WILL THE UK NEED A BAILOUT

29 August 2025

Will the UK Need a Bailout?

Introduction

Talk of a UK bailout still feels far-fetched - after all, Britain has advantages that France does not enjoy. The UK issues debt in its own free-floating currency, has an unusually long average gilt maturity of around 14 years, and benefits from an independent central bank that can backstop markets, as the Bank of England showed during the 2022 LDI pension fund crisis. 

These buffers give more breathing room than France, now under pressure for emergency spending cuts and its government demanding a vote of confidence on its austerity plan.

Yet Britain’s fiscal arithmetic is tightening. With debt at historic highs, annual borrowing still large, and gilt yields back to levels not seen since the 1990s, the question requires very serious consideration.

1. Where the UK is Today

2. How We Got Here

3. Where We Need to Be

4. The Path to Get There - and the Risks

1. Where the UK is Today

• Public debt stands at £2.77 trillion (97% of GDP), the highest ratio since the early 1960s

• The deficit remains about 4.4% of GDP, or £121 billion per year

• Gross financing needs are truly enormous: around £299 billion of gilt issuance scheduled in 2025/26

• Debt interest is consuming £111 billion annually - more than the education budget ... and rising as older gilts are refinanced at higher rates

• Yields on 10-year gilts are around 4.7%, with 30-year above 5.5%, showing markets demand a significant premium.

2. How We Got Here

• A decade of weak growth has made every fiscal shock harder and harder to absorb

• COVID-19 borrowing and energy subsidies after NATO expansion finally provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, piling on fresh debt

• Reliance on index-linked gilts (~22% of the total) backfired when inflation spiked, pushing up interest costs

• The LDI “mini-budget” crisis of 2022 demonstrated how quickly markets can revolt if fiscal policy appears unfunded, but equally how quickly confidence can return when government applies the brakes

3. Where We Need to Be

SMART Targets

• Stabilise debt by reducing borrowing below 3% of GDP (~£80 billion), within the next five years

• Bring the interest bill back under control, aiming to cap it below 3% of GDP (~£85 billion)

• Preserve the UK’s strengths: long debt maturities, central bank independence, credibility with investors

• Restore enough fiscal space to invest in productivity drivers - energy security, AI, infrastructure, skills, start-up incubators - so consolidation doesn’t turn to permanent stagnation.

4. The Path to Get There - and the Risks

• Consolidation: fiscal effort worth 1 - 2% of GDP (£30–60 billion) through a mix of targeted tax reform and spending restraint

• Windfall taxes eg on banks, to raise billions

• Market management: the BoE can pause quantitative tightening or intervene in gilt markets again if disorder arises, but credibility requires political discipline too

• Growth strategy: faster productivity growth can make the debt sustainable long-term. That means tackling housing, planning, and skills bottlenecks.

• Risks:

o Political backlash against spending cuts or tax rises, and civil unrest

o External shocks (oil prices, US rates, inflation reduction act and tariffs, more war) pushing yields higher

o If credibility is lost, an IMF-BoE package in the order of £120–180 billion could become unavoidable, with painful conditionality.

In short, the UK is not yet France, but its fiscal cushion is eroding. Unless borrowing is curbed and growth restored, the conversation about bailouts could shift from speculation to reality within this Parliament. 

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NO SOVEREIGNTY WITHOUT INNOVATION

15 August 2025

1. Trump’s Fake Narrative

It is a huge fake news for Trump to tell us in Europe that we are stealing America's money and jobs, because while the trade surplus in goods - it's true - is around $300b, what he doesn't tell you is that this is nothing compared with Europe's trade deficit in services; and still more important is the threat to Europe's sovereignty caused by this dependence on American service providers, especially in the area of b2b software, the cloud and cyber security.

When you think about the rise of the American empire and its increasing dominance and cruelty over its allies, the vassals, and its disregard for human rights or freedoms, you might think in military milestones - the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Iraq war, the twin towers, all the forever wars from Yugoslavia through ro Ukraine, and now ongoing with Gaza, Iran (Armenia), Pakistan, Cambodia.... intrigue, murder and mayhem everywhere.

2. The Cyber Space Empire

But what about in the world of cyber space?

When people talk of our cyber network on the cloud, it's not really appreciated that all we see is the tip of the iceberg, how the software collects, processes, stores and distributes information held "in the cloud".

But is it in the sky? In fact, the cloud is a very concrete, heavy and expensive thing, not in the sky but in underground cables and data centres, by land and by sea. 

And of expenditure on things digital, b2b, we just see 15% of the cost in the cloud and SaaS. We don't appreciate the data centers being built, the Blackwell GPUs, just consider the energy to the point where for example Microsoft is apparently reopening end extending Three Mile Island.

3. Real Estate Without Borders

For those of us who think in geopolitical terms, where borders and frontiers are lines on a map, this cyber "real estate", if you like to call it that, doesn't stop at borders, but continues right up to your smart phone, laptop, or more importantly, to your business IT hardware, and right up to the CPU itself.

Yanis Varoufakis considers that the new cyber real estate is owned by the new landlords, and they rent it out through software-as-a-service. Should we consider a bit more deeply what he is saying?

4. Europe’s Digital Dependence

Here are some interesting figures, figures that few people realise, on American domination of the cyber world (so not military physical domination, but cyber digital).

5. Market Power and Geopolitics

European expenditure on software and cloud goes 83% to American suppliers, generating two million high-paying jobs for Americans, while draining Europe of innovation skills and the possibilities of self-reliance.

That's €264 billion a year, that's just European b2b, but can you imagine how much that might be worldwide? And is it any wonder that the Mag7 (8 with Palantir), spending many hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, are draining Europe of the ability to compete, and that these American tech companies should so completely dominate the S&P 500, which in turn dominates world stock markets?

Of course, people worry about this concentration of dominance in their portfolio and can see why it could be a good idea to diversify into - just an example - SPKL 65%, XMWX 25%, PRAN 10%... that's a personal choice.... but this is how the American economy becomes hyper-financilised.

6. The Cost of Dependency

Europe's expenditure on American tech, focusing exclusively on commercial software as a service and the cloud, is about the same as its expenditure on oil and gas, and the same as Europe's goods' trade surplus with America. ... and a figure that is expected to double in the next 7 years. 83% of Europe's expenditure as we have seen goes to American companies. 

And I read that if just 15% of this extraordinary budget could be repatriated to Europe, it would create half a million jobs. And with all the tax receipts and the velocity of money, imagine what that would do to Europe's economies and prosperity.

7. The Security Risk You Don’t See

But considering that technology dominates all other sectors of any economy, and that this technology is largely American, it's a good idea to be aware of the evolution of tech and its strategic consequences - security of data, trade, innovation - in the context of risk to our independence. We witness America's use of increasingly brutal forms of dominance and all the jagged technological, economic and military uncertainty this creates.

In the past, the company would buy a software license, after which it would own the software and manage its data unsynced from the software company. Today, the company buys an annual subscription service to software that sits on the server. It no longer has the control of its data processing, and its data can be accessed / collected in all legality by American economic intelligence. Again, not many members of the public are aware of this.

8. First-hand Reality

Most companies with some sector importance will be aware of hundreds, if not thousands, of attempted invasions of their network daily...of course we are told it was all the Russians or the Chinese, but - for example - Airbus, Thales and Athos know otherwise. They recruited exceptional talent to write encryption and sniffing software, from Paris-Saclay (ranked #1 worldwide), the Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS) Paris, and Sorbonne University, and find these students are now being recruited into American companies.

So the loss of STEM post-grads is a real threat, a threat to European security and competitiveness today; and to our sovereignty in the next ten to fifteen years.

9. The Tax and Transparency Black Hole

Another point that is little appreciated is that this money for services, for American services paid for by Europe, transits through Ireland and off to so-called offshore "fiscal paradises". So that not only is it not taxed, but also, not open to inspection.

10. Leadership Vacuum

Point being, there's plenty of scope for independent minded leadership in Europe to take up Europe's defense.... This is not feasible, Europe's leadership has been dumbed down and bought out.

How to re-equilibrate all this, particularly now that there are the tariffs and protectionism?

Supping in the cafe at the end of the empire.

[END]

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DOES FRANCE NEED A BAILOUT

29 August 2025

Will France Need a Bailout

1. Where France is today

2. How we got here

3. Where we need to be

4. The path ro get there, plus risks.

1. Where we are today

France is staring at a fiscal crunch of historic proportions. Public debt stands at around 114% of GDP (over €3.3 trillion), while the budget deficit remains close to 6% of GDP, despite repeated promises of consolidation. The cost of refinancing that debt has climbed as ten-year bond yields hover near 3.5%, pushing the annual interest bill towards €60 - 70 billion. Investors are demanding higher spreads over German Bunds (currently ~0.7%), signalling waning confidence. 

Against this backdrop, Prime Minister Bayrou’s government has called a confidence vote for 8 September, tied to deep austerity measures that neither he nor the previous prime minister have been able to get through the National Assembly - to lop two public holidays off the annual calendar, tight control of unemployment benefits, freeze welfare benefits and the wages of civil servants, plus more depluming of the rich (but you'd have to catch them first). This underlines the severity of the crisis France - and by extension, Germany and the EU itself - is facing.

2. How we got here

The roots are long in the making. France’s debt ratio has been rising almost uninterruptedly since the global financial crisis of 2008, with COVID-19 and the Ukraine energy shock and war adding further layers of borrowing. Structural deficits - high spending on pensions, healthcare, and public administration - were tolerated in an era of near-zero interest rates. But once inflation spiked and the ECB raised rates, the cost of rolling over €300 billion of annual financing needs became unsustainable. A fragmented National Assembly has hampered reforms, while investor patience has thinned after years of failure to hit deficit targets.

3. Where we need to be

The immediate goal is credibility: a programme that reassures markets and allows France to keep borrowing at manageable rates. In practice, this means reducing the deficit to below the EU ceiling of 3% of GDP by the end of the decade, stabilising the debt ratio (Mastrictch said 60% but that was back in the days...), and regaining sufficient fiscal room to invest in growth drivers like energy, innovation, infrastructure and a European defence industry. 

That path requires €80 - 130 billion of fiscal effort over four years or roughly 3 - 4% of GDP. To be achieved through a mix of spending restraint, efficiency reforms, and carefully designed tax measures. 

A bailout package of €150–225 billion from the ESM, backed by ECB bond purchases, would serve as a bridge: enough cash to calm markets while reforms bite.

4. The path and the risks

The road ahead is steep. Consolidation on this scale will almost certainly shave 0.5 - 1 percentage point off growth per year in the near term, at a time when households already feel squeezed.

If reforms stall or a political backlash derails implementation, spreads could widen again, forcing a second rescue. Rising interest costs will eat up fiscal space for years to come, and any global downturn would worsen debt dynamics. 

Politically in particular, the risk is acute. If the vote of confidence is lost, what is macron to do? Should he find a new prime minister in one year or should he call elections? A third PM in 12 months would face exactly the same problems as rhe orevious two. Elections would almost certainly return the national rally with a substantial majority. So, further fragmentation, populist surges, and labour unrest, especially if austerity is seen as externally imposed, notably by paymaster Germany (which has its own very severe problems). 

The task for policymakers is to convince citizens that today’s pain is the price of tomorrow’s sovereignty - and to deliver enough investment alongside austerity so that the cure does not kill the patient.

Here’s a visual flow diagram to help grasp the argument at a glance.

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NO SOVEREIGNTY WITHOUT INNOVATION

15 August 2025

1. Trump’s Fake Narrative

It is fake news for Trump to tell us in Europe that we are stealing America’s money and jobs - though the goods trade surplus of around $300 billion is real. What he doesn’t say is that this is dwarfed by Europe’s deficit in services, and the far greater threat: Europe’s sovereignty is compromised by its reliance on American service providers - especially in B2B software, cloud computing, and cybersecurity.

When you think of the American empire’s rise, you picture military milestones: Soviet collapse, Iraq War, 9/11, the endless wars from Yugoslavia to Ukraine, and now the Gaza geno, Iran, Pakistan, Armenia - chaos and misery everywhere.

2. The Cyber Space Empire

But what about the empire in cyberspace?

When people speak of “the cloud,” we seldom appreciate that we’re seeing only the tip of the iceberg of how software collects, processes, stores, and distributes our data.

The cloud isn’t something in the sky, it’s physical infrastructure: underground cables, data centres, Blackwell comouters, GPU chips, on land and sea.

Of all digital B2B spending, only about 15% is visible as subscriptions or software use. The rest goes into infrastructure - data centres, compute hardware, energy usage (Microsoft is involved in restarting Three Mile Island for example). These hidden costs are massive.

3. Real Estate Without Borders

In geopolitical thinking, borders on a map define power. But this cyber “real estate” transcends borders, it runs right through smartphones, laptops, business servers, and down to the very CPU itself.

As Yanis Varoufakis puts it, this new cyber-land is owned by the new landlords and rented out via software-as-a-service. What are the implications of this ownership for the security of our data and the strategic leverage or misuse of same to our commercial disadvantage?

4. Europe’s Digital Dependence – Hard Facts

Here are some figures few people grasp about American dominance in the cyber sector:

5. Market Power and Geopolitics

An estimated 83% of Europe’s enterprise spending on software and cloud goes to American suppliers, amounting to €264 billion annually.

That figure about matches Europe’s goods surplus with the US and equals its oil and gas spending. No wonder that the “Mag7” tech giants completely overshadow European competition - today they account for a third of the S&P 500 - growing from 20% just two years ago - with roughly 63% average gains in 2024. 

America has the immense market, the deep deep funds, the startup infrastructure both legal and process, the can-do attitude and the advantage of three decades of outstanding achievements and experience.

6. The Cost of Dependency

This tech dominance supports millions of high-paying American jobs - two million, by some estimates. In contrast, if Europe kept just 15% of that spend local, it could create half a million jobs, boost tax receipts, and revitalise the velocity of money..

Yet, much of this money funnels through Ireland and tax havens, escaping scrutiny and taxation.

7. The Security Risk You Don’t See

Given technology’s economic primacy, its dominant over all other sectors of the economy, European dependence on American tech is a gaping strategic vulnerability. Today, software is bought as annual subscriptions, not owned outright as was the case before the cloud, and access to your data is governed by US law.

Under the CLOUD Act, American agencies can legally access data stored by US-based services, so no wonder this is a sovereignty crisis and one of that few realise and still fewer properly understand..

8. First-hand Reality

During my time at Airbus, we faced hundreds or thousands of daily intrusion attempts - officially from Russia or China. We recruited French PhD mathematicians from Paris-Saclay, Ecole Normale Supeiure ENS, and the Sorbonne, and grew in-house our cyber experts. We - together with Thales and Athos - developed the encryption and sniffing capabilities needed to protect our data. 

This was later all scooped up by the US, able to offer far more interesting and well-paid jobs. This STEM brain drain is so severe that it endangers Europe’s sovereignty in the decade ahead.

9. The Tax and Transparency Black Hole

Equally alarming, this European spend flows through Ireland and then into offshore fiscal sanctuaries - it is untaxed, untraceable, and unaccounted for.

10. Leadership Vacuum

Despite this existential crisis, Europe lacks independent-minded leadership needed to reverse the trend. Frankly put, our politicians at home and in the EU have been easily bought out - or left with little choice - by American money and soft power. Plus, with tariffs in place and protectionism rising, meaningful rebalancing remains an utter fantasy. 

The need for sovereignty in tech is urgent yet political will is absent - we have been well and truly vassalised.

Some Additional Context & Implications:

European reliance on US cloud providers raises fears around data access and control .

Only about 15% of the European cloud market is held by local firms, underscoring the dominance of these American hyperscalers .

In response, the EU is exploring digital sovereignty frameworks like EuroStack and Gaia‑X.

The AWS European Sovereign Cloud promises EU-only operation and €7.8 billion backing to 2040.

Public concern is mounting: surveys show over 70% of European businesses worry about US cloud provider access to their data.

Microsoft's pledge to defend European services from US political interference adds a layer of reassurance, or perhaps this is imagined.

References by Section

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5. Market Power and Geopolitics

• https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-eu-internet-europe-us-trade-war-data-cyber/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
• https://euro-stack.com/blog/2025/5/asteres-report-europe-digital-dependency?utm_source=chatgpt.com

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7. The Security Risk You Don’t See

• https://wire.com/en/blog/cloud-act-eu-data-sovereignty?utm_source=chatgpt.com

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Additional Context & Implications

• https://cepa.org/article/decoupling-from-the-us-cloud-a-step-backwards/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
• https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/28/euro_cloud_vs_us/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaia-X?utm_source=chatgpt.com
• https://www.itpro.com/cloud/cloud-computing/aws-says-only-europeans-will-run-its-european-sovereign-cloud-service?utm_source=chatgpt.com
• https://www.techradar.com/pro/cloud-sovereignty-in-europe-and-beyond-a-tipping-point?utm_source=chatgpt.com
• https://www.ft.com/content/66708fed-ec05-42a6-ab30-dadbb3fecaf3?utm_source=chatgpt.com

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CHANGING ROOMS, CHANGING RULES

2 August 2025

trans-doctor-sandie-peggie-chromosomally-male-consultant-tribunal

A nurse objects when a trans doctor enters a shared changing room. Is this a hate crime or is the doctor threatening the nurse's comfort zone? The public are divided.

SUMMARY OF THE CASE

An industrial tribunal involving veteran nurse Sandie Peggie and transgender doctor Beth Upton at Victoria Hospital in Fife has sparked controversy. Peggie was suspended after objecting to using the same changing room, citing discomfort with a chromosomally male doctor entering a female facility. A consultant told the tribunal the incident “could be considered a hate incident”, though Peggie maintained she raised a legitimate boundary or personal comfort zone issue explains is dea  - not a hate crime.

After an internal NHS Fife investigation lasting 18 months, Peggie was cleared of gross misconduct in July 2025, though the employment claim continues under the Equality Act for harassment and indirect discrimination.

OP-ED

I don't think she's being hateful to have a red line saying that she doesn't like to share a changing room with a biological male.

"Protected characteristics" in UK law are race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or *gender reassignment* - I ve looked it up.

But a hate crime involves causing harm, an unlawful act, and the thing is, there must be an intention to cause harm.

So a hate crime is a criminal act, caused by someone's prejudice to harm the protected characteristics of another person.

But this nurse didn't threaten, attack, or abuse - she drew a red line around her "bodily comfort zone" ( what else to call it?) and complained that she was left feeling uncomfortaable.

Well, to me, this is once again the authorities being detached from reality to even consider such a complaint. It's another example of entrenching hostility and division, not listening to the views of others, it's encouraging hate crime, and on a bigger scale, isn't this is where civil war starts? It is the triumph of uncompromising ideology over tolerance and common sense.

Surely a bit of diplomacy would help here and the diplomat in question would be the personnel manager at the hospital, not the law courts? And the result of arbitrating this at the place of work could be an update to the employer's policy on workers' employee rights.

If this kind of nonsense goes to the courts, all that happens is public confidence in the legal system retreats further. We live in a pluralistic society - that means a society of different end often conflicting interests. And we resolve these conflicts in a democratic way, which doesn't mean taking all disputes to court, it means that if you can't sort it out between yourselves, go to arbitration and be prepared to accept real-world based judgment, not challenge all the time.

Basically, and this is what's missing today, we need to be polite and be considerate of other people, but the idea of tolerance and give and take, that we are all together in the same boat (pun intended), has been lost... now it's fighting.

There's a book I read years ago: "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman. Of course, it comes across as tremendously naive in trying to understand and harmonise society today, which is so completely mixed up. He said that success in life depends not just on IQ but on EQ. EQ is our ability to recognise, understand and manage emotions in ourselves and others, it's about emotional self-awareness, empathy, social skills in shaping relationships, decisions and leadership... more so than raw intellect.

The fact in this case is that you can't put this transgender guy anywhere. If he was sensitive to other people, he wouldn't press to share a changing room with a woman, or at least not with a woman who didn't want it. But if he's attracted to men, how could you put him in a men's changing room?

CONCLUSION

I'm not being conservative or authoritarian, but if you start from the position that there are only two sexes, then it's up to those who see themselves as biologically outside this definition to adapt to the rules of the game and put up with the discomfort, not impose try to impose it on others.

Issues of inclusion / exclusion and from a mental health point of view, it might be better to go with the flow of the majority.

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WHAT IS A JAD SESSION

30 July 2025

Let's look at a definition and early history of JAD and SSADM, take a look at the roles of the participants and design a template agenda.

A JAD session - short for Joint Application Development session -  is a structured meeting that brings together business users, developers, and analysts to collaboratively define system requirements or design solutions. It’s particularly useful during the early stages of a software project.

JAD was a response to slow and error-prone traditional methods of gathering system requirements going way back to the 1970s, a methodology developed at IBM by Chuck Morris and Tony Crawford.

SSADM - Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method - dates back to the early 1980s. It was developed under contract to the UK government’s Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) as a standardised method for analysing and designing information systems.

By the mid 1990s, SSADM was on the way out due to the rise of RAD (Rapid Application Development), Agile, and object-oriented methods.

Object-Oriented Methods (OOM) are a way of designing and building software systems based on the concept of “objects”. These are self-contained units that combine data and behaviour, an approach mirrors the way we understand real-world entities like a car, a user, or a booking.. each has its own characteristics and actions.

An object has

- Attributes (data/state) — e.g., a User has a name, email, password.

- Methods (behaviour) — e.g., a User can log in, edit a profile, make a booking.

- Objects belong to classes, which are like blueprints for creating multiple similar objects. User gives hosts and guests.

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🔍 What Happens in a JAD Session?

• Facilitated workshop, often lasting several hours to a few days
• Focused on rapid consensus-building
• Participants work through use cases, data flows, interfaces, or UI mockups
• Typically led by a facilitator, with a scribe, users, and technical experts

Business users who know the domain

Analysts who map the requirements

Developers who understand system capabilities

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🧩 Typical Roles in a JAD Session

Role	Responsibility
Facilitator	Guides the discussion, ensures all voices are heard
Scribe	Takes detailed notes, records decisions and diagrams
Business Users	Share domain knowledge, describe real-world processes
Developers	Ask clarifying questions, assess technical feasibility
Analysts	Translate discussion into models, user stories, or specs

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✅ Advantages

• Cuts down on back-and-forth emails
• Produces a shared understanding of goals
• Captures accurate, detailed requirements
• Increases buy-in from all stakeholders

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📌 Use Case for Rentals

If rhe team were all co-located or online for a few hours, it would be possible to run a JAD session to:

• Finalise feature priorities for the MVP
• Walk through the booking flow from a user's perspective
• Agree on UI elements based on tester feedback
• Tackle tricky areas like deposit handling or ICal sync

Here's a JAD session agenda or template for the team.

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📌 JAD session agenda

- 🎯 Purpose: Finalise MVP features, align design + functionality Participants: • 

Facilitator: Project lead analyst • Developers: [Insert Names] • Testers / Users: [Insert Names]

Session Agenda:

1. Welcome + Goals Overview (10 min)

2. Review of Core User Flows (20 min)

3. Feature Prioritisation Discussion (20 min)

4. UI/UX Walkthrough with Feedback (20 min)

5. Issue Resolution and Open Questions (15 min)

6. Wrap-up + Action Plan (5 min)

[End]

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KENNETH CLARK CIVILISATION

25 July 2025

The Louvre Abu Dhabi - a cathedral of human expression

From Cathedrals to Water Cannons: What Our Art Says About Us

1. REWINDING TO CIVILISATION'S GLORY

Let’s fast backward to the 1960s. Kenneth Clark - gentle, eloquent, with a cork-tipped cigarette in hand, clambering over rocks on an Ionian beach in clothes fit for the City of London - reminded a postwar Britain of its cultural inheritance. His television series Civilisation ( a thirteen episode series recorded in 1969, watch episode one here) began with the bold idea that art tells the truest story of who we are.

Clark quotes John Ruskin, who said that among words, deeds, and art, it is art that stands as the most reliable testament to a nation’s character. Not the art of elites or museum showpieces, but the art that emerges from the connected soul of a people, our feelings and preoccupations.

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2. WHAT DOES OUR ART SAY TODAY?

So what would Ruskin see if he walked through today’s culture? Not soaring cathedrals or visions of the divine, rhat's for sure.

Instead, we get:

• Banksy’s Dismaland – Mickey Mouse cries and Cinderella lies dead in a crashed carriage... he's mostly about the mockery of consumer dreams
• BLM street murals – bold and defiant, transient (where are rhey today?) protest, etched onto the streets
• Internet memes – Wojak "Everything is fine", the NPC Non-Playable Character (NPCs are background characters in video games you can't control. They follow scripts, show no free will, and repeat pre-written dialogue). All rhat post-ironic nihilistic disillusionment stuff ... You either believe the propaganda or you mock it so much that you end up half-believing it, because there's nothing else to believe in, no more heroes, no more values.
• A 15-metre mural of Greta Thunberg – submerged in climate anxiety, up to her neck in rising water

You wouldn't call this uplifting, it's about struggle and despair in the midst of abundance, the artist talking for the protesters as much as the NPCs.

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3. FROM GLORY TO GRIEF

What once inspired our greatest works was the glory of God. What inspires today's artists seems to be struggle, cynicism, despair....is rhat how you - looking out at the world today - feel? Well this is your art.

In Clark’s world, beauty was in sacred proportions.

• The chateaux of the Loire Valley
• The grace of Chartres, Notre-Dame, or Florence’s Duomo
• A civilisation, a people, striving toward something higher, celebrating the glory of God.

Today? You don't see much of that today. Instead, we have global expanses of glass and concrete. We no longer celebrate our civilisation with art. We criticise it, and often with the ugliest works we can dream up.

Still, there is a modern day Louvre, but it's not in Europe, it's in the middle east. The Louvre Abu Dhabi seeks "to modernise while honouring heritage". In other words, build on the past, rather than destroy ourselves.

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4. THE NEW SYMBOL OF THE WEST

And if there’s one object that captures what we are today, it’s not the cross, not a dome, it’s the water cannon. Wheeled out to meet protest, unrest, the rage of a discontented citizenry, it's all about containment - kettling, containment and state control.

🤣🤣🤣

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5. POSTSCRIPT

What Clark began with Bach and Michelangelo, we’ve answered with graffiti and memes. But Ruskin wasn’t wrong. Our art still tells the truth. It tells us the West is in crisis. It tells us that in a way we’ve lost the script... will we find a new story worth carving in stone? Or will our civilisation fade from memory?

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

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TRUMP AT THE END OF EMPIRE CAFE

24 July 2025

TRUMP AT THE LAST CAFÉ BEFORE THE END OF EMPIRE

Policy contradiction, chaos, and the strange logic of leadership at the end of empire café.

1. A Loose Cannon with a Steady Aim

“Trump is a loose cannon… anything is possible”, writes a reader. It’s a phrase tossed around by both supporters and critics of Trump, and there’s something paradoxically fitting in it. When he came to power, he did so with three grand, populist ambitions:

- To rebalance the economy - trade, fiscal, and monetary

- To shut the border and end uncontrolled immigration

- To stop America’s endless wars abroad

This sounds like a blueprint for restoring a strong and independent republic. But when you begin to break these aims into actionable objectives, the contradictions start piling up.

2. Contradictions at the Heart of Empire

Take the trade imbalance. If you want to bring manufacturing home and reduce interest payments, currently 20% of US government expenditure, you need to make exports cheaper and lower rhe Fed rate... which means lowering the dollar. But that undermines the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency and how do you attract the capital needed to fund the deficits without offering high yields?

Or immigration. Shutting the border sounds like a clean solution... until harvest season. Then the cries go up from farmers, builders, and meat-packing plants and employers of casual workers, desperate for the cheap labour that fuels the economy Trump vowed to revive.

Or stop using military muscle to resolve foreign policy conflicts. How could America withdraw from the world and at the same time remain world hegemon, and keep the military-industrial-congressional complex going?

These internal contradictions - breaking out foreign and domestic policy goals into spews of contradictory objectives - are never resolved, they can't be, they are simply masked, not by policy but by performance. 

The real idea is to spend as long as possible in the last cafe before the end of empire.

3. The Perfect Liar for the Age of Collapse

Trump’s greatest political skill may be his total indifference to consistency. Facts, figures, coherent positions, matter less to him than the mood of the moment and the needs of his publics. He may seem to be flip-flopping and continuously changing his mind, but reality means he will say what he needs to say to whoever is in front of him, regardless of long term goals, regardless of the truth. And that’s exactly why he can survive the contradictions of this age of end-of-empire.

While powerful interest groups - AIPAC, the military-industrial-complex, Wall Street whose taxes incidentally fund the government at least in part, the agricultural lobby, the fossil fuel billionaires, the tech firms - all pull in opposing directions, Trump rests on his MAGA base end keeps the interest groups at bay with a barrage of contradictory poses and stories. His genius isn’t in strategic clarity. It’s in ambiguity and showmanship... in promising everyone what they want... and then changing the story by lunchtime.

In this sense, he is the ideal manager of late imperial decline. At the Empire Café, with the walls cracking and the staff revolting, he’s the maître d’hôte who smiles, lies, distracts, entertains, horrifies... and survives.

4. Anyone Would Lie in That Job

Let’s not pretend this is unique to Trump. Any President - be it Kamala Harris or Michelle Obama - would face the same contradictions. They too would lie, flip-flop, and pacify different constituencies with carefully tailored half-truths. The problem isn’t Trump. The problem is the stage on which he performs: a collapsing empire with no possible coherent plan for what comes next.

I’m reminded of a moment from the history of 1960s Britain. Harold Wilson, speaking in the port city of Rochester, was bragging about his defence plans. “And why do I emphasise the importance of the Royal Navy?”, he asked his audience. Someone in the crowd shouted back: “Because you’re in Rochester!”

Wilson was an early Trump in a way:  knowing that political truth is local, emotional, and, above all, disposable.... leave your critics behind you in the dust of your lies.

5. Final Thought

So yes, Trump is a liar. But perhaps, in this age of imperial chaos, only a liar can hold the centre together. Not because the lies fix anything, they can'r, other than get you power. But because they delay the collapse by a few more seasons.

Is that admirable? Or is it terrifying? Only history can decide....

"Trump at the Empire Café"

 The last cafe before the end of the empire.

[End]

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WHAT TO DO WITH THE GRANGEMOUTH TERMINAL SCOTLAND

22 July 2025

Grangemouth’s closure is not the simple tale of a dying industry, but a more complex strategic retreat forced by economic inevitability. 

Originally a BP asset, the refinery passed through Innovene to INEOS in 2005, and since 2011 has operated as a 50/50 joint venture with PetroChina under the name Petroineos. Despite media and union claims of chronic losses, financial records show the refinery was profitable in most years, generating £80 million in 2022 alone. A major loss reported in 2020 was largely a one-off accounting impairment, not a collapse in operating performance. The company claims to be losing £385k a month.The shutdown of crude processing in April 2025, despite recent profitability, suggests the decision might have been driven by long-term strategic factors, not only short-term insolvency.

This move marks a wider move across Europe, away from domestic refining towards fuel import & distribute hubs, as part of dealing with longtime over-capacity in the refining industry and “green” restructuring. 

Around £50 million was allocated to convert Grangemouth into an import-and-distribution terminal, aligning with INEOS and government decarbonisation agendas. The result: roughly 400 direct jobs lost, alongside local economic fallout through the extended supply chain. Yet companies like Scottish Power are already stepping in to rehire displaced engineers into renewables. This is a market failure, followed by a deliberate transformation of national energy infrastructure... though it is presented to the public in the language of crisis. 

Grangemouth must be reappraised in the light of market over capacity and technology advance. Its model must be updated to fit.green "pivot" and consequent regulatory path chosen by political and corporate elites.

☆☆☆

Detail on Grangemouth

The as-is:

*Ownership*

 50/50 joint venture (INEOS & PetroChina), not wholly INEOS-owned, half Chinese

*Profitability*

 Profitable outside a 2020 anomaly, but claims of monthly losses of £385k is why CEO Ratcliffe pulled the plug finally

*Strategic Shift*

 Transitioned to an import terminal, same in Europe due to global overcapacity in refining and newer, low cost plants in asia and elsewhere. This over capacity dates back many years, but now as a result of the green pivot it is only getting worse. Why did Ratcliffe even buy Grangenouth? It's only because it was his part of this niche industry.

*Economic Impact*

 Hundreds of jobs at risk, but there are still two local green investment possibilities that could offset some job losses.

*Conclusion*

 Ratcliffe couldn't sell it and the government doesn't want to or can't invest enough (£225m on a 50-50 basis). This tells us that this piece of industrial infrastructure is past it's expiry date and needs to be updated or removed. What's happened is that Ratcliffe tried to repurpose it, but reality is the global economy and technology have moved on and left it standing still.

*What to do*

 There could be a strategic push here for low cost, competitive refining advantage, that would give Scotland some control over, it's energy supply instead of being victim. Two the global market. 

 But it's also true that there's not much you can do about job losses, these are inevitable, other than retrain the workforce into new technology roles... And that's the job of government.

*Options*

Option 1: Green Energy Hub & Fuel Import Terminal 

Transforming Grangemouth into a low-carbon hub under Project Willow is a long-term investment (£3.8 billion over ten years to £13 billion in a full rollout...roday's estimates only) . 

The plan relies on private capital, alongside a £200 million UK and £25 million Scottish government commitment, to deliver nine green projects (recycling, biomethane, sustainable aviation fuel, hydrogen, e‑ammonia) via synergies with the Acorn CCS scheme. Plastic recycling alone may cost about £600 million and employ ~250 people, while larger facilities like SAF -

 (Sustainable Aviation Fuel), a low-carbon alternative to traditional jet fuel, made from biomass, waste oils, or synthetic feedstocks. It can reduce lifecycle emissions by up to 80%, and is a key plank in UK and EU net-zero aviation strategy -

or hydrogen plants. Rhese could require up to £800 million each ro set up. Supporters project 800–1,750 jobs by 2040, but success hinges on favourable regulations and sustained investment 

Option 2: Restart Refinery via Hydrocracker Revival 

Reactivating Grangemouth’s hydrocracker and processing North Sea crude offers a quicker, lower-cost route focused on preserving core infrastructure. MPs and unions estimate a £60–80 million investment to restart the hydrocracker. Additional upgrades such as connecting to the Forties pipeline and adapting for North Sea streams like Rosebank, would require further uncosted, unspecified, engineering expenditures. This strategy could potentially triple profitability, maintain existing jobs, and support a transition in the interests of the community, as part of the site's future biofuel roll-out. However, it doesn’t address long-term decarbonisation, and would require parallel green investment.

Summary:

Option 1 demands £3.8–13 billion in green investment (public + private), targeting a transformational renewable hub with long-term job growth.

Option 2 needs a £60–80 million injection to preserve refining capability, buy time, and sustain local employment while transitioning more gradually.

Final Conclusions

As a piece of industrial infrastructure, Grangemouth is well out of date. It has been overtaken by newer plants, by over-capacity in the industry, buy a switch to renewables, by more modern clean technologies. On economic grounds, it should be updated requiring considerable investment or the entire area repurposed - perhaps as an aeronautical construction site, servicing the burgeoning aeronautical engineering talent in Edinburgh.

Inevitably, in any industrial transformation, the workforce will be reduced and the government needs to step in with retraining programs.

From a strategic point of view, the objective must be for Scotland to retain independence and control in its energy supply. But equally, creative plans are needed for new strategically important industries in Scotland, things can be made, and this site could be the basis for that renewal - MSGA. Take Strata as an example.

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THE UK GOVERNMENT'S SUPER INJUNCTION

21 July 2025

What's this fuss about a super injunction? And the 30,000 who are being integrated into the UK?

treason-uks-secret-plan-to-resettle-thousands-of-afghans-revealed-after-superinjunction-lifted/

The public are being lied to

- Unprecedented secrecy: first known instance of a government using one a super injunxtion (silly name)

- Democratic failure: we were all denied oversight for nearly two years

- Risk - reward miscalculation: judge told rhe MoD risks were overestimated, yet the gag remained in place

- Public trust eroded: how many more cockups are being covered up; why did a labour Prime Minister cover up for the Tories, like for the elite?

Well maybe it was a cock-up, but Ida thought that these are exactly the kind of people that the UK wants - educated and loyal and young - what a scoop!

There we go - what might have been a positive thing and in accord with a moral duty, has instead turned into a political scandal over secrecy and accountability.

Who gives a damn - they were only loyal afghanis.

As u wld say, "what a mess". As Mearsheimer says, " they've got the meidas touch in reverse"... everything they touch turns to s**t.

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DIARY OF A PALESTINIAN IN GAZA UNDER SIEGE

19 July 2025

LIVING UNDER CONTINUOUS OCCUPATION
Diary of a Palestinian in Gaza under Siege

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1. “Waking in Ruins”

I wake up under broken concrete. The ceiling trembles with each distant strike. We used to live in homes, now we live in craters, tents, or what used to be schools. There is no morning routine, only the next decision: Where do we hide today?

They tell us to evacuate, but there is nowhere safe to go. We are caged inside Gaza, a 40-km strip surrounded by concrete walls, drones, and watchtowers.

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2. “This Is Not a War Zone. This Is a Prison”

Gaza is blockaded by land, air, and sea. We cannot leave. We cannot fish. We cannot import medicine, building materials, or fuel freely. Even drinking water is rationed. Electricity comes for 1–2 hours a day, if we’re lucky. The UN calls this the world’s largest open-air prison. We just call it home.

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3. “Why We Are Russian-Speaking in the East”

Just as Ukraine has its Russian-speaking east - rooted in the legacy of Catherine the Great - Palestine has its demographic fault lines. Gaza, dense and coastal, was filled with refugees from cities like Jaffa, Haifa, and Ashkelon in 1948. My grandmother was born in Jaffa. She fled on foot during the Nakba, barefoot and bleeding.

That was her story. Now it's mine... again.

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4. “The Bombs Do Not Ask for IDs”

We hear leaflets dropped from planes, robotic voices over loudspeakers: Evacuate the building in five minutes. And then... silence. Sometimes the bomb comes anyway. Sometimes it comes while you are packing.

Hospitals have been struck, the Indonesian hospital. Ambulances destroyed. UN shelters hit. Cemeteries bombed. Over 100,000 civilians dead, probably nearer half a million. More than 30,000 children. We keep digging with our bare hands. The smell of death is everywhere.

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5. “Even Language Is Resistance”

They want us to forget, forget our villages, our identity, our songs. They call us “human shields” or “terrorists” for simply being here. But we still speak Arabic. We still say our village names. We write poetry. We bury the dead by name, not number, when we can. We remember in our prayers.

Our bookshelves are now rubble, but we still recite Mahmoud Darwish by heart.

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6. “What It Means to Stay”

I could try to flee. Some tunnels remain. Some bribes still work. But I stay. Why? Because this is Palestine. If we all leave, they will say: They are gone. It is ours now.

So we stay. Not because we love war. But because we love this soil too much to let it be stolen again.

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7. Final Reflection: We Still Exist

To be Palestinian in Gaza today is to exist between grief and resistance. Our lives are disposable to the world’s powers. But our memory is not. Our children draw keys on the walls as symbols of the homes we lost in 1948. We teach them that even under siege, dignity survives.

We whisper to them each night: You are not victims. You are descendants of return.

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