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 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. There’s a colony of crows here: they dance in the updrafts from the airconditioning of the Amazon and DPD depots.

This time, though, there were more crows than I’d ever seen - all massing at the riverside. More crows came. More and more crows from the City in the west, Stratford in the north, and Essex in the east, looping towards the river, dark streams in the sky. Some crows barrelled under the bridge that carries electric cables across the river, and playfully zig-zagged across the Lea, screen-gliding like waterfowl, wingtips grazing the water before pulling up to land on the beach.

The crows all settled on the beach on the Tower Hamlets side. The arranged themselves in concentric circles, hundreds of birds, maybe a thousand, with more joining outer circles. The caw-ing was deafening. The warm afternoon stood still. The pigeons roosted on the industrial estate. The coots and moorhens hid in the reeds. The parliament reached a crescendo - and then at a certain moment, their decision was made. The crows at the centre lifted off, spiralling west, east and north. (They never fly south beyond the A13). The sky darkened as the parliament dissolved and hundreds of crows took off together, returning to their territories, leaving only the birds who dance over the warehouses picking for morsels in the river mud.

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. They’ll continue to act in the interests of the rich and will set “native” against “immigrant” as a distraction from their incompetence and cowardice.

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.