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A Blair revival is the only hope for Britain
Everyone else is thinking it, so I’m just going to say it: we need Tony Blair back in Downing Street. I don’t know by what mechanism and I don’t especially care. A by-election would be ideal, I suppose. They’re all the rage these days. Sedgefield is now known as Newton Aycliffe and Spennymoor (ugh) and Alan Strickland should do the decent thing and step down in the national interest. If for some reason this didn’t work out, there’s always the Lords. I’ve never been keen on this modern convention that prime ministers cannot lead from the upper house. The last PM who did so was, of course, the Marquess of Salisbury. He left office for the third and final time in 1902, and it’s been all downhill ever since.
Blair’s essay is the talk of Westminster not because it’s being pushed by a shadowy network of Centrist Dad columnists, as his obsessive and orcish right-wing haters imagine, but because he is the first prime minister since, well, himself to grasp the scale of Britain’s maladies and, most important of all, be prepared to take radical action to remedy them. In contrast to all those useless Tory prime ministers who presided over unprecedented waves of illegal immigration, Blair says: ‘We should deal by whatever means with small boats.’ He even uses the phrase ‘whatever it takes’. While the Tories cling to gerontocratic socialism, redistributing wealth from young workers to older retirees, Blair calls the triple lock ‘unaffordable long term’, and says the two main parties should work to reform welfare.
Unlike Starmer, whose government is failing to meet its own (modest) house-building targets, Blair denounces planning laws as an ‘abomination’ and urges ‘truly radical reform’. Labour remains prisoner to ideology and sentiment but Blair slaughters sacred cows left and right. He says that Britain ‘must prioritise cheaper energy and electrification over net zero and use what is left of our North Sea oil and gas resources’ and proposes ‘whole-system health-care reform’ with a ‘fundamental realignment’ of private and public provision.
This. This is exactly what we need. Political Nikeism: just do it. Can’t reform government because the civil service says no? Replace the civil service with political appointees and just do it. Can’t build data centres because Susan, a retired dental hygienist from Wiltshire, thinks they cause cancer? Build one on her front lawn and everywhere else they’re needed. Just do it. Can’t deport Johnny Jihad because, as everyone knows, the ECHR was specifically drafted to uphold the inalienable right to dinghy your way to Dover, claim your social housing, and knife the odd kafir when the notion takes you? Disapply the convention, amend the Human Rights Act, and if need be withdraw from the Refugee Convention. Just do it.
Blair was an effective leader because he was a Nikeist. He just did it. Followed his instincts, which were more often than not in tune with those of the British public, and because he did so he got things done. Sometimes those things were bad things because, being in sync with the British public, Blair is a bit of an authoritarian. All that ASBOs/marching toe rags to cash machines/illiberal speech laws stuff. No more of that, Tony. And, no, we can’t ignore the elephant in the room. Before he is allowed to return to No. 10, Tony will have to show contrition for his worst mistake, his gravest failure of judgement, the betrayal for which millions of Brits simply cannot forgive him. Yes, he will have to make a heartfelt, televised apology for setting up the Scottish Parliament.
There are a few tragic souls who would object to my proposal. A fourth term for Tony Blair (and fifth! and sixth!) would make the left and the nationalist right miserable – just abjectly, soul-shreddingly despondent – and while I’m not saying that’s as good a reason as any to get Tony back, it totally is as good a reason as any to get Tony back. On a more serious note – because I am stone-cold serious about this – a Blair revival is the only hope for this country’s future. There is no one on the national political scene with a fraction of his steel, his nous, his charisma, his determination or his superstardom. And before any of you Gen-Z whippersnappers call him a boomer because he came along before your Tiketty Toks and your Snapstagrams and your intersectional avocado toast, know this: he is one of the good boomers. He tuned in, turned on, but didn’t drop out.
The Blair era might have frustrated intellectuals, but for the average Brit it was a time of prosperity
He dug the music and the freedoms and the bewildered shudder of an old order greeting the new; he wanted to change things and, his father being a Tory, he naturally became an earnest young barrister. But in time he put away childish things and grew into one of the foremost centre-left politicians of the post-war West, a radical pragmatist who was practical about ends and unsentimental about means. He called his Labour Party ‘the political wing of the British people’, but it wasn’t the party, it was him personally. He prospered in politics by making himself an avatar of the popular will. Labourism is the theory that power belongs to the people but is best exercised by privately educated trade union lackeys who hate their guts. Blairism is the theory that maybe the people know what’s best for themselves.
Nineties nostalgia is huge right now, and if Oasis can do a comeback tour, why can’t that other Britpop icon, Tony ‘Ugly Rumours’ Blair? The Blair era might have frustrated intellectuals, who regarded it as a philosophically and culturally moribund epoch, but for the average Brit it was a time of prosperity, jobs, falling poverty, border security, public investment and optimism. Britannia was cool, everyone loved J. K. Rowling, the countryside wasn’t racist, Nigella Lawson was never off the telly, and hating the Jews was still an impediment to a career in progressive politics. Britain can have a bright future again, but only if it is led by a figure equal to the moment. There is one person who fits the bill. Go on, Tony. Just do it.
ENDS
Why doctors like me strike
Doctors are currently facing a moral dilemma. Strike, and risk potential harm to patients, or continue, and face the personal consequences. We chose this career, and most will be conflicted.
Do I condone strike action? No, but I can’t entirely condemn it either. Though media coverage often reductively attributes striking to money, the reasons run deeper. They are about working conditions, respect and long-term opportunity, all of which have been eroded, in parallel with pay. We often see opinions on strike action presented by commentators who are no longer practicing medicine. I struggle to reconcile with these views. The work today is not comparable.
I am lucky – I’ve reached the top. But I am concerned for my younger colleagues. They will work years towards a job in a system that no longer seems to respect them, with more debt than any other generation, and few of the benefits of years gone by. With job market bottlenecks, some will even be forced out of medicine or abroad.
I could talk about pension taxation and real terms pay decline, but we know that already. What we don’t talk about is the human cost of this work, and how that can erode one of the most important aspects of healthcare: goodwill.
Like many of my colleagues, I’ve witnessed death in every guise: peaceful and chaotic; clean and bloody; old and young. It’s the job, and that’s all it ever has been. We cope differently: a cry in the car before driving home; an extra glass of wine; even a dark joke, made too soon.
I remember each one. Everything except their faces. Perhaps it has been my mind’s way of protecting me all this time. In the past, I took these events no further than the hospital door, but that defence was breached some time ago.
It only took one case. ‘Are we all in agreement to stop?’ I nodded along with the others in the room. Chaos turned to silence as the resuscitation ceased, and an arm around my shoulder guided me out. A strange numbness came over me. I felt exposed.
In the months that followed I continued to work and the memory faded, as they usually do. But one day, through an unfortunate coincidence of events, the stars aligned. The trigger was visceral and I was transported back there immediately. Jolted into fight mode, the next four months were a blur of anxiety and fear, which invaded every aspect of my work and home life.
I felt ashamed but begrudgingly accepted a referral to the trust’s support services. The occupational health doctor was perceptive. Perhaps it was the unwashed shirt. Maybe it was the dark rings under my eyes, or my knee that bounced up and down uncontrollably.
He took me through a questionnaire – moderate anxiety and depression. PTSD was mentioned, though not formally diagnosed.
‘Have you considered taking time off?’
‘No.’ Of course I hadn’t.
The weeks went by and, though I took steps to remain safe in my clinical work, I tried to ignore the building pressure. This finally peaked in a session with a psychologist. As I walked in and sat down, it only took three words. ‘How are you?’ So simple. So effective. Disarmed, and unable to speak, I wept for most of the appointment. Later, I booked in with my GP who greeted me with the same opening lines, eliciting the same reaction. He suggested I take time off. I resisted. It was unthinkable.
But he knew what he was doing. Skilfully, he prised my fingers from the hospital door, eventually pulling me free. Finally broken, I conceded defeat and was signed off. It was the hardest decision of my career.
I can hear the critics: ‘You knew what you were getting yourselves in for.’ I get it
My story is not unique. I tell it not for sympathy, nor to sensationalise. You might even question the worth or relevance of an anecdote, a mere case report. N=1 is not what evidence and systems change is based on. Many however, will recognise similarities in their own career.
It does, however, illustrate how trauma compounds over time. It’s a glimpse of what it means to be responsible for life. Though complications can and do happen, when they do it is hard not to take them as personal failure. Some burn out completely. Others leave the profession. Regardless of the reason for leaving, when we do, the rota gaps grow. Those who are left often cover through goodwill, and when that stops, so potentially does the service.
This personal cost is not quantifiable and cannot be remunerated. We deal with it differently and often avoid discussing it. But it would be rare for one not to feel affected at all, and whether we realise it or not, it takes a toll.
I can hear the critics: ‘You knew what you were getting yourselves in for.’ I get it. Yes, we chose this path. It was never going to be easy. But when the rest of the ‘perks’ are stripped back, morale becomes strained, and we question whether the personal cost is worth it. In the name of self-preservation, and implicitly the preservation of the service for our patients, striking becomes thinkable. This goes against our natural intuition.
Whatever your thoughts, look beyond the surface-level argument about pay. Consider the hidden cost and the slow erosion of goodwill. That is the real threat.
The British Museum has let Jew hate win
Interviewed earlier this month at the Cannes film festival, Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes spoke of the ‘shameless orgy of anti-Semitism overtaking the West.’ The director of Son of Saul was stating something both profound and obvious, and here in the UK we see examples every week – and it sometimes feels like every day.
On Tuesday, the British Museum informed ticket holders to a talk scheduled for today as part of Jewish Culture Month that, ‘Due to security concerns, the Ancient Israel and Judah in the British Museum talk… has been postponed.’
While the British Museum may be sincere in its statement, ‘security concerns’ has become the contemporary equivalent of ‘No Jews admitted here’
It was the matter-of-fact blandness of the statement that hit hardest. ‘We apologise for any inconvenience. With best wishes, The British Museum Ticketing team.’
Oh well, just a bit of Jew hunting, sorry if it’s a bother, best wishes and all that.
I’ve little doubt that the museum was doing what it thought best. As it explained in a fuller statement yesterday after the news began to circulate:
‘In recent days, we were informed that a significant proportion of registered attendees were individuals intending to deliberately disrupt the event, preventing others from participating in good faith and undermining the purpose of the programme… we have a responsibility to ensure that events hosted within the Museum can proceed safely, securely and without intimidation for speakers, staff and visitors alike. Following discussions with organisers and security partners, a joint decision was taken to postpone the event to a later date when it can take place in an environment that properly safeguards both the audience experience and the integrity of the programme itself.’
But while the British Museum may be sincere in its statement, ‘security concerns’ has become the contemporary equivalent of ‘No Jews admitted here’ – the phrase that Jews have had to get used to hearing as the supposed reason why an event has been cancelled.
Increasingly, events involving or attracting Jews are being cancelled – and that’s when they have managed to find a venue willing to host them in the first place.
In January 2025, a performance by Jewish-American Chasidic singer Benny Friedman was cancelled by the Clapham Grand, citing ‘security concerns.’ The producer said they had struggled to find any venue willing to even consider hosting him. Last year the Jewish folk/klezmer band Oi Va Voi’s appearance at Strange Brew in Bristol was cancelled after the venue decided that hosting Jewish performers was a security risk.
At last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, Jewish comedians Rachel Creeger and Philip Simon had their bookings cancelled after venue staff expressed their fears about safety when hosting Jewish acts.
A planned exhibition at the Russell-Cotes Museum in Bournemouth about Jewish life in the town, due to run from last September until this March was postponed over ‘security concerns’.
In 2024 a talk by Douglas Murray at the Apollo Theatre in London was cancelled over ‘security concerns’. This is a far from complete list.
Whatever the actual motivations behind such decisions, they all have the same effect – handing anti-Semites a veto over the staging of events with or for Jews.
Let’s accept that the British Museum has acted in good faith, as it says in its statement. So what? The outcome is the same as when the West Midlands police caved in to the Jew hating mob and banned Israeli fans – Jews – from attending Aston Villa’s match against Maccabi last year. Their reasoning might be different, but their decisions have had a similar consequence. The British Museum has allowed Jew hate to determine its programme. By postponing a talk on Ancient Israel and Judah.
Let’s reserve judgement on whether this is actually a postponement or, as I suspect it will end up, a cancellation. One of our leading cultural intuitions has sent out a terrible message. Do you worst, it is saying to the anti-Semites, and we will cave. For shame.
Which party leader really rules social media?
Much has been made of which politicians dominate social media. A sizeable following on platforms such as X, Facebook and TikTok can have a significant impact on polling and, ultimately, at the ballot box. Nowhere has this become starker than in the Makerfield by-election.
Largely thanks to his sizeable social media following, Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain is now commanding 7 per cent support in the constituency, according to Survation. The rise of Restore locally could well split the right-wing vote and pave the way for Andy Burnham to return to the Commons, and then Downing Street. Restore’s growing brand recognition has been driven predominantly by social media.
But when it comes to the big tech platforms, who really rules the roost? Mr S has been crunching the numbers as of early this afternoon, though they are likely to fluctuate rapidly.
Nigel Farage has the largest total social media following, with 7,417,639 followers across X, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Farage’s strongest platforms are X with 2,292,523 followers and Facebook with 2,197,836, giving him a broad lead overall.
Sir Keir Starmer has the second largest total, 4,152,131, and performs especially strongly on X, where he has the highest single-platform figure at 2,313,122. Rupert Lowe’s overall figure is 2,626,623, helped mainly by a very strong Facebook following of 1,287,933.
Zack Polanski performs best on Instagram, where he has 706,493 followers. Kemi Badenoch’s strongest platform is Facebook with 502,917 followers, while Sir Ed Davey has the smallest total overall at 470,965, with his best performance also coming on Facebook at 206,416.
AI Ozzy Osbourne is a terrible idea
If you were one of the millions of Ozzy Osbourne fans who mourned the death of the Black Sabbath frontman when he died last summer, then you may, or may not, be delighted at the news that he is soon to be resurrected, albeit in holographic form. Granted, a return from the dead might not seem entirely unlikely for the one-time “Prince of Darkness,” but the form that his comeback will take is purely down to AI wizardry.
The idea of a gleaming, sanitized Ozzy is a depressing one both technologically and in terms of what it represents for the music industry
The digital companies Hyperreal and Proto Hologram are promising a whizz-bang experience that will allow no doubt grateful audiences not only to view Osbourne in his pomp, but also to interact with him. Hyperreal claimed that all footage of Osbourne will be “authenticated, approved source material, curated, consented, and controlled by the people who love him most.”
It is little surprise that his widow Sharon is firmly behind the project, and she has said that, “You can go and talk to Ozzy and ask him anything you want and he will talk back to you. You can have your photo taken with Ozzy. He can tell the audience he loves them. He can just be Ozzy. After you get over the tears, it’s brilliant.” It is unclear as to whether there will be a digitally aided recreation of the notorious moment when he bit the head off a bat on stage, but given advances in AI technology, virtually anything is possible, if not necessarily advisable.
Osbourne was, of course, a proud Brummie, and his home city loved him back, as could be seen by the emotional response to his state-like funeral there last year. Therefore it is fitting that AI Ozzy will begin its tour in Birmingham before going around the world. It was Brum where Osbourne made his final live appearance, a matter of a few weeks before he died, in a celebratory charity concert, and so this represents a homecoming of sorts. Yet it seems strange that nobody has taken a step back and thought whether this exercise in digital necrophilia is not just a poor idea, but sets a dangerous precedent for similar desecrations in the future.
Holographic recreations of dead musicians are nothing new. The eclectic likes of Tupac Shakur and Michael Jackson have been brought back from the grave to delight their fans – even if a recent Elvis show somehow failed to do so, much to its audience’s disappointment. In film, everyone from Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher to Val Kilmer has been resurrected via the wonders of AI. All of this has so far happened with their families’ consent, no doubt because there have been handsome payments made for image rights.
However, it is hard to imagine that Osbourne himself, an unreconstructed old rocker if ever there was one, would have been thrilled at the idea of his being recreated in pristine digital form. Part of Osbourne’s quintessential Black Country charm was his rough and ready on-stage persona, where audiences enjoyed the idea that anything might go wrong somehow. (And, let’s be honest, it often did; the bat-munching incident was not the only time that Osbourne managed to offend public decency.) The idea of a gleaming, sanitized Ozzy is a depressing one both technologically and in terms of what it represents for the music industry. Whatever next? Serge Gainsbourg reinvented not as a louche boulevardier but as a bright-eyed family-friendly entertainer?
No doubt there are many other major acts – naming no names, Mick Jagger – who are rubbing their hands together at the thought of continuing in AI form indefinitely and earning money from beyond the grave for decades yet to come. The precedent set by the (very much alive) ABBA and their long-running ABBA Voyage show has made the industry look at the idea of virtual performers entirely differently. But for the sake of the ramshackle, distinctly English Osbourne, and the sincere affection with which he was regarded by many, let’s keep his endearingly bewildered visage free from this digitized banality.
Will the Supreme Court allow a ‘creed’ to kill America?
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s tour to tout his new children’s book about the Declaration of Independence should have been uneventful. But then Gorsuch decided to talk about what America is.
On Fox News, with the New York Times and in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, Gorsuch kept staking out his view on what makes America special: America has no religion, no race, no people at all really, but instead a singular majestic idea.
“We’re a creedal nation, right,” Gorsuch told the Times. “I mean, we don’t share a religion, we don’t share a race, we share an idea, OK? And that idea has to be passed down generation to generation through history, as we discussed.”
That idea, Gorsuch says, is the words of the Declaration of Independence: that all men are equal, that they possess God-given rights and they have a right to self-government. These concepts alone, he says, define the American nation.
There may soon be enough American citizens raised in China to swing a US election
There’s nothing novel about Gorsuch’s statement. It is classic conservative pablum, syrupy boilerplate of the highest (or lowest) order. Calling America a “creed,” a “proposition” or an “idea” has been a lazy go-to for American conservatives afraid to give their country any further cultural identity.
In 2016, Paul Ryan called America “the only nation founded on an idea, not an identity.” At the 2012 RNC, Marco Rubio called America a nation “united not by a common race or ethnicity, [but] bound together by common values.” Irving Kristol boasted that “being American has nothing to do with ethnicity, or blood-ties of any kind, or lineage, or length of residence even.”
At almost any other time since World War Two, Gorsuch’s remarks would be unremarkable. It’s an appealing take if one doesn’t think much about it: generous, optimistic, morally flattering. It carries no vague whiff of racism (which Gorsuch’s generation has learned to fear more than anything, including death) and it means nobody has to fear feeling left out in America.
For a long time, whether it was true or not, it at least felt harmless. But at this very moment, America is facing a reckoning with Gorsuch’s saccharine attitude. We are about to find out whether mindless rhetoric and a naive self-conception can kill a country. Because, of course, in a matter of weeks, Gorsuch and his eight fellow justices will rule on the question of birthright citizenship. Fed up with anchor babies and birth tourists, the Trump administration hopes to clarify that US citizenship is, in fact, only passed on to the children of those who actually owe America allegiance, rather than every traveler peregrinating through its borders.
We don’t know how Gorsuch will vote, yet reducing America to a mere “creed” anyone can sign on to has long been the first step for American conservatives to justify mass immigration, amnesty and more. Since only the American “idea” matters, there is little moral ground for leaving anyone out, and in any case, since the people themselves are irrelevant, nothing is ever changed or lost by bringing them in.
Yet no matter how often repeated, the idea that America is a “creedal” nation detached from physical reality is so flimsy it can be collapsed with little more than a series of rhetorical questions. Has America ever gone out of its way to recruit immigrants who adhered to its supposed shared creed? Has America ever taken steps to expel residents who reject it? If blood is irrelevant to American nationhood, why does US citizenship still pass automatically from parents to their children? If the Founders meant for America to be defined by ideas alone, why did America’s first Supreme Court Justice, John Jay, write in “Federalist No. 2” that America was blessed to have “one united people… descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs?” Why did Thomas Jefferson himself warn America against excess immigration, precisely because emigrants from monarchies could not be counted to preserve “temperate liberty?”
At best, when people reduce America to a mere idea, they are just lazily saying something pleasant (fine for dinner party chat, but unfortunate from a Supreme Court Justice). More often, the idea of a “creedal” America is simply a façade – it is actually a way of saying it has no identity at all, or one so vague that America can import any number of new arrivals, from anywhere on the planet, without destroying or even endangering its fundamental character.
So, which is it for Justice Gorsuch? His vote on birthright citizenship will give us the answer. If Gorsuch does, in fact, rule that US citizenship is the right of anybody born on US soil, regardless of circumstance, then he will also be voting to abolish one of the very concepts he just extolled as a core American “idea” – the right of Americans to govern themselves.
Because, in the present age of jet travel, tourist visas, IVF and surrogacy, birthright citizenship is a policy of handing a nation’s existence over to the rest of the planet, to preserve or destroy it at will.
An estimated 26,000 children are born in the US via birth tourism every year – higher than the annual number of births in 15 US states. About a third of all surrogate births in America are for foreign parents, whose children, raised abroad, will still possess lifelong US citizenship. In California alone, there are hundreds of companies dedicated to helping Chinese citizens find a surrogate who will give birth in America. There may soon be enough American citizens raised in China to swing a US election – and all of this is dwarfed by the reproductive efforts of illegal immigrants, whose children make up a tenth of all births in the US.
Neither these new citizens nor their parents will be expected to buy into some quintessential American idea – but they will have the right to abolish that idea. And if that idea is gone, what identity will America have at all, according to Gorsuch?
MPs don’t want to confront the youth worklessness crisis
‘It is hard not to be pessimistic when you examine the data,’ former health secretary Alan Milburn says in the foreword to his report into young people doing nothing with their lives. That is quite the understatement.
Figures released this morning by the Office for National Statistics show that the number of those classed as not in education, employment or training (Neets) has passed one million – 13.5 per cent of all 16 to 24-year-olds. But Milburn’s review into the crisis suggests we are nowhere near the peak. Forecasting carried out for the report estimates that the rate could hit 16 per cent within five years, meaning more than 1.25 million young Britons would be classed as Neets. Even under the report’s most optimistic scenario, the number was expected to exceed one million – and that threshold has already been crossed this morning.
And all of this is starting to cost us. At current levels, Milburn estimates the cumulative annual cost of having so many young people out of work and education is £125 billion – more than the entire education budget. Had this rot not been allowed to take hold, and had those 18 to 24-year-olds been in full-time work, they could have contributed an additional £38 billion to the economy. Even if progress is made in rescuing some of the young Britons languishing as Neets, they will still likely miss out on nearly £300,000 in lifetime earnings, with every year spent outside work or education knocking around £52,000 off someone’s earning potential.
Milburn estimates the cumulative annual cost of having so many young people out of work and education is £125 billion – more than the entire education budget
But this tragedy is far more human than economic. Wasted youth is becoming wasted life. The longer someone remains outside the workforce, the less likely they are ever to join it. Right now, six in ten Neets have never had a job – up from four in ten two decades ago. This is not primarily a story of people falling out of work; it is a story of people never entering it in the first place.
It is obvious to anyone in the workplace that a major driver of this crisis is society’s growing acceptance of ever-rising levels of mental health diagnoses. The review notes that anxiety and depression, autism and ADHD now account for nearly two thirds of all 16 to 24-year-olds claiming Personal Independence Payment. Before the first lockdown, it was under half. Young people are now far more likely than older generations to claim disability benefits for mental health reasons.
Milburn pains himself to say that these conditions are genuine, and he does not believe in a ‘snowflake’ or ‘soft’ generation. But here perhaps he has gone soft himself. These conditions of course feel real for the young people experiencing them, but what has undeniably changed is our resilience. Before the pandemic, if you felt under the weather, stressed or blue, most people would have been encouraged to get on with it. Parents would have sent their kids with colds to school and workers would have trudged on. That’s not to say this is pleasant, but when eight in ten GPs admit to prescribing antidepressants they do not think are necessary, we surely have to ask ourselves if we are enabling these conditions to flourish when we pretend to be fighting them. And this give-up-and-go-away attitude that we seem to have adopted as a nation is not something that any government can fix – it will have to come from us.
However, government policy can clearly play a role. While it would be daft to say that Labour set this crisis in motion – they clearly did not – it seems inarguable that their approach to our economy has worsened it dramatically. The review – commissioned by Pat McFadden – finally concedes that ‘the cost and regulatory burden of employing young people has risen’.
Not only has Rachel Reeves’s £25 billion national insurance rise piled costs on employers, the minimum wage makes hiring young people less attractive too. Milburn says that employers raised this increased cost burden ‘repeatedly’. And while the report also offers an opposing view, the statistics surely speak for themselves.
Here, really, lies the problem. Introducing the report at a library in Islington this morning, McFadden called it the ‘cause of our times’ that had been ‘ignored for too long’ and ‘observed simply as background noise’. But it has not been ignored. I feel – and I’m sure you do too – that I have been reading about these statistics for the last few years. It has not been a hidden problem; it’s screaming at us in the face.
What use is the government – finally – accepting it as the most important issue of the day if it shows no signs of doing what really needs to be done? The real remedies are too uncomfortable for most MPs to confront. It would mean addressing the perverse incentive structure in our welfare system: the fact that for every £1 spent on employment support for young Britons, £25 is spent on benefits. It would mean recognising that mental health conditions are being overdiagnosed and overtreated when the routine and dignity of a good job would often be more transformative than another prescription.
And it would mean admitting that if, as Milburn concedes, you close the cost gap between giving a young person their first job and hiring a more experienced older worker, employers are obviously going to choose the older worker once the financial incentives for doing otherwise disappear.
There was one glimmer of hope from Milburn this morning. ‘Eighty-four per cent of Neet young people in the Review’s survey said they want to find a job, education or training,’ he said. ‘The challenge is not aspiration – it is opportunity and support.’ But that is precisely what makes this crisis so bleak. The desire to work is still there; what is disappearing is the pathway into work itself as it is replaced by a system that supports dependency.
Milburn’s key warning is that Britain risks creating a lost generation. But that understates the problem. The horrifying truth is that, as his own figures suggest, the generation is already being lost. We will have to wait until later this year for his proposed remedies, but it is hard to feel optimistic about a crisis that now seems already out of our control.
What is ‘Q Manivannan’ doing in British politics?
In an age full of nepobaby second-generation politicians posing as “outsiders,” new Green Party MSP “Q Manivannan” is the real thing. Indeed, the St. Andrew’s postgraduate is so much of an outsider that he doesn’t even hold British citizenship or permanent residency, and is unable to take up paid employment as a condition of his student visa. “Q” was allowed to stand for office last month because the Scottish government – the Wuhan Lab of terrible ideas in UK politics – recently changed the rules allowing foreigners with only limited leave to remain to compete in elections. Although Manivannan faced a probe into his visa, the powers-that-be ruled that being a politician wasn’t a real job. This prevented possibly the funniest outcome of all – the new member of the Scottish Parliament representing his constituents in Edinburgh and Lothians East remotely from Tamil Nadu.
A “transgender Tamil immigrant,” “Q” – born Srivatsan Manivannan – identifies as non-binary and describes himself as “passionate about more caring politics rooted in the working class, the queer, and the solidary.” Currently engaged in a research project called “Archiving and (Re)imagining Caregiving as Peacebuilding in Third World Social Movements,” at the time of his election he was also crowdfunding £2,000 to pay for his visa, apparently too impoverished to pay for it himself.
The more I read about Manivannan, the more he comes to resemble a Sokal-like hoax designed to test the limits of what progressives will accept if it wins them social approval. Always smiling for the camera, Q seems to have a cheerful demeanor and hugely adds to gross national gaiety; he will make a fine footnote in the history of modern Britain, as some future Gibbon explains how the world’s foremost imperial power found itself giggling into the sea. He certainly has reason to be cheerful; the £77,000-a-year ($103,000) salary of an MSP compares favorably with the average Indian annual wage of £2,500, or indeed the typical earnings of a graduate in Britain doing a PhD in peace studies, which can’t be that much more.
Perhaps it’s a failure of imagination on my part, but I find it hard to understand the mindset of someone who moves to a foreign country and, before even becoming a citizen, decides that they have the right to set its laws. Of course, as a billion Indians might say in response, you chaps do have some form on this matter yourselves.
What makes the situation somewhat galling is that the Scottish Greens are in favor of independence. Professor Peter Sarris put it well when he wrote: “Call me old fashioned, but I do feel it somewhat out of order for someone to come to my country as a guest on a student visa, and then set about trying to break it up? A bit like allowing a stranger to come round for tea and then sitting back as they decide to smash the crockery.”
Since British taxpayers, via the Scottish Social Science Graduate School, funded Q’s PhD, we might regard this as ingratitude, but many countries would view such behavior as actual subversion. In Singapore, where I just visited, the authorities take a very dim view of non-citizens getting involved in politics. Even displaying foreign flags is mostly prohibited, and agitating on behalf of one of the world’s various ethnic squabbles will have you deported as a troublemaker. The Singaporeans consider us utterly mad for tolerating the presence of foreign-born radicals in Britain, but they famously do not welcome outsider involvement of any kind.
Lee Kuan Yew famously said in a 1971 speech that “I am not interested in advice from Asian emigres on what should be in Singapore. Their advice is worse than useless. They have no sense of shame, or they would stay and help their own countries progress and their fellow countrymen live less wretched lives. Instead, they flee to greener pastures and give us advice.”
On another occasion Lee explained his thinking like so:
If you are an authority on Greek literature but a non-citizen, then you would be wise to leave the question of whether or not Malay should be the only official language to those who are citizens. The best thing is to stick to your subject. Now if you are an authority on economics and your research shows that a certain type of industry cannot be successfully established in Singapore, then by all means propound the results of your research and your conclusion thereon, even if it should conflict with a pet scheme of the minister in charge of industrial development. And if you are an economist of repute the minister would be well to read your exposition of the subject.
In that spirit we should welcome Q Manivannan’s expertise on (Re)imagining Caregiving as Peacebuilding in Third World Social Movements, while leaving all other issues to those who are citizens.
Of course, while visiting the city-state has probably not been a good influence on whatever lingering liberalism may remain within me, Britain is not Singapore and never has been. Foreign nationals are welcome to have their say and sometimes an outsider does indeed have a better view of where the country has fallen behind, especially when it involves sacred topics. Britain has historically been among the more open political cultures, and we had Indian-born MPs in the 19th century; indeed, you could go further back than that to the foundation of the House of Commons by a Frenchman.
Yet Indians could be parliamentarians in the reign of Victoria because they were imperial subjects; the empire is long gone, and yet something of that empire mindset still lives on among Britain’s elite. We still, bizarrely, allow Commonwealth voting, whereby foreigners are allowed to take part in our democracy purely because their countries were once invaded by Britain. Many of ours rulers still see their job as serving humanity in general rather than the British people. MPs, diplomats and even ministers feel no embarrassment about displays of dual loyalty; with this in mind, it seems like hardly a stretch to allow non-citizens to make our laws. Yet there are limits.
The Singaporeans value social harmony, which is best served by a clear distinction between naturalized citizens and resident foreigners; the latter enjoy the full protection of the law, but they have no right to take part in the country’s political affairs, for the simple reason that they are not invested in the country. As with so many areas, here they seem to have a less naive understanding of human nature and incentives than their former colonial masters. They are also more forward-looking.
Our elites equate “open” with high status and modernity, but it is actually the British-style approach which has become antiquated with hyper-globalization. At its most acute the risk of hostile foreign interference grows stronger with freer movement, better technology and economic integration, most notably in the case of states like Russia and China. While the Singaporeans have always been acutely aware of the risk of political infiltration from communist China, Britain’s rulers seem blindly unaware of the dangers.
True to the script, one of the first things Edinburgh’s new representative did after election was to push for Scottish taxpayers to fund reparations for Palestine
State interference is not the only risk, however; perhaps more of a problem is the rise of the Global South Aristocracy, members of ruling elites from non-western countries who help to polarize and radicalize the political systems of the states they move to. Talking the language of social justice and equality, they promote a form of identity politics which raises their own prestige, and which is often comically opposed to their ancestors’ record of oppression and slavery. What distinguishes the Global South Aristocracy from the exiles and refugees of the past is that their ire is mostly directed at their new homes, rather than injustices in their homelands. These are the “emigres” whom Lee despised, and the incentives to build careers in richer states are far more immense now than in his time.
While Q claimed to have “grown up starving” in India and that as a “queer Tamil immigrant” he would be a voice for the “working class and marginalized,” it turns out, inevitably, that he went to a private school. As the Sunday Times reported, “Manivannan comes from an upper middle-class household in Chennai, one of India’s wealthiest, most cosmopolitan cities.” Although his party want to ban private schooling, “Manivannan attended both private high school and university, and went on to run a subsidiary of an Indian business that coaches the children of the super-rich to access the world’s elite institutions.” I could give you that advice for free: just call yourself “they” and waffle on about gender identity. Every western progressive will swoon at your every word. They might even elect you.
The tale is too farcical to be enraging, too much of a right-wing fever dream, too obvious and predictable. True to the script, one of the first things Edinburgh’s new representative did after election was to push for Scottish taxpayers to fund reparations for Palestine. Of course they did.
George Osborne under fire over postponed Jewish event
Furious MPs have hit out at George Osborne after the British Museum postponed a lecture on the kingdoms of ancient Israel and Judah. The talk was scheduled to go ahead today as part of Jewish Culture Month, but was pulled amid ‘security concerns’ over possible ‘disruption’.
Last night, the museum said a ‘significant number’ of those registered for the event were plotting to ‘deliberately disrupt’ it. The institution insisted that postponing the lecture was necessary to ‘protect the event – not to diminish it’.
MPs and Jewish community leaders, however, slammed the move as caving to extremists. Their ire was aimed at Osborne, the museum’s chair, who defended the decision on social media. Reform’s Suella Braverman said: ‘Wrong call. You’ve given in to the bullies, to the mob and to the extremists. More weakness from the establishment elites- just like the Met Commissioner, the universities and the BBC.’
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said: ‘Jewish Culture Month is meant to promote awareness of and celebrate Jewish culture in the UK. This decision achieves precisely the opposite.’ Richard Ferrer, Editor of the Jewish News, asked the former chancellor: ‘The solution to intimidation is to reward it?’ The American historian Deborah Lipstadt chimed in:
The protestors won and they did not even have to show up.
The museum has said the talk will be moved to a ‘later date when it can take place in an environment that properly safeguards both the audience experience and the integrity of the programme itself’. What a sorry state of affairs when such stringent measures are deemed necessary for a mere lecture on ancient history.
But Mr S is hardly surprised that ancient Israel is of particular concern to Palestine extremists. They wouldn’t want their ahistorical mantras about ‘white settler colonialism’ being challenged by historical facts. It might just disturb their made-up narratives…
AI Ozzy Osbourne is a terrible idea
If you were one of the millions of Ozzy Osbourne fans who mourned the death of the Black Sabbath frontman when he died last summer, then you may, or may not, be delighted at the news that he is soon to be resurrected, albeit in holographic form. Granted, a return from the dead might not seem entirely unlikely for the one-time ‘Prince of Darkness’, but the form that his comeback will take is purely down to AI wizardry.
The idea of a gleaming, sanitised Ozzy is a depressing one both technologically and in terms of what it represents for the music industry
The digital companies Hyperreal and Proto Hologram are promising a whizz-bang experience that will allow no doubt grateful audiences not only to view Osbourne in his pomp, but also to interact with him. Hyperreal claimed that all footage of Osbourne will be ‘authenticated, approved source material, curated, consented, and controlled by the people who love him most.’
It is little surprise that his widow Sharon is firmly behind the project, and she has said that, ‘You can go and talk to Ozzy and ask him anything you want and he will talk back to you. You can have your photo taken with Ozzy. He can tell the audience he loves them. He can just be Ozzy. After you get over the tears, it’s brilliant.’ It is unclear as to whether there will be a digitally aided recreation of the notorious moment when he bit the head off a bat on stage, but given advances in AI technology, virtually anything is possible, if not necessarily advisable.
Osbourne was, of course, a proud Brummie, and his home city loved him back, as could be seen by the emotional response to his state-like funeral there last year. Therefore it is fitting that AI Ozzy will begin its tour in Birmingham before going around the world. It was Brum where Osbourne made his final live appearance, a matter of a few weeks before he died, in a celebratory charity concert, and so this represents a homecoming of sorts. Yet it seems strange that nobody has taken a step back and thought whether this exercise in digital necrophilia is not just a poor idea, but sets a dangerous precedent for similar desecrations in the future.
Holographic recreations of dead musicians are nothing new. The eclectic likes of Tupac Shakur and Michael Jackson have been brought back from the grave to delight their fans – even if a recent Elvis show somehow failed to do so, much to its audience’s disappointment. In film, everyone from Peter Cushing and Carrie Fisher to Val Kilmer has been resurrected via the wonders of AI. All of this has so far happened with their families’ consent, no doubt because there have been handsome payments made for image rights.
However, it is hard to imagine that Osbourne himself, an unreconstructed old rocker if ever there was one, would have been thrilled at the idea of his being recreated in pristine digital form. Part of Osbourne’s quintessential Black Country charm was his rough and ready on-stage persona, where audiences enjoyed the idea that anything might go wrong somehow. (And, let’s be honest, it often did; the bat-munching incident was not the only time that Osbourne managed to offend public decency.) The idea of a gleaming, sanitised Ozzy is a depressing one both technologically and in terms of what it represents for the music industry. Whatever next? Serge Gainsbourg reinvented not as a louche boulevardier but as a bright-eyed family-friendly entertainer?
No doubt there are many other major acts – naming no names, Mick Jagger – who are rubbing their hands together at the thought of continuing in AI form indefinitely and earning money from beyond the grave for decades yet to come. The precedent set by the (very much alive) Abba and their long-running Abba Voyage show has made the industry look at the idea of virtual performers entirely differently. But for the sake of the ramshackle, distinctly English Osbourne, and the sincere affection with which he was regarded by many, let’s keep his endearingly bewildered visage free from this digitised banality.
We cannot stop the small boats
This April, we agreed another deal with France to stop migrants coming across the Channel. The Home Office has explained it is ‘bearing down’ on small boat crossings, and that this latest £662 million deal would ensure ‘enforcement action on beaches and put people smugglers behind bars.’ Over the last Bank Holiday weekend, almost a thousand migrants were recorded as coming across the English Channel. This is regrettable, but there is no alternative. Small boat crossings began at scale in 2018. Since then, the total number of recorded arrivals comes to about 200,000. We have to accept that they are now a fact of life.
In the interests of fairness – the figures could easily be inflammatory – we also don’t record data about what proportion of crimes, or violent crimes, in this country are committed by small boat migrants
There is an immediate human cost to these arrivals. Since 2018, the Migration Observatory estimates that 162 people have died in the Channel. The Migration Observatory maintains it is neutral, but its suspicious interest in migration suggests an agenda. We should treat its figures with caution. Our government has no such bias, and its neutrality is demonstrated by the fact that it produces none at all.
In the interests of fairness – the figures could easily be inflammatory – we also don’t record data about what proportion of crimes, or violent crimes, in this country are committed by small boat migrants. Deng Majek from Sudan arrived by small boat and murdered Rhiannon Whyte, who worked at his asylum hotel, with a screwdriver. Haybe Nur from Somalia killed a man in a Derby bank with a knife. Ahmad Mulakhil from Afghanistan was convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton; Sadeq Nikzad, also from Afghanistan, of raping a 15-year-old girl in Falkirk. These are anecdotes, and there are many others, but the plural of anecdote is not data. We have to look at the bigger picture which, thankfully, government statistics don’t make available.
Dominic Cummings has suggested that the solution is violence. He discussed the use of the UK military to kill some of those attempting to organise crossings, after leaving the ECHR, and declared his confidence that it would bring small boat crossings to a swift end.
The notion that we might deliberately murder people in order to stop the small boat crossings is abhorrent. Our military might stage armed interdiction: warnings, warning shots, finally violence until the boat changed course. Such an approach is not merely against the law, but unthinkable.
Shooting people on a crowded boat is not easy, and it is likely there would be unintended casualties as well as deliberate murder, yet if the boats were stopped then the total number saved from drowning would likely be several times the number we killed, or greater by an order of magnitude, in the first year alone.
But we would then have become killers, and that is not a price worth paying. One could argue we prefer the harms of inaction to the guilt of action, even when the human costs are smaller. But morality is not a question of trying to minimise harms and deaths overall, but making sure we do the right thing. Killing people is not the right thing, even if it saves lives. We cannot make it the job of the military to use lethal force or guard our borders.
Human lives cannot be treated statistically, as though the actions that result in the fewest deaths were automatically better, even if they were monstrous. Even in the face of horror, violence is not the answer. Mahatma Gandhi, in an open letter to the British people on July 3 1940, gave a memorable example. ‘I want you to fight Nazism without arms… Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these, but neither your souls, nor your minds,’ he wrote. ‘If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them.’
Gandhi is a moral leader, Cummings is not. We cannot stop the small boats. All that is reasonable, therefore, is to continue striking landmark deals with France. Small boat arrivals are a fact of life. It is not for us to decide who comes to our country. Australia’s experience suggests strict offshore processing and an absolute ‘no settlement’ policy for such arrivals would bring them to an end without violence, but that is more unthinkable than murder.
Ireland is desperate for its own George Floyd moment
Ireland is in the midst of its own “George Floyd moment.” At least, that’s how a string of international headlines have portrayed the death of Yves Sakila, a Congolese shoplifter who was pronounced dead in hospital after being restrained by security guards, one of whom appeared to kneel on his head or neck. The circumstances of the 35-year-old’s death are being investigated, but, as yet, there is no evidence it resulted from racism or excessive force. Court records show Sakila had a history of theft, and a post-mortem reportedly found no signs of foul play or visible injuries on his body. That has not stopped activists and parts of the establishment from co-opting a personal tragedy to fuel a campaign of racial grievance.
It seems one of the few American imports still immune to tariffs are its racial psychodramas
Sakila’s body was barely cold when the vigils began along with the demands for racial justice. Addressing a large crowd in Merrion Square last week, Senator Eileen Flynn claimed that “seven men” had “murdered a black man” and that Sakila would not have died if he was white. “Yves died a hero, his name will live on in legacy in this country,” Flynn concluded. Dr. Ebun Joseph, Ireland’s racism tsar, held forth with impassioned non-sequiturs about immigration skeptics “abusing the tricolor” and Ireland’s founding fathers. The Taoiseach, Micheal Martin, called for a thorough investigation into what he hastily deemed a “deeply concerning” situation. It seems one of the few American imports still immune to tariffs are its racial psychodramas.
Ireland’s government, media and NGO complex mobilized with remarkable alacrity to portray Sakila’s death as a rerun of Floyd’s. One week after the incident, the most-read story on RTE was headlined: “Concerns ‘excessive force’ used against Congolese man.” The organization raising those concerns to the state broadcaster was the Irish Network Against Racism (INAR), a state-funded NGO, who asserted that Sakila’s death “appears to have the hallmarks of a case of excessive use of force.” The next sentence may shed some light on INAR’s reasoning: “The death of a black man in such circumstances is extremely worrying.” It seems that, to Ireland’s expanding body of race-relations entrepreneurs, the superficial resemblance this incident bore to Floyd’s death means that insinuations of foul play can be made while an investigation is still underway. The lack of evidence so far that Sakila’s death was racially motivated has proved no impediment to manufacturing narratives before the truth finds its trousers.
The cynicism of this spectacle is shown by the double standard applied here. Two days after Sakila’s death, Alexander Coughlan, a 37-year-old insurance worker, was beaten to death near Blanchardstown, north west Dublin. Of the two suspects, who have been charged, one is a dual national. Coughlan was heard pleading with his attackers, yet his death has been met with silence by Ireland’s race-relations industry, garnering a fraction of the national attention afforded to Sakila. The usual suspects were similarly missing in action when Yousef Palani, an Iraqi-Kurd, murdered two gay men, beheading one, in a homophobic attack in Sligo in 2022. When Riad Bouchaker, a naturalized Algerian migrant, allegedly stabbed three white children and assaulting their minder that same year, Irish officials were preoccupied with condemning the violent backlash to the incident. To suggest that the background of these men played a role in their alleged crimes was simply not the done thing: that, it seems, is reserved exclusively for when the perpetrators are white and the victims are not.
Sakila’s death, like Alexander Coughlan’s, was a tragedy. But only one of them has been hailed as a “hero” as a result. Will there be clarion calls for a “racial reckoning” for Coughlan, as accompanied the death of Floyd? I wouldn’t hold your breath. Does INAR find the death of a white man in such circumstances “extremely worrying?” Perhaps, but its silence would seem to provide its own answer. The truth is Ireland may indeed be undergoing a George Floyd moment, in that a man’s death is being deployed to sow racial division in a society where demand for racism far exceeds the supply.
Why don’t striking doctors tell the full story?
The British Medical Association announced yesterday that junior doctors will be going on strike again next month, with a four-day walkout beginning at 7 a.m. on 15 June. It will be the sixteenth time they have gone on strike since 2023.
The BMA is pressing ahead with this despite being given a very generous offer in March. The government was willing to concede a 4.9 per cent average pay rise this year, meaning that junior doctors would be on average 35.2 per cent better off than four years ago. Some more experienced junior doctors could, with additional earnings such as for working unsocial hours, be paid more than £100,000.
The BMA continues to insist that this is not enough and that they will settle for nothing less than full ‘pay restoration’. The BMA claims that they have seen pay eroded by a fifth in real terms since 2008/9 and have published a methodology to help explain how they reach this figure.
But as the Taxpayers’ Alliance has pointed out, it is somewhat disingenuous to pick 2008/9 as a starting point. During the 1990s and 2000s junior doctors received very strong real term increases in pay. From 1989/90 to 2008/9 real terms pay increased for junior doctors by 35 per cent.
This was possible because of the strength of the economy at the time. Britain was a net exporter of energy with a booming financial services sector. Perhaps the BMA ought to be going on strike until the government passes planning reform, fracking and another wave of deregulation in the city.
There is also the fact that the BMA is choosing to use RPI inflation in their calculations. The Office for National Statistics calls RPI a ‘very poor measure’ that tends to overstate inflation by around one percentage point. When we calculate the ‘real terms pay cut’ for junior doctors since 2008 using the CPI (the standard measure), we find a much less shocking figure of just 4.7 per cent.
As frustrating as this statistical sleight of hand is, there is a bit of good news. The NHS has been getting better and better at dealing with this industrial action without disruption to services. During the last round of industrial action in April the NHS managed to deliver 94.1 per cent of the elective activity it managed the year before.
So while striking junior doctors can do some damage to the NHS, they cannot bring it to a grinding halt.
Ireland is desperate for its own George Floyd moment
Ireland is in the midst of its own ‘George Floyd moment’. At least, that’s how a string of international headlines have portrayed the death of Yves Sakila, a Congolese shoplifter who was pronounced dead in hospital after being restrained by security guards, one of whom appeared to kneel on his head or neck. The circumstances of the 35-year-old’s death are being investigated, but, as yet, there is no evidence it resulted from racism or excessive force. Court records show Sakila had a history of theft, and a post-mortem reportedly found no signs of foul play or visible injuries on his body. That has not stopped activists and parts of the establishment from co-opting a personal tragedy to fuel a campaign of racial grievance.
It seems one of the few American imports still immune to tariffs are its racial psychodramas
Sakila’s body was barely cold when the vigils began along with the demands for racial justice. Addressing a large crowd in Merrion Square last week, Senator Eileen Flynn claimed that ‘seven men’ had ‘murdered a black man’ and that Sakila would not have died if he was white. ‘Yves died a hero, his name will live on in legacy in this country,’ Flynn concluded. Dr Ebun Joseph, Ireland’s racism tsar, held forth with impassioned non-sequiturs about immigration sceptics ‘abusing the tricolour’ and Ireland’s founding fathers. The Taoiseach, Micheal Martin, called for a thorough investigation into what he hastily deemed a ‘deeply concerning’ situation. It seems one of the few American imports still immune to tariffs are its racial psychodramas.
Ireland’s government, media and NGO complex mobilised with remarkable alacrity to portray Sakila’s death as a rerun of Floyd’s. One week after the incident, the most-read story on RTE was headlined: ‘Concerns “excessive force” used against Congolese man.’ The organisation raising those concerns to the state broadcaster was the Irish Network Against Racism (INAR), a state-funded NGO, who asserted that Sakila’s death ‘appears to have the hallmarks of a case of excessive use of force.’ The next sentence may shed some light on INAR’s reasoning: ‘The death of a black man in such circumstances is extremely worrying.’ It seems that, to Ireland’s expanding body of race-relations entrepreneurs, the superficial resemblance this incident bore to Floyd’s death means that insinuations of foul play can be made while an investigation is still underway. The lack of evidence so far that Sakila’s death was racially motivated has proved no impediment to manufacturing narratives before the truth finds its trousers.
The cynicism of this spectacle is shown by the double standard applied here. Two days after Sakila’s death, Alexander Coughlan, a 37-year-old insurance worker, was beaten to death near Blanchardstown, north west Dublin. Of the two suspects, who have been charged, one is a dual national. Coughlan was heard pleading with his attackers, yet his death has been met with silence by Ireland’s race-relations industry, garnering a fraction of the national attention afforded to Sakila. The usual suspects were similarly missing in action when Yousef Palani, an Iraqi-Kurd, murdered two gay men, beheading one, in a homophobic attack in Sligo in 2022. When Riad Bouchaker, a naturalised Algerian migrant, allegedly stabbed three white children and assaulting their minder that same year, Irish officials were preoccupied with condemning the violent backlash to the incident. To suggest that the background of these men played a role in their alleged crimes was simply not the done thing: that, it seems, is reserved exclusively for when the perpetrators are white and the victims are not.
Sakila’s death, like Alexander Coughlan’s, was a tragedy. But only one of them has been hailed as a ‘hero’ as a result. Will there be clarion calls for a ‘racial reckoning’ for Coughlan, as accompanied the death of Floyd? I wouldn’t hold your breath. Does INAR find the death of a white man in such circumstances ‘extremely worrying’? Perhaps, but its silence would seem to provide its own answer. The truth is Ireland may indeed be undergoing a George Floyd moment, in that a man’s death is being deployed to sow racial division in a society where demand for racism far exceeds the supply.
Why Murrell was able to get away with embezzlement
This week, the former chief executive of the SNP, Peter Murrell, pleaded guilty to embezzling £400,000 from his party over the course of several years. So far the media has focused largely on the incredible array of luxury items he bought with the money – including a Jaguar, £2,000 salt and pepper shakers, multiple coffee machines and, of course, the infamous motorhome. Questions have rightly been asked too about what Nicola Sturgeon knew about her estranged husband’s finances and the trove of luxury goods filling her home.
Yet something very important is also being missed. It explains why Murrell was able to carry on the embezzlement long after he should have been stopped – and why John Swinney cannot hide behind his victim of criminality defence, with the First Minister this week characterising himself as a victim, and describing Murrell’s actions as a personal betrayal.
There are really two different stories about SNP finances which have ended up becoming unhelpfully conflated. The first story is about money crowdfunded by the party, which was supposed to be ringfenced for a future referendum campaign.
The total amount of donations supposed to have been ringfenced ended up being £667,000, according to a statement by Colin Beattie in June 2021. We know from contemporaneous reporting that the vast majority of this – £482,000 – was raised in the first half of 2017.
We know what happened to that £482,000, because before anyone realised this was going to become a scandal, the SNP admitted that the money had been spent on the 2017 general election campaign. In June 2017, a party spokesperson suggested to the Herald that the crowdfunder had actually been raising money for the election, not a referendum, saying: ‘Our fundraising efforts were focused on the general election.’
When the SNP published its accounts for the previous year in August 2018, those accounts showed that the party only had £8,000 cash in the bank. The money which should have been ringfenced until a referendum campaign was no longer there.
Not much attention was paid to this until the Wings over Scotland blog wrote about the SNP’s parlous financial situation in January 2020, and noted that the ringfenced crowdfunder money was missing.
At this point, Nicola Sturgeon, John Swinney, and senior members of the SNP began what looked like a cover-up operation. They must have known the ringfenced money was raided to pay for the 2017 general election. But now that Wings was making a fuss, they decided to pretend it hadn’t happened.
This is why Nicola Sturgeon and John Swinney went on TV in 2021 to deny that the money was missing, following the resignation of party treasurer, Douglas Chapman. Sturgeon told STV:
Money hasn’t gone missing, all money goes through the SNP accounts independently and fully audited and we don’t hold separate accounts. We are under no legal requirement to do that. Our accounts are managed on a cash flow basis but every penny we raise to support the campaign for independence will be spent on the campaign for independence.
Asked if the crowdfunder money had been diverted elsewhere, Swinney said: ‘Not to my knowledge, no.’ Adding:
I don’t understand quite what’s prompted this. The National Executive Committee has responsibility for scrutinising the party’s finances… and in addition to that the accounts of the party are independently audited by external auditors and are submitted to the Electoral Commission for scrutiny.
Now, let’s turn to the second story: Peter Murrell’s embezzlement. The year by year evolution of his crime looks like this:
Several things stand out. Murrell’s criminality was pretty small scale until he started to accelerate the looting in 2016. Importantly, this was before the first of the party’s Indyref2 crowdfunders was launched in March 2017.
The majority of the embezzlement happened from 2019 onwards. In other words: most of the money was taken out after the disappearance of the bulk of the crowdfunder money was made public in 2018, with the publication of the 2017 accounts.
Almost half of the embezzlement happened from 2020 onwards. In other words: almost half happened after Wings had first raised questions about where the crowdfunder money had gone.
This timeline explains why Murrell was able to continue the embezzlement for so long. Sturgeon, Swinney, and numerous other senior SNP figures were trying to cover up run-of-the-mill dishonesty, and this allowed criminal dishonesty to continue (and to accelerate) unchecked.
And this explains why Swinney cannot wash his hands of this crime. The criminality was able to happen because Sturgeon and Swinney said the crowdfunding money had not gone missing. By saying ‘nothing to see here’ about the ringfenced money, both Sturgeon and Swinney facilitated Murrell’s criminal behaviour.
Beef olives – classic comfort food, without an olive in sight
We all did mad things during the first Covid lockdown. For some it was getting a dog or starting up a microbakery. For me, it was signing up for a NVQ Level 2 in butchery. I’m still not quite sure how it happened, but, once the schools reopened, I spent my Tuesdays in a cold butchery store in east London, socially distanced from my septuagenarian master butchery tutor, who would teach me how to break down whole carcasses, the art of seam butchery and the trick to linking sausages.
For much of those lessons, while trying to feel for a muscle group I couldn’t see, or conjure up the answer to a question about a sheep’s physiology, I would look straight ahead, gazing at a poster almost as old as me which showed different ‘value-added’ dishes that the traditional butcher could offer to the time-poor customer, a way of making the most of cheap cuts that would take the faff out of cooking. Most were familiar: kebabs on skewers, chicken kievs, marinated chicken breast. But among them, one intrigued me: the beef olive. It was hard to tell from the poster what it actually was. I prided myself on having reasonable culinary knowledge, but the beef olive was a mystery to me. I’d certainly never seen one, let alone eaten one.
My butchery teacher was appalled: how did I not know what a beef olive was? They were a staple of the butchery counter. And it’s certainly true they have a long history.
Thin, gently cooked steak and a highly seasoned stuffing, all bathed in a rich gravy. It’s classic comfort food
The first thing to say about beef olives is that half the title is misleading. There are zero olives in a beef olive. If I had £1 for every time I had to write ‘we’re not actually sure where the name comes from…’ – but you guessed it, we’re not quite sure why they are called beef olives. Some will tell you it’s because the finished product looks like a stuffed olive, but given the age and English or Scottish origin of the dish, this seems unlikely. According to the lexicographer John Ayto, the ‘olive’ in the name is a corruption of the Old French word alou, lark, because the rolled beef resembled stuffed larks. What we do know for sure, thanks to written records, is that the name has been around since the late 16th century, although it was initially used to refer to veal. By the 18th century, beef was more common, and a beef olive meant a thinly pounded beef steak rolled around forcemeat, stewed in a sauce.
Once you actually know what a beef olive is, their appeal is obvious: thin, gently cooked steak and a highly seasoned stuffing, all bathed in a thick, rich gravy. It’s classic comfort food.
Rump or topside are best for the exterior beef: they’re lean and cheap so they respond well to a low, slow cook, and it’s harder to flatten out a marbled, fattier cut than it is a leaner cut. And you really want the beef as thin and as large as you can get it, so that it wraps right around the mixture. I do this by sandwiching each steak between two sheets of baking paper, and gently battering it with a rolling pin; glancing blows work the best. The stuffing is, as all good stuffing is, a flexible mixture of highly flavoured constituents mixed with some kind of binding. I like sausage meat and breadcrumbs – it’s a perfect blend of lean and fat from the sausage, while the breadcrumbs will absorb the flavour and moisture as the whole thing cooks – with sage, finely diced onion and a generous amount of freshly ground black pepper. But you’ll often find bacon or mushrooms, mustard or nutmeg or even haggis in there.
To roll, I just tuck the beef in and around itself, but you can use butcher’s string or cocktail sticks, as long as you remove them before serving. Then the beef is browned off, before the whole is cooked low and slow in an onion-heavy, red wine-laced gravy.
I tend to serve beef olives very simply, on a generous bed of mash, onion gravy spooned lavishly over the top, and some steamed green veg on the side. But like all extremely brown gravy-drenched comfort food, it will sit just as happily alongside chips, doorstops of bread and butter, or cheesy polenta.
Serves: 2
Hands-on time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 1 hour 30 minutes
- 4 large, thin slices of topside of beef
- 1 tbsp olive oil
For the stuffing
- 4 pork sausages
- 3 tbsp breadcrumbs
- ½ onion, finely diced
- 1 tbsp sage, finely chopped
- ½ tsp black pepper, freshly ground
For the sauce
- 1 onion, sliced
- 1 tbsp plain flour
- 100ml red wine
- 300ml beef stock
- Preheat the oven to 175°C/160°C fan. In turn, place each of the slices of beef in between two sheets of baking paper, and bash gently with a rolling pin until they are larger and thinner.
- Make the stuffing by removing the sausages from their casing, and mixing the meat with the breadcrumbs, finely diced onion, sage and black pepper.
- Divide the stuffing into four equal parts, and place one in the centre of each of the steaks. Tightly wrap the beef around the stuffing, tucking the ends in and around, so the stuffing is all completely sealed. You can use butcher’s string here if you need to.
- Season the rolled beef olives, then heat the oil in a frying pan over a medium-high heat, and brown them off. Set to one side, and reduce the heat.
- Cook the onion until soft but not coloured, then stir the plain flour through it, and cook for a minute or two more. Add the red wine followed by the beef stock and bring up to a simmer.
- Place the beef olives in a snug oven dish, and pour the sauce around them. Cover with foil and cook for 90 minutes. Serve hot.
The film producer with eyes on the Derby
I broke into a skip last week as I walked up the steps of Carlton House Terrace towards the Turf Club, under the watchful eye of Frederick, Duke of York, up on his plinth. I have a habit of skipping and scrunching up my nose with my knuckles when I’m very happy; apparently, it’s quite an alarming sight for people walking towards me. But I was just bursting with bonhomie, and my feet were full of it.
My day had got off to a good start at Oxford railway station. A bloke who wasn’t, shall we say, dressed for lunch at the Turf, dropped his ticket as he walked along the platform. And everyone, except one woman and I, looked the other way. I nodded to her as if to say ‘I’ve got this’, and went in pursuit with the errant ticket. He was so incredibly grateful, he filled my heart with joy. That tiny, effortless act had reaped such a reward.
If Maltese Cross wins, Waud will be the first Englishman to outright own a Derby winner for over a decade
In truth, however, I was already on top form, because I was going to have lunch with Nigel Rich, an ex-Hong Kong taipan, and the film producer George Waud, who is soon going to be a horse-racing grandee. And where better to meet than the Turf Club, the main attraction of which is Mr Paine, the restaurant manager? I just don’t see enough of Mr Paine and wish I could start every day having breakfast with him, such is his sunny disposition. He’s one of those people who make the world a better place.
However, I suspect that Mr Paine is not accustomed to serving gentlemen who wear two pairs of glasses while they eat their lunch. So the sight of a pair of specs jauntily perched on the top of George’s head threw him a little off balance, and I may have detected a slight roll of one eye. But Mr Paine is not the sort of chap to be discombobulated for long, and he was soon regaling us with the availability of gulls’ eggs on the menu. ‘I believe we’re the only club in St James’s serving them,’ he said conspiratorially. It was an invitation not to be turned down, so Nigel and I filled our boots.
The purpose of our lunch was to chew over racing’s political landscape. Nigel was not only a steward of the Hong Kong Jockey Club for five and a half years, but he also worked with Charles Allen when he was an executive director of Granada Group. When we put our lunch in the diary, Lord Allen was still chairman of the British Horseracing Authority. But in the interim, that bird either flew or was shot during the first drive, depending on your point of view.
Waud is a very interesting cove, described by his friends as ‘a genuine cultured renaissance man who knows how to live, but isn’t flash’. He is one of the producers of Cabaret, in its fifth year at the London Playhouse, and more importantly Withnail and I, which he’s bringing to the West End in 2027.
But if Maltese Cross, currently the third favourite for the Derby, wins on Saturday week, he will be the first Englishman to outright own a Derby winner for over a decade. He will be a collector’s item.
His pride and joy, specifically bought to try and win the classic, is by Sea the Stars out of a Camelot mare. And he has won his only two races this season, including the Lingfield Derby trial. ‘I’ve been watching Sea the Stars’s races since Lingfield, and he never won by far,’ George says. ‘And there is plenty of stamina on both sides of his pedigree.’ He also concedes to Nigel that he’s had a couple of big offers since the Derby trial win. You can assume they were seven figures. Whoever made those offers will almost certainly have looked at the data of Maltese Cross’s last win. His average stride frequency was 2.15 strides per second and his average stride length was 24.1 feet. When the favourite for this year’s Derby, Benvenuto Cellini, won his trial at Chester, his numbers were 2.06 and 26; last year’s Derby winner Lambourn’s stats were 2.14 and 24.9 at Epsom, according to Total Performance Data.
A rough rule of thumb is that a slow stride frequency and a long stride are good over a mile and a half at Epsom. In the early stages of the race, the climb from the starting stalls to the top of Tattenham Hill is comparable to the height of Nelson’s column. It’s vital that energy is saved at this stage of the race, so a long rhythmic stride is essential. A naturally short stride will require too high a frequency and energy burn. Interference and block-ing by other runners will also empty the tank.
Calves’ liver and bacon were washed down with a bottle of excellent Nuits Saint Georges and we had a thorny discussion on the use of pacemakers. Opinion was divided over whether they are fair and useful, stopping the race becoming a crawl with a subsequent pile-up as happened in 1932, or an unfair advantage that tilts the outcome in favour of the horse the pace is set for.
The two things we could all agree on were firstly, that we weren’t going to have a glass of port – Nigel had to go and pick up a pair of trousers from his tailor – and secondly, we all believe that the horse-owners, who pay for literally everything in racing, should have more say about how the sport is run. Definitely more than the racecourses, which are the beneficiaries of the horses racing there.
Nigel chuckled at the prospect of that, presumably with his ex-Hong Kong Jockey Club cap on. ‘Owners are only allowed to own three horses each there,’ he advised. George Waud will be buying a lot more than that if Maltese Cross wins the Derby.
All good holidays start with a border checkpoint
What a treat it was to escape to Cyprus for some sun and a last-minute mini-break.
I left the builder boyfriend and the cleaner with strict instructions about a booking for a honeymooning couple, and they promised to put flowers in the room. ‘Go, get some sun,’ said the BB, for I was becoming peevish in the Irish rain.
I chose Northern Cyprus because it was cheap and because all good holidays surely start with a border checkpoint. It was an hour’s drive from Larnaca, but I sailed into the Turkish republic no problem, in a taxi with disco lights on the ceiling.
The hotel was just my thing, not too luxurious because luxury makes me nervous. A plain, comfortable room, a shower that spat some hot water out in a jaunty fashion, and a little balcony with plastic chairs overlooking a mountain range and a swimming pool.
The hotel was nearly empty and I settled around the pool each day to tan myself silly while reading books and doing crosswords.
Because it was slightly out of season, they were building a new pool bar, but I was so glad to be in the sun with no crowds that I put the drilling and hammering down as a bearable side-effect.
This pool bar, by the way, was clearly the idea of the elderly hotel owner’s young son, who strolled about in sportif wear looking like he was taking over the business, and his first trick was obliterating half the mountain view with a square concrete eyesore. Hey ho hum, I thought, that’s the way of things, and I couldn’t have been more sanguine.
After a few days, a sulky-looking young woman slammed herself on a bed right beside me and began to cry into her phone about her husband cheating on her.
Her toddler son was running around the pool edge while she lay stretched out on her back wailing to Shandice for more than an hour, before rousing herself to a standing position and screaming: ‘No baby! Not near the pool! That’s dangerous innit!’
At one point the child wandered all the way out of the hotel grounds into the road, but a waiter brought him back.
The woman had not one but three belly-button piercings, liberally bejewelled, a French manicure – on her feet – and the biggest Gucci sunglasses I’d ever seen. They were like welder’s goggles. She could have worked on a car assembly line in them.
‘I’m only drinkin’ every night cuz I’m so upset cuz of ’im innit!’ she said to Shandice, as the toddler again contemplated falling into the deep end of the pool.
He peered into the blue waters and teetered and I thought I might have to grab him, and slap her in the face. ‘Ee says I should be cookin’ ’is dinner. Anyway, that’s it. That whole sushi situation means I ain’t never goin’ back.’
A woman I took to be the child’s grandmother ran over to pull the baby away from the pool as it transpired that the whole sushi situation was him taking another woman out for dinner, and lots more besides. Which ought to have taught her the folly of not cooking, you’d have thought. Not a bit.
‘So I came up behind her right, and I grabbed her by the hair and I was about to punch her when she spun round and tried to hit me…’
I would have been more sympathetic to her plight if she had sat down next to me and started telling me this sorry saga. But she’d sat down next to me, ignoring 25 other sunbeds round an empty pool, and subjected me to the whole story while denying me the chance to chip in.
She’d sat down next to me and subjected me to the whole story while denying me the chance to chip in
The workmen came back from lunch and the construction of the mountain blocker recommenced and I said: ‘Oh that drilling is lovely!’ Truly, I have never been so grateful for the sound of a disc cutter.
After a while, however, having an angle grinder on one side and her telling Shandice she weren’t cooking no one’s dinner on the other, did rather make me question whether out of season was the way to go.
Eventually, I figured out there was tension in her demeanour every time the owner’s son walked over to see what progress the builders were making in blocking out the view.
Oh, I thought… This was getting good.
Then another woman, plump and hefty in a garish swimming costume, tattooed ankle, sat down opposite and the phone girl and her started shouting at each other about what time they were leaving. And when the other lady who was caring for the toddler tried to speak to her, this big tattooed bird screamed: ‘Get away from me!’
This was really hotting up. ‘Yeah and to fink I was about to move my whole life over ’ere!’ said the girl into her phone. ‘But there’s no way. And now my kid’s gonna grow up without a farva… Owwwwwww!’ And she howled and howled.
The woman opposite then took out a big skin file and began vigorously rubbing the heels of her podgy feet into the swimming pool. Sitting right on the edge of the pool she was, filing her skin into it.
Then she put her iPhone on full blast to watch those clips on TikTok telling you how to deal with a ‘backed-up liver’, and I had to listen to ‘Put two teaspoons of cinnamon in a…’ I bet she has got a backed-up liver, I thought.
At which point, laughing boy strode back over carrying a boom box, and set it up in a nearby tennis court where he and his friends began to whack balls and shout, and I had to listen to an R&B club mix number consisting of a riff of seven notes that repeated for a full 15 minutes.
I started off by being absolutely furious, but after five minutes I realised I was lying on my sunbed, Ruth Rendell dropped to the floor, singing: ‘You know that I can’t break throooough, you know that I la la la la…’;
And the worse thing is, I now love this song and I can’t find out what it is. I’ve come back from Cyprus singing it and I realise I’m going to have to ring the hotel and ask to speak to their son, if he’s not too busy having a whole sushi situation.
Trump or Hochul: who knows ball?
The New York Knicks clinched an NBA championship spot Monday – and President Trump shared his excitement over his home team’s progress and his hopes to attend an NBA Finals game during today’s cabinet meeting
“Boy, what a team. They win all their games,” Trump said. “They really, they have some great players. I think I will be going to one of their games.” He also congratulated Knicks owner Jim Dolan, who he counts as a longtime friend.
Trump has been a Knicks fan for years, with recently surfaced photos showing him sitting courtside back in 1991. If his plans work out, he will be the first sitting US president to attend an NBA Finals game. His endorsement of the team could prove testing for the Knicks: embrace Trump’s support – and half the country will hate you. Reject it – and the other half will. It’s lose-lose!
Governor Kathy Hochul of New York was unimpressed by Trump’s enthusiasm. “I’d ask him to name the starting lineup of the 1993 championship team and see how he does,” she said at her press conference when asked about Trump’s ostensible Knicks fandom.
The jab came back to bite – sports fans were quick to highlight how much Hochul got wrong in one sentence. The last time the Knicks won a championship was in 1973. They didn’t even make it to the NBA Finals in ’93, instead memorably blowing a 2-0 series lead in the Eastern Conference finals to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls, who went on to win the championship.
Perhaps Hochul should leave the sporty comebacks to New Yorkers who actually attend games.
Meet the anti-Gretas: the women celebrating nuclear energy
Over the course of their lives, Americans have an average carbon footprint of 1,300 tons of CO2. Paris Ortiz-Wines, a young woman from San Francisco, has already canceled hers out. She could hop on a flight every week for the rest of her life, eat ribeyes at every meal and sip almond milk all day long, and still be in the clear. Back in 2021, Ortiz-Wines played a key role in the campaign that stopped the closure of California’s only nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon. This has already saved more than 30 million tons of CO2 emissions.
Ortiz-Wines is part of a new generation of women advocating for nuclear energy, even though surveys show most women are skeptics. Call them the Nuclear Power Rangers. Engineers, community organizers, influencers, even models, they have atomic levels of gumption and are helping move the dial on our most misunderstood energy source. And that’s not an easy mission: there are a lot of villains to blast into oblivion.
Science unequivocally proves that nuclear power is super safe and super clean. But, as Oliver Stone argues in his eye-opening documentary Nuclear Now, it’s been demonized. For decades now, an unlikely tag team has sought to snuff out nuclear energy: oil lobbyists and pro-renewables green activists. The sworn enemies buried the hatchet to take down what each sees as the competition. Do-gooding celebrities, from Jane Fonda to Jackson Browne, joined in too.
As a result, anti-nuclear disinformation has spread far and wide. Nuclear power, we hear, is expensive and unreliable. And, of course, it’s lethal. Accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima are cherry picked when, in fact, nuclear power has led to fewer deaths globally than wind power, let alone oil or coal.
Today, the atom supplies barely 9 percent of the world’s electricity. Yet every passing day makes us realize how much more of it we need, whether that’s to combat climate change and reach net zero, power AI or achieve energy independence.
True, public opinion is changing, but not fast enough. Nuclear power consistently garners less backing than renewables – and is especially unpopular with women. Polling commissioned by Radiant Energy Group has uncovered a “gender gap.” Across 20 countries, just 26 percent of women are for it. By comparison, 45 percent of men are. Why? Richard Ollington, formerly at Radiant and now at Emys Energy, suggests this might be down to a heightened perception among women that it’s dangerous and dirty.
Until recently, the nuclear industry did little to change the narrative. “We didn’t promote the value message,” says Heather Hoff, an operator at Diablo Canyon and the co-founder of Mothers For Nuclear. “It’s been, ‘We operate the plant safely and effectively, and we don’t talk to anyone about it. We fly under the radar.’”
As such, the Nuclear Power Rangers figured they better fly high and perform aerobatics as well. There are, of course, prominent male advocates of nuclear power, but it’s women who are really leading the charge. In a male-dominated sector – only 24 percent of employees worldwide are women – this might sound counterintuitive. And yet, just like in Silicon Valley, it’s often outsiders who disrupt ossified industries.
Hoff started Mothers For Nuclear in 2016 with her Diablo Canyon colleague Kristin Zaitz because “our industry wasn’t good at communicating with women.” When the two learned that California authorities were decommissioning Diablo Canyon, they realized they had to step up. “We have, like, half our population that doesn’t support nuclear,” she remembers them thinking. “If we boost that up, we’re good to go!”
To that end, Mothers For Nuclear crafted an uplifting message: nuclear power will usher in a bright future. “I have this hope that, by supporting nuclear, that’s like the root of everything,” Hoff says. Ortiz-Wines, who has spearheaded pro-nuclear campaigns in 32 countries, concurs. “Nuclear in general provides more societal benefits. And if we have healthy societies, that means we can have healthy humans.”
For the Nuclear Power Rangers, the medium is as important as the message. Take the model Isabelle Boemeke, who also had a starring role in the campaign to save Diablo Canyon. She produces social media content that entertains as much as it informs. In one viral TikTok video, she uses her skincare routine to debunk myths about radioactivity. Or take Jenifer Avellaneda, a nuclear engineer whose online moniker is “Nuclear Hazelnut.” Her posts use pop culture savvy, she tells me, “to make nuclear energy more approachable and more human.”
The Nuclear Power Rangers were initially ignored by the very sector they were trying to boost
It might seem an obvious strategy in hindsight, but the Nuclear Power Rangers were initially ignored by the very sector they were trying to boost. The campaign to save Diablo Canyon, for instance, received no industry funding. Cut to today, and companies are contacting Hoff and Ortiz-Wines for advice. It’s the ultimate form of vindication. “I think that’s huge,” Hoff gushes.
What’s also huge is the vibe shift in climate activism that the Nuclear Power Rangers are heralding. They are optimistic that the planet can be saved. And why wouldn’t they be? The stakes are too high to be mopey. Think of them as the anti-Greta Thunbergs.
The green movement too often resembles a doomsday cult these days. Rather than offering solutions, they offer self-flagellation sessions to keep busy until the Rapture. No wonder that more and more young people suffer from “eco-anxiety.” Ortiz-Wines, who studied environmental science and came up in the environmental movement, can relate. “I felt so hopeless when I learned about climate change,” she says.
The good news is that we can solve the climate crisis if we massively scale up nuclear power. “Nuclear is inherently beautiful,” Ortiz-Wines concludes. “In dark times, when we think everything is going wrong, it is so refreshing to have a vision you can subscribe to.”