Search Results

by Michael Carberry   The Massacre of the Innocents by Cornelis van Haarlem, 1590  On 28 December each year Western Christian communities  around the world mark the Feast of the Holy Innocents , commemorating the horrific events recounted in the Gospel of St Mathew (Ch 2 vv 16-17) when, having learned of the birth of Jesus Christ,  Herod the Great, King of Judea (modern day Israel/Palestine) ordered the killing of all babies under the age of two years in Bethlehem and the surrounding district. Herod had been told of the prophecy that from among these children would arise a leader who would usurp his kingdom.  Mathew gives no indication of the number of infants murdered nor is there any independent confirmation of the event, but, whatever the historical veracity of the details, the incident is certainly consistent with Herod’s psychopathic personality and his record of bloodthirsty homicide, including most of his own family.  The massacre has been portrayed by many artists over the centuries and, still today any normal human being feels a natural repugnance at the murder of innocent babies for political reasons .   We may be tempted to say “Oh but that was a very long time ago in a much less civilised era” , but the suffering of the children involved and the anguish of the mothers witnessing their babies slaughtered before their eyes was no less then than it is now.  In the two thousand years since little has changed and such atrocities continue to be perpetrated.  Both the First and Second World Wars saw large numbers of children brutally killed, maimed or starved to death, most horrifically during the Holocaust when among the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis were perhaps as many as 1.5 million children.  Young children were gassed immediately upon arrival in concentration camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau; older ones who were not killed at once simply did not have the resilience to endure the starvation and mal-treatment which followed.   In an effort to prevent such appalling atrocities reoccurring, the international community came together to develop a corpus of international humanitarian law to protect the lives and welfare of vulnerable populations, particularly children, through agreements like the Geneva Convention, and institutions to enforce these laws such as the International Criminal Court. It was in the light of the Holocaust that the United Nations approved the Genocide Convention in December 1948 which came into force on 12 January 1951. The preamble to the Convention states that “genocide is a crime under international law, contrary to the spirit and aims of the United Nations and condemned by the civilized world,”  The United States and Israel were both early signatories to the Convention, Israel doing so on 17August 1949 just one year and three months after the Proclamation of the State of Israel and ratifying it on 4 March 1950. The International Criminal Court took much longer to set up but was finally established by the Rome Statute of 17 July1998. But  the effectiveness of such international conventions depends on the wiliness of signatory states to implement and respect the commitments they have made.  That in turn often depends on the nature of the government in power in the states concerned.   When Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on October 7 th  2023 there was an instinctive outpouring of revulsion at the brutality of the atrocity, sympathy for the victims which included infants and young children, and a recognition that Israel would have to respond.  Despite the ferocity of the immediate Israeli response, which quickly resulted in the deaths or maiming of far more innocent victims than the Hamas attacks, many people, including British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, were prepared to defend the Israeli actions on the ground that Israel had a “right to defend itself” .   But as the violence continued, with no real willingness on the part of the Israelis to reach a settlement, international concern grew.    When I first wrote about this issue in February ( What does the Holocaust teach us? ) I was concerned that many people did not seem to recognize the enormity of what was happening in Gaza (and also the occupied West Bank).   That is no longer the case. After a year and nine months with more than sixty-one thousand people confirmed killed including over seventeen thousand children (but with thousands of bodies still buried under the rubble the real number may well exceed seventy thousand); the harrowing tales of surgeons trying to treat children with limbs blown off without proper facilities or drugs or medical supplies;  the shooting by IDF soldiers of starving parents rushing to try and salvage a few crumbs from the meagre aid provided because they were perceived as “threatening”,  all while the Israeli IDF continues to bombard hospitals, schools and residential areas, only the most culpably ignorant could be unaware of the atrocities being committed by the Israeli forces on an almost daily basis.   On January 15 data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the World Health Organization and the Palestinian government revealed that, Israeli attacks had damaged: ·       Almost all of Gaza’s homes ·       80 percent of commercial facilities ·       88 percent of school buildings ·       Healthcare facilities - 50 percent of hospitals are partially functional ·       68 percent of road networks ·       68 percent of cropland And the situation has steadily worsened in the six months since then. The Israeli government and military persistently claim they are targeting “Hamas terrorists.”   But the numbers killed by the IDF grossly exceed the entire numerical strength of Hamas before the conflict began. Because of the high fertility rates among Gazan families, the majority of the population are very young. It’s estimated that 65% of those killed and injured have been women and children.   The bulk of Palestinian territory has been under illegal occupation by Israel since 1967 and Gaza itself has been completely blockaded by land, sea and air since Hamas took over its administration in 2007, creating a vast open-air prison. The blockade constitutes an act of war and a collective punishment against the Palestinian people which has been condemned by the UN and international human rights organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross.  Any act of resistance against the illegal occupation has been punished by harsh Israeli reprisals, including bulldozing of homes (contrary to international law) and the imprisonment indefinitely and without charge of thousands of Palestinians, many of them children, for as little as throwing stones or waving Palestinian flags.   The taking of hostages was a deliberate strategy by Hamas to achieve a bargaining chip which might help release these Palestinian prisoners.   The first cease-fire from 24 to 30 November 2023. which led to the release of 50 Israeli hostages, 19 non-Israelis and some 180 Palestinians (mostly women and children held in “administrative detention” ) showed the way to release all  the hostages and find a peaceful solution to the conflict. Instead, under pressure from the ultra-nationalists in his government, Netanyahu preferred to abandon the remaining hostages, resume the military campaign and unleash a cataclysm against the people of Gaza.    No one denies or would try to play down the appalling atrocities committed by the Hamas terrorists on October 7 th  2023.  But one atrocity never justifies another and the scale of the atrocities being committed by the IDF on the orders of the Israeli government has long since eclipsed those by Hamas. As the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, made clear in reports published in March 2024 and earlier this month this is a campaign of genocide. While many pro-Israeli and far-right groups, including the Trump administration, have criticised Albanese’s comments as “antisemitic” , it is notable that the former UK Supreme Court Judge, Lord Jonathan Sumption,  noted for his conservative views and certainly no “lefty lawyer” , has been categorical that the actions of the IDF in Gaza in attacking, schools, hospitals, and aid distribution centres constitute clear and repeated violations of international humanitarian law amounting, on the evidence available, to genocide.   Israel pretends to be a civilized democracy but it is not.   For almost 60 years it has been illegally occupying the bulk of the territory of its immediate neighbour, driving out the legitimate occupants and seizing their land for illegal settlements.   As well as having been indicted domestically for charges of corruption, Benyamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Galant have both been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court. Charges against other leading members of the government or military may follow.  Israel has become a rogue state headed by a criminal cabal.   It was the British conservative philosopher, Edmund Burke, who said “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” .  As Francesca Albanese observed in presenting her report, the carnage in Gaza could be stopped if Western governments agreed to cease providing military and diplomatic support to Israel and took collective action to end the blockade and flood Gaza with the aid required to save lives and protect the innocent.  Instead, they wring their hands or, worse still, like Donald Trump, actively support Israel, welcoming Netanyahu to the White House to discuss plans for the expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland to create lebensraum for Israeli settlers or space for Trump’s real estate developments.    The tragedy unfolding in Gasa is fourfold:  First, for the Gazan people, who have suffered appallingly with families torn apart, thousands of innocent civilians killed and maimed, and the economy destroyed. Secondly for the Israeli citizens, especially the hostage families, who find themselves living in a pariah state and forced to participate in a war which most of them do not want, and many actively oppose. Thirdly, the Jewish communities around the world facing increasing antisemitism as a direct consequence of the actions of the Israeli government.  And finally, for Humanity in general. We have failed to learn the lesson of history - political problems can never be solved by warfare - and have become increasingly inured to barbarity, lies, and a contempt for international law or respect for humanitarian principles.   In, The Story of the Jews, the Jewish historian, Simon Schama, relates how in pre-Islamic times Jews and Arabs lived intermingled throughout the Arabian Peninsula and Egypt.  They were both semitic peoples who speak closely-related languages; indeed there were at that time many Arab Jews.   Like Christianity, Islam derived its monotheism and much of its ethics and practices (e.g. circumcision) from Judaism.  Even after the rise of Islam, Jews were often accorded special treatment as “people of the book”  and despite occasional purges by fundamentalist puritans, like the Almohads in Umayyad Spain, the two peoples mostly co-existed peacefully - a situation which largely continued until modern times.  It was from Christian Europe that Jews experienced the most vicious antisemitism and the most appalling atrocities – not least in medieval England. What changed everything in the relationship between Arabs and Jews was the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 - a state carved out from land taken from the Arab  Palestinians who had lived there for two thousand years - and the depredations and illegal annexations, which have gone on to this day.   There is no reason why Jews and Arabs cannot co-exist peacefully if there is a political will to find a solution which seeks to address the concerns of both peoples.   But there can be no prospect of a peaceful solution so long as there is an Israeli government which refuses to recognise the right of Palestinian self-determination and is backed by ultra-nationalists and religious fundamentalists intent on expelling the rightful owners of the land of Palestine to re-create by force of arms a biblical state which disappeared over two thousand years ago.  Meanwhile innocent children continue to be slaughtered on an almost daily basis.   Two thousand years after the massacre of the innocents recorded in the Gospel account, much of the world still remembers and is repelled by the callous brutality of that act.  Likewise, the atrocities being daily perpetrated by the IDF in Gaza on the orders of Netanyahu and his cronies will never be forgotten.  These crimes will remain as a blot on the reputation of the State of Israel and on the conscience of Humanity for generations to come.

by Lynda Goetz Photo by Chabad Lubavitch So, Sadiq Khan is now a knight of the realm. Could anyone please tell me quite what Sir Sadiq has done to earn this knighthood? He is the first mayor of London* to have been so honoured, yet, under his watch, our capital city seems not so much to have flourished as to have become a rather diminished version of its former self.  Crime has risen, homelessness has increased, and in common with so many other British cities mainstream business, retail in particular , seems to have given way to dubious candy shops, vape shops, fast food deliveries and Turkish barbers. It is hard to point to any ideas or innovations introduced under his jurisdiction which have been really popular with the general public and yet he has been Mayor since 2016, having won his third term last year. How has this happened? What exactly are his real achievements? Who are his supporters?   To answer these questions we need to delve a little deeper into Mr Khan’s history and connections. As he is always keen to point out, like our Prime Minister, he came from humble origins. His parents were working-class Pakistani immigrants who arrived with their existing children in the UK in 1968.  His father was a bus driver and his mother a seamstress. His grandparents were part of the Sunni Muslim-Muhajir  who moved into Pakistan after the partition of India in 1947. Sadiq was born in St. George’s Tooting in 1970 and was the fifth of eight children. He worked hard and went on from school to study law at the University of North London (now the Metropolitan University). He went on from there to do his Law Society finals at the College of Law and completed his training at a small law firm which undertook mainly legal aid cases. Khan specialised in human rights law and became a partner in the firm before resigning in 2004 to become the prospective Labour party candidate for Tooting. He had already been involved in local politics as a councillor, representing Tooting on Wandsworth council since 1994.   Sadiq Khan entered parliament as a Labour MP in 2005. He did not always see eye to eye with the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, criticising him publicly for the terrorism he considered had been unleased by the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He also opposed the proposed introduction of 90-days’ detention without charge for those suspected of terrorist offences. However, Gordon Brown thought highly of him, and he was rewarded with increasingly senior posts in his government, culminating in the position of Minister of Transport. Khan was returned as an MP in the 2015 general election but resigned in 2016 to become the first Muslim Mayor of London or indeed any major Western capital city.   Boris Johnson’s legacy as mayor  was somewhat mixed: criticised for his lack of response to the 2011 riots, his support for Brexit and for allowing too many skyscrapers to be built; praised for his support for the arts, the Olympics and Boris bikes – although Lynne Featherstone, Lib Dem London Assembly transport spokesperson, and Ken Livingstone, the first London Mayor, both have claims to initial input on the latter. Ken Livingstone’s legacy was the congestion charge for central London and actually winning the 2012 games for the capital (although otherwise equally controversial). What has Sir Sadiq actually achieved that merits the award of a knighthood, where his predecessors have received no such accolade?   Since Mr Khan has been in charge, knife crime in London has increased and it is has become an increasingly worrying aspect of life in the capital. Council tax has also increased exponentially. His unpopular Ulez (Ultra-low emission zones) policies, first introduced in 2019, covering the area of the congestion charge, and since expanded to cover all 32 London boroughs, are another contentious aspect of life under his administration. He has also been accused of “rank hypocrisy”  over the use of zero hours contracts among employees at City Hall, despite Labour plans to abolish them. There have been accusations of cronyism in awarding contracts by Transport for London (TfL), of which Mr Khan is chairman, although City Hall have defended and denied these accusations and claim  they were all properly recorded in the register of interests – even if they had been awarded directly rather than being put out to tender as required. London’s other obvious problem is homelessness, which has also been on the increase under Sir Sadiq’s watch. Critics also flagged up the fact that Sir Sadiq blocked attempts to investigate grooming gangs in the Greater London area. Given the number of Pakistanis in the capital this could appear to be something of a cover up, although the Labour Government has been equally reluctant to have a proper national enquiry into the grooming gangs.   Taking knife crime as a starting point: has Sadiq Khan done enough to tackle this? The statistics would suggest not. According to Statista  in April this year, “The number of knife or sharp instrument offences recorded by the police in London rose to approximately 15,016 in 2023/24, compared with 12,786 in the previous year. This was the highest number of knife crime offences reported in London since 2019/20, when there were 15,928 offences. Between 2015/16 and 2019/20, knife crime in London increased yearly, with a particularly large increase occurring between 2016/16 and 2017/18”.   To be fair, this coincides with a countrywide increase in knife crimes, particularly in the West Midlands. Since 1991, according to House of Commons tables ,  the number sentenced for knife crimes has increased from 1,729 to 8,563 in 2023. Nevertheless, as Mayor, Sadiq Khan is responsible for setting the strategic direction of policing in London and also has a role in the hiring and firing of Metropolitan police commissioners. He recently clashed with chancellor Rachel Reeves, saying that there would be cuts in policing as a result of her spending review. The right-wing press have suggested that money is not the real issue and that police forces , including the Met, should prioritise their investigations and reduce the time spent on tackling non-crime hate incidents  (NCHIs) after a series of cases involving disproportionate numbers of police officers.   What about the increase in council tax, argued by shadow Home Office minister, Chris Philp, to have been 71% since 2016? According to Full Fact , this isn’t strictly true as it refers only to the London Mayor’s portion of council tax, the Greater London Authority ‘precept’. This is the portion of council tax which helps pay for the running of City Hall and the services it provides.**  In 2016/17, the average Band D council tax bill in London, including the precept, was £1,306. As of 2023/24 it’s £1,789—a 37% increase; perhaps not 71%, but substantial nevertheless.   Sadiq Khan claims that his clean air measures were part of his manifesto and popular with Londoners. This may perhaps be the case, but they are also extremely unpopular with many who live and work in the outer areas of the GLA and also those who need to drive into the capital. On 13 th June Sir Sadiq boasted that his scrappage scheme was a success as a new report found that the scheme has seen 35,094 cars and 17,964 polluting vans in London taken off the streets in exchange for grants (presumably paid for by that increase in the precept). He also claimed that air quality in London was improving at a faster rate than elsewhere in the UK. However, as drivers now have to pay to drive through the London Boroughs in areas where public transport is unavailable this puts increasing pressure on small businesses. Business groups are also distinctly unhappy with the proposals to raise the congestion charge. Many small businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to be competitive as they contend with these extra charges at a time of general cost of living increases. Unemployment in London stands at 6.8% compared with 4.4% nationally.   The homelessness issue has been highlighted by Angela Rayner’s recent announcement that she is proposing to abolish the 200-year-old Vagrancy Act by next spring. Already, police are reluctant to enforce this act and there are fears that without any sort of powers of enforcement police could have real difficulties in moving on those who choose to camp in streets and parks. In January, the BBC reported  that the number of people sleeping rough in London was 5% up on 2023 with a 26% increase in those sleeping on the streets. In October last year, local authorities in London reported that they were spending £4m a day on homelessness. The encampment on Park Lane occupied by around 40 - odd people, believed to be largely Roma, on a site owned by TfL, has been the subject of court actions over the last decade, with the latest concluding in May this year.   When Khan was knighted by King Charles earlier this week, he claimed that the King apologised for the fact that it had “taken so long” . Sir Sadiq, magnanimously stated that this was “not a problem” . Apart from the fact that it is generally agreed protocol not to report what was said in conversations with the monarch, why on earth would Charles be apologising for a delay in knighting this “proud Muslim”  Mayor? His elevation was announced in the New Year’s Honours list, but it remains unclear to many just what he has been knighted for.  Many critics have slammed it as "a reward for failure" .   On Facebook following the ceremony, Sir Sadiq posted : “The London promise: if you work hard, and get a helping hand, you can achieve anything” . I was rather fascinated by “get a helping hand” . What exactly did he mean by this? Was his fellow human rights lawyer, the Prime Minister, giving him that helping hand? Was his association with the King via The Mosaic programme *** of the King’s Trust useful in aiding his elevation? How, given the somewhat contentious nature of his governance of London, did he even manage to secure a third term?   By 2019 the Muslim population in the UK reached 3.2 million people. By the time of the 2021 census this had risen to 3.9 million of which 1,318,755 lived  in London.  This is roughly 15% of the capital’s population. The non-white population of London was at this time 46%.  Given the rapid increase in immigration since then, these numbers will have undoubtedly increased quite substantially. Some further facts may be pertinent here:- -          According to the ONS, the Muslim population of Britain has increased by 44% in a decade. -          A recently published list of the most popular names in the UK shows that Muhammad is at the top as of 2022. -          It is predicted that Muslims will become the dominant population in England in the next two decades.  -          25 Muslims were elected as members of the House of Commons in the last year’s parliamentary elections. -          According to the House of Lords Library ,  British Future’s analysis of the election results found that almost 14% of MPs are from an ethnic minority background. It compared this to an assessment of census data that suggests 14% of the UK electorate is from an ethnic minority background. Given Sir Sadiq’s relatively undistinguished achievements during his time in office as Mayor of London, and indeed as an MP, could it be perhaps that this recently awarded gong is not for distinguished and outstanding service, but quite simply for being part of an ethnic minority whose influence is growing and to which our political classes will increasingly need to ‘kowtow’ and the rest of us likewise?   *Non-Brits, indeed non-Londoners, should know that the Mayor of  (Greater) London is a recently created role, dating from 2000; not to be confused with the Lord Mayor of the City of London, a role which has existed since 1189 (Sir Richard Whittington, Dick to his friends, was one). **If you look up A Guide to City Hall  you will be able to download a 32-page pdf document detailing the extensive powers of the Greater London Authority (GLA) *** ’Bringing together Muslim men and women from across ethnic and theological differences who are holding positions of religious authority for a leadership programme’.

by Stoker   ... to buy a fat pig, Home again, home again, jiggety jig” is one of the more ancient English nursery rhymes, dating at least from the time of Elizabeth I.  Unlike many of those old songs it does not have a hidden meaning – unless our readers know otherwise – such as “Ring-a-ring of roses”  which is about the 1665 plague year; we sneeze and all fall down because we are dead!   But “To Market, to Market”  has a certain painful edge to me, involving not buying, but selling fat pigs. My father, a farmer, did not want sons who were sentimental about animals and at about the age of 13 I was given two orphan piglets to rear by hand, initially from a bottle, and then later as they grew into strong young white porkers, by twice daily  charging of their food and water troughs.  But alas, his son was indeed rather sentimental and so decided that these piggies (Pinky and Perky, inevitably*) should stay on the farm and be used as breeding stock.   One day I was doing my Saturday morning chore of cleaning out their shed when a misunderstanding occurred and I was not only knocked over by Pinkie but then rolled into the heap of the very thing I was cleaning up (very good for roses). In a fury I found my father and said that there had been a change of policy in the Stoker Pig Business, and they were to go to market the following Saturday.  “Are you sure?” “Yes” . He booked them in, and the lorry to take them. That Saturday morning we went together to the local Yorkshire market town, which still had its livestock market in the centre of the town, adjacent to the town market place.  Sellers and buyers and auctioneers could walk across the pens on narrow board walks – how the Health and Safety Inspector would love that now.  We did so; to the pen containing two white sows . When they saw who it was, they looked up in that friendly cheerful way that pigs have, expecting no doubt a bucket of pignuts to descend to them.     I realised with horror the reality of what I had done.  “Can I withdraw them?”  “No.”  “Can I buy them?”  “No” .  The tears came, but were suppressed quickly.  I realise now my old man was probably as upset as I was, but if his son was to be a farmer, here was a lesson to be learned.  Indeed, he made me watch as the auctioneer came along the boards, and in about 50 seconds flat of incomprehensible auctioneer rat-a-tat staccato disposed of Pinky and Perky to a pigmeat dealer to finish fattening up.   Just as well, I think, I never did become a farmer. I did contemplate becoming an auctioneer but I haven’t the voice for it (and would never be able to contemplate selling a distressed boy’s pigs.) My brother eventually took the farm over, but he never gave his animals, mostly pigs - hundreds, thousands of pigs - names. Never get on first-name terms with anybody you might end up eating is a good rule in life.  And none of us discussed that soon after these piggy events my father adopted an orphan calf who he called “Monty” . She grew into a beautiful black cow, loyally followed him around the home paddock and farm buildings, and lived a restful cheerful life on the farm for many years. Ha!   Last week, as it happened, I was in that northern market town with time to fill. Walking in the market place I heard the distant strange staccato rattle of a first class auctioneer in prime form.  It was the Friday cattle market; a shadow of its former self of fifty years ago, but other than a state of the art electronic particulars board with seller and weight and number (of the beasts being sold, not the seller) very little has changed.  The same slightly red-cheeked, maudlin farmers standing in the ring with their cattle, hoping for a good price but also saying goodbye to animals they have known for eighteen months or more; the auctioneer’s clerk beadily watching for missed bids; and ageing men in wellies and overalls and flat-caps busy tapping their noses or tugging their ears or rubbing their chests. Not because they have strange itches, but to indicate to the man with the gavel that they are bidding.  It’s almost impossible to work out who is, but the auctioneer knows, and he knows when to bang down the gavel and shout a name, and then “Next. Lot 86! ”   It is amazing that the market survives on the site where it has been for hundreds of years; the local council would love to move it to a site on the ring road.  The great landowner who owns the freehold of the market and much of the town would also like to move it but is mindful of the historic location and the money it still brings into his tenants’ shops in the town centre; maybe also mindful that the site would perfectly suit a Waitrose or Sainsbury but after nearly 500 years of ownership, he can wait. The farmers probably like it where it is as they can spend some of their proceeds in the pubs after the sale; and their wives like it where it is as they can shop. And also drag their menfolk out of the pubs before things get out of hand. The dealers who come to buy would like it to move; getting large trucks in and out of a fundamentally medieval streetscape is always a nightmare. And many of the local residents, and the council’s Health and Safety Department, neither group much enamoured of strange smells, frightened animal noises, odd substances on the roads, and occasional  escaping sheep, would like it gone.   But if it goes, it will end.  On market days the great sheds of the cattle and sheep markets are at best 20% occupied and the outdoor pig pens, no longer with those board walkways, are hardly used at all. Much of it is indeed a slightly odd car park except for market days on Tuesday and Friday.   And visitors?  Go if you can to your local livestock market; it is the last gasp of a highly traditional ancient part of life.  Some of us do have memories of how things were, and are rather attached to those memories, memories of some sorrow it is true, but that is part of life and growing up.  Soon, no doubt, farmers will cease to bring their animals, nor will the dealers come, and the auctioneer and his clerk will get on with the much more remunerative business of selling houses from their smart offices in the square.  The market will close, and only one failed pig keeper will remember the tragedy that happened here.   *Pinky and Perky were singing puppets in a much loved children’s TV show in the 1960’s.

by Richard Pooley YouGov’s latest Multilevel Regressive Post-stratification (MRP) poll of the likely result should there be a general election in the UK now is bad news for both of the country’s main political parties. Labour’s vote share drops to 23%, the Conservative one to 18%, the first time in over a century that the two parties have less than half. Under our democratically-challenged voting system, Labour would win 176 seats but the Conservatives would have just 46, not far ahead of the Scottish Nationalists with 34 seats from a 3% vote share, and behind the Liberal Democrats with 81 seats from a 15% share. The party with the largest share (26%) and most seats (271 – 55 short of a majority) would be Reform UK, the latest political vehicle for Nigel Farage, the most consequential British politician since Margaret Thatcher. The most interesting statistics to come out of this poll of 11,500 people are that Brits in households with an income of over £70,000 are more likely to vote for Labour than any other party, while those earning £20,000 or less are most likely to vote Reform. The average UK salary for full-time employees is £37,430. So, are the poor no longer voting Labour and the middle class no longer voting Conservative? If so, Reform UK really has not so much reshaped the political landscape as blown it up. What is Reform offering the British which is proving so attractive to so many? Its most well-known and popular policies are to do with immigration – no “non-essential” immigrants and immediate deportation of foreign criminals. But the latter has been tried for years by British governments without much success. If foreign countries won’t accept ‘their’ criminals, how will Farage send them back? He doesn’t say. Just as his party does not explain how it will “return” failed asylum seekers and those who arrive on “the small boats”  from France. Farage’s anti-European Union rants when a Member of the European Parliament and his prime role in getting 52% of Brits to vote to leave the EU has made him a pariah among most governments in the EU. And he cannot expect any help on reducing immigration to the UK from his right-wing nationalist friends in Europe. They have or will come to power precisely  because they also are saying they can reduce immigration. I can’t see Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella of France’s National Rally allowing les flics to continue to patrol the beaches of north-west France to try and stop migrants heading for the UK. How do Reform define “non-essential” ? Foreign nurses and doctors are essential, as indeed they are if the National Health Service is to keep going. Those in hospitality are not. Nor are farm-workers, carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers, electricians and plumbers. Nor care-workers.  So, the jobs that Brits won’t or can’t do won’t be done by migrants. And fruit and vegetables won’t be harvested, houses won’t be built, old people won’t be looked after. Reform thinks it will fill these jobs by forcing employers to take on Brits: they would have to pay much higher National Insurance (20%) on foreign workers than on British ones. But if a Brit is not able or willing to do the job, I, as an employer (as I once was), will hire a foreigner (if Reform will allow me to) and pass on the cost to my customers…or invest in machinery or Artificial Intelligence…or go bust. Surely, you may think, a right-wing outfit like Reform will get Brits back to work by taking an axe, or at least a scalpel, to the UK’s welfare bill. The cost of disability and incapacity benefits has shot up by 45% in real terms since the Covid pandemic. That’s a million more claimants. Compare that to Germany where the number of such claimants has fallen. Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative government’s finance minister from 2022 to 2024, thinks that if his successor “cut the value of overall working-age benefit claims to 2019 levels, she would save £49 billion a year in real terms…”  He admits in the same article that he is “indirectly responsible” for the ballooning welfare costs. In 2014, when he was in charge of the Department of Health, Hunt shepherded the Care Act through Parliament. One of this act’s main aims was to stop the National Health Service treating mental health as less important than physical health. The law of unintended consequences has resulted in mental-illness claims accounting for more than 50% of the post-pandemic increase in disability benefits. Hunt goes on to suggest ways to overcome this and save a lot of money. Yet Reform are unlikely on present evidence to do anything about welfare costs. When the Labour government cut winter-fuel payments to all but the poor, Farage said he would restore them; and said he would restore them in full when Labour U-turned and restored them in part. Likewise, when the government tried to save £4.5 billion by making eligibility for disability benefits much tougher, Farage made it clear that he supported the Labour backbenchers who all but scuppered the plan. Who would have been most hit had the government succeeded? Those households earning less than £20,000 a year. What else is Mr Farage and his motley crew of six (or is it now five?) MPs proposing to do should they come to power? One of the most eye-catching and eye-watering is their manifesto pledge, since confirmed by the man himself, to raise the personal allowance for income tax from £12, 570 to £20,000. So, anybody earning less than £20,000 will pay no income tax at all. No doubt who will love that and vote for it. The cost in lost revenue would be at least £70 billion. Add in Farage’s wish to abolish inheritance tax, and cut fuel duty (gotta help the petrolheads), stamp duty (gotta make it easier for rich people to buy and sell their houses) and VAT (gotta boost consumption…actually that’s a good idea), and clear-headed economists reckon you can add another £70 billion of lost revenue. But that’s not all. Farage wants to cut corporation tax by 10% (another £36 billion lost). Despite all this disappearing tax revenue, Reform say they will increase spending in some areas: some £40 billion more for health, defence and the police. And they will make our views better: electricity cables will be buried underground instead of hanging from those ugly pylons. When it comes to how all this will be paid for Reform are much less clear. Money will be saved by abandoning our Climate Change Net Zero targets and by making 5% savings in central and local government bureaucracy. All will be well because, somehow, Reform’s policies will add 1% to growth (that’s almost double what it is now). Do Reform’s supporters worry that the party’s tax and spend policies literally don’t add up? Do they care that its immigration policy contains nothing significantly different from those of the current and previous governments and, if implemented successfully, would do huge damage to the economy? No. And Farage knows that. Look at his latest wheeze. He is rightly worried that so many wealthy people who earn most of their money outside the UK are leaving the country. These are the ‘ non-doms’ who under the previous Conservative government were told that from April this year, if they stayed in the UK, they would have to start paying UK income tax on money they earned overseas from April 2029. Labour decided to be even tougher and have added inheritance tax. In 2024 about ten thousand millionaires left  the UK, many of them non-doms with a lot more than a mere million quid. This was a 157% increase on 2023. The signs are that even more will have left by the end of 2025. Farage’s solution? A one-off entry fee of £250,000 for those who have gone abroad but wish to return. For this they will get a ‘ Britannia Card’ which exempts their non-UK income and assets from UK taxation for ten years. The £1.5-2.5 billion a year raised would be given to the lowest 10% of British earners (2.5 million people). Splendid…except that the existing non-dom policy is expected to raise some £36 billion in tax over 5 years. So, that’s another £26 billion net of lost revenue, Nigel. It’s been called by the media his “Robin Hood” policy and, of course, the poor who will benefit love it. The UK’s institutions and systems badly need reforming if the country is to grow and prosper. The tax system needs a complete overhaul to make it less complicated and less easy to be gamed by the tax lawyers and accountants of the rich. Power and resources have to be transferred from central government to local government. We should emulate the French and others and have a health service partly funded by private insurance. Yet Reform UK is not offering any such reforms. It belies its name. One reform which is also necessary and which Nigel Farage has long championed is to our voting system – making it a proportional one. He seems to have gone quiet about that of late. I wonder why.

by Richard Pooley Photo: Nick Page on Unsplash “I’m off to Bulgaria.” So said Nick, the man who had helped boost our Sky broadband download speed at our house in Bath from a piffling 3 to 5 Mbps to a hardly less piffling 12 Mbps (compared to a download speed of 37 Mbps in our house in deepest rural France). Nick had come because we had decided to try again to up the speed by contracting with a provider who could give us full-fibre connection. Again? Yes, we had signed up with True Speed, a Bath-based full-fibre broadband provider, two years ago. Installation dates came and went. Engineers appeared and disappeared. A red-sheathed cable dangled from the high pavement near our house…and stayed there for well over a year. Emails and calls from me went unanswered. We cancelled. Nick had come to try and sell us Starlink but went away having given us good advice on what much cheaper, non-Elon Musk solutions there are. He also told us that he had had enough of “Broken Britain” and was selling his house in Swindon and moving with his dog to rural Bulgaria to become as self-sufficient as possible, unreliant on government or big business. He is even learning Bulgarian. I guess Nick is in his late thirties. Covered in tattoos, his various injuries have not just come from his past professional life as a roofer. He’s a serial entrepreneur and he is sick of British politicians – “They’re all on the take.” – and British bureaucrats – “incompetent jobsworths”. These are views and language I have heard on many doorsteps as I  canvassed in the General Election last year and local council elections in May this year. My business colleague, Tim, a successful businessman whose upbringing was, I suspect, much tougher than anything Nick went through (his father was in prison for long periods), is also heading overseas. He’s bought a house in Spain and plans, with his wife and young son, to become fully resident there within two years. He also has a dim view of British politicians and has never voted. He can’t see the point: they have no experience or understanding of business, they favour the workshy over those trying to better themselves, and they raise barriers to growth through over-regulation. His ire is directed most at the Police. His main business in Sheffield was burgled three times. The third time, the cameras he had had installed caught clear images of the robbers and their vehicles’ registration numbers. The thieves, so confident were they of not being arrested, did not even bother to hide their faces. The Police did nothing with all this evidence. John, a Brit and close friend, whose successful business in the UK was destroyed through no fault of his own as a result of the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, is wondering whether he wants to return to the UK from his current home in France. He and his wife, formerly a nurse in the UK,  have had to deal with the health and care problems of their parents in the UK and worry what awaits them in their old age in a Britain whose health service faces chronic staff shortages, years-long waiting times for operations, and crumbling hospitals. Compare this with the superb health service they benefit from in France (not that the French themselves realise how lucky they are). He’s a highly practical man who can turn his hand, literally, to almost anything which needs to be built or repaired. His business had depended on him being so skilled. Yet I recall him telling me how, when he lived in England, he had stopped being a volunteer for his local Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). He had joined a group putting in and repairing fencing, gates and stiles without any problem until told by a paid AONB official he must take the Health and Safety course in ... how to operate a chainsaw? No, how to safely use a spade when digging a hole. When he refused to waste time on such a course, he was banned from the group. He, like Nick and Tim, believes the UK is hamstrung by over-regulation. I agree and would add that even where regulation is necessary, the rules are not enforced. I could regale you with more of my own Broken Britain stories but, if you are a Brit, you have enough of your own, and if you are not, you are probably keen to tell me how bad things are in your own countries (if so, please put them in the Comments below). The figures for the UK economy compared to other developed economies confirm the story of a spavined country. In 2007, the UK’s nominal GDP per person was $50,400. The USA’s was $48,100 and Germany’s $42,400. Yes, folks, we were richer than the super-capitalist US Americans and those industrious Germans. But now*? The USA figure is $82,800, Germany’s is $54,300…and the UK’s has dropped to $49,500. How we Brits put the Great back into Britain is something I’m still trying to work out and will be the subject of future articles. What interests me right now, as an activist in a British political party, the Liberal Democrats, is how British politicians are responding to the frustration and anger of British voters. Love him or loathe him (and I am in the latter group), Nigel Farage is the only politician who is connecting with many British people at the moment. His Reform UK party has just five Members of Parliament out of 650 MPs but completely dominates the news. The mainstream media have long favoured the right-wing of British politics but that usually meant they supported the Conservative party. Even the BBC, forever abused by the Left for favouring the Right and by the Right of leaning Left, is now, justifiably, being accused of giving far too much air-time to Farage and his motley crew of right-wing nationalists. The traditional political parties in Britain have only themselves to blame. Labour came to power last year promising to get the UK growing again but without raising any major taxes, borrowing any more money, or cutting overall public spending. Yes, they said, Britain was in a mess but that was all the fault of misrule by the Conservatives. What was Labour’s vision? Their solution? We still don’t know. The first act of the Labour government of 1997 was to give independence to the Bank of England. The first act of the Labour government of 2024 was to scrap the winter fuel allowance for old people. 11 months later they have restored it for most old people. Thanks. I was wealthy enough not to need it a year ago and I still don’t need it now. If Labour appears to have no overall plan for the country, the Conservatives are honest enough to admit they don’t have one either. Their newish leader, Kemi Badenoch, tells those who wish to know (not many) that they are not going to be rushed into working out what their policies are. They need to learn from past mistakes to ensure they don’t repeat them. Very laudable but an admission that they have no idea what to do to fix Broken Britain. Those in her party who believe Badenoch’s no-policy policy is misguided either think the Conservatives should merge with Reform or hanker for the return of that self-styled Cincinnatus of our times, Boris Johnson, fresh from siring his ninth (we think) child. In short, the Conservatives are either not being listened to or are not serious. Or both. And my party, the Liberal Democrats? We still have not come to terms with being taken seriously by many voters. We have got so used to being the butt of jokes and ignored by political commentators, we don’t seem to realise that with 72 MPs we are the third largest party in the House of Commons – a platform from which to demand attention. But only if we have the courage to be honest with the electorate and say what needs to be done: Brexit was a dreadful mistake and we should negotiate re-joining the Customs Union; to thrive the country needs immigrants to do the work which Brits can’t or won’t do; illegal migration can be reduced (look at how liberal Denmark has done so); taxes will have to rise if we are to grow. But our leader, Ed Davey, a good and decent man in the wrong job, has neither the courage to say this nor the oratorical skills to inspire and persuade. The Green party at least has the clearest plan for the future among all the parties. But, like its sister parties elsewhere in the developed world, only the young and idealistic, with no money to lose should those Green plans come to fruition, are prepared to vote for them. And the Scottish and Welsh nationalists? The former will find it hard in Scottish parliamentary elections next year to defend a rotten governmental record. The latter will do well in next year’s elections to the Senedd, especially after reforms to the voting system, but may find, as the Scottish nationalists will, that Reform are as much a rival as the other parties. Let’s not get into Northern Irish politics; I know my limits. Which brings me back to Mr Farage. My Only Connect  colleague, Stoker, has written elegantly about him in previous articles. I won’t cover the same ground. Suffice to say that Farage does have a plan for the UK and is able to communicate it in a way which will persuade at least a quarter of Brits to vote for his party at the next general election. The plan is unworkable and dangerous (why in my next article) but unless the other parties start communicating their own visions for the UK, forcefully and clearly, they will fail to stop Mr Farage becoming the next prime minister of Britain. We chose Virgin Media as our new broadband (and TV) provider. Installation in early July. Will it go smoothly? Or will I have another Broken Britain story to share with friends and family…and Nick in rural Bulgaria (Ah, No: he said he was going to be “off-grid” ). *World Bank and OECD national accounts data. Latest figures are for 2023.

by Dr. M. Nicholson Mzee in June 2025 When I started my tree project 20 years ago it was almost unheard of that an indigenous Kenyan would come and buy native trees. The combination of knowledge, increasing wealth and concern about the environment has meant that in recent years, more and more Kenyans come and buy seedlings of East African trees. A couple of months ago a man appeared looking for unusual tree species. His name was Michael Mwangi Muthee and he invited my assistant and me to visit his shamba  in Karen, an exclusive and expensive residential area to the west of Nairobi where land without a house now fetches well over one million dollars an acre. Mwangi [1]  has an interesting history. He played rugby for Kenya in the heyday of Rugby Sevens and played against England. He became Chairman of Kenya Rugby Union but resigned because he was fed up with the corruption [2]  that plagues so many of Kenya’s sporting organizations. He is now the MD of a large company in Nairobi, Biomedica, that makes enzymes for food and health food producers.  Mwangi Muthee with my assistant Wambua (foreground) We arrived at an old colonial house with a formal English style garden surrounded by a cultivated area covered in trees. Mwangi calls it a forest farm and he aims for high biodiversity and the integration of organic foods. We supply him with a wide variety of shrubs and trees not usually found on any farm in Kenya. Traditional Mexican maize known locally as Githugu A normal Kenyan smallholder plot consists of maize, beans, sukuma wiki (a type of kale), and perhaps potatoes. As we walked round Mwangi’s farm he showed us numerous indigenous vegetables that one rarely sees these days. He still grows Githugu  maize, a traditional Mexican variety brought in to Kenya over one hundred years ago. It is a lower-yielding variety but much sweeter and tastier. It is illegal to sell the seed in Kenya because too much money is made from hybrid seed from the USA. Muthee is the first to admit he is a health food addict and his farm is alive with unusual plants such as yams, arrowroot, sweet potatoes (which we were given for lunch), plus a host of indigenous vegetables hardly grown any more.   On our return to his house, we saw an elderly gentleman sunning himself in a chair. “That’s my dad, Mzee [3] . He is almost 100 and he is one of the few Freedom Fighters left alive” . We went to greet him: to find a beaming face, a white beard, a strong handshake and an articulate voice and mind.   Are you happy to talk about Mau Mau? “ Of course ” he replied, “ I’ll try and remember as much as I can.”   He was born in 1928 and he went to work for a colonial farmer in 1943 after he finished school. The farmer was a Captain ‘Dudu’ [4]  O’Hagan. By coincidence I knew that name because I used to live next to his son Desmond, a retired Provincial Commissioner who died at least 20 years ago in his late eighties. As a young man, Mzee worked his way up till he became the record keeper for 6000 cattle on O’Hagan’s farm near Naro Moru in the flat land between Mt. Kenya and the Aberdare mountains. When he was about 24, he underwent an oathing ceremony to rid his country of the colonials and regain the Gikuyu ancestral land. “ Why was Mau Mau restricted to Gikuyus?”  I asked. “ Well, it wasn’t. It also included other tribes around Mt. Kenya such as the waEmbu and the waMeru. But the colonials had stolen Gikuyu land and we wanted it back. The other tribes were less interested because either they were cowards or their land had not been pinched ”. I suggested that was unfair because many other tribes were far away and their land had not been taken over. “ So why were you arrested? ” I asked. “ I was not arrested or charged because I admitted nothing and they had no evidence. I was questioned by Gikuyu loyalists, whom I hated and then I was detained by our colonial masters. I was a Gikuyu and that was enough.  So we were marched off to detention in the drylands on the way to Mombasa. The first camp was near Mackinnon Road where 30,000 of us were imprisoned under low mbati (corrugated iron) roofs painted with black tar. Can you imagine the heat when the semi-desert sun beat down outside?”  “Did anyone escape?” “No, because in those days the place was teeming with lions. After two years we were moved to another hot area, then to Lake Victoria where I almost drowned, then to the Mwea swamps, finally to Athi river south of Nairobi where one man was tortured and then died.” “ Were you maltreated? ” I enquired.   “ Did you ever hear of humans treating their enemies kindly? We slept on the ground with scorpions. We had a bucket at night for use as a communal toilet. By day we were allowed to empty it, wash it and refill it from the river for use as drinking water”.   During the five years of his internment, he was moved to five different camps and endured hunger, boredom, thirst and inactivity. Does that constitute torture? I asked him if he still hated the British. “ Not at all, ” he replied. “ We won and that is all that mattered .” Would I be that magnanimous? I doubt it.   I went back to mzee  on 11 June to have another lunch with this charming, bright eyed and smiling Ancient Mariner.   The next day, I visited a special old friend of nearly ninety from ‘the other side’, the colonial regime. His daughter had produced an article from The East African Annual   1955-56  entitled ‘ Comrades in Arms ’ in which there was a photograph of him as a 19 year-old ‘ Fort Commander’ . These white ‘ officers ’ were undoubtedly brave, hunting for ‘ gangsters’  in mountainous bamboo terrain infested by buffalo and elephant. In one instance, three patrols covered 1300 miles on foot and only made two contacts with Mau Mau fighters. To quote from the article: “ In the early days of the Kikuyu [5]  Guards organization, young officers barely out of their teens had to contend with the formidable test of nerves. Often the only European in an area seething with Mau Mau, one of the cardinal aims of whose secret oaths was to kill white people, he daily, hourly had to expect an attack on his strong point. And when it came, he had not only to contend with the enemy outside but to wonder whether there would be treachery within - for the terrorists sometimes filtered into the loyalist movement - and Kikuyus frankly admitted that it was impossible for a man to be certain that his own brother had not taken the Mau Mau oaths. Only in action could a man give proof that he was a true loyalist. But the Guards officers’ main duty is, and always has been, to lead the loyal Kikuyu against the groups of fanatical murderers who have brought disaster on their tribe. The fight will not cease until they have banished the fear which seeps through Kikuyuland. But living, leading and fighting with the Kikuyu loyalists, the Kikuyu guard officers have built a comradeship between black and white which augurs well for the future of Kenya.” Describing the Gikuyu loyalists, it went on: “Untrained, and equipped with only the poorest of native weapons, the Kikuyu loyalists in the early months of 1953 must have seemed most unpromising material to a casual observer. But they had two great war-winning virtues - unflinching courage and the determination to stand and, if necessary, die for their faith in Christ or, in the case of thousands of pagan tribesmen, their belief in the government and their adherents to tribal customs violated by Mau Mau.”   Let me vex some of my old friends and state the obvious: the colonialists were on the wrong side of history. The Kikuyu Guards and the colonial masters may have won the battle in terms of casualties (653 Guards killed vs. 3827 Mau Mau terrorists killed by 1956) but they lost the war. It was the Mau Mau that brought about Kenya’s independence.   I feel sad that so few young Kenyans really understand the sacrifice such people made in order to gain independence. And of course, it reminds us all that one person’s ‘ Terrorist’  is another person’s ‘ Freedom Fighter’ .    [1]  Increasingly, Kenyans today prefer using traditional tribal names instead of Christian names. [2]   https://www.mpasho.co.ke/entertainment/2015-04-15-mwangi-muthee-finally-speaks-about-the-state-of-kenya-rugby-union [3]   Mzee is a respectful name for an elder [4]  A nickname given him by other settlers meaning ‘Insect’ [5]  The terms Gikuyu and Kikuyu these days are interchangeable. Kikuyu (short for ki-Gikuyu ) is more common but refers to the language. Gikuyu is the correct spelling.

by Stoker   Readers will think this is yet another howl of discontent about the planning system, and so it is. Some may also detect a roar of rage about the sheer incompetence and utter lack of imagination of our new(ish) government, and it is that as well. And the majority may detect tears of despair at the death of Britain, and it certainly is that. But most of all we celebrate the 70th anniversary of the first publication of an extraordinary book: Outrage written by Ian Nairn, one of Britain’s great historians of landscape and architecture, originally published as a special edition in June 1955 by The Architectural Review .   Nairn was one of the original Angry Young Men, perhaps exemplified by the playwright/actor John Osborne, but with many others who wanted to change the world, including the writers Alan Sillitoe and Kingsley Amis, the poet Philip Larkin (he and Amis became much less angry as they got older), and a whole range of painters, philosophers, and indeed, architects.  Nairn never became less angry but he did become very disillusioned, and eventually took to strong drink and died in 1983 at the age of only 52, after a long silence.    Outrage  was the great magnum opus which established his reputation, and made him Britain’s foremost commentator on architectural design.  He published many books on the subject, all of which are worth reading; they indeed should be required studies for all those involved in building, design and planning.  And indeed, for Angela Rayner, who we will come back to.   Nairn was neither a modernist or an old fogey; he was not against industrialisation or development, and whilst he was certainly an early conservationist he was most certainly not conservative.  What made him furious, the source of his outrage, was the lack of thinking and consideration that went into building development.  The Second World War had brought about opportunities, the necessity indeed, to modernise Britain, especially urban Britain.  Much building stock had been damaged in the war; even greater amounts were in poor condition and not fit for the new technological revolution.  The countryside was blemished by immense military landscapes – not just airfields (in fact they were the least of it) but huge military stores thrown up quickly and badly by the army and navy. And most grotesque of all was the rapid building of a power network; huge pylons strung with transmission wires striding across rural lands visible from almost anywhere in the country; no respecter of remote beautiful landscapes or of handsome townscapes, they.   In fact, Nairn did not object to pylons and wires per se; he recognised and indeed welcomed the improvements to life that their electricity brought, and individual pylons could be masterpieces of design.  But what he hated was the thoughtless ways they were put up, without any consideration as to the visual damage done.  He wanted more cables buried and he queried the need for a national grid. He examined the hydro-electrical power stations then being built in the Scottish Highlands and thought them generally acceptable, often well-designed in a brutalist style, and built in concrete which actually suited the harsh landscape in which they sat.  But why, he asked in Outrage,  was their power sent south, necessitating the great pylon chains across the Scottish mountains, when they could provide a reliable and low impact supply to their local communities? Outrage  narrated a car journey by Nairn and several companions from Southampton in a straight line to the far north of Scotland, with a slight deviation through the Lake District, and omitting about one hundred miles from Carlisle to north of Glasgow.  He photographed many outrages; not just ribbon developments (houses stretching into the country along roadsides; retail and factories being built outside towns on arterial routes; cafes and petrol stations dotted here and there in rural locations),  municipal style flower beds on roundabouts, block planting of coniferous trees, bullying signage, with never a “please ”, most of it completely unnecessary except to show the citizenry who is in charge. All this Nairn christened “Subtopia”  – his dismissive term for suburban sprawl.  Thirlmere, in the Lake District, a water source for Manchester, drew his complete rage, concealed among great fir plantations, fenced off with high wire fences, repetitious officious signage to keep the public out.  As though a few walkers would have any effect on piped water.   The publisher Notting Hill Editions have just republished Outrage in a delightful pocket-sized edition which persons of taste may transport easily to look at what has happened over the last seventy years and ponder on what Nairn might have thought about modern development (probably not printable). One defect is that Nairn’s black and white photographs are more or less invisible because of the scale of this otherwise lovely book, but any reader will get the ideas, and it is the furious text which is both delightful and inspiring.   Which brings us to Ms Rayner and her Cabinet co-conspirator, Ed Miliband.  Mr Miliband is Minister for Energy, and Ms Rayner Minister for many things but in particular, Housing and Development.   It should be said that Outrage  did, over time, bring about some modest change: pylons and cables paid some (very limited) heed to the landscapes they booted their way through; many military bases were cleared away and returned to farmland; the concept of brownfield development was introduced – the re-use of abandoned urban sites; residential development in cities became denser and higher; green belts stopped building in rural areas around cities; and more heed was paid to quality of design (though little to quality of construction) in sensitive locations.  Perhaps most obviously, municipal flowerbeds on roundabouts and highway verges have gone, though mostly because of budgetary cuts rather than taste. But, in truth, not much has changed in how we use land and build in modern Britain; in this tiny crowded island we still use our precious land as though we could easily create millions more acres.  And, a particular Nairn bugbear, no heed is paid to the heritage of our regions as the mass residential developers fling up endless identical unimaginative estates, usually on former farmland.   But worse is to come: the rush to green energy is equally a rush to steel energy as the pylons and cables are once again on the march, together with all the transfer plants, substations, solar parks, wind turbines, and other necessities they bring with them.   Ms Rayner has promised that in the five-year term of this Parliament she will cause to be built one million, five hundred thousand houses.  Not a word as to impact or quality or positioning; most of them will be built on greenfield sites and many by either inexperienced local authorities or large speculative builders - it is hard to know which will be worse.  Changes to the planning process being progressed by both ministers will remove most of the current ability of citizens to object or to delay the process.  If the minister says “let it happen” , it will happen.    A feature of this government is its lack of original thought, of new ideas and approaches, of a search for radical and novel solutions (nor are any of the other parties any better).  That, alas, is true of Mr Miliband and especially so of Ms Rayner, whose approach to the planning conundrum is simplistic and unimaginative.  She has far too many responsibilities, none of which she seems to have the personal resources to handle.  Both ministers could usefully take the Outrage reprint and follow in Ian Nairn’s footsteps (tyre tracks) and reflect on what he saw and how we might manage to avoid these terrible errors.    Will they? Of course not.  The State is about to double down on the damage done.  Take your vacations in Britain whilst you can; things are not going to get better.

by Eric Boa Only a week to save the Poor Now is not the time for charity. At least officially, as Governments swap aid for arms. In extreme cases whole aid departments have been wiped out. In February this year the website for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) ceased to exist – apart from a terse statement announcing ‘notification of administrative leave. The budget for 2024 was $63 billion.   USAID’s demise is extreme but the trend towards defunding the poor is not. Successive UK governments have decimated our aid budget. The Conservatives began by reallocating funds to housing asylum seekers. This came on top of a cut from 0.7% to 0.5% of GDP post the Covid pandemic. Said to be temporary, it was never reinstated. The most cynical move was to move the innovative Department for International Development back to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. FCO became FCDO.   The UK aid budget has been cut further in recent months as funds are shifted into defence. The many agencies, NGOs and professionals who depend on aid funding are fuming, but there’s little they can do beyond decrying the declines. The public here in the UK and elsewhere have other more pressing priorities, from the cost of living and concerns about health and education. Even so, there’s no sign that fund-raising by charitable organisations has significantly declined in challenging economic circumstances.   I should qualify this. Most of the charity money raised in UK is destined for health matters, including running of hospices and cancer research. Animal charities do well, as does the National Trust, a guardian of ancient buildings and the countryside. All predominantly, if not solely, UK-centric. Significant amounts are also given to big international charities, but overall small by comparison. The likes of Save the Children International, Oxfam and faith-based NGOs such as CAFOD (Catholic) and Islamic Relief run extensive programs around the world. There’s a similar emphasis on human health and, increasingly, on climate change-related matters. Good stuff, but not enough without government support.   For further evidence that the public is concerned about aid, look to the showy events which periodically capture wide attention (and funds). Band Aid and its marathon offshoots have raised over £150 million and did much to alert people here in the UK to the plight of populations living difficult lives. Comic Relief continues efforts to highlight what can be done to improve vulnerable and impoverished communities here and overseas.   Maybe things are not so bad after all. While Governments give less for aid, civil society (think non-profits and NGOs) continues to show up and fill the gaps. I wish this was true. What I’ve called ‘aid’ so far is a complex beast. Providing food, shelter and other financial handouts for the those ravaged by conflict, natural disasters and fragile living conditions are at best sticking plasters on festering wounds. The roots of poverty are many and complex. The pressing needs of the weakest and most vulnerable mask deep difficulties in creating equitable societies, delivering better healthcare, making agriculture more efficient and balancing human needs with conservation of nature. Reduced aid means fewer chances for long-lasting changes to everybody's lives (Tajikistan) I’ve spent over 40 years working in international development. I began as a scientist – “good at asking questions”  as Robert May, once the UK’s Chief Scientific Officer, pithily put it. What he and others meant is that scientists aren’t necessarily good at solving practical problems. I changed tack, fuelled by funds from international development agencies. I began trying to solve practical problems, working with big and small NGOs as well as national and local governments. Me and a cast of thousands. It’s a messy world and one that’s difficult to explain to people. Why try? Because I wanted to show that international development matters. I had limited success. My youngest son, who finally witnessed Dad working in Africa and America, belatedly said in his late teens “ Now I understand what you do” . The cuts to ‘aid’ are profound and hugely damaging. No more so than in the interfaces between conflicting areas, such as the use and conservation of biodiversity. How do you maintain forest areas, the major source of of biodiversity, yet allow adjacent and often resident rural communities to grow crops? My Only Connect colleague Mark Nicholson has explored these challenges and shown some of the successes that have been achieved. It’s a long-term problem which requires long- term study. And the more we ignore profound and fundamental challenges, whether it’s in nature versus man or creating stable primary healthcare systems, the more people and the planet suffer.   I have some hope that philanthropy will come to the rescue. Two of the world’s richest women have established their own foundations. Pivotal Venture s , founded by Melinda French Gates in 2015, “ accelerates social progress by removing barriers that hold people back .” Mmm. Not quite sure what this means, though I’m impressed by the $2 billion it has spent in the US and the expansion of global initiatives to support women’s health. Bill, her ex-husband, plans to give his fortune away and to continue support for broad-based international development. Divorces are good for supporting the disadvantaged. Mackenzie Besos is also giving away lots of money to the deserving downtrodden through Yield Giving. Like Melinda, the emphasis is on the US and US Territories, though there are plans to expand internationally.   Good for them, and other foundations with noble intentions. I looked for information on what one of the UK’s wealthiest woman is doing with an estimated net worth of nearly £10 billion. Denise Coates is a little-known benefactor, perhaps because she generally remains largely outside the public gaze; her wealth comes from running a successful betting company. Never mind. The Denis Coates Foundation has reportedly given money to Oxfam and CAFOD, disaster relief in the Philippines and various dollops elsewhere in Africa. There’s no website, and like its founder, the Foundation is somewhat shy.   I’d like to appear hopeful. There is widespread support for helping poor and marginalized people live better lives, but poorly reflected in government policies. There are still major and active aid programs, for example the European Union. Rich people are also giving money away, some more comprehensively and constructively than others. As I attempt to prune my work papers I like to think I’ve also done something useful. I’m still avoiding the pessimism fired by a nagging feeling that I didn’t do enough. Better to remember the people I worked with and who will, Insha’Allah, continue to tackle knotty problems. Better to remember E.F. Schumacher’s* concise call to arms: “ Find out what people do and help them do it better .” Every little bit helps.   * He wrote Small Is Beautiful , the guidebook to what became intermediate technology. Great title – though it was the publisher, Anthony Blond, who proposed it.

by Lynda Goetz Photo: John Cameron, Unsplash The Free Speech Union  (FSU) is currently running a campaign to support the Conservative party  in their bid  to abolish (somewhat belatedly it has to be said) Non-Crime Hate Incidents (NCHIs). These legally odd ‘non-crimes’ have, for the last ten or more years, been taking up a disproportionate amount of police time and resources. A NCHI, according to the definition on the government website , “ means an incident or alleged incident which involves or is alleged to involve an act by a person (‘the subject’) which is perceived by a person other than the subject to be motivated - wholly or partly - by hostility or prejudice towards persons with a particular characteristic”. The origins of this bizarre and increasingly Orwellian non-crime can be traced back to the murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 and the response of the police to the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report . Without going into too much detail, most of which can be found on the aforementioned government website, The College of Policing issued updated guidance in 2014 and the government then legislated in the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act 2022 to publish this code in order to enhance transparency surrounding the decision-making processes involved.   According to the government website the purpose of recording NCHIs is “ to collect information on ‘hate incidents’ that could escalate into more serious harm or indicate heightened community tensions, but which do not constitute a criminal offence .” It goes on to state , “this data is vital for helping the police to understand where they must target resources to prevent serious crimes which may later occur.” Unfortunately, not only has it been shown that the police actually do little or nothing with the data they are recording   and keeping on file, but NCIHs have become an over-used tool in the armoury of the police to target ordinary members of the public who are guilty of nothing more than giving vent on social media to increasing frustration with the state of our country. They may not be a crime, but they are flagged up on enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service checks.   This country, once renowned for leadership,  real community (as opposed to the singular communities police now try to protect and negotiate with), innovation and so much more, has become a divided nation, ashamed of its history, prey to fanciful fads and fashions and with no clear idea of who we are or even how we should behave. The word ‘respect’ is bandied around endlessly and yet there is almost no respect for anything or anyone. Shoplifting and burglaries are largely ignored by the police; car break-ins and knife-crime in cities are normalised; drug dealers and money launderers proliferate. And all the while our police forces up and down the country appear to be spending a huge proportion of their time focusing on “ incidents ”, “ alleged to involve an act ” “perceived”  to be motivated, maybe only “ partl y”,  by “hostility or prejudice”.   This is a minefield and a total nightmare from a legal point of view.  There is no objectivity anywhere in this definition. The police appear totally unable to judge whether or not an incident is worthy of their time and resources. The overreach on so many occasions is staggering.   It has recently come to the attention of the press that in 2023 a retired Special Constable was arrested  over a tweet which ‘Plod’ didn’t even have the wit to understand correctly. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they sent SIX officers to arrest him. He was handcuffed and the officers searched his house (including his wife’s underwear drawer) commenting on the fact that he had “Brexity ” books in his bookcase! What sort of ‘crime’ is that? He was then held for eight hours before (erroneously and to his own detriment) agreeing to accept a caution.  Mr Foulkes is now, with the help of the FSU, suing the Kent Police for compensation for wrongful arrest.   In the last few months a number of such incidents have been reported in the national press, including a case where parents were arrested (again six officers were deemed necessary) and held for 11 hours  “ on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications, and causing a nuisance on school property”.  They had been emailing the school, questioning the recruitment process for a head teacher and criticising the leadership of their daughter’s school in a parents' WhatsApp group. Last November (on Remembrance Sunday) Allison Pearson, a journalist and columnist on the Daily Telegraph , was famously interviewed by two policemen on her doorstep about a post she had put up, (and fairly quickly deleted) on X (formerly Twitter) a year previously. The fallout from that incident resulted in a lot of comments from politicians and journalists alike and eventually resulted in the police withdrawing their claim that Ms Pearson was guilty, not apparently of a NCHI, which was what she had thought,  but the more serious actual crime of “stirring up racial hatred ”.   In yet another example of overreach, in March of this year,  Surrey police arrested mother, Vanessa Brown, not for a NCHI, but for theft – for confiscating her daughters’ iPads in an effort to get her 16-year-old to concentrate on her GCSE revision. She too was held by police for nearly eight hours before police acknowledged their error and released her. Apart from these incidents, Freedom of Information requests by newspapers have shown that playground insults by children have also resulted in NCHIs, which according to Lord Young, founder of the FSU, do not get deleted from their records, unlike cautions for actual crimes, when they reach the age of 18.   Although a new code and guidance  for NCHIs was issued in June 2023, setting out a “proportionate and common sense approach” , all the incidents given above have occurred since the new guidance was issued. Analysis of official data indicated that by the end of 2024, 133,000 incidents had been recorded, an average of 13,000 a year. This clearly represents an appalling waste of police resources. Although Statista appears to show that burglaries are falling in the UK, this may be because fewer and fewer are actually recorded. The perception of the public is, rightly or wrongly, that the police are increasingly ignoring crimes like shoplifting, burglaries and theft from cars. Many retail businesses have in fact given up bothering to even report shoplifting crimes as they do not expect the police to respond in any meaningful way.   As a member of the public it is often very hard to see or understand quite how our police forces now see their role. I remember last year coming out of Tower Hill Underground station in London to be faced with a massive police presence. There were police standing around everywhere and police cars parked all around the perimeter of a small park area. Here a smallish group of hippy-looking people of all ages were beating drums and tambourines, in a perfectly peaceful manner, in apparent protest about some unidentifiable grievance which may possibly have been climate-related*. One lady was swooping around in a black and white bird cape with a tambourine/drum and a blue flag with what might have been an egg-timer depicted on it. Around them, office workers sat eating their lunch and tourists took snapshots. The many police men and women simply stood around, occasionally chatting, seemingly not anticipating, even for a moment, that they might be required to do anything at all. Their presence seemed out of all proportion to any perceived threat. What else was going on whilst they all wasted time here?   When it comes to the weekly Palestinian protests, it is all too easy to see that that there might be a chance of clashes with counter-protestors. But why are these groups not being made to contribute to the massive cost of policing their activities? As of January last year it was estimated that the cost of policing these ongoing protests was over £25 million. In a democracy, the freedom to protest is quite rightly regarded as sacrosanct (if only freedom of speech were so well regarded). However, there should surely come a point where this right needs to be balanced with the rights of the rest of society, both in terms of peaceful existence and freedom to go about their business (which Jews in London no longer appear to have, certainly not on weekends) and the spending of our taxes on an issue of interest to a minority, many of whom are not even permanent residents of this country.   Two-tier policing may not be accepted as a reality by our politicians, or by those they put in charge of investigating if such a thing exists - the term was described as “disgraceful”  in the report published by MPs at the end of last month. Nevertheless, it is definitely bothering huge numbers of British people who see daily evidence of policing which is not ‘colour-blind’, but which now actively seeks to compensate for those whose ‘cultural differences’ seem somehow to exempt them from the rules and framework which have governed law and morals in this country. Indeed this is explicitly stated in the police conduct race discrimination report  published last November. This approach again goes back to the Macpherson report following the death of Stephen Lawrence, as stated by Rachel Watson, the Director General of the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) in her foreword. Baroness Lawrence , Stephen Lawrence’s mother, is apparently against the Conservative party move to abolish NCHIs. This is understandable, but it ignores how much has changed since her son was murdered.   Last summer’s Southport riots were caused in part by the government’s refusal to disclose facts about the killer who stabbed to death three young girls in a dance class. Failure to share that information with the populace was compounded by then attempting to portray the killer as he had been a number of years earlier as a schoolboy. Trying to paint all protestors as “far-right thugs”  and arresting people like Lucy Connolly (sentenced to 31 months in prison for an ill-judged tweet), whilst talking to ‘community’ leaders about how they would like their areas to be policed, does not enhance public trust in the police. When, following the Supreme Court ruling on biological women last month, the trans communities and their supporters in London and Edinburgh took to the streets, the police showed further evidence of what can only be called double standards. Seven statues were defaced, placards making explicit death threats were waved, protestors were seen urinating in public. The police did little or nothing in the face of open incitements to violence and protests which amounted to public disorder. As at Southport, they were “examining footage” . How different would the reaction have been had the protestors been groups of elderly ‘Brexity’ people, readers of Douglas Murray , the Daily Telegraph and The Spectator, mixed with a number of disaffected unemployed youth and proud working class whites whose jobs have disappeared and whose areas have become  overrun with ‘irregular ‘ migrants. I suspect there would have been mass arrests – necessitating the release of a few murderers and rape gang members, (should any still be in prison).   Meanwhile, PC Richard Prior, elected Chair of the Metropolitan Police Federation, who was suspended and then removed permanently from office “after warning that officers are running scared of being accused of racism when dealing with people from ethnic minorities”,  is challenging his suspension and seeking a judicial review of his sacking with the help of a crowdfunding appeal by the FSU. In an interview with GB News, Mr Prior said: “There’s a striking crisis of confidence at the moment within policing in general and certainly within the Metropolitan Police, whereby officers are withdrawing from any kind of proactive policing for fear of falling foul of the IOPC [Independent Office of Police Conduct], or a vexatious or malicious complaint.”   The IOPC has also ruled earlier this month that Sgt Martyn Blake, the firearms officer cleared of murdering gangster Chris Kaba should face a gross misconduct hearing. On Sunday, the Telegraph also revealed that a Scotland Yard officer, known only as W80, who shot and killed 28 year-old criminal Jermaine Baker in 2015 as he was preparing to spring two prisoners from Wood Green Crown court, must appear before a disciplinary tribunal in October. He faces being sacked. No wonder police morale is at an all-time low and many are leaving or taking early retirement. Even from the outside the whole system sounds completely incompetent and toxic. As our wonderful Chancellor keeps telling us, “The world has changed ”. It has, but for most of us it is very hard to see any change for the better and very easy to see things getting worse. People like to imagine that in a democracy the police are independent of government. Sadly this is increasingly not the case. Police behaviour may not be at the direct behest of government, but it is clearly very closely aligned with what has come to be seen by the public as the Establishment Blob and the Uniparty. No wonder the recent local elections saw both major parties trounced. The public would like to see their police force focusing on crimes and on the general lawlessness which appears to have overtaken our country. The abolition of NCIHs would, at the very least, free up a great deal of police time and resources, allowing them to focus on real criminality. Whether or not the Reform Party could be the answer to the country’s woes remains very much to be seen. Will there be a real revolt from those who have hitherto allowed themselves to be trampled over and browbeaten into submission by various vociferous minorities or are we simply destined to see police overreach and underperformance on repeat?   *The few flags they waved were painted with a cross in a circle and the letters BR UM. If anyone can identify the group, please do inform me.

by Vincent Guy Iceland is my second choice. For years, my dream has been to go to Antarctica. But, cost apart, the journey’s logistics are daunting. And what if you get there and find you’ve forgotten your gloves? So I choose Iceland for its exotic geology and intriguing culture. The former I’ll be exploring with a small group on a photographic tour organised by Wild Photography Holidays; the latter by staying on a few days in Reykjavik. I’ve been a serious photographer for a decade. For this trip I’ve sold off my pricey cameras and lenses and bought the latest iPhone – travelling light.   Day 1 Arrival delayed two hours; the plane had a faulty tyre. At the airport: crumbled black lava everywhere. From the bus to the city, flat empty landscape covered in rocks the size of fists, until, in the distance, the pyramid forms of volcanoes.   Reykjavík cityscape: modern rectangular buildings, white, cream, grey, few more than 30 years old. The locals I come across friendly and helpful, speaking perfect English. The dreadlocked receptionist at Hotel Klettur starts a lively chat with me about Arctic tern migration. On my phone a warning of nearby volcanic activity.   Day 3 The highlight was a huge waterfall. Took some snaps, then, with our Hungarian-Swiss team member, mounted the steps to the top. The others chickened out. We made it, Mishka helpfully taking my rucksack, so I only needed one pause for breath. There we found a new vista, including another waterfall of a completely different shape, horizontal rather than vertical. Descending, Mishka estimated the number of steps at around 400. Back in the van, consulting phones, we find it’s 542. Not bad for a young octogenarian like me.     Day 5 Two stunning events. The first, revisiting a bay with stacks (pokey up rocks) which we saw yesterday in the mist; today from a different viewpoint, and the mist clearing. A bay of black sand with white breakers rolling over it: rock formations, sea birds, sounds of the tide.    Second scene, an open field beneath a basalt mountain. In the distance, snowy white caps and in the field, Icelandic horses, each with a different pattern and colour, a different temperament. Several extremely friendly, happy to stand around and be petted (and of course photographed - see title photo), one even attempting to eat my tripod.  After such grandeur, this scene was intimate and calming. Late afternoon extra: visit to another waterfall. Option to go in behind the falling water, with a high probability of getting wet. The other menfolk all go in, layered in waterproofs, to return duly drenched. I opt to stay with the women.   Day 6 Long drive today, a little dull, from the southwest of the island to the southeast, mostly through rain. Scarcely a sign of human activity; occasionally a house, café or tourist hotel. In 30 miles you might see one tractor. And some powerlines.   We reach the glacier zone. Stopped briefly at the Ice Lagoon. Like most sites of interest, it’s overpopulated with tourists taking selfies. Tourism’s a major industry. But back on the road, it’s all endless emptiness, lava rocks and craggy mountains.   Day 7 
 Back to the Ice Lagoon, dramatic in the gloaming. A huge glacier sheds its calves into a pool. Then a narrow point causing an ice jam; it takes a long while for the icebergs to get down to the sea. They pile on top of one-another, looking like pieces of blue cake lying askew in the pool. A family of seals cavort and tease each other. At our feet snow buntings hop without hint of shyness.

   Day 8 
 Weather: always fickle, random, unpredictable. Drive 10 miles and… has it changed or is it another microclimate? Forecast 24 hours hence is best ignored.   Stop for coffee. The café owner, a voluble showman, insists we try two traditional Icelandic specialities: gravad  (buried) shark fin and pickled ram’s testicles. He presents two small dishes of moist greyish cubes the size of a fingernail. My companions turn up their noses; the odour is penetrating. The only victim willing is me. Mine Host proffers a bit of shark on a fork, then the testicle. Which is more revolting? He pins a “True Viking” badge on me. The group tease me with that moniker for the rest of the trip.     Day 9 Time to engage with Iceland’s ice. In the morning we travelled to a cave inside a glacier. Magical, as if decorated by some modernist designer: interlaced shell-like patterning on the ceilings. Drips falling onto us and the dark slippery floor. We could see further pilgrims in Indian file walking up the slope. The pilgrims, to be frank, were the problem. As everywhere, selfie-seekers were crawling over everything like ants. Before some miracle of nature, without even glancing at the scene, they pose for Instagram with arms outspread, like Goya’s painting of resisters being shot by Napoleon’s soldiers. And because of the chattering, jostling numbers, our stay was limited to 15 minutes. This after a substantial drive in our own van, an off-road vehicle weaving us along a bumpy track, and a final scramble on foot. A whole morning invested for a few minutes of sublime beauty. But yes, it’s worth it.   Afternoon, return to the lagoon. The hoped-for sunset doesn’t materialise. But no matter: the whole beach is strewn with ice chunks, some the size of a krona coin, some as big as a troll reaching out for the moon. As the breakers intermingle with them, there might be upward sea spray or changing colours in the ice fragment itself as the sea flows under it. And each piece is a different shape, a different style. One is a smooth rock; another a jagged mollusc; the next full of holes with the sea flowing through, its neighbour a sculpture reaching skyward. And even as you watch, the shapes slowly change, eroded by the waves or melting in the warmth of day. Some are in the water at the tideline; others, as the tide ebbs, left behind like stranded fish on the black sand.   After dinner, back to the lagoon, this time on the other side looking directly onto the glacier and its icebergs. We hoped to photograph aurora borealis , the Northern Lights, but Aurora, a moody goddess, fails to appear. With chilly fingers we coax our cameras into revealing, if not the Lights, the icy forms in the darkness.   Day 10 In keeping with the whirligig of weather, yesterday evening presented us with the ne plus ultra  of Ultima Thule: Aurora finally came out to play. Above the Ice Lagoon there were lines gradually tracing across the heavens presaging the Lights. Jethro, our guide, shows me a technique on the iPhone: I can point it at the sky and, without seeing anything on the screen, hold the button steady for three seconds to reveal the universe; an infinity of colours, streaks and stars. After a while, the tips of my fingers fairly froze so I went back to the van. (They stayed numb for a couple of hours.) An even stronger motive for retreat was the arrival of a dozen Italians with lights, camera, action – even more arm-waving and exclamations than from the Chinese.   Maybe I missed the climax of the Lights’ display, but I was happy; what I’d seen was dramatic, what I caught on camera beyond expectations.   Day 11
 Now back in the capital, if somewhat exhausted, ready for the new solo phase of my trip.   Caught in a horizontal blizzard, I realised why people here don’t use umbrellas. I took refuge in the Lava Show, enlightening and vividly presented by a Scotsman. Emerged into a heavyweight thunderstorm with rain still horizontal, in the other direction.   Tourists outnumber the natives on the island. Chinese predominate, mainly young women, dressed fittingly in white. Our guide to the geysers (she’s Swiss) tells us that tourism really took off after 2010; the explosion of the unpronounceable volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, brought Iceland to the world’s notice. More remarkable is that all the people public-facing are immigrants. The Icelanders tend stay behind the scenes owning the businesses and running the politics. The only local I’ve chatted to at any length was a guy making a film – about tourism.   
 On a bus trip we visit this volcanic crater, no longer active, the rock reddened by iron. Other sights, each one of a genre I hadn’t seen on this trip or indeed in my life: the rift valley where the continental plates meet; the eponymous Geyser; a vast waterfall, Gullfoss the Golden One, tumbling at multiple angles.  
 Last day I’ve trimmed my sails for the day. Just pack and go to the swimming pool, ready for an early night. At the entrance my bank card fails; it’s just expired. Well, it is April Fools’ Day. However, I manage to sweet-talk my way in for a free entry. The local rule is that before entering the pool area you must take a shower, naked. The showers are wide open, though it’s single sex so I’m not too bothered. Beside the pool are various geothermally heated tubs. I revel in the massage effect of the vigorous underwater jets. The bathers are all Icelanders, and I notice that most are dark-haired. Hardly a trace of that Nordic blonde look. The suggestion that the Vikings brought captive Celtic women with them might have more than a grain of truth.   Later in my hotel room, I hear banging in the corridor - men at work?  The bed shakes. I realise it’s an earth tremor from volcanic activity 40 miles away. When I inquire at reception, they think it’s a great laugh, “Just look out of your plane window when you leave. You might see something cool. “   Given my defunct bank card, I spend my last day in this expensive city without spending one krona . It takes me back to my twenties, hitch-hiking around Iberia without a peseta in my pocket.   I drop into an art gallery. The picture above could well be our little group of photographers dodging between rock and troll. Except we were in a VW 4x4.   Literature Did some reading. The supposed masterpiece of Icelandic literature is Independent People   by Nobel laureate Halldor Laxness. I found it an uphill climb; stopped halfway up. Spoiler alert: the book’s first half has a farmer living in remote corner of the island, an unpleasant fella, though able to sing. His wife is, in the modern jargon, challenged, both mentally and emotionally.  His neighbours talk tediously about weather. A sheep goes astray so he goes in search, leaving his dog behind (if you can imagine a shepherd leaving his dog behind on such a mission). He naturally gets lost and is away for days. Arriving back home, he finds the wife has died in childbirth - but Hey! no worries - the dog is feeding the infant. Unclear whether Lassie is doing this from her own bosom or mixing up formula in the kitchen. If this is great literature, I’ll eat my hat with a side-serving of pickled ram’s dangles.   Reflections My experiences here have been as intense as I imagined. Not only does the weather keep changing but the scenes before our eyes (and our cameras) were varied, surprising and new. Of the Icelanders’ way of life I’ve only scratched the surface, but I get a sense of its contrasts and paradoxes. A modern forward-looking economy where language and literature preserve aspects of a millennium ago. A prosperous egalitarian society with the arts engaged mainly with gloom and doom. Reykjavik Concert Hall epitomises the hyper-modern aspect of Iceland’s worldview   Its interior echoes patterns in the ice.

by RIchArd Pooley Photo: Annie Spratt, Unsplash I was standing in line at the bakery here in the Dordogne last week—yes, another tale from the land of crisp baguettes and existential shrugging—when an English couple ahead of me asked, in oddly precise tones, for " deux croissants et un pain au chocolat, s’il vous plaît" . The woman turned to her partner with a triumphant smile, clearly proud of her linguistic victory. Then, after paying, she muttered just loud enough for the rest of us expats to hear:  “Still not sure it was worth all the red tape just for this.” She was, of course, talking about Brexit. Now, I try not to be smug. Truly. But as I sipped my coffee (made by a machine older than some trade agreements), I found myself reflecting—as one does in rural France—on the curious case of the British economy and its recent penchant for self-inflicted wounds. A Self-Imposed Slow Puncture Brexit, we were told, would unshackle the United Kingdom from the bureaucratic behemoth of Brussels. The image was of a nimble Albion, bursting with pent-up entrepreneurial vigour, striking deals faster than you can say "chlorinated chicken." And yet. The Office for Budget Responsibility—our modern-day Delphic oracle—quietly estimated that the long-term hit to the UK economy from Brexit will be worse than that from the pandemic. A 4% reduction in GDP, to be precise. Not so much a quick jab to the ribs as a slow puncture of the economy’s tyres. Trade? Down. Business investment? Down. Labour force? Shrinking. That global Britain swagger turned out to be more of a limp. The Curious Case of the Disappearing Fruit Pickers I have a friend who runs a soft fruit farm in Herefordshire. “Used to be full of Poles and Romanians in summer,”  he told me last July, over a pint of something warm and flat. “Now I’ve got teenagers who quit after a day and pensioners who can’t tell a raspberry from a rogue thistle.” Freedom of movement, it turns out, worked both ways. Whole industries built on flexible European labour—farming, hospitality, healthcare—have found themselves scrambling to fill gaps. The great “British jobs for British workers”  plan may sound good in a speech, but in the field, behind the bar, or at the care home, the vacancies linger. Customs, Delays, and Other Love Letters from Dover Exports have become a labyrinth of paperwork. Small businesses, once happily shipping cheese to Copenhagen or gin to Ghent, now face a sea of forms, fees, and the occasional spoiled shipment. Some gave up. Others went under. The bureaucratic leviathan wasn't slain; it just changed postcode. And for what? A blue passport and some commemorative 50p coins? The Invisible Damage Unlike a financial crash or a war, the economic effects of Brexit are subtle, cumulative. It's not that Britain fell off a cliff; it's that it’s walking into a headwind, pretending the breeze is invigorating. The damage is in the choices not made, the investments not secured, the opportunities quietly moving elsewhere. A German friend in Toulouse asked me recently, “Why did the British vote to become smaller?”  I didn’t have a ready answer. I still don’t. Ah, but Sovereignty! Yes, we got our laws back. (Not that most people could name the ones we lost.) We got our fish back. (Though they now have trouble reaching EU markets.) We got to make our own trade deals. (Which, curiously, look a lot like the ones we had before.) Perhaps, in the end, the great Brexit experiment has delivered what it promised: control. But like a toddler given the car keys, we’ve discovered that control doesn’t guarantee direction—or competence. So, What Now? There’s a quiet realism settling in among the public. The fever pitch of 2016 has given way to a dull ache, like a hangover from a party that went on far too long and wasn’t very good in the first place. And yet, in true British fashion, we carry on. Grumbling, muddling through, pretending that the kettle still works even if it now costs 25% more to boil. Back in the bakery queue, the English woman sighed and said, “Still, at least the croissants are worth the hassle.” They are. But I couldn’t help wondering: what else did we lose in pursuit of a principle that no longer feeds us? Photo: Andrea de Santis, Unsplash Puzzled? If you are a regular reader or a friend (sometimes the same person), you may well be. You know that I don’t live in the Dordogne. My now second home is in the Lot Department; granted it’s in the upper Dordogne valley. Nor do you get the point in the first paragraph: why would Brexit have changed the way the Brit orders her croissants? Moreover the really attentive reader will have remembered from a previous article that in the village’s southern boulangerie you order une chocolatine , not un pain au chocolat. I didn’t write this article. Artificial Intelligence did. Hence the capital A and I in my name. My daughter, Head of Digital at a Florida advertising and marketing agency, typed in the following instruction into her employer-paid-for version of Chat GPT: “Write an article on the damage done to the UK economy by Brexit in no more than 1000 words. Do it in the style of Richard Pooley’s articles in Only Connect." It took 5 seconds to produce the above post. I have no friend who runs a soft fruit farm in Herefordshire, nor a German one in Toulouse. So, AI makes up stuff. In this case it has to. Otherwise the article is not going to fool you into believing I am the author. I tell stories and quote people I have met or know. ChatGPT only had 59 articles to work with and those probably tell it ((he? she? sh/it?) that I know farmers, I live not far from Herefordshire in the UK, I have German friends and my French house is only 2 hours north of Toulouse. Even so, I was impressed. Who could not be? It got my writing style. Apart from the nonsensical croissant stuff, there is a logical, if fact-light, flow to the piece. Even so, I doubt I would use AI in quite the same way in future. What I was after were facts and arguments, to help me create an essay which drew on personal experience and anecdotes. If I were to choose the same subject, I would just type in " Write an article of no more than 1000 words on the damage to the British economy of Brexit." What I had not expected was to get an analysis of my writing style. At first, I was delighted. It was so insightful. And so well-written. And so flattering. It covered every aspect, giving examples from my most recent article - "Overall Tone and Voice, Structure and Flow, Language and Style Techniques, Perspective and Themes". The "In Short" at the end had me glowing: " Richard Pooley’s style is anecdotal yet analytical , humorous but incisive , deeply personal yet culturally observant . It's the writing of someone who has seen enough of the world to recognize absurdity — and patience — on all sides." Hold on though. Where was the negative criticism? I use brackets too often. My sentences can be over-long. Do I over-use the semi-colon... and the hyphen? Dear long-time reader, add a few more failings in the Comments section below. If ChatGPT had got this analytical method from some eminent Professor of English Literature, what does that tell us about the standards of literary criticism in our universities? This would have been too much even for a publisher's marketing manager to put on the back cover of a new novel. My worry with AI has always been that it will stop people having to think for themselves. True, schoolchildren and university students are nearly all using an AI tool to help them write their homework and essays. To help but not to do the whole job. If the latter were the case, teachers and tutors would surely find themselves getting very similar work handed in to them. Unless, of course, each student added to their instruction "...in the style of Steven Pinker/J G Ballard/Stephen Fry" There was a disturbing coda to this little exercise. I could not find the original article produced by my daughter's advanced ChatGPT. So I typed the same instruction into the free version. Up came a very short but witty essay. And with it an analysis of the writing style of Robert Shrimsley, the Financial Times' chief political commentator. I had just read his column in the FT Weekend, something I do every Saturday. But I was not aware I had said anything about it or mentioned his name, although I had thought his article an amusing read. I checked my instructions. No mistake. I had written "in the style of Richard Pooley, based on his articles in Only Connect." Robert Shrimsley/Richard Pooley. Okay, there is a certain similarity, but, hey, can Chat GPT read my mind?

by Eric Boa It’s been twelve years since their last reunion, and though some have died in the intervening years, numbers are up: 135 compared to 117. Everyone is getting on. Many have come a long way and will be eager to catch up with their peers. The food will be good – it always is – and there’s lots of juicy gossip to exchange. The setting for the reunion is sublime. The wines will be spectacular, though everyone will need to keep a clear head. There’s important business to be done. And having to give up your mobile phone will prove tricky. What’s the point of juicy gossip unless you can share it with others?   The papal conclave is the ultimate reunion. By the time this article appears, they may have reached their decision. Not on day one, at least. There will be joy and disappointment when the final flourish of white smoke appears*. Job done. Another pope elected, yet some ambitions thwarted. Relief that it’s all over: there’s only so many times you can admire the roof of the Sistine Chapel. Mobile phones are returned and its back to the humdrum business of guiding the flocks.   Equally grand get-togethers as the papal conclave do exist. I’m thinking of a spectacular reunion held every four years, where the select participants also experience mixed emotions. Relief they’re no longer in the post. Some attend to appear gracious in defeat, others to confirm their status as global statesmen (and they are all male – so far). Some will feel bruised, resentful or appalled at the latest person to join their group. There will be limited opportunities for chit chat. Exchanges will be brief. “Hi Jimmy. Good to see you’re still here.” “Good to see you too, Bill. And brave of you to bring the wife.” “Just doing my duty, Jimmy. This is my fifth reunion. How about you?” “This will be my ninth since I gave up the job.” “Wow. That’s some achievement Jimmy. Though I seem to remember the job gave you up.” “True – though I’ve always stuck with the same woman. How was impeachment, by the way?” Hillary Clinton, the failed candidate, did indeed turn up to Donald Trump’s 2017 presidential inauguration. She was also there with Bill earlier this year. Trump has had the most ex-presidents attend his inaugurations (four for each), as far as I can see**. Jimmy Carter was a serial attender, following his defeat to Reagan in 1980. His seven attendances still outstrip Bill Clinton (six and counting).   Presidential inaugurations provide an excellent example of how not being invited, or spurning an invitation, carries a particular significance. Richard Nixon was persona non grata  after he resigned and did not attend when invited by the gracious Carter. Trump refused to attend Biden’s inauguration.   Reunions involving cardinals and ex-presidents are exceptional. Things work differently for routine reunions, such as those based on employment or a particular profession. Medics love reunions even though my doctor friends seem equivocal about their attraction. Cohorts tend to be large – there were around 100 medical students in each year when I was at university. When you run out of people you remember – and this will be a small group – you can always swap stories about hospitals, unusual cases and the failings of the NHS, and bask in the elevated status you’ve achieved. Medics are good at signalling achievements with long lists of initials at the end of their names.   My Botany class of 1975 at the University of Aberdeen has never had a reunion. And never will. There were only ten of us. We had few joint classes. I stayed in touch with one classmate for a few years after we graduated, then drifted apart. She became a travel agent, then a psychotherapist. I’d like to thank her for introducing me to my wife of forty-four years, but why go to a reunion to do this? More generally, what’s the point of attending a reunion with people you didn’t know especially well decades ago and with whom you’ve had no contact since?   This was the main thought that flashed by me when I learnt that my university rugby club was celebrating its 150th anniversary with a fancy dinner. It’s 50 years since I last played rugby for Aberdeen. I haven’t spoken to any of my ex-teammates since then, though I have stayed in touch with our coach. I surprised myself by signing up and joining a WhatsApp group. My reservations started to weaken when I discovered three team-mates living close-by in southwest London. Heathrow closed and all flights were cancelled on the day of departure to Aberdeen. Ian and his wife Heather drove me and Graeme for ten hours and we managed to make it in time for the reunion weekend.   Never has such a long journey gone so quickly. The reunion magic was working. I started to reflect on what made rugby special for me at university, something I hadn’t thought about for a long time. We were remarkably successful and dedicated long hours to getting fit and winning. The popular view at the time was student rugby was chaotic. Drinking came before playing. Our winning formula was careful planning and commitment with a dash of gifted players, all held together by our coach, Mal. He was years ahead of his time. Yes, someone “stole a fire engine”  during a French tour and large amounts of alcohol were consumed. But these and other escapades were not the defining highlights.   Dave, the organiser of the WhatsApp group, asked people to share information about what had happened after they left Aberdeen. We’ve now got a book with 38 cameos and lots of photos, evoking moments of sporting excellence and camaraderie -  e.g. the one above, outside our favourite bar in Aberdeen - with at least two simulated sex acts. I believe one of the participants is now a shepherd in the Scottish borders. The one with his tongue out is now a Commander of the British Empire. The book developed organically, a sideshow to the dinner, the main event and pivot of the reunion. Oh dear. My reservations resurfaced as I took my place at a table along with three hundred other folk.   A lot of people have played rugby at Aberdeen since I left in 1976. The noise and bustle at the dinner were overwhelming, leaving little opportunity for idle chat. The sense of togetherness created via WhatsApp evaporated. Things got worse. Someone had thought it necessary to invite a Guest Speaker, a Famous Rugby Player who’d played for Scotland and the British Lions. He had no direct connection to Aberdeen University. Never mind; he had a bottomless pit of rugby anecdotes and off-colour jokes. Dull and embarrassing and, above all, redundant. This is where reunions go awry.   There were redeeming parts to the dinner. Mal, our coach, got some of the recognition he deserved in front of diners who had played university rugby after he left his post. It improved when other rugby alumni spoke on team rituals and rites of passage. But it’s the life stories and photos that still stand out, evoking dormant memories.   We had a pre-season training week at Pontins Holiday Camp in Morecombe, a novel idea to prepare us for the university championship at the beginning of the academic year. We were, at the time, the only university that did this, and one of the reasons why we swept the other teams aside.   This was the first time any of us had been to Pontins, a cheap, cheerful and slightly bizarre place to base a university rugby squad. Loudspeakers outside each chalet blasted Una Paloma Blanca , a pop hit in the 1970s, to announce breakfast. Followed by exhortations to “ get up – or you’ll miss it” . We formed two queues outside a cavernous and bleak dining room. The queues were named after leading cigarette brands (Embassy and Castella). Waitresses with broad Scottish accents, down south for the summer season, dumped our trays of food as they hastened to serve the masses. We stood out from all the other package holiday families and got extra helpings when the servers discovered we were from Aberdeen.   I remember a knobbly-knees competition at Pontins. Whatever happened to this holiday staple? Why am I telling you all this? Because as life moves on, I reminisce and reflect more on what went before. So yes, the reunion was worthwhile. One last vignette. Our team captain, Dave Robertson, was a big fan of I Left My Heart in San Francisco . I learnt the tune from sheet music so I could accompany a festive rendering of this rousing show tune. They sang the Tony Bennett version lustily. It was not the same as the sheet music and my efforts to please faded. Maybe I can have another go when we reassemble for a smaller and more intimate reunion. One better suited to a celebration of who we were and what we’ve become.   * It’s the end of the cardinals reunion as I’m about to submit this to our editor: the white smoke has emerged. ** I’m grateful to Carl Anthony’s website for details of who attended presidential inaugurations.