Politics
Banana Republic UK
I was forced through conversation today to contrast my experience of the U.K. from 48 years ago with the present day, as we spoke the differences were crystallised confirming the abyss into which the U.K. [more…]
United Kingdom
Authoritarianism
Why do the English (*) drink so much?
This is a question asked by all foreigners, who look on in horror as we binge-drink our way through the week, stumbling through the streets in various states of inebriation. As though I were talking [more…]
Politics
YooKay2026…… A State broken by Corruption (Part 7)
By this point the pattern is visible. The remaining question is why it is allowed to continue. The answer is not that everyone inside the system is secretly coordinating. It is simpler than that. The [more…]
Engineering
YooKay2026…… A State broken by Corruption (Part 6)
HS2 is one project. What happens everywhere else, across the hundreds of councils and public bodies that spend the rest of the £1.23 trillion, is in many ways worse. In the financial year 2022–23, 467 [more…]
Engineering
YooKay2026…… A State broken by Corruption (Part 5)
In July 2017, four joint ventures were awarded HS2 civil contracts worth a combined £6.6 billion. The original structure was a target-cost contract with a pain/gain share, meaning that if costs overran, the contractor would [more…]
Labour
Starmer’s Resignation
I watched unloved Starmer’s self pitying tearful resignation speech outside Number Ten & was struck by one sentence in which he referred to Britain as ‘the Country I love’. I was dumbstruck. The reason he [more…]
Politics
YooKay2026…… A State broken by Corruption (Part 4)
The revolving door describes one route through the system. There is another. Between 2013 and 2023, 68 of the 284 peers nominated by party leaders were political donors, giving a combined £58 million. Fifteen of sixteen [more…]
Politics
YooKay2026…… A State broken by Corruption (Part 3)
In each of the 438 quangos described in Part 2, someone decides who sits on the boards, who chairs the committees, and who approves the contracts. Look closely at who those people are and a [more…]
Politics
YooKay2026…… A State broken by Corruption (Part 2)
Almost a third of all government spending, £391 billion a year, is not spent by government departments. It is spent by 438 separate publicly funded bodies that ministers cannot direct, Parliament cannot easily scrutinise, and voters [more…]