Best Of

Zitron gets his clicks by being the "this is all dodgy accounting/doesn't actually work/massively over hyped" view, so his will be the extreme bear case. Personally I have no idea.

Zitron is broadly right I think, even if he does lay on the drama a bit thick. There is a vast amount of dodgy accounting going on, mainly via circular funding. Right now the AI industry is like Greggs handing everyone who walks in the door a £20 note, provided they promise to spend it on sausage rolls. They can brag sausage roll sales are up 2000%, but it's entirely artificial and they're burning money to make it happen.

The other big issue, until recently, has been subsidised use. AI companies have been charging a flat-rate to use their models, regardless of the actual cost to provide the service. But they're desperate to show some actual revenue now, so that's going away in favour of token-based billing. Companies and individuals are now waking up to just how expensive it is to use AI in a major way, often more expensive than hiring humans to do the same job.

Unfortunately for them this has also coincided with the rise of Agents. Previously humans acted as a rate-limiter for AI use; someone has to type in the prompt, wait for the AI and then read and check the output. But now it's often an AI running other AIs, which can result in enormous token use and a correspondingly large bill.

FPT...

Allister Heath in the Telegraph.

"Anti-white racism is real, and there’ll be more Henry Nowaks until it’s crushed
Critical race theory has taken us from Martin Luther King’s inspiring vision of a colour-blind society to today"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/03/anti-white-racism-is-real-and-its-been-corrupting-britain/

Employment rates (2022 figures):
White 77%
Black 69%

Stop and search (2023 figures) per 100,000:
White British 5.6
Black 24.5

Court judges (2024 figures) v working age population (2021 figures):
White 89.6% v 80.7%
Black 1.3% v 4.4%

Median earnings (2022):
White £14.35 per hour
Black £13.53 per hour

Employment - controlled for education?
Stop and search - controlled for location, criminal tendency (ie gang membership) etc?
Judges - controlled for age?
Earnings - controlled for education?

Those are all raw figures. Court judges is compared with the working age population.

There are significant disparities in educational outcomes, including when controlling for relevant factors, e.g. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1339899/

The ADR UK report linked to above does more in terms of trying to control for other factors.

Raw figures are pretty meaningless.

It’s a particular bugbear of mine that people look at the percentage of, say, court judges in their 60s who are black and say “it’s too low, we’re racist”.

No. It just means that 35 years ago we had fewer black lawyers qualifying, and hence have a smaller pool of candidates for judges today. It will work itself out over time

Raw figures are a good starting point. But, yes, these are complex phenomena where it can be difficult to know what factors are at play…

… which is what I’ve been saying in reaction to the headless chickens running around claiming we have two tier policing and anti-white racism based on one event that we still don’t know the full details of.

A totally fiat point. Here's another one. The incident was in December last year, essentially 6 months ago.
So why hasn't the investigation into the policed conduct been completed? It didn't need to wait for the court case to finish, the outcome would not affect what happened on the night. If I had any power I'd be getting that report finished asap.

But then the next problem will be if the report doesn't match the narrative for the far right, they will claim it's a whitewash. A better question might be how have we reached a situation where people believe this narrative?

The IOPC investigation clearly cannot be published until the court case is finished. Certain facts in the report will depend on the court case's conclusion, so it can't be finished before the court case concludes (e.g., it is pertinent to the IOPC investigation whether Digwa was found guilty or not, many of the judge's comments are relevant too). Hopefully, we will see the report soon.

(I note that the IOPC's budget was cut by the Tories, more than a third in real terms since 2018, so that's going to make it harder for them to carry out thorough investigations in a timely manner.)

It is clear that some on the right are not interested in reading anything that might contradict that on which they have already made up their mind. This was apparent on the previous thread.

How have we reached a situation where people believe this narrative? Because the radical right in the US has been pushing a white grievance model, and the radical right in the UK have taken that up.

As I'm a bit thick, why would this be true? " it is pertinent to the IOPC investigation whether Digwa was found guilty or not, many of the judge's comments are relevant too". The actions of the officers on the night do not go back and change via quantum entanglement if Digwa is found guilty or innocent surely? I totally understand why the report could not be released before the conclusion of the trial for obvious reasons. But as an investigation of the actions of the police officers, why does Digwa's guilt or innocence matter?

Can you not see a difference between "the police wrongly took the word of the murderer" and "the police wrongly took the word of someone who had been attacked by Nowak" (which was Digwa's defence AIUI)?

No. There was a man lying on the ground with 4 stab wounds which would prove to be fatal. Who the F*** cares who or what he was? He needed urgent medical help. He did not need handcuffs.

It's worth reading the judge's sentencing statement where he explains the police were seriously misled by the murderer and his brother and in his view acted reasonably. Murderers don't usually call the police to the crime scene, they had no reason to believe it was anything other than the two men claimed it to be. There was no visible wound when they put handcuffs on Nowak and the policeman was horrified when he found out Nowak had a serious injury a moment later.

The police are being maligned, not least by politicians who should know better. The case is not remotely similar to George Floyd where the murderer was actually the policeman, nor to Stephen Lawrence where the police simply didn't bother to investigate properly because the victim was black.

There will be, and should be, an investigation into the police operation and no doubt there will be some changes to procedure. It's not obvious from the sentencing remarks what generalised changes would have made a substantial difference to what happened to Henry Nowak, sadly.

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Digwa-Final-Sentencing-Remarks.pdf

The judge's remarks are fine as far as the circumstance go, but seem ignorant of existing police policy (and training) which would not have suggested the automatic handcuffing* of Nowak, even if he had been the assailant, and would have mandated a far more thorough assessment of his condition.

*Handcuffing by the police, without reasonable justification, constitutes an assault.
The circumstance here, with Nowak lying on the ground, do not seem to provide that justification.

https://x.com/electionmapsuk/status/2062565428237369539

Westminster Voting Intention:

RFM: 27% (+2)
GRN: 17% (-2)
CON: 17% (-1)
LAB: 15% (-1)
LDM: 11% (-1)
SNP: 3% (=)

Via @FindoutnowUK, 3-4 Jun.
Changes w/ 27 May.

Sleazy, broken Greens, Tories, Labour, and LibDems on the slide!

No sign yet of Reform crossing the line with the public. It may not come if 25-30% like what they stand for, and the rest don't know who to vote for instead.

Andy may have a lot of work to do once he gets in.

Andy hasn’t even won his byelection yet!

Well he's the only plan Labour have to beat Reform, and no one else has a plan which is working, so he had better!

The strange aspect in this is Reform seems to be adding to their lead

Is Burnham really in danger of losing ?

Nigel has had a good if cynical week and Rob the Plumber is getting loads of comedy exposure.

Propaganda, propaganda, what we need is propaganda (or something like it) as Nigel Farage might have said in the 1930s.

They’ve been learning from Ed Davey.