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https://x.com/khaledhzakariah/status/2005662862044217675?s=46

“Britain finds itself in an utterly unprecedented and deeply humiliating situation, one that has made it a global laughing stock.

Only in Britain could you witness the years-long campaign to pressure a country into releasing an extremist, only for that same nation, its politicians and media, to immediately fixate on sending him back.

This farce unfolds while our Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, and Minister for the Middle East have gone into hiding, having just welcomed this extremist, who has never lived here, "back" to Britain.

The entire episode is so profoundly bizarre and without precedent that I struggle to convey the sheer astonishment with which my contacts across the Arab world are observing it.”

This is essentially my position.
I’m staggered some are brushing this off as “performative”.

The UK state is a self-harming fraud upon the British people, is what it looks like.

The latest from Jenrick:

https://x.com/RobertJenrick/status/2005728891114250399

At the same time as el-Fattah is apologising ‘unequivocally’, over on Arabic Facebook he is liking posts claiming he’s just the victim of a 'Zionist campaign'.

Get this disgusting man out of our country now.

Jenrick or Fattah ?

In either case, they're pretty nasty individuals, but just no.

If we can't cope with crappy political debates without resorting to ostracism, then we are lost as a well functioning democracy.

I'm not sure ostracism is the right word. El-Fattah is not in any meaningful sense a member of the British political community. He's a foreign activist who happens to have acquired British citizenship based on a technicality.

Is that technicality the law of the land?

Hello PBers.

I’m kind of despairing at the news about Mr Abd El Fattah.
It suggests that the entirety of government machinery is perpetuating a hoax on the wider public.

Although I understand Abd El Fattah is a noted dissident from a celebrated family of dissidents, he ought not to have passed the Fit and Proper test for citizenship. And it beggars belief that almost the entire political class, from both legacy mainstream political parties, campaigned so strongly for his release when his social media activity was always publicly available.

Brass Eye. Cake.

Nothing has changed - any bandwagon that is superficially attractive will get jumped on.

I’ve mentioned before getting an MP enthusiastic about growing peanuts in Africa to make oil for ZEV. After 10 minutes conversation he was ready to take it to the Minister. Wish I had been there for that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanganyika_groundnut_scheme

When Brass Eye was made, it was still generally assumed that while backbench MPs and celebrities might be a bit gullible, there were serious people behind the scenes who knew what they were doing.

Now it seems as though the entire state has been taken in, and to add insult to injury, is directly funding the hoaxters who are busy making fools of us.

You raise an interesting question about just how much the State itself is funding the legion of charities who then insist on new measures to constrain, emasculate and otherwise siphon more monies from the State.

Indeed it might be be of the main self-perpetuating activities of the “elite”, with both left and right wing flavours.

Elon has been talking about this for most of 2025 to general heckles and finger wagging.

Regrettably, and based on my serving of the board of one charity, I’ve come to the conclusion that a great deal of charitable activity is essentially bollocks, if not outright grift.

Dunno about grift or malice, but expecting charities to do the good things society wants is playing on easy mode.

Most of the wicked problems in society are the ones about tradeoffs; which of these two good things should we prefer, or which of these two bad things should we reluctantly accept for now?

Charities are programmed, required even, to ignore tradeoffs. They have a charitable purpose, and they are duty-bound to do that as much as they can, no matter what the external consequences are. Much like that imaginary robot that keeps making paperclips, even if it ends up destroying human civilization to do so.

Those tradeoffs are the stuff of government and politics. But we've decided to deny their existence, which is one of the underlying causes of... all of this.

https://x.com/khaledhzakariah/status/2005662862044217675?s=46

“Britain finds itself in an utterly unprecedented and deeply humiliating situation, one that has made it a global laughing stock.

Only in Britain could you witness the years-long campaign to pressure a country into releasing an extremist, only for that same nation, its politicians and media, to immediately fixate on sending him back.

This farce unfolds while our Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, and Minister for the Middle East have gone into hiding, having just welcomed this extremist, who has never lived here, "back" to Britain.

The entire episode is so profoundly bizarre and without precedent that I struggle to convey the sheer astonishment with which my contacts across the Arab world are observing it.”

This is essentially my position.
I’m staggered some are brushing this off as “performative”.

The UK state is a self-harming fraud upon the British people, is what it looks like.

The performative bit is anyone pushing for deportation of someone who is a citizen because they may be a shitty person. An argument about whether they should have become a citizen in the first place is a separate matter which is far less problematic I think.

I don’t believe in stripping citizenship from someone once granted, it’s authoritarian. The ability for the British government to do so came about in 1981 and is a stain on Thatcher’s record.

However. The man should never have been given British citizenship in the first place, and second had no automatic right to consular services, and third the government were absolute retards to tweet ecstatically about it on Boxing Day.

Can I recommend to you all a thoroughly interesting 45 minute conversation between Polanski and James Medway, one of the economists I respect most: https://pca.st/episode/aa464011-8ea3-4f3f-8903-0cef76bf3481. Even if Polanski is not your cup of tea (and he isn't mine economically), Meadway is both very intelligent and an excellent communicator.

Two points, a trigger warning and a question:
1. One of the things I respect most about Meadway is that, almost uniquely amongst left-wing economists, he engages with the reality of the power of the bond markets in the UK, resisting the simplistic 'just borrow more' that Polanski wants to hear.
2. Meadway laces his conversation about economics with an understanding of the current and likely future impacts of climate change. At a time when it feels like everyone has just stopped talking about this, that's really refreshing.

The trigger warning: Meadway was economic adviser to McDonnell when he was Shadow Chancellor. If your thinking goes McDonnell=Corbyn=Antisemitism=Evil, maybe spend your scarce 45 mins elsewhere. But if you're interested in a coherent left-wing critique of our economic system it's worth your time.

The question: particularly for @Luckyguy1983 as I know you have views on this, but also for any right of centre person interested in economics - what do you make of Meadway's arguments (first 10 mins of the podcast) about how the BoE deals with its ownership of government debt?

The fact everyone has stopped talking about it shows just how fickle and faddish most public opinion is.

Trump has blocked it on the Right and the Left has decided that Gaza offers a far better social bonding experience.

I will still talk about climate change, but I have asymptotically approached my personal limit on the number of times I am willing to have the same fruitless "debate" with people who deny the science.

As fruitless internet debates go it has nearly a 15 year head start on Brexit, for example.

I think it's more that the debate is effectively over. Very few people continue to deny it exists, or that humans are responsible for it. You still get people like Casino_Royale who think it's just some culture war game, but the data is becoming metronomic - we're about to declare this year our hottest year on record (again). I think we all understand that with Trump any debate/campaign for mitigation is fruitless until we get a sane Thatcher-type figure on the right again.

At some point we are going to need to have a serious conversation about adaptation. That's what so pathetic about those people who suggest we can't stop it happening - fine, so where's the big plan for 3 degrees+?

On the domestic front, we have nobody building any water infrastructure, and a virtual ban on dredging for the last 20-25 years, due to EU habitat legislation, then we blame the resulting summer droughts and winter floods on climate change.

That's some way off I think.

According to Water UK, it has run at about £10 billion a year since 2000 - though I'm sure we would all question some places that the water companies get the money from (ie corporate borrowing):
https://www.water.org.uk/news-views-publications/views/record-levels-investment

I don't think it is included in the above - one of our basic planning policies since about 2010 has been that surface water runoff from a development should be no more than the pre-existing site - that's where all our balancing ponds come from. The last one of these I did required a preliminary design as part of Outline Permission, required to establish that the site was suitable for development; it was done by Mott McDonald and came to around £250 per potential housing unit just for the preliminary design.

The Thames Tideway Tunnel, which came online last year, was about £5 billion on its own.

That's all water infrastructure, as is investment in sewerage treatment, canal and river maintenance, and the rest.

That is a fair response to a point I made that included hyperbole but was still an important one.

There have been no major reservoirs built for over 30 years - the last one (there are some being built now) was completed in 1992. At the same time, the population has risen by 11 million.

I find that staggering, and it makes me extremely cynical when people panic about our weather conditions.

In general I'd argue that building more reservoirs should be the last resort, as it is a 'tailpipe' solution. Reduction of demand should come first, just as reduction of energy demand should come before building more power stations or windmills or solar farms. So for me that means measures such as leak reduction and 100% water meters, which apply the market mechanism and themselves generate a reduction of 10-12% in water usage, before we spend hundreds of millions on new reservoirs.

I think one of the unforeseen problems of the last budget will be caused by the unbundling of insulation etc programmes from energy bills - it can now be seen and will be far easier to target in political debate. The programme has been very successful for 15 years doing basics such as loft insulation, until the current one is under severe question - when the programme has been doing more complex installations (eg external wall insulation) with inadequate standards / supervision.

I am sure you would argue that - I would argue the opposite. Your argument leads to the British economy where it now is - mine leads to the Chinese economy where it now is. Abundant and cheap energy is a pre-requisite for any prosperous society, and is the lifeblood of human progress.

More specifically, having a deliberate policy of failing to build sufficient reservoirs, and instead blame the public for water shortages - encouraging them to water their gardens less, even to shower less (truly revolting) and take other punitive measures to combat 'water shortages' (when Winter floods will be along soon) is simply gaslighting.

I admit I just don't see that as a viable argument. I think you are assuming a zero-sum game, which is not the case. I don't see how a concept of blame applies.

Achieving the same outcome using fewer resources is a simple increase in efficiency. How is that not a benefit.

Why should we want to use 25% more water (or electricity) than necessary? Would you argue against reduced fuel consumption in a motor vehicle on the same basis?

The point about reservoirs is that if water consumption is reduced, fewer reservoirs is not "insufficient"; it changes the definition of "sufficient" to be a smaller quantity.

To turn the question around, why should we waste scarce resources on building unnecessary reservoirs or power stations?

For a specific example on water, current use in Denmark is around 105l per person per day, compared to 130-140l in England. Denmark does not seem to have an economy on its knees, and is noticeably prosperous.

Because water is not scarce. It is especially unscarce in the UK. It is an abundant resource that is there to be enjoyed and used. The idea of convincing the public that it is running out and that they are showering too long or gardening too much is a despicable perversion of the truth that would mystify and appall our ancestors.

https://x.com/khaledhzakariah/status/2005662862044217675?s=46

“Britain finds itself in an utterly unprecedented and deeply humiliating situation, one that has made it a global laughing stock.

Only in Britain could you witness the years-long campaign to pressure a country into releasing an extremist, only for that same nation, its politicians and media, to immediately fixate on sending him back.

This farce unfolds while our Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, and Minister for the Middle East have gone into hiding, having just welcomed this extremist, who has never lived here, "back" to Britain.

The entire episode is so profoundly bizarre and without precedent that I struggle to convey the sheer astonishment with which my contacts across the Arab world are observing it.”

After a bit of a dry spell, we’re once again leading the world in comedy.