Best Of

An incredible stat here. Someone has done IQ estimates of the “Swedish elite”

Look at the political class. The PARLIAMENTARIANS barely edge over IQ 110. THEY ARE 115 tops. That means quintessential midwits like @kinabalu and @IanB2 are running Sweden. People who should be running second hand bookshops or amateur ballet classes are running entire countries. Hence, perhaps, Sweden’s many modern problems, many of them entirely avoidable if you’re not governed by mediocrities

I am pretty sure we would find the same in the UK. I adduce David Lammy, Jess Philips and Ed Miliband as probative evidence

https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1719842701229560092?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg

We need a new word for this phenomenon. Government by the averagely dim

The Tories and LDs, indeed, all parties, are equally stuffed with these twats. It is not a partisan thing

Without knowing the IQ of the person doing the estimates, how can you take it seriously?

Unless... oh my God... it plays into your existing prejudices, and therefore must be believed and shared.

https://x.com/benonwine/status/1911332065431236882

British police warn an elderly, partially-deaf man that saying "speak English" is a hate crime.

Incredible!

A policeman somewhat off the rails there, and wasting his own time.

Somewhere in a 1920s London commuter suburb, I'd say - from the architecture.

Out of interest, what organization does the 'Let's Make Britain Great Again' slogan on the guy's shirt relate to?

The video is watermarked "Turning Point UK", maybe it's them ? The kind of stuff William's Twitter feed is full of, anyway

From Wikipedia:

Turning Point UK (TPUK) is a British offshoot of the American student pressure group Turning Point USA.[1] The UK group was set up to promote right-wing politics in UK schools, colleges and universities, with the stated aim of countering what Turning Point UK alleges are the left-wing politics of UK educational institutions.[2] The close similarity of Turning Point UK's rhetoric and target demographic to that of Generation Identity, a continental European group with racist and Islamophobic intentions, has been noted by scholars of hate studies and the far-right.[3]

Turning Point UK describes its objectives as promoting "the values of free markets, limited government and personal responsibility". It says it does this to counter what it alleges is "a dogmatic left-wing political climate, education system and radical Labour Party" which, Turning Point UK states, "sympathises with terrorists [and] wishes to disarm the nation".[4]

The group was launched in December 2018[5] by Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, and Candace Owens, then the communications director of the US group,[6] at the Royal Automobile Club in London.[5] On the day of its social media launch in February 2019, some Conservative MPs including Jacob Rees-Mogg and Priti Patel tweeted supportive messages for the group.[7][8] Labour MP David Lammy stated that the launch and its Tory support were evidence that the Conservative Party "openly promotes hard-right, xenophobic bile".[9] From its inception, the organisation and its leading members were the subject of widespread popular ridicule. It was described by the BBC as "a tsunami of online mockery".[10][11]

“From Wikipedia”

I know Jimmy Wales. No joke. I do (it’s a long story, he lives in the UK)

He laments that it has been hijacked by a cabal of left wing editors who have turned it into a pathetic shadow of what it was. Almost any contentious political/religious topic is now a biased screed of Woke gibberish, rigorously fenced off from more sensible editing

Sad. Enshittification of Wiki can be added to the many other Enshittifications

I'm an editor on Wiki (Sunil060902), don't think I'm THAT left-wing

There are definitely some weirdo Wikipedia editors who wield Wikipedia bureaucracy like it’s a finely honed weapon against anyone coming in to point out that a Wikipedia page might not actually contain truthful statements.

That said, Wikipedia has spent a decade or more coping with an onslaught of “post-truth” idiots: The bureaucracy is a defence mechanism that mostly works as intended.

That Wikipedia works at all is amazing. That it is as good as it is is astonishing. It will never be perfect, because it can’t be, but it’s still one of the shining achievements of the Internet that was.

The government is looking for a buyer to take over British Steel.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c87p3lep19yo

I find this government rather odd. Starmer as a stated lifetime socialist was all about nationalisation of things when he ran for leadership and even after that. Now there is here something that is prime for nationalisation, but they are only sort of nationalising and I imagine the majority of the public could see this as for the greater good, but they are tip toeing around actually committing to nationalisation and also claiming they are going to try and find a private sector buyer (when last time the only option was the Chinese and now they have already ruled out any Chinese company from bidding).

I can't work out the logic politically or even economically.

Its like the unwillingness to find any extra fiver for a new super high tech AstraZeneca facility in the North West.

They have no theory of the world other than "do Thatcherism more politely" and "stupid Green stuff". Literally. The impression I got from "Taken as Red" and "Get In" is that they don't have any political theory other than crowd pleasing headlines and metropolitan elite nostrums. They think the machine works without their involvement, whereas it's a full-time job just trying to make sure the wheels don't come off.

Or, as I put it, they don't know how to fly the plane.

There is a 'thing' though, shared in my opinion by the British civil service, and to be fair by some within the Tory Party, that Britain's national interest is bad and dirty, and that actually the admirable course of action is to kick the lumpen proles of Blighty in the gonads and call it high-minded fairness and competition.

I think it went into overdrive after Brexit, when in my opinion, a great many people in administration decided that Britain's national interest was Brexit's national interest, which they actively loathed, so they would do all they could to undermine the country. The long term plan being to return us suitably chastened to the bosom of Europe.

A more prosaic possibility or perhaps added dimension is that a lot of people are at it.

Either way, they all have to go, the Labour Party of course but a complete gutting of institutions is required too.

Yes. A Reform-led government is necessary but not sufficient. What we need is a Trump-style revolution (without the crazy economics, foolish foreign policy and basic weirdness). Trump did well with his initial 50 days in completely shattering the confidence of the Woke left and dismantling decades of Woke bureauwank

We need the same. Sack half the judges, for a start. Destroy the quangos. Make it illegal to work for migration and asylum cases. Repeal the Equality Act. Repeal any DEI crap. Swift deportations of all foreign criminals. Prohibit the seeking of asylum unless in exceptional cases (HK, Ukraine). Leave the ECHR

And on and on. Basically we need a coup d’etat

At the moment I honestly do not regard this Labour government as legitimate and I feel no moral requirement to obey British laws. It cannot defend our borders, it cannot defend our citizens, it actively and racially discriminates against me as a British
white male and against my daughters for merely being white

So the United Kingdom government and all its agencies can go fuck itself

Were you struggling to keep your right hand from involuntarily doing a nazi salute while typing that. Peter Sellers would be proud of that performance.

F1: not sure how much people care for commentary about this but I've made what i intend to be a last hedge (until things change substantially) on Piastri at 2.6. I'm green if he wins the title, a bit greener if he's top 3 because I backed him each way, and green if someone else wins.

With him and Norris I don't think the odds will change all that much more. There's a risk at Spain (1 June, I think) the flexi-wing change will damage McLaren and perhaps advantage Red Bull. Hard to say how big the impact will be.

I also bet against Norris a little at similar odds. This race might go well (but if it does that's fine, backed him at 6.5 each way). If it doesn't, his odds will lengthen. Be interesting to see if Russell or Verstappen can break into the McLaren duo's stranglehold on short title odds.

The Mercedes engine is looking good for 2026 so unless Russell is in the fight the team may switch pretty quickly (I'm hoping I can hedge my 26 on him after a good performance today). Red Bull's looking poor so they may stick with developing this season's car longer than others as a potential final chance for another Verstappen title, and he won't face intra-team competition.

I am very grateful for your covering of F1, because a friend of mine is a terrific fan. It's not an interest of mine and your comments help me to (a) understand what she's talking about and (b) respond with some semblance of intelligent interest.

Many thanks!