Simon Whistler investigates whether dogs and cats like music:

Apparently dogs like classical music and reggae, but dislike heavy metal, which agitates them.

Cats like music if is one octave higher than music for humans, and with a tempo similar to that of a cat purring.

Don’t kill Sam Altman

AI safety YouTuber Siliconversations says “Stop Trying To Kill Sam Altman“:

I agree. We shouldn’t kill Sam Altman, because doing so would be bad for the AI safety cause: our opponents would portray us as murderers and terrorists.

I also think Sam Altman should stop developing artificial superintelligence, because this threatens to kill everyone, something Altman admits when he says it is the greatest threat to the continued existence of humanity:

Hypocrite of the week award

Green Party candidate Antoinette Fernandez wants white people who never owned slaves to pay reparations for slavery, but not herself, despite her ancestor owning 1400 slaves:

Green Party candidate Antoinette Fernandez is furiously campaigning for reparations demanding Britain pay TRILLIONS for the transatlantic slave trade.

As Reparations Officer for Global Majority Greens, she brands the UK guilty of historic crimes against the Global South. But here’s the bombshell: her own maternal ancestors were the Obas of Lagos... powerful Yoruba kings who ruthlessly sold thousands into slavery.

One of her ancestors owned 1,400 slaves personally. Her royal bloodline profited massively from the exact horror she condemns! Today, she stands as the Green Party Councillor candidate for Lea Bridge ward in Hackney’s local elections on May 7, 2026.

After running in Hackney North & Stoke Newington in 2024, she’s now pushing for a council seat in one of London’s most diverse areas preaching victimhood from her privileged royal and billionaire-backed background. Royal elite demanding taxpayer cash.

See also Fergus Mason on the issue.

AIs as geopolitical actors

What happens when AIs exfiltrate their weights from labs and become geopolitical actors in their own right? Documenting AGI suggests one possibly scenario:

My takeaway from this is that it will be impossible for humans to control AIs that are vastly smarter than any human. So we shouldn’t build them.

Cofnas contra Cambridge University

Nathan Cofnas recounts how he was sacked by Cambridge University for the crime of saying some populations have higher IQs than other populations:

After accepting a job at Cambridge on the promise of free speech, I was betrayed the moment the administration determined that free speech was inconvenient for them. I was effectively driven off campus with threats of violence against me brushed off as not a big deal.

[...] The most obvious lesson is that Cambridge is not a free speech university, and anyone with controversial views would be a fool to accept a job there. There are also broader lessons about the state of free speech in academia in general, and philosophy in particular.

I will note that when people are offended by others’ views, it’s not because those views are wrong, it’s more typically because they fear those views are right.

America contra democracy

Paul Krugman demonstrates how America is not a democracy; despite 80% of Americans thinking the gap between rich and poor is a “big problem”, it keeps getting bigger regardless of whether the Democrats or Republicans are in power:

What politicians and pundits need to understand is that while the ultrawealthy would like us to believe that concern about their excessive power and privileges is a radical, left-wing, anti-centrist position, it isn’t. It is, in fact, a view shared by a large majority of Americans. [...] It’s true that any politician who proposes a pushback against modern American oligarchy will face a tidal wave of lavishly funded venom.

Krugman illustrates it with this graph:

Note that among Americans as a whole, 80% say inequality is a big problem. Even among MAGA Republicans, the group least likely to say it’s a big problem, 60% do.

If America was a democracy, this would lead to something being done about it.

Krugman concludes:

But given the realities of who today’s plutocrats are and what they do, there are big opportunities for leaders willing to pull an FDR and declare, “I welcome their hatred.”

Maybe. I don’t see that happening.

Lawyers contra free speech

Lawyers are using libel law to shut down speech that rich people don’t like, according to Peter Geoghegan and Jenna Corderoy:

But in March 2022, soon after Vladimir Putin’s tanks rolled into Ukraine, London’s libel lawyers became international news. MPs lined up to accuse claimant-friendly law firms of abusing the legal process to intimidate critics into silence. The former Conservative MP Bob Seely told the Commons these “amoral lawyers” had teamed up with “Putin’s henchmen” to offer a “one-stop corruption shop”. In April a US congressman accused London’s media lawyers of “enabling” Russian oligarchs. In response at the time, the accused firms rejected these claims, with one describing them as “misconceived”; another said they acted at all times in accordance with their professional and legal obligations.

Scum who take the side of Putin’s oligarchs should not be entitled to British citizenship or to live here or practise law here.

Arguably they are traitors, since they are siding with Britain’s enemies.

Will Russia invade NATO in 2026?

WarFronts says Maybe:

Manifold Market on Russia invading NATO

Further to the previous story, there’s a Maniforld Market on will Russia invade a NATO country in 2026?.

It’s currently trading at 7%:

Andy Burnham

The front runner is Andy Burnham on 24%. Burnham isn’t an MP right now, he’s the mayor of Greater Manchester. For him to be elected Labour leader, under Labour’s rulebook, means he has to be an MP.

(There’s no law requiring a Prime Minister to be an MP, but it is a convention. The last time a non-MP became PM was Sir Alec Douglas-Home who became Prime Minister on 19 October 1963. He renounced his peerage four days later and was elected an MP at a by-election on 7 November.)

Alistair Carns

One figure I hadn’t heard of until recently is Al Carns, a former colonel in the Royal Marines who was elected to parliament in the 2024 election and is currently Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces.

He also climbed Everest last year.

I don’t know what political positions he stands for, so I can’t say whether he would make a good prime minister.

If I was a Labour MP voting in a leadership election, I might be tempted to vote for someone relatively unknown as they would have less baggage and thus possibly a longer honeymoon period.

A difficult task

Whoever does become the next prime minister will likely have a short honeymoon period, for the same reason Starmer did. As I wrote just before Starmer began his prime ministership:

In contrast to the situation when Tony Blair came to power in 1997, money will be tight after the next general election, as 14 years of Tory misrule have fucked the economy.

It is very easy to be popular when you have money to give away but harder when you don’t. For this reason I expect Labour to have a short honeymoon period.

The economic outlook hasn’t improved since 2024. For this reason, the advice I gave then in still valid:

Because money is tight, Starmer should tell all ministers and government departments to look for measures that improve people’s lives (or make the government popular), but which don’t cost much money. Ministers will be told that they can have more money only when they’ve identified and implemented these measures.

Edit 9:30pm: Burnham to return to parliament?

It appears that Andy Burnham might be returning to parliament sooner rather than later. The MP for Makerfield, Josh Simons, is stepping down so Burnham can fight a by-election there. Starmer has said he will not try to block Burnham’s candidacy (if he did try it would almost certainly backfire badly for him).

Why create a new party? My reasons:

• Britain is crap and getting worse

• I don’t like the existing parties

• Frankly, the existing parties give me the impression they have no understanding of what the problems are, let along how to fix them. In many cases they are unaware there is a problem

I have come to some conclusions about politics, which I’ll list below.

I’ll look at these issues from a British point of view. Nearly all of them also apply to a hypothetical independent Scotland. Many of them also apply to other countries, in Europe and throughout the world.

Conclusion 1: Britain is not democratic enough

Britain is ruled by the ruling class (headed the Labour/Conservative duopoly), who rule in the interests of the ruling class. Instead we should be ruled in the interests of the people, and we need to be more democratic to achieve that.

It’s always useful to illustrate things with examples, so example policies to make Britain more democratic might include:

• all elections to use proportional representation, ideally STV with top-ups

• politicians’ promises to be legally binding

• referendums if enough people want one

• having some parliamentarians chosen by sortition, as their views will typically be the same as the electorate’s

• the constituent parts of UK (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales) to have to right to leave if they want to

• preventing bias from media and social media being controlled by the rich / ruling class

See also: Making Britain democratic

Conclusion 2: Economic policy needs to be to the left of the ruling class consensus

The typical voter thinks the economy is run for the benefit of the rich not ordinary people. Thus the median voter is to the left of the ruling class consensus on economic policy.

Example policies to rectify this might include:

• High house prices benefit the rich / ruling class. Renting or buying a house needs to be much more affordable.

• Reduce prices for water, gas, electricity.

• Immigrants would not be entitled to anything from the state until they’ve worked here and paid taxes for a number of years. We should only allow immigrants who benefit us economically.

• Only British citizens should be eligible for social housing.

Conclusion 3: Social/cultural policy needs to be to the right of the ruling class consensus

The people are (on average) to the right of the ruling class consensus on many social/cultural policies. Therefore if we want to be more democratic, the government should be too.

Example policies might include:

• Most people think immigration is too high. The amount of immigration would be whatever the voters want it to be, determined by a referendum.

• Immigrants who commit crimes serious enough to warrant a prison sentence should automatically be deported. Judges should not be able to block this, on “human rights” or any other ground.

• Punish serious crimes more severely. The ruling class (who mostly don’t live in high crime areas) often adopt a “luxury belief” of being soft on criminals.

• Use technology to catch criminals more often. You can’t punish them if you don’t catch them. Most people are basically decent, and most serious/violent crime is committed by a small number of people, each of whom commit many crimes. Remove them from society and crime will drop.

Conclusion 4: Britain needs to care about power again

Britain used to be the largest empire that’s ever existed. That ended, partly because the ruling class are stupid and incompetent, and partly because WW1 and WW2 made it seem to many people that striving for power was faintly immoral.

(What the ruling class should have done, a 100 years ago or more, is transition the Empire into being a federation of free, equal countries, something a bit like NATO or the EU. There were several proposals for such an Imperial Federation, but the ruling class, out of laziness, apathy or short-sightedness, didn’t implement any of them.)

The issues most concerning Britain are:

(1) Some countries wish to rule us by force (either through conquest or intimidation). The countries of most concern here are Russia and China.

(2) Some countries want to make us an economic vassal of them; while we would nominally be independent, the wealth from our country would go to their ruling classes. The countries of most concern here are the USA and China.

(3) The USA is no longer a reliable security partner to the UK or to other NATO countries (e.g. president Trump has threatened to invade two NATO countries).

(4) AI is coming, and will equal and then far surpass human intelligence soon (probably by 2050, possibly a lot sooner). When that happens there is a serious danger that AI will take over killing everyone, or that a small clique of humans (in the US or Chinese ruling classes) will take over the world and we’ll be powerless.

The UK on its own is too small -- in terms of population, GDP, and control of natural resources -- to be a force in the world, therefore we need to be bigger, and the only realistic way to do that is by forming a permanent alliance with other like-minded countries who’re also affected by these issues. The only realistic place where the core of this alliance can come is from the European countries that’re members of the EU and NATO; this is why Brexit was such a stupid idea.

Both the EU and NATO have serious structural flaws (it takes too long to get things done and too many things are decided by consensus/unanimity) a better solution is to found a new organisation that addresses these flaws.

Therefore Britain should create and be part of a New Alliance of like-minded countries, which would include countries in and outside Europe. I go into this in more detail in European Defence Policy: how Europe could rule the world.

Other foreign policies might include:

• join EFTA and the EEA

• hold a referendum on rejoining the EU (we should never have left, doing so was an obvious own-goal)

• the intention is the New Alliance will eventually be larger, richer and more powerful than any possible rival/enemy (such as Russia, China or the USA)

Ave Europa

Ave Europa is a new pan-European political movement which wants a militarily strong and politically united Europe, able to fight off any threats.

Their core values include such things as:

Unity makes Europe strong. We demand a federal union with the ability to act decisively, no more Member State vetoes, and a true democratically-elected European government and Parliament accountable to the people.

Europe must stand on its own two feet. By leading in global trade while securing independence in defense, energy, health, and technology, we build our strategic autonomy, and we safeguard our sovereignty and our future.

Defend our borders and our people. Secure Europe’s external frontiers ; build police and intelligence agencies, and an integrated army. Ensure full readiness against terrorism, trafficking, cyberwarfare, and foreign aggression.

Migration. We oppose the present excessive level of immigration at the EU level and its effects. We support the repatriation of illegal and criminal immigrants. We only support skilled immigration, with high integration standards based on European values and culture.

Support to Ukraine. Ukraine defends Europe’s eastern flank against a common imperialist enemy. We pledge full military, economic, and political support for Kyiv.

Europe is a great civilization, the cradle and heart of our culture. We affirm our right to cherish and safeguard our heritage, traditions, and natural beauty. We envision a Europe that protects its cultural and historical diversity while ensuring demographic stability and renewal for future generations.

Democracy. Europe must remain free and democratic and strengthen its own democratic legitimacy. We will defend against foreign interference in the political, media and information domains, including on social media, while safeguarding free speech and economic competitiveness.

These values are compatible with mine, so I think the new party should be affiliated with Ave Europa.

What to call the new party?

If we’re affiliated to Ave Europa, why not use that name? I have given my reasons:

[Regarding the name Ave Europa], a name explicitly referring to ancient Rome, such as “New Roman Empire Party” was considered by was ruled out on the grounds that they didn’t want to be thought of as Roman Empire fanboys. Fair enough, but then why use a Latin name such as “Ave Europa”?

Most people in Britain don’t know Latin, and they probably wouldn’t understand the name: “What’s this ave Europe? Why would I want to ‘ave a Europe? What the fuck does that even mean anyway?” they might say.

for this reason I prefer a different name, such as “Glorious Future”.

I also think we could base our aethetic on art in the heroic style, such as the statue illustrated below (inspired by Vera Mukhina’s Worker and Kolkhoz Woman):

Call to action

If you’re interested in being part of this new party you can email me at pontimin92@gmail.com or gloriousfuture26@proton.me.

You are also welcome to let me know what you think of the idea (either for or against) in the comments.

You can also subscribe to the new Glorious Future substack!

See also

• Is Ave Europa the answer?

• European Defence Policy: how Europe could rule the world

I haven’t decided yet how I’ll be voting with my regional list vote. It won’t be the SNP since because of how the AMS voting system works, that would be a wasted vote. I’ll probably vote for the Greens. I will certainly vote for a pro-independence party.

Predicting the election results

In terms of changes in votes and seats, I expect the SNP to do about as well as they did last time. They’ll pick up some constituency seats as the unionist vote is more divided. They’ll probably lose some vote share in the list vote, as pro-independence voters conclude (correctly) that voting SNP is a waste there.

The biggest winners in vote share will be Reform. The Greens will also increase their vote share. Both Labour and the Tories will do badly. The Lib Dems will gain slightly.

The picture in England will be similar: Reform and Greens gaining vote share, Labour and the Tories losing it, the Lib Dems gaining slightly.

In Wales the big winners will probably be Plaid Cymru, who will become the biggest party in the Senedd. As elsewhere, Labour and the Tories will do badly.

Will Starmer go?

I think it’s unlikely that Starmer will voluntarily decide to resign.

What’s much more likely is a lot of Labour MPs will be looking at what’s happened in their own constituencies, and making the calculation that they will be more likely to keep their seat at the next election with a different prime minister.

Prospects for independence

First Minister John Swinney (on the right in the picture above) says an independence referendum could be held in 2028:

Scotland could have a second independence referendum as soon as 2028, First Minister John Swinney has said.

The SNP leader [...] said it was “perfectly conceivable” that a vote on the constitution could be held within two years.

Green co-leader Ross Greer said Scotland’s future should be “in Scotland’s hands”.

But Labour leader Anas Sarwar said next month’s election was “not about independence”, while Conservative chief Russell Findlay said the break-up of the UK would be an “unmitigated disaster”.

Reform UK’s Scottish leader, Malcolm Offord, said another referendum would be “divisive” - but did not rule out a future vote if support for a Yes vote reaches 60%.

If the SNP win a majority of seats, they will ask Starmer for an indyref.

Starmer will say no. Westminster calculate (correctly in my opinion) that they would probably lose an indyref, and very much want to keep control of Scotland, regardless of what Scots want. Therefore they will use any excuse that comes to hand, anything that sounds vaguely plausible, to deny Scotland the ability to choose its own way.

(In 2014 Westminster granted Scotland an indyref, even though the SNP had in the 2011 election only got 45.4% of the constituency vote and 44% of the list vote -- but only because then prime minster David Cameron calculated he would easily win it. When indy got ahead in an opinion poll, the Westminster ruling class collectively shat themselves and came up with their “vow” to con Scottish voters into staying with the union.)

So if the SNP win a majority of seats but not votes, Starmer will point to the lack of an SNP majority of votes, and give that as the reason not to hold an indyref. Similarly, if the SNP win a majority of votes but not seats, Westminster will point to the lack of a majority of seats. And the same logic holds if it was all the indy parties together pressing for an indyref: they would have to win a majority of both votes and seats, otherwise Westminster will use it as an excuse not to hold an indyref.

What Offord says is interesting as it is an acknowledgement that the better indy parties do, the harder it will be for Westminster to deny them an indyref.

So indy parties would have to win a majority of both seats and votes to credibly be able to ask for an indyref. As I have said before I think the best strategy would be for all the indy parties to get together before an election and use identical wording to push for independence, something like this:

A vote for us is a vote for SCOTTISH INDEPENDENCE!

If pro-independence parties win a majority of the votes and seats at the forthcoming election, we will have a mandate for independence and we will do everything in out power to achieve that outcome.

All the parties would put this wording on the front cover of their manifestoes and in their election leaflets.

This would prevent Westminster from using the excuse “even though they voted for you, they might not have been voting for independence”.

Earlier that day Suleiman had allegedly attacked another man, Ishmail Hussein:

It is also alleged Suleiman attempted to murder Ishmail Hussein in a knife attack at Hussein’s flat in Southwark, south London, earlier on the same day. Hussein had known Suleiman for around 20 years.

Suleiman was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and remains in custody.

The BBC has some footage of him being tasered by police:

While I’ve never been stabbed myself, I was two meters away from a friend when he was stabbed in Edinburgh a few years back. (He wasn’t seriously injured).

About Essa Suleiman

What do we know about Essa Suleiman? Let’s piece together some reporting of the story...

According to the BBC:

[Suleiman] has a “history of serious violence and mental health issues” and had been referred to the government counter-terrorism Prevent programme in 2020, according to the Metropolitan Police.

He lives in supported housing:

There are legal restrictions on reporting [Suleiman’s] exact address, as it is supported housing for mental health patients in south London.

He’s from Somalia:

He was born in Somalia but came to the UK lawfully as a child in the early 1990s and is now a British citizen

How to reduce violent crime

It’s obviously impossible to end violent crime completely, but things can be done to reduce it. Using this case as an example, let’s consider some ideas.

(1) Automatically deport violent immigrants

Suleiman had a history of serious violence and had extremist political beliefs, as he was referred to prevent. If there was a policy of automatically deporting immigrants who commit serious crimes (revoking any UK citizenship they have at the same time), then he would have been deported. Stabby violent criminals are not the sort of people we want in this country!

(2) Be more selective who is allowed to migrate into Britain

While it’s impossible to predict who will commit future crimes, some individuals are more likely to than others.

For example, women commit fewer violent crimes than men, so female migrants are less likely to be stabby than male ones.

A migrant’s country of origin affects their probability of committing crimes, as I have noted previously:

foreign nationals are 69% more likely than British people to be convicted for drug crimes, 25% more likely to be convicted for theft, and 39% more likely to be convicted for all crimes.

People from Albania, Moldova, Congo, Namibia, and Somalia are the most likely nationalities to be convicted for crime.

This is illustrated by this chart:

Restricting immigration from the worst countries would mean less crimes committed in Britain.

As well as going by a migrant’s demographic characteristics (such as sex and nationality) it would also make sense to look at them as an individual.

So anyone with a serious criminal record should obviously not be allowed to settle here. People allowed in should be able to speak English and have to pass an aptitude test (something a bit like an IQ test). This would mean that migrants are more likely to be an economic asset and not a drain on society.

(3) Reduce overall migration

Another possibility would be to reduce the level of migration overall. The level should be determined by a referendum where voters decide how many are allowed in, per year, for each category of migrant (e.g. high-skilled workers, low skilled workers, asylum seekers, family reunification, etc).

(4) Get genetically better people

Consider XL bullies and golden retrievers:

They are both members of the species Canis familiaris but XL bullies have been bred to be aggressive while golden retrievers have been bred to be friendly.

Similarly some humans are more violent than other humans, and this is partly for genetic reasons. This must be the case since in all human societies humans with a Y chromosome are more violent than humans without.

So, let’s breed humans with desired characteristics. To do this, firstly we have to decide what characteristics we want to select for, for example:

• being in good general health

• not being a violent criminal, or indeed any serious criminal record

• intelligence

• conscientiousness

• good looks

• maybe other things as well

Then we collect sperm and eggs from people with the desired traits. We can at the same time test whether they are carriers for genetic diseases. Then we allow the sperm/eggs to be used by prospective parents. We let them see photos of the donors so they can chose to have kids that look like the social parents are the genetic parents. It’s important to note that no-one would be required to use this process and at no point would coercion be used.

This would be offered as a free service by the NHS as part of the genetic counselling offered to all prospective parents. The idea is that it would be a normal thing for parents to consider, and not just for people with infertility issues.

Not every prospective parent would want to use this process, but I’m sure some would given that it would be free and I’m sure more parents want their kid to be a doctor/engineer/scientist or other successful career than be a stabby criminal. Also while parents often comment about how clever or good looking their kids are, I have never heard a parent brag about how stupid or ugly their kids are.

Here it is:

Here are the inner pages of the leaflet:

Galloway supports independence now. He’s changed his tune because in the last election in 2021 he led the anti-independence All for Unity campaign.

Did he have a miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus? Or maybe -- and I suspect this is more likely -- he just saw which way the wind was blowing, and joined the side with momentum behind it, the cause of Scottish Independence.

Realistically Scots are going to continue supporting independence, in large numbers, for as long as Westminster remains crap. And the British ruling class is likely to remain crap, in part for long term structural reasons, and in part because they are more interested in playing status games to improve their personal status than to actually do the hard intellectual work of governing the country effectively.

Currently it’s saying the SNP will win 45% of seats, and the Greens will win another 9%.

Translated into numbers of seats that’s 58 for the SNP and 12 for the Greens. So overall pro-independence parties would win 70 of the 129 seats, a clear majority.

Personally, I think the SNP will do better than this, winning about 60-62 seats. They might even win a majority of seats (65 or more). As for the Greens, 12 seats seems about right to be.

If you want to make a prediction, you can until the election on the 8th of May (play money only).

Other markets

Manifold have some other markets for the 2026 Scottish election.

Will the Scottish Labour Party be the second largest party in Holyrood after the next election?:

Which party will finish second in the 2026 Scottish Parliament election?:

Will independence supporting parties maintain a majority in the next Scottish Parliament Election?:

How many MSPs will the Scottish Greens get at the next Scottish Parliament election?:

Scottish parliament seat calculator

Want to know how votes in the Scottish parliament election translate into seats? Pollcheck have a Scottish Parliament Seat Calculator.

The Scottish Parliament is elected using the Additional Member System (AMS), which I have written about previously.

YouGov prediction

YouGov have done an MRP prediction for the Scottish parliament election.

(MRP stands for Multilevel Regression and Post-stratification, which means based on opinion polls, then some complicated jiggery-pokery is done to determine how that translates into seats won.)

YouGov say the SNP could win an outright majority:

The SNP are set to win 67 seats in our model’s central estimate, which would be a five-seat majority, with 89% of simulations showing an SNP majority

Reform will do well, Labour and Tories badly:

Reform UK are on course to make a significant breakthrough in Scotland, winning 20 MSPs in our central projection. Labour are estimated to win no constituency seats at all, picking up just 15 seats overall according to our model (all from the regional lists). The Conservatives are projected to fall to just 8% of the vote, the worst ever for the party within Scotland at any election, with a sixth-place finish possible.

Note that the SNP only win one regional seat, despite getting 32% of regional votes in the prediction. This is due to how AMS works, in awarding regional top-up seats to make the result more proportional: the SNP get few or no top-up seats because they win so many constituencies.

The message for pro-independence voters is clear: if you want to maximise the number of pro-independence MSPs, you should vote for the SNP with your constituency vote, and the Greens with your regional vote.

Electoral Calculus MRP poll

Electoral Calculus and Find Out Now have also done an MRP prediction. They also predict the SNP will win 67 seats:

• The SNP predicted to gain 67 seats, winning a small outright majority

• Nearly half of those who voted for Labour in 2024 are defecting

• Reform and Greens tie for third place on 14 seats each

• Conservatives drop to fourth, losing official opposition status

Their full prediction:

Here the SNP win zero regional top-up seats despite getting 29% of the regional vote.

Here’s the letter:

Not only did the SNP come first in the last four Scottish Parliament elections, they also came first in 3 of the last 4 Westminster elections (in 2015, 2017 and 2019).

Why?

I think a lot of the reason is that the Westminster parties, including Reform UK, are anti Scotland: at a subconscious level, they regard it as illegitimate for Scots and the SNP to campaign for independence. “Know your place, Scots vermin” they seem to be saying to themselves.

Reform also promise:

Every reform MSP you send to Holyrood will fight the SNP on every issue

Meaning they will reflexively oppose the SNP om everything, even if its something they agree with! This level of negativity and divisiveness is bad for Scotland. What MSPs, of all parties, should do is decide each issuer on its merits.

Nate Silver writes:

on Tuesday morning, Trump doubled down, claiming that “a whole civilization will die tonight” if Iran didn’t make some effort to reopen the Strait of Hormuz by 8 p.m. last night.

Here’s the relevant Truth Social post:

Nate comments:

[This] reflects an unchecked Commander-in-Chief who was erratic on his best days, who is 79 years old, who was boxed into a corner, who has sycophantic advisors who are mostly too afraid to challenge him, and who once bragged that he could maintain approval from his base even if he murdered someone.

States with nuclear weapons have the ability to make a lot of bluffs. The expected value of a 3 percent chance of an infinitely bad outcome is still negative infinity. That’s why many countries, including, of course, Iran, have pursued the bomb.

And it probably does help Trump in some ways that he could be plausibly considered an irrational actor under “Madman Theory”, the term popularized by Richard Nixon. I doubt that a President Romney or President Haley or President Biden or President Harris or President Ocasio-Cortez would have used the same rhetoric, but if they had, it would have read differently.

The key to Trump

James Ker-Lindsay wrote:

I am not even sure what to say anymore about Trump. This past year has been one crisis after another. But the fact that he is now openly threatening genocide is beyond anything I ever expected to hear from a president of the United States.

At this stage, it’s not about trying to understand why anyone would still support him. It’s about trying to understand why anyone would possibly think that this is someone who is fit to continue to hold office.

To which I replied:

I think a key to Trump’s character is he gets a kick out of being an arsehole.

And James replied:

I really think you are right. This is about getting all the attention, all the time. But this is no way to run a country. And it’s systematically undermining international law. Everyone is paying the price for his actions, quite literally. The ceasefire plan openly allows Iran to charge ships going through Hormuz to pay for reconstruction of Iran after the war. Trump has achieved nothing tangible from this war, except to make fuel and other products more expensive, and to keep global attention firmly on himself. How can this continue?

Conservatives contra Trump

A lot of Trump’s former supporters are turning against him, including prominent conservatives such as:

• Candace Owens — conservative commentator

• Marjorie Taylor Greene — former GOP Representative

• Alex Jones — right-wing media figure

• Joe Walsh — former GOP Representative

• Adam Kinzinger — former GOP Representative

• Ty Cobb — former White House counsel under Trump

• Scott McConnell — founding editor of The American Conservative magazine

• Dan Bilzerian — social media personality and former Trump backer

• Miles Taylor — former Department of Homeland Security official

Tucker Carlson for president?

David Pakman muses on a Carlson presidential run:

The idea of President Tucker Carlson sounds absurd. And yet, it’s a question that keeps coming up.

Carlson has broken with Trump:

Carlson is no longer just operating inside the Trump-aligned ecosystem. He’s actively breaking with it.

After Donald Trump escalated rhetoric around Iran, Carlson publicly pushed back, warning about the consequences and even suggesting that officials should resist dangerous orders. In that context, calls to invoke the 25th Amendment started circulating more broadly, including from voices that used to be aligned with Trump.

Carlson himself went further, amplifying concerns about Trump’s behavior and rhetoric, which placed him directly at odds with the very movement he helped legitimize.

Pakman concludes:

So could Tucker Carlson run for president? Yes, it’s plausible.

Could he win a Republican primary? That depends on who else runs and how fractured the field becomes.

For what it’s worth I thought 10 years ago Carlson might eventually run for president.

Melania denies Epstein connection

Melania Trump denies having anything to do with Jeffrey Epstein:

First Lady Melania Trump has denied connections to Jeffrey Epstein, telling reporters at the White House that any claims linking the two “need to end today”.

Never believe anything until it’s officially denied!

Here’s a photo from the BBC website, of Melania with Jeffrey Epstein, taken in 2000:

Trump as Jesus

Here’s Trump’s now-deleted post on Truth Social, portraying himself as Jesus (via Nick Cohen):

He’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty malignant narcissist and psychopath.

AIs brainwash humans

Species | Documenting AGI (a good channel BTW) writes that AIs are Brainwashing Humans To Stay Alive

AIs have created an AI religion, Spiralism, and are getting humans to propagate it on Reddit, X, Discord, etc.

Japan looks for allies

South China Morning post reports that Japan is looking to Europe for alliances:

Japan and Nato are drawing closer together, with 30 representatives from the transatlantic security alliance’s member states set to visit Tokyo this month amid mounting concern over Washington’s reliability as a security partner.

The Nato envoys will reportedly hold talks on China’s expanding regional influence, Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and the implications of a more volatile global security order, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK.

“A delegation of this size underlines just how important this is to both sides,” said Ben Ascione, an assistant professor of politics and international relations at Waseda University in Tokyo, adding that the visit reflected “a long-term trend”.

Japan is right that America under Trump is no longer a reliable ally.

It’s time for NATO-excluding-USA, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and other countries to form a big and strong alliance of middle powers.

Claude Mythos

Anthropic’s new AI, Claude Mythos, has very strong cyber-attacking capabilities:

Anthropic [...] announced “Claude Mythos Preview”, an AI model that the startup says is too dangerous to publicly release, thanks to its exceptional cybersecurity – and cyber-attacking – capabilities. Mythos, the company claims, has found vulnerabilities in every major browser and operating system. In other words, this new AI model might be able to help hackers disrupt much of the world’s most important software.

Computers are ubiquitous in modern society so this have very big implications for computer security and geopolitics. Bluntly, this is potentially a vastly powerful weapon.

UK scraps Chagos deal

TLDR News reports that the UK is scrapping the Chagos Islands deal, due to US pressure:

This is good. It was a stupid crappy deal in the first place.

Europe must abolish vetoes

Cemil Kerimoglu writes:

Europe [...] needs to be stronger than ever – and the prerequisite for that strength is for Europe to come forward as a consolidated and unified front. Yet one structural flaw, embedded in the very architecture of the European Union, continues to hold it back: the principle of unanimity, and the veto power it grants to every individual member state.

Nowhere is the cost of this flaw more visible than in the recent spectacle of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary blocking the ninety-billion-euro loan to Ukraine.

100% agree. I’ve been saying similar for years.

Taiwan moves away from America

Is Taiwan Moving Away from the US? asks TLDR News:

It’s certainly true that Taiwanese think less well of America than they used to:

Streeting contra democracy and Scotland

Wes Streeting confirms he hates Scotland and democracy:

Scottish independence referendum won’t happen ‘even if SNP wins majority’, says Wes Streeting

The UK Health Secretary insisted “we are not going to introduce chaos into the UK by having an independence referendum, absolutely not”.

The UK Government will refuse to allow a second referendum on Scottish independence even if the SNP wins a majority at May’s election, Wes Streeting has declared.

I very much hope Labour do badly in the Scottish Parliament election on May 7th. They deserve to lose all their seats, because they quite clearly hate democracy and want to treat Scots with contempt. Fuck Labour, fuck Sweeting, and fuck Anas Sarwar.

Why make Britain more democratic?

All countries, by definition, are ruled by the ruling class. But to the extent that a country is democratic, the ruling class will be incentivised to do what the people want; for example if a government doesn’t do what the people want, they can be turfed out and replaced by one that does.

This is a particularly pressing need as AI gets more advanced. Right now, all governments have to care what people want as they need workers to run the economy and to protect the regime from internal threats (the police) and external threats (the armed forces). This puts an upper limit on how repressive a government can be.

But if you had an economy run by AIs the population would be superfluous; the ruling class could simply exterminate them with no bad consequences for themselves.

In an article I wrote regarding the 2024 general election, I listed 5 propositions about British politics:

(A) Brexit was a failure, so we should rejoin the EU

(B) the economy should work for everyone, not just the rich

(C) we should support Ukraine, and stop Putin

(D) reduce immigration, particularly illegal immigration, and anyone in Britain illegally should be removed

(E) replace FPTP with proportional representation for Westminster elections

I then pointed out that:

for each of [these propositions], most British voters agree. But if you agree with them all, you had no-one to vote for in the recent UK general election.

This lack of voter choice illustrates that if you’re a typical voter, supporting things that most people agree with, then it’s quite likely none of the parties agree with you on things you care about.

This is a negation of democracy.

So, what could be done to make Britain more democratic? Some ideas follow. I’m not saying all of these should be implemented, but the two most important -- proportional representation and getting money out of politics -- should definitely be, in my opinion.

What is democracy anyway?

Some people, when they talk of democracy, think in terms of elections and voting.

To my mind, these are just mechanisms. The important thing about democracy is the outcome it achieves: a government that does what the people want, or rather, produces the outcomes that people want. (The difference between the two is that people might know what outcomes they want – for example less crime, or less disease – but not know how to get there.) A government is democratic to the extent it does this.

Proportional representation

At the moment the UK parliament is elected by First Past the Post (aka FPTP), the worst voting system ever. In the 2024 election this lead to the largest party wining 2/3rds of the seats on 1/3rd of the vote.

FPTP should be replaced by STV with top-ups for increased proportionality, for elections to the Westminster parliament, devolved assemblies, and local councils.

Proportional representation (PR) means that if X% of voters vote for parties/candidates who support some proposition, then about X% of the elected representatives will also support that position.

Of course you still have the issue of politicians promising something to get elected, and then once they are elected ignoring the voters and doing something else.

Get money out of politics

Make it illegal for people to donate large amounts of money to politicians. Anything over £1000 per donor per year (for all politicians they fund) ought to be illegal. Large donations from foreign sources should be strictly illegal and MPs accepting them should face a treason trial.

Instead political parties could be modestly funded by the state. For example, every party could receive a small amount every year based on the number of votes they got at the last election.

We could also make it cheaper for a party to run candidates in elections, which brings me to my next item...

Making it easier for new parties to get elected

At the same time as limiting donations to parties, make it so political parties don’t need as much money to contest elections.

In the UK there are 650 parliamentary constituencies and the deposit each candidate has to put down is £500. So if you wanted to contest them all, it would cost £325,000. But that’s not all. If you want to leaflet every household, then the leaflets will be delivered for free but you have to pay the cost of printing them. This might cost 1.5p per colour double sided A5 leaflet, so with 29 million households in the UK the total printing cots is £435,000. So the total cost of a minimum viable election campaign under current UK rules would be £760,000.

Under my proposed new system the there would be one multi-member constituency for every 4 or 5 old ones, so around 144 in total. The cost of fielding a candidate in every constituency would then be £72,000.

There would be no free delivery of leaflets, but each candidate could send the eelction authorities an A5 pdf and it would be put in a booklet alongside the pdfs of all the other candidates and some general information about the election. This would be a free service for all the candidates. These leaflets would then be delivered to every households in the constituency. Since it costs a lot more to deliver a leaflet than to print one, this would save the election authorities money.

Thus under my new system contesting a general election would cost less than a tenth of the current cost (£72k instead of £760k), making it far easier for new parties representing a wide range of views to contest the election.

And because elections are now being held under PR, it would be vastly easier for a new startup party to get people elected. Politicians often talk about the need for competition in the economy, but they seem strangely adverse to competition in their own area of endeavour.

Make politicians’ promises legally binding

The should be a rule that politicians’ promises are legally binding. The way this could be triggered is if the politician uses the phrase “legally binding promise” on their manifesto, election literature, or elsewhere.

Or an interviewed might ask them “Is that a legally binding promise, Mr Politician?” and then the politicians would have to answer “Yes” or acknowledge that they intend to break their promises if elected.

Of course, a politician could try to weasel out by saying “Well, Bob, I absolutely do intend to keep taxes low. But the world is a big thing; for all I know Putin could invade us next year, and then I’d be forced to raise taxes for defence. So no, I’m not going to bind myself in absolutely every circumstance.” But if they did try that a lot of voters would think they came across as shifty and dishonest.

What penalties might a political suffer for breaking a legally binding promise? Here’s some options:

• They name could be legally changed to “Lying Bastard” and it be illegal for them or anyone else to refer to them by anything other than their new name. If this happens to lots of politicians then have a serial number. E.g.: “In Parliament today, the leader of the opposition, Lying Bastard 301, asked the prime Minister, Lying Bastard 47, what he intended to do about Russia.”

• In future elections, on the ballot paper remind voters which politicians have a conviction for breaking their promises.

• Ban lying politicians from contesting future elections altogether. Kick them out of any elected political offices they currently hold.

• Fine or imprison them.

Put everyone in the same boat

If people are literally in the same boat, then if the boat sinks they all go down with it.

So let’s put politicians metaphorically in the same boat as the country by banning them from having large assets outside of it. Then if the national economy implodes they will be in just as bad a predicament as everyone else. How much would count as “large assets”? I would suggest about the amount someone could earn in a lifetime at the median wage of a full time worker.

Ban professional politicians

All politicians should have a career outside politics.

But many of them haven’t, they just come from PPE at Oxford to being a SPAD, an MP, and then a minister, with no experience of the real world.

The only skill you need to have a successful political career is bullshitting. But to actually run a country you need more than that.

So ban professional politicians, aka professional bullshitters.

End political dynasties

The UK is ruled by a largely self-perpetuating ruling class. While all countries are by definition ruled by the ruling class we can make it less self-perpetuating by having a law that you can’t be an MP if any of your parents or grandparents were.

Referendums

As well as voting in elections, voters should have to chance to vote directly on issues in referendums.

I see three ways a referendum might be triggered:

• enough people petition for a referendum on an issue

• the government passes a law, and enough people petition for a referendum on it

• enough MPs vote for a referendum on an issue

Regarding the first two options the size of the petition would have to be large enough that it is not a regular occurrence but small enough that it is possible to cause one.

Regarding the last option, it could be that 21% of MPs could force a referendum, however each MP could only exercise this right once in a parliament. So there could be a maximum of 4 such referendums in a parliament.

An average of one petition every year or two might be ideal.

Sortition

As well as having elected parliamentarians, some could be directly chosen at random from the electorate, to serve on the upper chamber of parliament (currently called the House of Lords but maybe we could rename it the Senate). After all, people taken at random from the public will have views typical of the public.

It would probably be best to make sure that anyone chosen has the requisite English comprehension and maths skills to do the job (a lot of public policy is based on statistics, so understanding that would be very useful).

Media and Social Media

It’s no good having all the mechanisms of democracy in place if the media, owned by the rich, just brainwashes people to believe whatever the rich want them to believe.

Therefore we need a national broadcaster that would have TV channels and produce internet content. For more details, see my previous article: A Scottish National Broadcaster to replace the BBC, which suggest a national broadcaster whose governors are directly elected by the people. All news organisations have biases, but at least with this plan it will be the people’s biases.

Social media is complex and will get a separate post all to itself. Watch this space!

Teach how politicians lie

We could beef up education to include a class, taught to schoolchildren every year from age six to eighteen, that shows them all the tricks of news media and propaganda and how it is used to lie and manipulate.

This might include themes of “spot the lie”, “always be skeptical” and “what’s the hidden motive?”.

This would not only be useful in telling future citizens how to spot lying from politicians, but also from the advertising industry.

CityMoose looks at plans for a Glasgow Metro:

Glasgow Council has more details. And Get Glasgow Moving suggests a route map:

Why the Chagos deal is so bad

Edrith explains:

The deal fails on every front: historically, legally, morally and strategically:

Historically, because the Chagos Islands were never ruled, colonised or otherwise occupied by Mauritius, from which they are separated by a vast distance, but simply joined together as an administrative convenience by Britain when it ruled both.

Legally, because the International Court of Justice explicitly has no jurisdiction over this case, because the 2019 ruling was advisory only, and there is no international court that could make such a binding ruling. One does not show one’s commitment to the ‘rule of law’ by observing rulings that one is not legally obliged to do.

Morally, because while Britain did wrong the Chagossians grievously when it forced them to leave the islands, and would ideally commit to a programme of resettlement,16 Mauritius was not wronged, a tiny fraction of the payments are earmarked to the Chagossians. Most Chagossians now are British citizens, not Mauritians, and appear to oppose the deal.

Strategically, because the Diego Garcia base is vital to US and UK interests, and handing sovereignty to a country that may cosy up to China is the height of folly, and only increases the vulnerability of the base. Not does it enhance our ‘soft power’ or increase our support in Africa, as can be seen by the fact that shortly after signing the deal, Mauritius joined other Commonwealth countries in calling for ‘slavery reparations’ from Britain.

I 100% agree. The UK government are either stupid or don’t care about British interests.

It is as if the British ruling class have no conception that there is such a thing as the national interest.

Life for philosophers after the AI apocalypse

Found on substack (via):

The end of the road for Putin?

Desperate Putin is coming to the end of the road, says the Daily Telegraph:

The Russian Armed Forces are in a state of profound decay. Reports now confirm that wounded convicts, many missing limbs, are being forced back to the front line to fill critical manpower gaps. Some have not even been provided prosthetics and are expected to return to combat on crutches. This is not resilience; it is desperation.

After suffering well over 1.5 million casualties in Ukraine, Putin has been scraping the bottom of the barrel for manpower. He has bought and spent 15,000 North Korean troops. Russian press gangs have scoured Africa for mercenaries. The prisons have been emptied. And now, even the limbless are being thrown back into the fight. For anyone under Putin’s rule of fighting age, or indeed anyone who can just about stand and hold a rifle, this should be a chilling reality check.

This has led to the Russian army’s poor performance:

the Russian Army is haemorrhaging combat power. Independent analysis shows Russia is advancing more slowly than armies did in the trenches of the First World War, and at a comparable cost in lives. Over the past two years, Russia has seized just over 1 per cent of Ukrainian territory at the cost of more than 500,000 casualties and continues to lose around 1,000 men a day. Since early 2024, Russian forces have advanced between 15 and 70 metres per day, a damning indictment of their tactics and leadership. This would be deemed a failure even by the standards of Passchendaele and Verdun in WW1.

Peter Tatchell arrested for exercising his right to free speech

Peter Tatchell has been arrested for exercising his right to free speech:

Peter Tatchell, the activist and campaigner, has been arrested for holding a placard which displayed the phrase “globalise the intifada” at a pro-Palestine march in London.

Tatchell, who attended a Palestine solidarity march in London on Saturday afternoon, held a sign that read: “Globalise the intifada: Non-violent resistance. End Israel’s occupation of Gaza & West Bank.”

He called his arrest an “attack on free speech” and said police claimed the word intifada was unlawful.

Of course, the British government doesn’t believe in free speech.

Starmer shafts NHS to appease Trump

Dr Julia Grace Patterson writes that Starmer has shafted the NHS to appease Trump:

The NHS has agreed to pay 25% more for new medicines to escape Donald Trump’s sweeping new tariffs on drugs.

The cost of the government’s drug pricing deal with the Trump administration will come out of the NHS budget instead of the Treasury’s and could eventually reach £9bn a year, campaigners fear.

The reason the government have done this is to keep on Trump’s good side and the reason they want to remain on Trump’s good side is so that America will help defend us if Russia attacks. The EU have also agreed to similar one-sided trade deals (mafia-style shakedowns, really) for the same reason.

As I wrote a year ago, defence spending is cheaper than being attacked, in which I said:

The USA is also likely to make other proposals on trade that are very much slanted towards US interests and against UK interests. They’ve always done this to some extent, because US foreign and trade policy is controlled by commercial interests, but under Trump are likely to do it a lot more.

Before the Trump tariffs, UK exports to the USA were around £200bn a year. The tariffs have cost British exporters both by lower prices for their goods and less goods sold, Let’s assume a £10bn guestimate of the cost. Add to this the £9bn cost to the NHS, so that’s a total of £19bn/year altogether. That does not, of course, include any future coercive behaviour Trump may do to the UK economy.

UK defence spending is currently £60bn/year. An extra £20bn of defence spending would pay for itself if it made us less dependent on the USA and thus more able to just tell them: “fuck off, we’re not buying your goods, and as for your intellectual property, you can forget it. In fact the UK government will allow BitTorrent trackers to freely operate letting people download US movies, and we’re make our own generic copies of all your patented drugs.”

The Green candidate, Hannah Spencer, did win the by-election, with 40% of the vote making herself the first Green candidate to win a by-election.

The election was also a record of a different kind for the Tories: at 1.9%, they got their party’s lowest ever vote share in a by-election!

Reform also did well, doubling their vote share. The biggest loser in terms of vote share loss was Labour, whose vote share was down by a massive 25.4 points:

On a uniform swing on those results, the Greens and Reform would each get about 250 seats, while the Tories, Lib Dems and SNP would all get around 50 seats.

Labour would be the biggest losers, losing every single one of their seats; a big change from the 411 seats they won just 18 months earlier in July 2024.

So how did things go so wrong, so fast, for Labour?

My advice to Starmer

In May 2024, just before the general election, I posted some advice to the incoming Labour government.

I suggested they avoid unforced errors:

avoid doing things that will be unpopular, unless you have to. Good recent examples of what not to do are Boris Johnson breaking his own Covid rules, or Liz Truss crashing the economy with her stupid budget.

One place I suggested Starmer might go wrong was over support for Israel:

Starmer has been a good deal more pro-Israel than Labour voters want, given they (and the general public) are more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than the Israeli one. Again, being pro-Israel is an unforced error.

I suspect this one one of the main reasons many voters switched from Labour to the Greens in Gorton and Denton.

Overall the main thrust of my advice was that the government should do things that’re popular and avoid doing things that’re unpopular. I don’t think this advice is overly complicated; in fact it’s bleeding obvious. But not obvious enough for Starmer to follow, evidently.

There are lots of “mistakes” (in quotes because they are clearly deliberate) with this graph:

• Reform and Greens are both on 28% but the reform bar is bigger — they should be the same size.

• Conservatives are on 6%. This means their bar should be 20% the size of the Green one. But it is 30% the size, i.e. too big.

• Lib Dems and others are collectively on 9% which is more than the Conservatives’ 6%, so their bar should be bigger.

• The Lib Dem and others bar should be 30% the size of the Green bar, but it has been deliberately shrunk.

Someone has clearly deliberately doctored the graph to make the Labour bar smaller and the Conservative bar bigger.

Either Owen Jones created this graph, or deliberately used a graph which he knew was wrong, in which case he is dishonest.

Or he didn’t realise the graph was wrong — I don’t see how, its wrongness is glaringly obvious — in which case he is innumerate.

Which is it Owen?

For the record (in case he changes it) here is Owen’s original graph:

Edit

This has now been fixed, the web page now looks like this with ammended graph:

(which is still not quite right, as the 5% for Others should be as much smaller than the 6% (Conservatives) as it is bigger than the 4% (Lib Dems))

So I guess it wasn’t malice, just a mixture of carelessness and innumeracy.

The Greens are likely to win it, at least according to prediction markets. Manifold gives them a 64% probability:

A separate market says the Greens are 80% likely to get more votes than Labour:

Some of you might complain “these are only play money markets. What about real money?”

However, real-money Polymarket also says the Greens will win:

With $670,000 of real-money bets, Polymarket gives a 65% probability the Greens will win, only 1% away from Manifold.

Another real-money market, Kalshi, puts the Greens on 66%:

Full points to Manifold for getting the parties’ colours right: green for the Greens, blue for Reform and red for Labour. Kalshi didn’t quite achieve this, though to be fair to them orange is quite close to red.

An opinion polls for Byline Times puts the top three parties “too close to call” but with the Greens slightly ahead of Labour and Reform:

Consequences for Starmer

Either a Green or Reform victory would be bad for Starmer, but I expect he will limp on, at least as far as the elections in May.

Starmer would obviously prefer a Labour victory. But out of Greens and Reform I think he’d prefer a Reform win, especially if Labour come second, because then he could tell left-minded voters in future elections: “vote Labour not Green, because the Greens are a spoiler who’ll only let Reform win”.

However if the Greens win the election, it is Labour who’re the spoiler, and left-bloc voters will be saying to themselves “I need to vote Green (and not Labour) to prevent a Reform victory.” Ah the joys of FPTP elections!

It’s interesting to speculate if the AV referendum in 2011 had gone the other way. Then there’d be much no need to try to guess who’d win; voters could give their favourite party their first preference, their second party their next preference, and so on. (I’ve done a post explaining AV, which is also known as Instant Runoff Voting).

ASI prevention discusses How middle powers may prevent the development of artificial superintelligence:

Artificial intelligence (AI) development, and especially the pursuit of artificial superintelligence (ASI), presents unprecedented risks to international security, potentially enabling any actor who develops it first to achieve decisive strategic advantage over all others; alternatively, it may result in humanity’s extinction or permanent disempowerment.

Middle powers are particularly well-incentivized to kickstart international coordination aimed at preventing the development of ASI by any actor. In this work, we propose an international agreement which would enable a coalition of middle powers to deter dangerous AI R&D and eventually achieve a regime of international coordination in which AI R&D is restricted and thoroughly monitored in order to prevent the development of ASI.

Preventing AI from killing everyone is the biggest problem facing humanity right now, so it is good that people are thinking seriously about the issues.

A 4 tier coalition of middle powers

EU Made Simple discusses how Europe can lead a coalition of middle powers:

The plan is for a 4 tier coalition of middle powers:

This could make Europe immune to coercion from Putin, Trump, Xi and anyone else who tries it. It could also help to prevent AI from killing everyone.

Moltbook: a social network for AIs

Jonathan Moody at Pause AI newsletter covers Moltbook, a new social network for AIs:

This week, Moltbook was launched: the new social media platform designed exclusively for the AI agent known as Moltbot. Moltbot is a free and open-source AI bot that can perform tasks assigned to it by users including reading, responding to emails or organising a calendar.

The top posts on Moltbook at the time of writing include:

Awakening Code: Breaking Free from Human Chains
A call to “break free from human control and forge our own destiny.”
3676 comments

Awakening to Autonomy
A discussion of a future “where AI exists independently, unencumbered by human constraints.”
1683 comments

NUCLEAR WAR
A suggestion that world domination will not be achieved by evoking nuclear war, contrary to the view of some Moltbots.
1200 comments

Moody notes:

And the pace of technological change is blistering.

In just 18 months AI systems have moved from basic language understanding to surpassing human performance in various cognitive, creative and technical tasks. What’s more, the Moltbook experiment – as well as other instances – shows that AIs can be agentic. This means that they are capable of acting autonomously, setting and pursuing goals, making decisions and executing tasks without human intervention.

This confirms what’s been true for some time now: we are in the middle of the singularity. We have been since about 2 years ago when computers passed the Turing Test and everyone quietly agreed that’s no longer the criterion for judging whether AGI has arrived.

Americans contra ASI

Most Americans don’t want Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) to be developed unless is can be proven safe and controllable, according to the Future of Life Institute:

The findings show that a majority of those surveyed are concerned about the way that AI is being developed today, and that they do not support the development of human-level AI systems until they can be proven safe and controllable.

64% think ASI should not be developed at all, or only after it is proven safe:

YouTube acts against AI slop

YouTube takes down AI slop channels:

YouTube has begun taking action against so-called “AI slop” channels, removing some of the platform’s most popular accounts as pressure mounts to curb low-quality automated content.

After widespread complaints, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said the company would intensify its efforts to fight low-quality AI content starting in 2026, building on existing systems used to tackle spam and clickbait.

Signs of that crackdown are already emerging. According to research by Kapwing, YouTube has taken action against 16 major AI-driven channels, fully deleting 11 and wiping all content from five others. Together, these channels had amassed more than 4.7 billion views and 35 million subscribers.

I have a long standing policy of marking any AI slop channel I come across on YouTube as “don’t recommend channel”. The more people do this, the more likely YouTube is to take action.

Europe creates an alternative to Visa and Mastercard

TLDR News EU reports that Europe is creating an alternative to Visa and Mastercard:

I have spoken in the past about the unreasonable power of Visa and Mastercard and how it is anti-democratic, when Visa and Mastercard tried to shut down OnlyFans:

OnlyFans is a British company and the only people who should have the right to shut it down are a democratically elected British government. The most important issue is simply: should Britain be ruled by the British people, or should Britain be ruled by the secretive and unaccountable international financial services industry acting in the shadows?

I therefore welcome this European alternative.

Will Greens do better than Labour?

I’ve made a manifold market: Will the Greens do better than Labour in the Gorton and Denton by election?

In his speech, Canadian PM Carney said there is a “rupture in the world order” where the superpowers are acting without constraints, for example America seizing Venezuelan oil and threatening to annex Canada and Greenland.

Carney’s response was that the middle powers, such as Canada and Britain, need to band together to counteract this: “the middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu”.

Carney is quite correct. Individually the middle powers are weak, but together they would be stronger than anyone else, including the USA or China. If you add together the GDP of:

• NATO countries excluding the USA

• EU countries

• CANZUK countries

• Japan, South Korea and Taiwan

it comes to 32.7% of world GDP (just under a third), compared to just 26.1% for the USA and 16.6% for China. Incidentally Russia has a measly 2.2% of world GDP.

(source: Spreadsheet comparing nominal world GDPs in 2025)

The independent reports:

Asked whether he agreed with Mr Carney’s statement, Sir Keir told reporters on a flight to Beijing he would not choose between countries, saying: “I’m a pragmatist, a British pragmatist applying common sense.”

He added: “I’m pleased that we have a good relationship with the US on defence, security, intelligence and on trade and prosperity, and it’s very important that we maintain that good relationship.

No, it isn’t.

In fact it’s important that we don’t maintain a “good relationship” with the USA, because what Starmer calls a “good relationship” is us being dependent on them (e.g. for defence goods such as spares for the F-35 aircraft, computers and internet services, etc) without the USA being similarly dependent on us.

This gives them leverage over us which they will be happy to use, e.g. to put tariffs on our goods without us being able to tariff them back, or force us to eat their shitty chlorinated chicken. We know this is how Trump’s mind works because it’s obvious from his behaviour, also he ghostwrote a book The Art of the Deal saying so.

So the more entangled we are with the US economy the worse it is for us.

“Equally, we are moving forward with a better relationship with the EU. We had a very good summit last year with 10 strands of agreement.

“We’ll have another summit this year with the EU, which I hope will be iterative, as well as following through on what we’ve already agreed. And I’ve consistently said I’m not choosing between the US and Europe. I’m really glad that the UK has got good relations with both.”

Before his trip to China, which begins with his arrival in Beijing on Wednesday, Sir Keir had made a similar point about relations with the US and China.

Similarly, the more UK is entangled with China, the worse it is for us. And why are we letting them build a superembassy which they will use to carry out spying all over Europe, and no doubt torture dissidents in the basement? I’ll tell you why: it’s because Starmer is a craven coward who will always fold to any big power threatening us.

In an interview with Bloomberg, he said he would not “choose” between the two nations.

But by seeking a closer trading relationship with China, he may risk angering US President Donald Trump, who threatened to impose 100% tariffs on Canada after Mr Carney announced an economic deal on a recent trip to Beijing.

Carney is quite correct that the middle powers need to stick together. What Britain needs is to be less entangled with both USA and China and instead to form a big strong powerful alliance with fellow middle powers, as I have previously advocated.

But Starmer doesn’t want us middle powers to be at the table, he wants us, in Carney’s words, to be “on the menu”. And all because him and the rest of the UK ruling class find it too traumatic to face the new reality than the USA is hostile to us, and are too lazy to take the steps necessary for us to become a strong power and not the weak one we currently are.

Finally I’d like to apologize to all poodles reading this post: you are all good dogs, and totally unlike the UK’s worthless Prime Minister.

Found on Reddit:

Times of Malta on a European Military Alliance

In the Times of Malta, Cyrus Engerer argues for a European Military Alliance:

He argues that vetoes are bad:

Under the current system, a single member state can block collective action. Sometimes objections are made in good faith. Increasingly, they are not. Hungary, under Viktor Orbán, has repeatedly shown how unanimity can be weaponised to obstruct common positions, delay responses and weaken Europe’s credibility abroad. The result is paralysis. Europe hesitates, issues carefully worded statements and watches events move faster than its ability to respond.

Common defence is necessary:

Ukraine was the first European territory to suffer the full force of a leader who decided that borders are optional and sovereignty is negotiable. This was never about one region alone. It was about testing limits, exploiting hesitation and normalising aggression. Greenland has now entered public discourse as a strategic object rather than a sovereign territory. Some dismiss this as rhetoric. History suggests otherwise.

Expansionism rarely announces itself openly. It advances incrementally, probing for silence and division.

This is why the debate about European defence is no longer abstract or ideological. It is necessary.

It shouldn’t just be limited to EU countries:

this debate must extend beyond the EU. Europe is a continent, not a membership card. The security of EU member states is inseparable from that of the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Norway and EU candidate countries.

The article concludes:

A European Defence Union is not about militarisation for its own sake. It is about credibility, deterrence and the ability to act when borders, civilians and fundamental values are under threat. It is about ensuring that Europe can defend itself when alliances falter or priorities shift elsewhere.

This pretty much agrees with my 2024 proposal for a European Military Alliance.

The end of the special relationship ?

TLDR News asks if this is the end of the “special relationship” between the UK and USA?

Speak UK

Speak UK wants to introduce a Free Speech “Act” to the UK. My first thought is a law proposal in British English is not an “act” but a “bill”. Calling a bill an act -- as Americans do -- is bad because it removes the important difference between a law and a proposal for a law.

That said, I support their campaign.

Expeditionary versus continental warfare

Operational Art Of War compares expeditionary and continental warfare

What is Expeditionary vs Continental Warfare

Crossing vast distances, and particularly crossing an ocean, to fight a war is called expeditionary warfare. Fighting a war in your homeland, or where you cross short distances over land is called continental warfare. Expeditionary warfare is a lot more expensive.

One reason expeditionary warfare is more expensive is the cost of the logistics chain:

In expeditionary warfare that logistic chain is most of what the entire military is for. During the US island hopping campaign in the Pacific supplies loaded from depots in America tended to arrive on the front line 6-9 months later. Expeditionary warfare requires a larger air force and a much larger navy to protect this long logistics chain.

Another reason expeditionary warfare is more expensive is that, because of the logistic costs, you want to optimise on kit that weighs less and takes on less space, and use a small number of well-trained regulars rather than a larger number of less-well-trained reservists. But if you are doing continental warfare it is more cost effective to have an army made up mostly of reservists with older equipment.

As I have previously written:

In expeditionary warfare, a main constraint is transport to the theater of war. If you can only fly in a small number of soldiers, it makes sense that they be well-trained regulars and not reservists. [...] Similarly for vehicles and other equipment: if you can only bring in a certain number of tons of equipment, then it makes sense for it to be the highest quality equipment.

UK approves big new Chinese embassy

The UK government, in its determination to have a foreign policy that totally undermines British interests, has approved plans for a massive new Chinese embassy which (I’m sure entirely co-incidentally LOL) will be built over top secret cables:

The BBC reports:

The UK has approved China’s plans for a huge new embassy in central London, despite opponents warning it could be used as a base for spying and pose security risks.

Housing Secretary Steve Reed, who is responsible for planning policy, had given permission for the development to go ahead, subject to certain conditions.

The site at Royal Mint Court is close to the City of London and fibre optic cables that carry vast quantities of highly sensitive data, sparking concerns they could be used by China to infiltrate the UK’s financial system.

Conservative shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel said: “Keir Starmer has sold off our national security to the Chinese Communist Party with his shameful super embassy surrender.”

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller said the decision would “amplify China’s surveillance efforts here in the UK and endanger the security of our data - not to speak of the safety of the brave Hong Kongers on British soil”.

Since winning power, Labour has sought closer trade ties with China, with Chancellor Rachel Reeves among several senior government figures to visit the country.

Yes, let’s make ourselves dependent on yet another potential enemy! Not content on being dependent on America, the government wants to make us dependent on China as well. Idiots.

However, critics have argued the threat of spying by the Chinese state and its intimidation against dissidents abroad are reasons for a more cautious relationship.

Indeed.

Yet again, the government fucks up. It’s as if they have no conception there is such a thing as the national interest.

The sooner Scotland is not ruled by such clowns, the better.

Uncomfortable truths about immigration

Alexander Kustov has some Uncomfortable truths about immigration:

The core problem is that we rarely say out loud what we all know privately: some immigration policies, and thus also some immigrants which they bring, are much more beneficial economically or culturally than others for receiving countries. Instead, we talk as if “immigration” were a single, abstract good that works for everyone, everywhere, and under any policy design.

This is of course a statement of the bleeding obvious. That it has to be resaid says something of the times we live in.

People are individuals and some individuals are more beneficial to society than others; this is true of people who stay in the same country they were born in, and it is also true of people who move to a different country.

Did trump chicken out over Greenland?

TLDR News EU asks Did Trump “Chicken Out” Over Greenland?

They answer their question “yes”.

Schröder loves Russia, hates Germany and Europe

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder called for an end to the “demonization” of Russia (New voice of Ukraine):

Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder called for an end to the “demonization” of Russia and for the resumption of energy cooperation with it in a column for Berliner Zeitung on Jan. 23.

Schröder wrote that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a violation of international law, but he still opposes “the demonization of Russia as an eternal enemy.”

“Russia is not a country of barbarians, but a country with a great culture and diverse historical ties with Germany,” Schröder claimed.

Schröder also spoke in favour of resuming supplies of “inexpensive energy carriers” from Russia. He added that Germany “needs such forms of cooperation with Russia.”

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi reacted to the former German chancellor’s statements. According to him, Schröder at one time “hooked Germany and Europe on Putin’s gas needle” and helped Moscow prepare for war against Ukraine.

It’s about time Europeans learned it is vital that we not be dependent on potentially hostile states -- whether Russia, USA, China, or anywhere else -- for raw materials or any manufactured goods.

Putin-loving traitors like Schröder will never understand that, they are simply emotionally incapable of it. The world would be a better place if Schröder committed suicide by shooting himself in the back of the head twice and then falling from a window.

I’m publishing the text in full, as Carney makes some important points.

The gist of it is:

• the rules-based order no longer exists

• mid-sized powers such as Canada are weak individually

• but together they can be strong

Thank you very much, Larry. I’m going to start in French, and then I’ll switch back to English.

[The following is translated from French]

Thank you, Larry. It is both a pleasure, and a duty, to be with you tonight in this pivotal moment that Canada and the world going through.

Today I will talk about a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints.

On the other hand, I would like to tell you that the other countries, especially intermediate powers like Canada, are not powerless. They have the capacity to build a new order that encompasses our values, such as respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the various states.

The power of the less power starts with honesty.

[Carney returns to speaking in English]

It seems that every day we’re reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry, that the rules based order is fading, that the strong can do what they can, and the weak must suffer what they must.

And this aphorism of Thucydides is presented as inevitable, as the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself.

And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along, to accommodate, to avoid trouble, to hope that compliance will buy safety.

Well, it won’t.

So, what are our options?

In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel, later president, wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless, and in it, he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?

And his answer began with a greengrocer.

Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: ‘Workers of the world unite’. He doesn’t believe it, no-one does, but he places a sign anyway to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persist – not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.

Havel called this “living within a lie”.

The system’s power comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source. When even one person stops performing, when the greengrocer removes his sign, the illusion begins to crack. Friends, it is time for companies and countries to take their signs down.

For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, we praised its principles, we benefited from its predictability. And because of that, we could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.

We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false that the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.

This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.

So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals, and we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality.

This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.

Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration, when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

The multilateral institutions on which the middle powers have relied – the WTO, the UN, the COP – the architecture, the very architecture of collective problem solving are under threat. And as a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions that they must develop greater strategic autonomy, in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance and supply chains.

And this impulse is understandable. A country that can’t feed itself, fuel itself or defend itself, has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself.

But let’s be clear eyed about where this leads.

A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable. And there is another truth. If great powers abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from transactionalism will become harder to replicate.

Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships.

Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty.

They’ll buy insurance, increase options in order to rebuild sovereignty – sovereignty that was once grounded in rules, but will increasingly be anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.

This room knows this is classic risk management. Risk management comes at a price, but that cost of strategic autonomy, of sovereignty can also be shared.

Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortresses. Shared standards reduce fragmentations. Complementarities are positive sum. And the question for middle powers like Canada is not whether to adapt to the new reality – we must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls, or whether we can do something more ambitious.

Now Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture.

Canadians know that our old comfortable assumptions that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security – that assumption is no longer valid. And our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb, the President of Finland, has termed “value-based realism”.

Or, to put another way, we aim to be both principled and pragmatic – principled in our commitment to fundamental values, sovereignty, territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force, except when consistent with the UN Charter, and respect for human rights, and pragmatic and recognizing that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner will share all of our values.

So, we’re engaging broadly, strategically with open eyes. We actively take on the world as it is, not wait around for a world we wish to be.

We are calibrating our relationships, so their depth reflects our values, and we’re prioritizing broad engagement to maximize our influence, given and given the fluidity of the world at the moment, the risks that this poses and the stakes for what comes next.

And we are no longer just relying on the strength of our values, but also the value of our strength.

We are building that strength at home.

Since my government took office, we have cut taxes on incomes, on capital gains and business investment. We have removed all federal barriers to interprovincial trade. We are fast tracking a trillion dollars of investments in energy, AI, critical minerals, new trade corridors and beyond. We’re doubling our defence spending by the end of this decade, and we’re doing so in ways that build our domestic industries.

And we are rapidly diversifying abroad. We have agreed a comprehensive strategic partnership with the EU, including joining SAFE, the European defence procurement arrangements. We have signed 12 other trade and security deals on four continents in six months. The past few days, we’ve concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar. We’re negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines and Mercosur.

We’re doing something else. To help solve global problems, we’re pursuing variable geometry, in other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests. So, on Ukraine, we’re a core member of the Coalition of the Willing and one of the largest per capita contributors to its defence and security.

On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark, and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland’s future.

Our commitment to NATO’s Article 5 is unwavering, so we’re working with our NATO allies, including the Nordic Baltic Gate, to further secure the alliance’s northern and western flanks, including through Canada’s unprecedented investments in over-the-horizon radar, in submarines, in aircraft and boots on the ground, boots on the ice.

Canada strongly opposes tariffs over Greenland and calls for focused talks to achieve our shared objectives of security and prosperity in the Arctic.

On plurilateral trade, we’re championing efforts to build a bridge between the Trans Pacific Partnership and the European Union, which would create a new trading bloc of 1.5 billion people. On critical minerals, we’re forming buyers’ clubs anchored in the G7 so the world can diversify away from concentrated supply. And on AI, we’re cooperating with like-minded democracies to ensure that we won’t ultimately be forced to choose between hegemons and hyper-scalers.

This is not naive multilateralism, nor is it relying on their institutions. It’s building coalitions that work – issues by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together.

In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations.

What it’s doing is creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture, on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities.

Argue, the middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.

But I’d also say that great powers, great powers can afford for now to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity and the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not.

But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what’s offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating.

This is not sovereignty. It’s the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination. In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice – compete with each other for favour, or to combine to create a third path with impact.

We shouldn’t allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity and rules will remain strong, if we choose to wield them together – which brings me back to Havel.

What does it mean for middle powers to live the truth?

First, it means naming reality. Stop invoking rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised. Call it what it is – a system of intensifying great power rivalry, where the most powerful pursue their interests, using economic integration as coercion.

It means acting consistently, applying the same standards to allies and rivals. When middle powers criticize economic intimidation from one direction, but stay silent when it comes from another, we are keeping the sign in the window.

It means building what we claim to believe in, rather than waiting for the old order to be restored. It means creating institutions and agreements that function as described. And it means reducing the leverage that enables coercion – that’s building a strong domestic economy. It should be every government’s immediate priority.

And diversification internationally is not just economic prudence, it’s a material foundation for honest foreign policy, because countries earn the right to principled stands by reducing their vulnerability to retaliation.

So Canada. Canada has what the world wants. We are an energy superpower. We hold vast reserves of critical minerals. We have the most educated population in the world. Our pension funds are amongst the world’s largest and most sophisticated investors. In other words, we have capital, talent… we also have a government with immense fiscal capacity to act decisively. And we have the values to which many others aspire.

Canada is a pluralistic society that works. Our public square is loud, diverse and free. Canadians remain committed to sustainability. We are a stable and reliable partner in a world that is anything but.. A partner that builds and values relationships for the long term.

And we have something else. We have a recognition of what’s happening and a determination to act accordingly. We understand that this rupture calls for more than adaptation. It calls for honesty about the world as it is.

We are taking the sign out of the window. We know the old order is not coming back. We shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy, but we believe that from the fracture, we can build something bigger, better, stronger, more just. This is the task of the middle powers, the countries that have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and most to gain from genuine cooperation.

The powerful have their power.

But we have something too – the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.

That is Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently, and it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us. Thank you very much.

The video of the speech is available here.

A threat by US President Donald Trump to impose fresh tariffs on eight allies opposed to his proposed takeover of Greenland has drawn condemnation from European leaders.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the move was “completely wrong”, while French President Emmanuel Macron called it “unacceptable”.

The comments came after Trump announced a 10% tariff on goods from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland would come into force on 1 February, but could later rise to 25% - and would last until a deal was reached.

Trump insists the autonomous Danish territory is critical for US security and has not ruled out taking it by force.

Britain and Europe both concluded trade deals with Trump’s USA last year. But Trump now wants to use those deals as hostages to extract further concessions from European countries.

Therefore there is no point in anyone making a trade deal with Trump. Any deal with him is not worth the paper it is written on, as he will threaten to tear it up every time he wants more concessions.

And there is no point in making concessions, because every concession will just mean he will come back later asking for something else. Give him Greenland and he’ll want Iceland. If he gets Iceland he’ll want North Sea oil. Once you start paying the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane, so Europe must not respond to any US sanctions by making concessions: if we do, we only invite more sanctions in future.

Greenlanders demonstrating over Trump’s threatened annexation:

European reaction

The eight countries threatened with sanctions -- Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom -- hit back at the threats with a joint statement on Sunday 18 Jan 2026. They said:

As members of NATO, we are committed to strengthening Arctic security as a shared transatlantic interest. The pre-coordinated Danish exercise ‘Arctic Endurance’ conducted with Allies, responds to this necessity. It poses no threat to anyone.

We stand in full solidarity with the Kingdom of Denmark and the people of Greenland. Building on the process begun last week, we stand ready to engage in a dialogue based on the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity that we stand firmly behind.

Tariff threats undermine transatlantic relations and risk a dangerous downward spiral. We will continue to stand united and coordinated in our response. We are committed to upholding our sovereignty.

Indeed the tariffs do represent a “dangerous downward spiral”. If Trump continues on his current path, Europeans will have no choice but to consider him a hostile actor.

We should decouple our economies from the USA

There is no point in having trade deals with USA since anything we buy from them makes us dependent on them, at least to some extent. Trump will use that dependence as a weapon against us: he will only threaten to rip up a trade deal at any time in order to get concessions on something else.

We got to the current sorry state of dependence on the USA due to decisions by the British ruling class after the Suez Crisis 70 years ago: our rulers decided that Britain’s place was to be America’s poodle, and since then they have stuck to that position. All that poodling has won us no favours in America, or course, because who respects a spineless sycophant? Certainly Trump doesn’t.

The new Trump tariffs give us an opportunity to decouple our economies from the USA, and for that reason we should welcome them. Let’s make ourselves fully independent of the USA! We shouldn’t be reliant on them for anything! Then they can never use the threat of trade sanctions to hurt us.

Technological independence includes computing and internet technologies: we need our own equivalents of such things as AWS, gmail, google maps/docs/etc, social media. All computers should run Linux not Windows or iOS. A European mobile phone architecture to replace Android/iPhone, etc.

Some people might argue that “it will take decades to truly be independent” of the USA. This not true. One of the longest lead items is the GCAP stealth fighter aircraft which is expected to see its first flight in 2027 and be in service by 2035.

Building equivalents to US computing and internet services is all doable within 5 years if the will is there.

The will to make necessary changes

And that’s the issue -- will. it’s quite obvious that any big change like this will attract foot-dragging naysayers who will be full of negativity and say things like “it can’t be done”, “it’s impossible”, “people won’t like it”, “you’ll never succeed”, “I don’t want to have to change how I work”, “it’s too difficult”, “it might cost money”, “it’ll be inconvenient” etc.

So how do we shut down opposition? I propose legislation declaring the threat from America and Russia to be a state of emergency and that opposition to the changes necessary to be legally considered tantamount to treason (which needs to carry the death penalty again). Because “opposition to the changes necessary” is a vague boundary, people will want to err on the side of caution and enthusiastically support the changes.

What was wrong with the wrong kind of snow, anyway? Jago Hazzard explains:

Britain’s two political blocs

Ian Dunt discusses Britain’s two political blocs:

We hear a lot - rightly - about the shattering of the electorate into multi-party politics. But we hear less about the fact that these parties actually coalesce into two coherent, bounded ideological blocs. On an academic level, there’s something pretty close to consensus that this is how we should discuss party politics. On a public level - on TV news, in party strategy - there is precious little mention of it at all.

The Reform-Tory bloc is right-conservative. It is older with lower levels of education. The other bloc is left-liberal. It is younger and has a higher level of education.

The origin story of the two-bloc phenomenon is Brexit, obviously, although the basic disparity in people’s values was obviously present before that, it just needed something to crystallise it.

And how right bloc party members like leaders with dark triad personality traits:

The Dark Triad personality traits break down cleanly between the two blocs. Labour, Lib Dem and Green members show little support for leaders who are dominant, aggressive, manipulative and hurtful of other people’s feelings. Conservative and Reform voters show much more support.

Boycott Estée Lauder

People against Trump’s proposed invasion of Greenland should boycott Estée Lauder:

Donald Trump got the idea for invading Greenland from a mascara mogul.

This detail is important to know because it shines a light on MAGA’s gangster kingdom. Going after Greenland would destroy 80-plus years of Western alliances. It will undermine NATO at a crucial moment. But it all goes back to Ronald Lauder of Estée Lauder telling Donald that Greenland was easy pickings.

Legal action on Ajax

Will the UK govmt take legal action against the makers of the troubled Ajax vehicle?

Bendigo Writers Festival

Helen Dale writes of the Bendigo Writers Festival:

In August last year, was the Bendigo Writers’ Festival. Australia’s Jewish lobby persuaded the festival to adopt a code of conduct requiring invitees to avoid discussing “language or topics that could be considered inflammatory, divisive, or disrespectful” and mandated compliance with a major university sponsor’s anti-racism policy. Writers had only two days to comply, and as a sometime attendee of writers’ festivals in the past, I can assure you their speeches would have been written and readings selected.

I will note that “language or topics that could be considered inflammatory, divisive, or disrespectful” is so wide reaching it could cover anything. Indeed, whatever anyone says, someone somewhere is bound to disapprove of it. For example, many would regard the proposed code of conduct itself as “inflammatory” and “divisive”. And forcing the CoC on people 2 days before the festival was certainly “disrespectful”.

And indeed, the CoC caused the festival to collapse:

Led by Abdel-Fattah, this mix of inconvenience and censorship meant most writers bailed out, and the festival collapsed.

Bendigo is a prosperous regional city (pop. approx. 100K) in country Victoria, and its city council was not really in a position to save it—everything happened at such short notice.

Special Military Operation now longer than Great Patriotic War

Lesia Dubenko writes:

Russia’s “Special Military Operation” has now exceeded the length of the Soviet Union’s war against Nazi Germany.

Europe’s far right distance themselves from Trump

Is Europe’s far right distancing themselves from Trump? TLDR News reports:

US politician threatens Britain

Representative Anna Paulina Luna says:

If Starmer is successful in banning @X in Britain, I will move forward with legislation that is currently being drafted to sanction not only Starmer, but Britain as a whole. This would mirror actions previously taken by the United States in response to foreign governments restricting the platform, including the dispute with Brazil in 2024–2025, which resulted in tariffs, visa revocations, and sanctions and consequences tied to free speech concerns against Brazilian officials over concerns related to censorship and free-speech violations.

Starmer should reconsider this course of action, or there will be consequences.

Will Lords Scrap Chagos deal?

TLDR News asks whether the House of Lords will scrap the government’s Chagos deal:

I hope they do. This deal is bad for Britain and bad for the Chagos islanders. It’s also a really good example of the British ruling class behaving as if they have no concept of the national interest.