Best Of

I see it COP30 this week in Brazil. There’s been little fanfare about it in the lead up to it. A few years ago it would have had significant coverage.

Main countries aren’t bothering. Hard to see what it can achieve aside from the regular demand for ‘climate reparations’.

And, yet, the problem is more serious than ever.

It just goes to show how fickle and shallow much opinion is on this.

Musk has spoken quite a bit in the last 48 hours about climate change. I think his view is correct. This doesn’t need to be solved at the cost of all else in the next 5 years, but it needs to have been addressed roughly by the time the century is out.

In truth, man made climate change is rather low down the list for likely causes of civilisational collapse.

That's not really how climate change works though, is it?

It's going to be exceptionally difficult to reverse and, while there is enormous uncertainty about the severity and nature of the ongoing damage, it's almost certainly better value to reduce emissions now than spend billions on flood defences and deal with mass migration from Africa, crop blight etc etc. Or at least it is if you are younger or care about the next few generations.

The same people who were denying climate change existed have now reached a final, late stage of denialism where they insist it's not worth doing anything about. It's pathetic and transparent.

1) Most remaining civilians have not fled El Fasher - likely trapped or dead
2) RSF continues mass killings
3) Displaced people visible in Garni, location of reported gross human rights abuses.
https://x.com/HRL_YaleSPH/status/1984438122369659362

Hundreds of thousands are at risk of murder in Sudan.
Or already dead.

I've been banging on about the shameful lack of media interest in the war in Sudan (and the DRC and Myanmar) for a few years. Wall-to-wall Gaza news (which is also a horrific situation, don't get me wrong) but .. that's it. Mono-focus. They got bored of Ukraine, so onto Gaza for a while. Now they're beginning to get bored of Gaza.

Now I expect lots of reports about Sudan, hand-wringing podcasts with media people asking media people some moderately difficult questions to which they already know the answers,

I remember - many years ago - and been reminded by a comment up-thread about the World Service. It really was a marvel. News from deeply involved correspondents across the globe. Now their main news programme is just a copy'n'paste from various other BBC show snippets.

All to save the money it'd cost for an episode or two of "Celebrity Bake-Off". Though I guess training and allowing journalists to flourish costs almost 3-4 episodes.

I turned on BBC News during a major news event, and they were talking about Heidi Klum's Halloween party.
We used to be a proper country.

We are a proper country. We just don’t have a proper national broadcaster.

Sky News are at least making an attempt to get someone on the scene now.

The merger of BBC News and BBC World has led directly to a massive decline in the output of the BBC News channel.

The BBC find trouble in getting to Cambridgeshire due to funding issues?

No, due to priorities.

They never find trouble in getting to Glastonbury.

A rather depressing and free read from the Times. Interview with the head of Reed, a large recruiter, on the current market and the risks to it. Basically it’s a jobs desert at the moment, AI is decimating entry level jobs for grads jn some professions, and the so-called workers rights bill, all 197 pages of it, at the behest of the Unions will not help.

Worst job market for 40 years basically.

https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/companies/article/james-reed-graduate-jobs-no-longer-a-given-fhnjk70hp

I graduated 40 years ago when there were over three million registered as unemployed and I couldn't even get into teacher training which was seen as the last resort (sorry, @ydoethur ).

I did my time queuing at the job centre with all the others who couldn't find work. Eventually, and much against my better judgement (but out of financial necessity), I worked in a bookies (which I had through my student holidays) for a year or so and hated it. Marking the board on odd afternoons was a bit of a laugh but as your main employment (apart from the money), it was very different and not pleasant.

As an aside, it would be much worse now given the long hours.

Working in a bookie 40 years ago would be great fun compared to today.

Today you’re basically babysitting the machines on which the lowest in society are losing their rent money, and dealing with a bunch of idiots waving their phones showing better odds then you can give them. All for minimum wage, and with a fair chance of getting robbed for the contents of the safe.

Turf accountancy is probably an extreme example, but it's probably true of most jobs. Captain Mainwaring's successor at Swallow Bank surely has less status and autonomy, even if the Walmington-on-Sea branch still exists. GPs get to do less of the Dr Finlay bit. And so on.

It's happened for a reason, and there's no point trying to undo the process. Things and services are cheaper and more abundant and more convenient, and we have mostly gained more on that side of the balance than we have lost on the other.

But there has been a cost, and I suspect it's one of the factors in left-behind populism. Perhaps we haven't used the gains from automation and tech-enabled management as wisely as we should.

For many solicitors, the direction of travel is the same. Far more time is devoted to box-ticking compliance, and serving as an amateur tax collector, than in the past.