2014

Is there anyone who didn’t predict that the Big Society would descend into shameless grantsmanship, chancerism, and possibly illegal party financing? Go read; the list of projects is unimprovable, The Thick of It meets Siobhan Sharpe meets the Alan Partridge pitch scene. Much of the money ended up with Tories or ex-Tories and some of…

Read More Jobs through Your Local Budget are 400% of GDP!

I started planning this post asking why Palestinian rockets seemed to be steadily increasing in range, but not improving in accuracy. Although nobody publishes circular-error probable figures for these things, various indicators suggested that they were still essentially random weapons. For example, there were no or few reports of them hitting valuable infrastructure or politically…

Read More Wild speculation on a highly controversial subject

It seems to be TYR Service! day, so I followed up on a discussion elsewhere about social trust in the UK by analysing Ipsos MORI’s polling series on trust by profession. Having fiddled with various ways of filtering the data in an attempt to get a readable line chart, I decided to look at net…

Read More Who do we trust? Len McCluskey, Jerry Heywood, and SCIENCE!

It looks like the experiment is over. The job of Head of the Home Civil Service is being re-integrated with Cabinet Secretary and No.10 Downing Street PS. There’s also going to be a “CEO” who will perhaps be recruited from the private sector, although no names that aren’t civil servants have been put forward. But…

Read More Viva Blob!

The main response to the nomination of Lord Hill for European commissioner was widely described as incomprehension. This was literally true; nobody understood who he was. But they didn’t fail to understand because Hill is so obscure, but rather because they were ignorant. Martin Schulz, for example, made a fool of himself as follows: “I…

Read More Hill