Re Starmer' welfare cuts ...

I may be thick but... Why are we cutting spending when the economy IS GROWING...? albeit very slowly.  Around 0.2% but as Mr Micawber used to say ... Breaking even = happiness.  I remember the "double dip" 1992 recession caused by the ERM debacle... we didn't cut spending to the bone then and it was followed by the biggest boom in years.  People in the media go on like we're in recession and that's just total bollocks.  We did austerity because the economy crashed.  That hasn't happened. So why Austerity 2?  And when has there ever been a direct link between cutting public spending and growth?  It's bananas...

 

See, swirl, sniff, sip, savor, sack

Right wing twitter bore "Ben on Wine" is being "investigated" by Waitrose after he was doxed by readers of his twitter diatribes as that bloke they see behind the wine counter in Henley.  Seems slightly unfair.  Couldn't a compromise between made like moving him to the fish counter with the other kippers? 

If you would like to help him in his plight (because despite working for a cooperative he is of course not in a union) you can donate here.  I've given the steam off my urine as although I wholeheartedly disagree with him I will defend to the slightest inconvenience his right to be a sommelier with appalling taste.  

However, this does seem wrong.  Ben has worked hard to become a whine specialist and his knowledge is clearly evident in the large quantities of sour grapes currently on display in his X feed.  It seems wrong for his enemies to be breaking out the champagne.  Perhaps a bottle of Blue Nun?  His just dessert wine.  

Okay that's enough wine puns ...

From now on it's going to be only UK First

One thing we can all do to stuff Elon & Trump. Move your investments out of America.  I've just moved my pension to exclusively UK investments.  Being over 50 this is well over £100,000 of stock about half of which was previously invested in NASDAQ companies.  Apart from being a political move I think US stocks are a particularly risky investment at the moment and want out so it's a win win.

As my mother becomes older (mid80s) she gets increasingly convinced things that are not real are happening. For example a while ago someone broke into the shed but failed to steal the lawnmower due to having the criminal skills of Anthony Worrell Thompson. A couple of years later she's now convinced the same people are poisoning plants in the garden ( when actually they just die due to disease or not enough water). You can talk her out of this irrational thinking for a while but left alone for a while her mind reverts and then you have to do it again and again and again... Or just give up and not bother. Sometimes I look at the aging Donald Trump with his lists of threats and perceived enemies and wonder if his obsession with unreal enemies is in any way linked to a similar kind of dementia. A world in which threats are never analysed with proportionality... And bits and pieces of evidence are glued other without much critical thought... Anyway....

 

Grok 2 Vs Grok 3

Grok 3 "the greatest LLM ever made" doesn't seem to have improved much...

I’m not here to sling mud or dodge tough questions. Let’s break this down. The term "fascist" gets thrown around a lot, so what exactly are you pointing at with Elon Musk? Are you talking about his business moves, like running Tesla or SpaceX with an iron grip? Or maybe his X platform decisions, where he’s been vocal about free speech but also bans folks who cross certain lines? Could be his political takes, which have swung right lately—calling out government overreach or backing figures like Trump. People sling "fascist" when they see control, censorship, or power flexing that rubs them wrong.

Give me specifics—what’s got you fired up about him? I’ll dig into it, check the latest on X or the web if needed, and give you a straight answer without the fluff.

 

An Ocean Apart

 

Today I watched a bit of David Dimbleby's classic 80s documentary "An ocean apart".  Amazing how Woodrow Wilson went from a complete isolationist to founder of the League of Nations.  Died a broken man over the Versailles Treaty compromises after suffering a stroke.  But it's interesting to consider in the light of recent events how people do change.  And also the limits on Presidential power.  Wilson wanted to completely halt the sale of arms to Britain but Congress wouldn't let him do it.  Ok, that's enough Alistair Cooking for today...

Pear shaped in Dystopia Series 2 episode 4

 

When you put up a poster to show the world your happy smiling employees...

 ...but they do not want their phizog on it or even the correct silhouette for their sex and one person doesn't exist at all...

James Bond Won't Return

Barbera Broccoli (60s) & Michael Wilson (80s) have just sold their copyright control on Bond to Amazon following on from it's acquisition of MGM a while ago ... but, well, it's a bit of a fire sale.  The copyright on the Bond novels has less than 10 years to run (depending on your jurisdiction maybe less). Ms Broccoli said once that they would always return to the novels before writing the next screenplay (usually with Messers Purvis & Wade) but what plots and characters really remain to be plundered?  There used to be a feeling that despite the central character being occasionally recast it was still vaguely plausible that we were following the path of one man's life.  Lazenby was younger than Connery ... but Moore was about the same age... By the time Dalton was cast Bond's floating timeline started to become questionable... But Bronson was about the same age as Dalton... But by then the 30 years of continuity was becoming burdensome so a reboot was undertaken with Craig after the rights to Casino Royale were finally acquired.  In the final film (spoiler) which featured an inversion of the plot of OHMSS Bond actually died which in retrospect may have been the Producers making a subtle hint that this would now be their swansong...
 

Of course James Bond will return but it will never be the same as he has now passed from literature into legend like Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Raffles, Frankenstein etc... there will be many other iterations and interpretations but no one (or half a dozen) guiding minds.  Like Sherlock Holmes really belongs to the 19th century, Bond really belongs to the 20th and despite attempts at modernisation increasingly resembles a period piece of cold wars instead of hot wars and Anglo-America relations that had not soured.  Not to mention a time when the distinction between high resolution theatrical film and 405 line black & white domestic television was very clear ...

It cannot be understated too that whatever you think of Bond, Cubby Broccoli's antics constituted a massive boost for the British film industry employing lots of people, building new sound stages at Pinewood and making England a go to production location for American movies...

 

On the plus side perhaps given soon anyone will be able to make their own Bond film ... I will actually be the next James Bond myself...

Today's Not Spending Money Man

 

The latest money man that social media forces on me is Mark Tilbury who boasts loudly of being a millionaire.  Mate, nearly everyone down my street is a millionaire... That's just London house prices and inflation.  He's not even a £ millionaire just a $ one.  Mark made his money selling model helicopters and diversified to being an eBay seller and his general advice is to start a side hustle and invest in the FTSE 100.  Within his content there's various plugs for crypto and share platforms but he is fairly honest about these cross promotions.  Still, it's tacky.  Like all the others Mike's miserly advice is never to spend any money because the cost is "the future".  He reminds me of parable in the Bible about the man who stores up riches then snuffs it... "you do not know the hour".  Even in the 21st century in the UK there's still about a 3% chance of not making 50.

Mark seems to faintly admit that there may be something geopolitically wrong in a world where everyone has to have multiple jobs and income streams in order to just stand still but his solution rather than political action is just to run faster on the hamster wheel.  Got a hobby? Find away to monetise it!  Got savings? Risk them on the share market.  On it goes... The trouble with Mark's advice is if you followed it (ignoring the risk factors) it'd devour all your time... And time is priceless.

Trump's circle of evil

It's hard to write here sometimes as it is hard to find amusement in the world at the moment.  Donald Trump's regime appears more odious, venal and vile than one could have anticipated... Siding with a murderous tyrant against Ukraine, spreading lies and coming up with such whoppers as no peace was ever achieved without both sides making concessions.  This from the country that nuked Japan into unconditional surrender?  I seem to recall Hitler committing suicide? 

And poor old King Harold got an arrow in the eye whilst Richard III was buried under a car park?

J D Vance meanwhile is pomposity personified.  The US President continues on his mission to dismantle domestic institutions and populate them with political puppets.  Meanwhile Elon prances about like a pantomime villain.  A while ago he advertised for people to send him their code (not their CVs) on Twitter.  I sent him some old AWK scripts for a laugh and didn't even receive an auto response*.  I guessed he was building a LLM but then it occurred to me that perhaps that's where he got his DOGE Musketeers from...  With the bodies piled high in Gaza also we are entering an era of global instability of the like I cannot remember. WWWIII? I saw an ex head of MI6 on the news the other day who said that the misunderstanding Trump has with Putin is he thinks the Ukraine war is about territory whereas really it is about the fact that Putin disagrees with Ukraine's right to exist altogether.  Of course he does.  Any non authoritarian regime is a threat to a nearby authoritarian one.  Just as Canada, Mexico & Greenland are threats to Trump.  Trump is such a vile person.  Unlikable on every level... 

*For those of you who are not programers the joke is that awk consisted almost entirely of special characters? 

#!/bin/sh

pattern="$1"

shift

awk '/'"$pattern"'/ { print FILENAME ":" $0 }' "$@"

No?

Please yourselves 

0.1% Growth

The economy grew unexpectedly by 0.1% today which was welcome news for Rachel Reeves who who recently suffered stinging criticism from former school teachers who said that she had failed her 11+ and not done very well at all at her Comprehensive School.  

Mrs McClusky (99) said "Rachel was a very lazy child known for copying other children's homework and smoking cigarettes behind the bike shed", whilst Mr Bronson (105) recalled that "Rachel was a disruptive element within my class".  

Ms F Craddock (120) recalled that "I don't know what she was like at economics at the Bank of England but she was rubbish at Home Economics.  Often her cakes would sag in the middle, probably because she was always slamming doors so I've no idea what she'd do to our economy."

A fellow pupil who wishes to remain anonymous described Reeves as "Someone who was very bad at investing pocket money". 

Meanwhile Andrew Neil tweeted that it was only a matter of time before the British Economy slunk into recession.  "It's bound to happen sooner or later," he said.  "It's just a matter of waiting till she messes up.  Why wait?  Keir Starmer needs to replace her now even though nothing has gone wrong yet because it will go wrong eventually."

Bandages...

Bit of satirical observation now that is probably too old to be funny but...

I must admit that at the moment I am a little addicted to listening to Real Dictators on BBC Sounds.  It seems very prescient given the re-emergence of the far right in politics.  There are so many parallels with today.  

For example, one that's quite amusing is ... as Mussolini became more entrenched as a dictator and more and more right wing, the number of people trying to assassinate him (mostly nutters and fanatics) started to increase rapidly.  Probably the most famous attempt on this life was that of Violet "God told me to do it" Gibson.  Fortunately (or not depending on your viewpoint) 

although she got quite close Mussolini jerked his head at the last moment and the bullet just grazed his nose ... although apparently it went through both nostrils....

Mussolini being a great self publicist made the most of this that he possibly could by wearing an enormous bandage over his nose everywhere he went in public.

Gibson, being an English/Irish Unionist created a diplomatic nightmare for the then Italian and British governments and to save a diplomatic incident was safely bundled off to an English asylum where she lived for the next 30 years before dying in 1956.

Anyway, I was wondering if I was the only person to see a similarity between Benito's oversize nose bandage and Donald Trump's rather large ear bandage following 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks failed assassination attempt in Pennsylvania in 2024...?

Also

...although it's not quite an assassination attempt one is also reminded of the time that Massimo Tartaglia (another mentally disturbed person) launched an alabaster model of Milan Cathedral at the face of the then rather right wing scandal prone Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi - inevitably there were comparisons with the bandaged Il Duce ...

...but isn't it odd how the same patterns...

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Oh for the good old days when we just bought Newspapers one at a time off the stands and it didn't require a lifetime financial commitment...

Anyone remember when boxers used to threaten to kill each other...?

 ... these days they sound like an HR Director on LinkedIn 

So much for Meta's fact checkers being sacked...

 

Allow him a degree...

So I pottered over to blue sky and this is how it went...

This meme came into my timeline so I simply noted that...

...because, well he does.  

There was much wailing, gnashing of teeth and blocking...  

It's funny how it is an article of faith in parts of the left that if you don't like / disagree with / disapprove of ...someone ...then it must be because they "are stupid".  

Well, Trump's a very dangerous criminal and (according to at least one Civil Court Judgement) a rapist ... but one thing he is not is stupid and uneducated.  He had a great education.  He just chooses to be a bad actor and that reality is too much for some people to handle.  

At heart there is an educational snobbery on parts of the left about their enemies which is probably due to many in the left being in education.  If only everyone was more educated they'd make more rational decisions is their article of faith...  but it is not so.

Indeed, when I questioned it some people said I was making myself look stupid because I hadn't researched the truth... After all, if Donald is stupid all his supporters and defenders must be stupid - so abuse them by calling them stupid... that'll win you support...

...can't tell you who abused me, of course. because... they've all blocked me but clearly Socratic debate was something that just happened to other people for these educated folk who think even expecting them to provide the evidence to back up their statements is stupid.  

One man managed to drag up Trump's sister's claim in "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man" that Donald paid someone else to take a SAT test for him - the results of which are used to award University places...

However, even if Donald had cheated in this way (and a University investigation concluded there was no evidence to support this statement because it was too long ago) it doesn't invalidate the fact that Donald had to study for several years - first at the Fordham University before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania to qualify for his BSC in Economics.  He's an adjudicated rapist, a convicted felon and twice impeached but that's not enough for you ...? He's got to be stupid?  Well, he isn't and that's how he runs rings round you...

Even if he had played the system in some instances, it surely would have been impossible for him to hire impersonators for the entire four year time he was at University so......no, he did not purchase his degree.  

Someone asked me why I'm standing up for Trump.  Well, because the truth matters.  And this meme is obviously not true.  It's not about Trump, it's about someone clearly lying to me and thereby insulting me.  But you can't tell 'em.  They mostly blocked me.  

It's not like it's an outlandish statement that Trump isn't stupid.  He's probably not the biglyest intellect by a lot but then I don't think I'm in a position to throw rocks at someone for a poor academic record having only scraped into University myself and then having spent 3 years there largely mistaking it for a giant party on the State.  I had a fantastic time!

But "You're MAGA!" they scream.  

I'm not even living in America but I can at least see from the above why parts of the Democratic movement might be a complete turn off for us thickos...  for the implication of the meme is that all Donald's supporters are thickos too.  

But they're not.  

The BBC's Panorama program spent some time with Donald's supporters in the run up to the election.  In particularly the regular and committed contingent who sat at the front of all his rallies crisscrossing the country to do so to the point that Donald got to know them by name - they became christened the "Front Row Joes".  One of them (a lady Joe? or lady Jo?) remarked something along the lines of "You won't win.  We'll outvote you."  

Well, they did.

Yes, he's a fascist.

No, he's not stupid.

You are stupid.

Allow him a degree.

Swastikas

 

I read some of my great grandfather's old letters last night.  Some of the most historically unremarkable documents ever produced they consist almost entirely of comments like "We went here" and "It didn't rain".  At one point he stretches himself in his descriptive prose "Went to the Palaces in Paris but I'll tell you about that when I see you." There are even swastikas on some of the cards from before Hitler appropriated them.  Ah... the wonderful era of world peace and prosperity before 1914... If you were a leather manufacturer.

Doomed!

Not since Pontius Pilate pardoned Barabbas has the pardon power been used so corruptly as Donald Trump pardoning the January 6th rioters.  Donald promised he would be a Dictator on day one and he seems to be living up to his word... freeing his "Proud Boys" and associated scum to act as his Blackshirts again... this time secure in the knowledge that if they get convicted of a crime trying to keep the Orange Fascist in power he will just pardon them.  With such abuses of the judicial system it is only a few steps more to government by decree.  All the spectacle of the inauguration ... its words, prayers and meaning are made a mockery of by an anointment of career criminal Donald J. Trump... who promises that every day will be "America First" - literally the slogan of the 1940s Nazi appeasement movement. 

Meanwhile Elon waves his arm in what he says is not a Nazi salute.  A statement that would be easier to credit if he didn't picture himself in Roman centurion attire under the First Reich motto SPQR...

Meanwhile collaborator Piers Morgan assures us that it isn't all bad because El Donald has put Winston Churchill's bust back in the Oval Office... as Donald plans his new walls, his new wars with Canada and Greenland, his new trade wars, his new death penalties, his new vendettas...

But fear not because, to paraphrase Leslie Howard,

...Donald will never rule the world as he wants... because he is doomed. All of who have demoralized and corrupted a nation are doomed. Tonight they will take the first step along a dark road from which there is no turning back. And they will have to go on and on, from one madness to another, leaving behind them a wilderness of misery and hatred. And still, they will have to go on... because they they will find no horizon... and see no dawn... until at last they are lost and destroyed. They are doomed, doomed I tell ye, doomed!

Anthony Zerbe's head...

The other day I was watching "Star Trek Insurrection" and I noticed that Anthony Zerbe was playing Vice Admiral Dougherty.  One of Zerbe's most famous roles was as Milton Krest in the James Bond film "Licence to Kill" where he's memorably dispatched by being locked in a decompression chamber whose air tube is broken by drug dealer Franz Sanchez causing a sudden decompression which causes his head (or a cleverly constructed latex version of it) to explode.  The prop was recently sold at auction see here

Anyway, I did that "Oh, it's him" thing in my mind having not really noticed last time I saw it years ago but then when he was dispatched in "Star Trek Insurrection" I noticed (sorry for the spoilers) that his head was pushed into a skin stretching machine ... of course we didn't see the gory effects because this is Star Trek but I started to wonder if Zerbe had become typecast as "the man with the exploding head".  That may seem fanciful but I remember Gareth Thomas complaining that after Blake's 7 he was constantly cast in roles in which he was killed so perhaps it's not that outlandish...  Perhaps it's one of those "homages"...?

On a tangent on the DVD for "Licence to Kill" Robert Davi suggests that he partly based his portrayal of Franz Sanchez on Donald Trump because he wanted the gangster to be like a businessman who has gone over the edge and become a kind of gangster but still regards his criminal outfit as a business.  There's an interesting observation by film historian Richard B Jewell on the commentary for "Little Ceasar"'s DVD release [the actors were not available for comment due to death] where he talks about how a theme of gangster movies is how in many ways criminal organisations mirror legitimate organisations ...they just skip the inconvenience of operating within legal regulation.   Anyway, life imitating art or ...?