don’t trust Sunak on the environment, but that 20% of them are so terminally gullible and stupid that it’s a wonder they’ve lived to reach voting age. Only 22% of Britons trust Sunak on climate, finds Guardian poll

Have we got to the stage yet where the parasites shuck off their Tory and begin to seek out a Labour host?

Sunak would not have given his climate speech if the Tories didn’t think us fools. Rishi Sunak announces U-turn on key green targets

Tories vs ruinous Brexit: “Get it done!” Tories vs existential climate crisis: “Let’s just slow things down for a culture wars poll bounce”. Not before shuttling over to the US to ensure UK banks get IRA bonanza dibs. Sunak planning to drop net zero policies in …

I’m pretty sure everyone who booked Russell Brand knew what kind of person he was. Still, they went ahead and booked him.

Crazy how these credentialed white men reacted with a fantasy projection when an algorithm got as good at passing the tests they took as tokens of their entitled intelligence. “It’s a really clever machine and it will get cleverer and cleverer and, and, and turn you into paperclips! So …

What a steaming pile of crap Resy is. Truly awful user experience that must take some experience to have so enshittened.

It’s curious just how many boomer and gen-x academic and academic-adjacent types who spoke of the need for the young to develop critical thinking skills in the face of nascent Web 2.0 are now covid-denying antivaxxers railing against being imprisoned in 15 minute neighbourhoods.

Currently reading: The Tyranny of Merit by Michael J. Sandel. Thoughtful and articulate on how meritocracy has metastatised in neoliberal societies 📚

Neoliberal meritocracy doesn’t stand up to even the lightest scrutiny. I thought that its credentialed elite advocates championed it for self-congratulatory or self-serving reasons. That they do it out of ignorance and incuriosity seems now both more likely and considerably more depressing.

Oxford university, Britain’s educational Mordor, spewed out hordes of neoliberal PPE graduates who laid waste to public life and brought a Britain they had broken to its knees. Now its dank courtyards nurture the neofascist Longtermist death cult.

“What Britain needs is more spineless, visionless neoliberals whose big idea is NHS privatisation” said no one on the doorstep. So who are Labour talking to?

I was shopping for bird food at the Range at Surrey Quays this afternoon. What a nice store! There was a bit of a queue at the checkouts, and they put on more staff. The customers didn’t break queueing order, and the staff were friendly and helpful. Also, I scored 12.5kg of bird seed for …

Friends, what is the Magic Technocrat lever that the Tories haven’t used which Reeves and Starmer will pull to deliver growth and prosperity with otherwise the Exact Same Policies?

Local bird ground effect over water update: Local coots are the ground effect champions. If they ever actually fly out of ground effect, they do it in secret Cormorants always break ground effect and fly over bridges carrying power cables Crows won’t fly under bridges in ground effect. They’ll happily cross the Lea in ground …

I’m reading Show Me the Bodies by Peter Apps 📚 Fuck me, this is a painful, important book. First non-fiction book this year that I’m crying as I read it.

Got home before the dishwasher finished for the first time and noticed it rather swankily projects its progress onto the kitchen floor. Maybe this is something all dishwashers do? In which case, shows how unobservant I am!

Do you live in Newham? Have a great idea? Residents can apply for grants of up to £5,000 for community projects through People Powered Places. There’s two weeks left to apply. You can get help with your application at your local library. newhamco-create.co.uk/en/pages/…

Saw this pigeon down at Telehouse. It looks like CGI, but there’s no trickery. The flesh had been torn from its neck, exposing the spine. It was steering clear of the flock there, but was quite agile, and dodged my attempts both to feed it and to grab it to take it to the pigeon hospital.

Not sure if it’s the weather or it’s time to fly home, but the swifts are massing over the Olympic Park.

Philosophically, neoliberalism is superficial and incoherent - almost as if it were designed to appeal to uncritical, incurious swots. In practice it is a failure: enabling a rentier plutocracy’s march to fascism

“Principled” conservatives: you may think the “dash for fash” is a cynical ploy to attract voters disenfranchised by neoliberal technocrats, a plan to entrench a rentier-capitalist plutocracy, or merely an unintended consequence of incompetent electioneering. Whatever. Why are you enabling fascists?

Here’s the thing about technocrats: they find themselves running a death camp, so they set about improving the productivity of the gas chambers.

One of the problems of the modern political class in Britain is that being a person of action means being photographed in front of a whiteboard gesturing with a dry wipe marker.

The didgeridoo player at Stratford station always attracts pigeons, who stamp their feet in time to the rhythm. The electric guitar player seems to drive the birds off though.

Rejoice, elder peasants! Those high-paid, high-skilled, high-productivity jobs could soon be yours. Over-50s could deliver takeaways, says work and pensions secretary

So, the right wing argument for not doing much about climate change is, “It’s not so bad. It’s not as if everyone will die.”

Banking printing money from interest rate hikes. The extractive energy sector struck a money gusher after Russia invaded Ukraine. Now the Tories are working assiduously to promote the interests of these sectors, which were shrewd enough I guess to direct some of the free money the Tories’ way.

Ethical banking: This piece on Farage’s crusade against NatWest on Richard Murphy’s Funding the Future blog is interesting. Is there a future for ethical banking? Three comments: Regarding banks and banking in the modern economy, neoliberalism is ideologically, philosophically, and practically …

Pigeon Tribes: Based on their colouring, local pigeons are different tribes. From Terry Spinks Place in Canning Town north to Three Mills in Bow, there are many birds with “Skeletor” patterns (white-to-speckled-white heads, feathering to dark colouring). At Canary Wharf, there are many …

I occasionally see a dilapidated ice cream van around Hackney that looks like a horror movie prop. Surely a spoof, it’s emblazoned with the company name “NAZ Ice”.

I’m not sure why a public transport service whose exhortations fail to get people to do self-interested things like “keep to the left” or “let the passengers off first” thinks that a few posters will be effective in combating the harassment of women on the network.

The choice in British politics is between weak, unprincipled invertebrates and weak, unprincipled invertebrates who try to make themselves look strong by kicking migrants and transgender people.

What electoral constituency is Starmer trying to appeal to? Two nasty parties

Twenty is plenty

So, I am posting in greyscale from an eInk device.

Does “elite overproduction” explain all the mess the UK and the US are in? I don’t think so, but it sure is an important factor.

Remember all those “think of the children” Tories during the pandemic? Where are tbey now? Home Office had murals for children removed at second asylum centre

In the battle of East London leisure destinations, Canary Wharf is advertising at Westfield Stratford

I’m at St Marks Gate/Cadogan Terrace. The Greenway - a scenic walk down a Victorian super-sewer starts just a few meters away, as you can smell in the breeze. This is also the site of the death of the first person to be murdered on a railway train.

“Torn” is a great song. Fight me. (And Mrs Moorhen).

Maybe don’t throw bacon sarnies and toasties at the nesting coot.

Was wondering why the pot wasn’t boiling. I hadn’t actually turned the hob ring on.

What are we looking at, Sarge? 3 to 5 years for crimes against architecture, lad.

So I tried Threads today. Definitely not for me. But the promise of federation is … promising.

I can’t find a single quantity theory of money bro who’s loudly blaming inflation on pandemic stimulus demanding 100% tax on the excess pandemic savings of the upper half of the income distribution.

Hey, @help - is something up with the CDN or with image uploads from the MacOS app?

Nablus on the roost: 

Scritti Politici on the airer: 

Yes, it’s a pokeria

Brutalist Chinoiserie in Calabria: Along the Tyrrhenian coast on the gulf of Policastro you’ll find the fading legacy of a chain of dilapidated holiday homes. The unifying aesthetics are ornate green lanterns and “brutalist chinoiserie”. The look can’t have come cheap - but they are all falling apart now. …

Bergamot soda - “green gold of Calabria”

Over the decades I’ve been taking the train south from Napoli Centrale, the station has got busier and busier. And like other European cities, the growth in the number of homeless people living around the station is shocking.

Naples Central Station

Starhotel Terminus, Naples, Italy ⭐️⭐️⭐️

I accidentally one-click bought some climate denialist garbage on Amazon by swiping too hard. I hesitated for a second before returning. Perhaps I should consider alternative viewpoints. I didn’t want to give the crank any money, though. Have I just cancelled?

I’ve got superstitious over the years over the order I put the vegetables into a ciambotta.

Mitigating the risk of extinction from an out of touch and amoral billionaire class should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.

Your occasional guide to understanding the right: Classical Liberal = over-credentialed incel reactionary. Free Speech Absolutist = loves sound of own voice. In a sexual way. Contrarian = broken down boomer journalist desperate for clicks.

A coot among the pigeons

The bourgeois populist press coverage of inflation and interest rates is as howlingly vacuous as the national populist press coverage of immigration and “small boats”.

The already awful Horizon scandal that saw innocent sub-postmasters gaoled because of computer system errors gets worse and worse. Shocking, depressing, it lays bare Britain’s dark side. Post Office Horizon inquiry used racist term for Black people, documents show

I’ve noticed that elites tend to use “intelligent” as a shorthand for “narcissistic, Machiavellian, self-serving” rather than, say, “insightful, inventive, clear-thinking”. This informs elite views of “artificial intelligence” - both what it is, and how it will be used.

The staff canteen has been replaced by a staff food-bank. You know when you’ve been Toried.

Still wrestling with a working (and workable) definition of political centrism. My latest is “bourgeois populism”. I know it’s an oversimplification - centrism applies to the credentialed elite more so than the wider bourgeoisie - but an ever-increasing share of the bourgeoisie is …

From the media round today, it seems Keir Starmer has decloacked. Disappointingly but unsurprisingly he’s a “centrist dad” neoliberal.

Citadel. OMFG. I don’t think it’s ironically bad, just absolutely, utterly terrible. Still, attractive leads - though Richard Madden’s brain-wiped character is rather grating. I’m sure if I get the lobotomy and watch the season the sexism will be re-upped with racism, …

I can recommend Belvoir - pronounced Beaver - Farm Ginger Cordial. I make it at double strength with sparkling water. It’s lovely.

I don’t get the mint business. Does it really make sense to airlift bagged sprigs of mint from Ethiopia to Blighty?

When I see people with their Instagrammable dogs, I think of chickens - 3600 years from prestige pet to discarded bones in a polystyrene box with chip-bits picked over by pigeons.

Schrödinger’s civil service is both woke, lazy and incompetent, and orchestrating a devastatingly effective deep-state conspiracy to frustrate Brexit and derail the Tory government.

Fox News has collapsed beyond degenerate matter and, spinning wildly, has become a griftar.

The 0816 Overground from Stratford always leaves late. Except when the next three trains are cancelled. Then it leaves 2 minutes early.

If government has to give incentives to business to invest, doesn’t that imply poorly-regulated and uncompetitive markets?

Coots are one of nature’s great bricoleurs. This coot is one of a pair who’ve built their nest entirely from rubbish thrown into the Royal Docks from visitors to the IFSCloud cable car.

A young female pigeon (I think - not 100% expert at pigeon sexing) is roosting on the patio door handle. I know they can be messy birds, but she seem so precarious - landing there can’t be easy - I don’t want to disturb her. She can rest for the night as the police helicopters clatter …

Hello journalists! Voter in a democracy here. Sunak’s government is not the one that made the manifesto commitments in 2019. So, what key pieces of legislation do the Tories intend to get through before the next general election? And why?

🐦‍⬛A blackbird is singing over the hiss of the traffic. In the dark. In the rain.

Poverty and the political right: If the right wanted a low-tax small state through democratic means, it would tackle poverty. The poor derive more direct benefit from public services than the rich. This is why the right, who want a low-tax, small-government state, deny structural poverty and claim the poor are lazy, feckless …

It’s kind of pathetic watching successive senior Tories do their “Chemical Ali” turn over Brexit border chaos. www.theguardian.com Suella Braverman denies Brexit to blame for Dover queues of 14 hours

Struggling to get my palm rest out of the packaging because my wrists are so bad.

I am just beginning the planning now for the 10 year anniversary of this sign not coming down.

Local drivers need parking practice.

Sovereignty didn’t matter either: The great tragedy of Brexit is that it was just a tactical move by the Tories to win an election and an opportunistic gambit by individual politicians to gain power. Beyond this, there are no goals, no principles, no big ideas. Just cynical optics for the base. www.theguardian.com UK joins …

The abandoned Nike outlet is a mirror to the Overground tracks.

Keir Starmer in drag.

Capturing Hot Air: Tories: The State can’t pick winners. The Mah-Ket will decide our fate. Also Tories: Shackled to the dinosaur EU we can’t take advantage of the New Economy. We have to Leave! EU: Okay. Bye! Tories: Incandescent lightbulbs! Also Tories: Behold the powerful suction of our vacuum cleaner motors! (Made …

A slice of delicious home-made apple pie with a bit of custard.

I wonder how many terminal prompts the servers at Telehouse support. Here’s a view of Telehouse North Two at the Tower Hamlets side of Leamouth in East London.

The bridge on the left supports Aspen Way. On the right, the DLR.

Let’s see ChatGPT 4 drive a car.

The customer service fail at Franco Manca Canary Wharf this evening isn’t evenly spread. One young couple were kept waiting to order, had their starters delivered late, had their pizzas forgotten about, then got the wrong pizzas. I’m sure a piano is going to land on their heads.

Honestly the pizza points are not worth the pain of using Franco Manca’s utterly useless app.

Culinary instruments on display at John Lewis, Canary Wharf.

Scored a kilo of Panch Puran (Bengali five spice). This is an essential cooking ingredient for me - really elevates brassicaceae.

Imagine the derision if a member of the working class declared the invention of the shovel the dawn of artificial general intelligence.

Food courts disconnected from the encumbering shopping mall are an increasingly popular destination in East London. Here’s the Cargo Market Hall in Canary Wharf. Notice the very English door-blocking yellow cone - but sadly for completists, no plastic fencing this evening.

A pigeon under the pedestrian ramp at Homerton Station grabs the chance of a bit of morning sun.

I get it’s disappointing that few high-follower-count folks have left Musk’s horror-platform. Heck, I’m disappointed, too. But let’s not forget Facebook orchestrated the Rohingya genocide and folks stayed there too.

Lots of interesting insects at Praia a Mare last summer. Me being me I was mainly taking pictures of the famous local pigeons. But here’s a large black bee collecting nectar from lantana flowers on the corner of Gramsci Road.

A couple of key right wing terms: Declinism: the opinion that a bonfire of regulations and tax cuts for the rich is not an industrial strategy. (Plan for) growth: the belief that industrial strategy consists of deregulation and cutting taxes for the rich.

Every right wing talking head: “Rant, rant, woke this, woke that, rant bathrooms, woke deep state. Why are the left wing establishment declinist wokerati arguing about woke and not delivering our ‘plan for growth’?”

If you are over 50, the writing on the labels of food packaging is too tiny.

What an odd hill Mark Rowley has chosen to die on. Chopping logic over “systemic” vs “institutional” prejudice is way more political than the term “institutional” itself. Casey report: Met chief accepts review diagnosis, but will not use term ‘institutional’

I’m looking for a houseplant. Nice display in M&S at Crossrail Place - but they’d sold out of the plants I’d had my eye on. I’m passing through Stratford tomorrow on my way home, so may take a look in the shops there.

The area south of A13 between Silvertown Way and Freemasons Road was called Cherry Island. Here is our sakura analog.

Pigeons on the quasi-portico of Canary Wharf Underground Station

I got up late so my early walk to Canary Wharf this morning was a dash to the Custom House Elizabeth Line station.

Passing through the Custom House portal to Canary Wharf lives up to its sci-fi name. Two Londons couldn’t be more divided if they were in parallel universes

Manor Road between Canning Town and West Ham, with its temporary pedestrian crossing chicanes, narrow, uneven footpaths, and poor drainage is the pedestrian’s nemesis.

“Nat has herpes” is scrawled all over East London. Should I feel sorry for Nat, or does this have another meaning?

You have got to wonder about the folks who take their dogs to shit outside the school gates.

In sum, seems like a budget to keep self-interested Tories onside. I guess it presages a ratcheting up of culture war cobblers to gin up Tory supporters who vote against their own interests.

Hmm. Seems like the Tories have given back around 2/3 of the recent corporation tax hike in tax reliefs. Corporations already don’t know what to do productively with the money. Share buybacks FTW!

Imagine if the Tories had given wealthy savers the same pension tax breaks, but required the money be invested in net zero and social housing.

You need a lot of patience to drive down Morning Lane in the, uh, morning. I walk - and there isn’t much patience on show.

Fiscal rules: Your budget day reminder that outside of political discourse there’s no such thing as fiscal rules. The term was introduced into the UK by Gordon Brown to counter the (mistaken) premise that Labour is bad at economic management. As political tools, fiscal rules are designed to support political …

The unimaginative build-it-by-numbers regeneration strategy is to throw up high-rises around public transport hubs, which leaves tracts of East London without a horizon, little sunlight, and very windy streets.

This is Canary Wharf Station on the Elizabeth Line. It has no direct connection with Canary Wharf Station on the DLR, and neither of those stations have a connection with Canary Wharf Station on the Jubilee Line. One location: three stations.

Against the grey afternoon sky the silver leaves sprouting from the tree growing out of the taxi aren’t so shiny.

Flying Tiger - this is the Crossrail Place branch - gimcrack ground zero.

I can be a bit slow on the uptake. The people who get het up about “declinism” are the same people as “classical liberals” who rail against the “woke” and decry “cancel culture”.

The Tapping of the Purple Reader is the essential ritual of East London travelling people.

Public address speakers paired together on the lampposts at Hackney Central station.

Passenger on the train has a “specially selected” mozzarella and sun dried cherry tomato wood fired sourdough pizza - cook at home - on her lap. The most prominent aspect of the packaging is the Union Jack.

Hackney is gridlocked this morning. The average British car is the size of a small bus these days. Nevertheless most have just the driver.

The immigration “debate” in the UK is always radioactive. With their small boats stunting the Tories have gone the full Chernobyl. How do they shut it down when it explodes?

Saw this on my walk to the Hackney office today through sleet and snow. It explains why so many exterior light-fittings in England are round.

Tory “libertarians” overcome cognitive dissonance by believing free enterprise only applies to people they went to school with or who pay them off. Small-boats people-trafficking needs to be profoundly financialised before it becomes a global British success story to be turbocharged via …

www.theguardian.com Rishi Sunak ‘extinguishing the right to seek refugee protection in UK’ Shameful. All the more so because this “law” is merely a political stunt by the Tories.

The whole display has crashed at EY, Canary Wharf.

Crossrail (the Elizabeth Line) is an engineering marvel. But they never take account of passengers when designing rail infrastructure.

Tory Migration-go-round Explained: The Tories won’t fix public services, healthcare, housing or infrastructure. If they did, you wouldn’t believe that “the country’s full”. And the Tories won’t fix small boats and asylum processing delays. If they did, you wouldn’t blame migrants for the …

This art piece in Crossrail Place at Canary Wharf is made up of LED tiles. The art itself is maybe a little condescending, but the motion is interesting.

Almost 45 years in, and I thought that neoliberalism would have its “reflections on forced collectivisation” moment. But nope. It’s it’s not going to happen, is it?

The pilot hen is the moorhen who’s always leading the other water birds to the food. This time, she’s jumped out of Telehouse Pond as is zipping along on land towards me.

One of the interesting things about the Windsor Framework is that it is not, say, the Barnsley Framework.

The crows are running around on the roof. I can hear the distinctive hopping gait.

The crow on “crowverlook” duty on the Star Lane office today watches in solitude.

Gosh @help - am I doing the photoblogging challenge wrong?

It’s London “nope” weather in Hackney this morning.

The crazy thing about neoliberals is that they love markets right up to the point that someone tries to create a market in their ideas. Biden has been forced to confront neoliberal madness head on

Highbrow media are setting up Sunak v Starmer as a battle of the centrist dads. Never was a frame so improbable. Sunak is a “state capacity libertarian” and Starmer a “reforming” Christian democrat. A right-wing battle far from the failing systems of country crashing into penury.

Some tools in the can. Looks pretty secure.

On changing the brushes on the motors when the battery is flat: Leave politics aside a sec and ask yourself, who is being feather-bedded when businesses are uncompetitive, have low productivity and live of rents? The owners of capital and the executives who see their returns and remuneration rise “to the moon”? Or the workers whose wages are …

Okay. So, thanks to Geofency and Pipedream, I can annoy you all with my arrivals at and departures from selected locations.

Sense of Wonder: There’s this sci-fi trope where our time-travelling hero in the past lets the future know when she is by taking out a classified ad for something that couldn’t exist at the time. When I was studying physics at school, mechanics was just classical mechanics, and I kind of got this because …

Are Tories blind to structural problems? Does their privilege lead them to really, truly believe the world is a Disney movie? www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-p… one of the best ways for people to boost their income is not only to get into work if they are not in work already, but to work more hours or …

I like Yubico YubiKeys - sound idea for improving online personal security, I think. I own a couple. But their marcomms is utter kack.

Bought some nice-looking russets from the local M&S, but they’re rubbish: flavourless and squishy. So making apple pie with what I can find about the flat - “Classic Christmas spice”, ginger, Muscovado sugar, sweet-potato flour, and frozen vegan ready-made shortcrust pastry.

I generally avoid vegetables with trademarks, but Kalettes(TM) are seriously tasty. I braise them with shallots, dried chilli flakes, panch phoran, garlic and a splash of rice wine. Good enough to be probably illegal.

Alexa seems to like chicken.

Putting ANPRs on pelican crossings and fining every driver who runs a red light would seem to be an easy money spinner for London.

Is it that graffiti is not art, or that all that art is is pissing on lampposts?

Road racer’s engine is louder than the sirens of the police chasing after down the A13

I’m leaving Stratford International on the DLR from platform 2. Have literally never seen a DLR leave from platform 2 before. Let alone be on it.

What are the Americans shooting down? De-orbiting Teslas?

A brief musing on political centrism: I’ve struggled with the concept of political centrism. I’ve found its positioning as “moderate” or “in the middle” of a left/right continuum at odds with its political incoherence and its totalising tendencies. I think centrism is better understood as a form of …

Uttering sound bites while wearing a high viz jacket is not an industrial strategy.

Reading Liz Truss’s piece in the Sunday Telegraph, I can only conclude that the UK political right has spent far too long, with way too much cocaine, talking to itself in darkened rooms. The only solution is sunlight and a lengthy period of cold turkey. Alas for us, we’re stuck the the …

Elon Cohaagen cutting off the oxygen in Venusville is fiction, right?

Reading about power outages and trees exploding from the cold, and the best we’ve got is the wrong kind of snow every decade or so.

Dockhunt: closer to that journalistic slip of the tongue than the UK chancellor of the exchequer.

Not sure how public sector workers contribute to the “wage/price spiral” given their labour isn’t sold for profit on the open market.

The workers being lowered into the sewer are all Irish. This is England! We expect foreigners to clean up our shit.

What is your worst walk? Mine is Canning Town to the Greenway via Manor Road. Nasty in all weathers.

The BBC’s review into its taxation, public spending, government borrowing and debt output is interesting and worth a look, as is this commentary from Richard Murphy.

Newham Council would like people to drive less and walk more. It’s a laudable aim even if, as we heard at the “budget summit” they favour the stick over the carrot. Today, it’s an icy morning and the walking routes to local schools are ungritted.

I have some thoughts and comments about reforming NHS bureaucracy. I tried referring myself to Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting, but they wouldn’t see me. I have to follow appropriate channels.

www.theguardian.com The UK may avoid a recession for now but it won’t feel like it for many Britain avoids recession because population permanently drunk.

www.theguardian.com Hedge funds holding up vital debt relief for crisis-hit Sri Lanka, warn economists Bastards will bastard.

With his sleight of hand promise to cut inflation, Rishi Sunak sure does think his core vote needs help with maths. www.theguardian.com/politics/…

Seems to me that the people lacking numeracy skills to prosper in the workplace are the Tories. Except the people being let down are you and me. www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/…

Finished reading: Rentier Capitalism by Brett Chistophers 📚- one of the most insightful books I read all year when it comes to understanding what ails the British economy

Could a politician or policy wonk explain the difference between “turbocharge” and “supercharge” when used in vacuous rhetoric?

I managed an average of 11.6km a day of walking or running in 2022. Not the 12km a day I was hoping for, but still pretty pleased.

The verdict is in. Anyone who voted Leave was duped. I hope once the Tories are out of office, politicians can start being honest about this. www.theguardian.com/commentis…

Oh-ho! Discovered a mandarin negroni stollen that somehow didn’t get eaten.

When a poor person slips on the ice, does anyone who matters hear them fall?

Ungritted pavements in Custom House

Ungritted streets in Canning Town

Imagine being so cynical and cruel that you choose a performative immigration and asylum policy over an effective one.

Temporary if poorly fitted and not working eInk display on the Elizabeth Line

I’ve run this timeline over and again and the only place neoliberal “meritocracy” ever ends up is fascism.

Apparently “Singapore on Thames” is gone, and Britain will “become the next Silicon Valley” via regulatory independence. Around 78% of Singapore’s citizens live in social housing. Silicon Valley has a housing crisis. In this sense, the Tory line is more accurate.

It’s interesting that the Tories say of Brexit that we “voted to change our trading relationship with the EU”. This is of course a consequence of Brexit, but I don’t think that that is what anyone voted for.

New micro post on the MarsEdit 5 beta. I like the “throwing it out there” aspect. Like others, I think a character count would be nice. Call me old-fashioned, but if I right-click on the Dock icon I only get “New Post”. I’d like “New Micro Post” too.

Couldn’t get a micro.blog window to show up on the app until I delete the cache. Odd. Anyway, seem to have too many Mastodon accounts. Maybe micro.blog only is the way?

Enjoying The Peripheral on Amazon Prime Video. One thing puzzles me, though. Why are the inhabitants of future London so theatrical, given there is, like, nobody left? Does future London represent the triumph of the Ted Talkers?

Theory: the people elect politicians to regulate the markets Practice: the markets pay off politicians to screw over the people

There’s a distinction between riches and the return to riches. Redistribution isn’t taking from the rich and giving to the poor, it’s lowering the return to riches. Austerity is the opposite: it precisely intends to increase the benefits of being rich.

With only weeks to Christmas, the value destruction leaderboard looks like this: Elon Must Liz Truss Vladimir Putin Will nation states destroy the most value? The billionaire class is valiantly fighting back. As we enter the festive season, there’s everything to lose!

www.theguardian.com The cowardly state beholden to “the markets” is back.

Don’t people like Elon Musk cause real problems for meritocracy’s true believers?

Leafing through dismal opinion polls this morning, three words characterise Tory supporters: ignorant, complacent, unpleasant.

“Smart Home” technology would be a lot better if it actually worked.

All they have got, the TINA neoliberals, the handmaidens to the rentier class, is racist dogwhistles. That’s it. Nothing else.

Currently reading: How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil 📚: Man likes chicken.

Not really needing my vegan burgers to have added artificial blood.

Lagrange is a nice Gemini browser, with an opinionated UI. Amfora is a good looking Gemini client for the terminal.

I stumbled across Project Gemini, a lightweight internet protocol pitched somewhere between Gopher and HTTP, with a Markdown-lite document format.

Currently reading: Failures of State: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle with Coronavirus by Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott 📚- Reading in short busts to avoid hurling the Kindle out the window.

www.theguardian.com PM weds at “secret” ceremony with friends. It’s in all the papers. Words used to mean something.

Picnic, early May 2021: To Eat Baby potato salad with steamed green beans, lettuce and tomato, mint, quails eggs, capers and smoked olives Tumeric roast cauliflower and onions with za’tar Steamed white asparagus with mustard vinaigrette and chopped, soft-boiled eggs Heirloom raddish and cucumber with chilli oil and …

An important day for pigeon science: In the colder weather, the plants on the balcony are wilting. At the beginning of the week the pair of pigeons who’ve taken up residence were looking increasingly desperate as their food supply was shrivelling and dying before their eyes. I filled a small pot with birdseed and left it on the …

Signs of the times: What does this sign mean? Today, I learned it means: GET OUT OF MY F*ING WAY YOU C*NT. LOOK AT THE F*KING SIGN. GET OUT OF MY WAY. C*NT!

Sometimes during lockdown I put my coffee in my travel mug.

A (pedantic) note on King Coot: twitter.com/furtherfi… The Community of Coots are too ornery and independent to want anything to do with queens, let alone kings. In times of crisis, a coot emerges from the need for collective action. That coot is called Marengo. In the Elder Noise, Marengo means the Caller of Ways. The …

Moral cesspit? Welcome to Tory Britain. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/sep/01/home-office-planning-to-end-family-reunion-for-children-after-brexit

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/aug/31/help-to-buy-loans-benefited-more-rich-than-poor-households Knock me down with a feather.

Memo to self: O&M and AOV. Don’t ask.

Is it ever wise to look at micro.blog clients at two minutes to midnight?

Footling with collaborative writing apps instead of, you know, writing.