"The UK AI Action Plan quite explicitly encourages building up a greater tolerance for 'scientific and technical risk'. This is the language and ethos of venture capital investing, but with government funding: "move fast and break things" on the path to AI dominance."Elke Schwarz says the British government has thrown caution to the wind in favour of an uncertain, speculative benefit. Amanda Dylina Morse says youth workers can be powerful counters to figures like Andrew Tate and provide a positive example of manhood. Andrew Pakes, Labour MP for Peterborough, introduces his co-operative housing bill: "Co-operative housing sits in stark contrast ...
The latest edition of my weekly political polling round-up, The Week in Polls, is out. As it says: Of course, you might reasonably expect – and discount or even disagree with – me being a bit grumpy now and again about how much attention a media outlet or a pollster decides to give to my own party's leader, Ed Davey. The Observer and Opinium did, however, take a very unusual approach recently as summarised in my letter to The Observer... Find out more by reading this edition of The Week in Polls here, and you can sign up below to ...
" A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." Winston Churchill TLDR: More parents know who Andrew Tait is than teenagers and of those Teenagers who do know of him the vast majority abhor his extreme views. Today's statistics come from three Guardian and Independent stories over the past 12 months and from the charity internet matters. Well done lovvies you've managed to get the Prime Minister himself to advertise Andrew Tait to young ones! According to internet matters 89% of parents know who Andrew Tait is and 63% of Adults do. This is ...
This review appears in the new edition of Liberator. When We Speak of Freedom: Radical Liberalism in an Age of Crisis Paperback edited by Paul Hindley and Benjamin Wood Beecroft Publications, 2025, £15 When We Speak of Freedom, as a football commentator would put it, is very much a book of two halves. The first is historical, philosophical and a little quirky in its approach: the second has chapters by policy experts with concrete proposals for government action in their fields. The editors, Paul Hindley and Benjamin Wood, write that the project began over wine and sandwiches at the home ...
It is a common trait of bullies that they resort to self-pity; claiming to have been bullied themselves. Yet such psychopathology is found not only in the school playground but in the affairs of nations. Putin's narrative justifying the invasion of a peaceful neighbour and attendant war crimes draws heavily on a history of post-Soviet Russia being taken advantage of by the West. When China behaves badly it is apt to invoke its own 'century of humiliation'. The rulers of a newly confident India hark back to past conquests by Muslim invaders to justify persecuting religious minorities. The Balkans and ...
The first rock 'n roll record to hit the British charts was Rock Around the Clock in 1955, but that song owed an indecent amount to Move it on Over by Hank Williams from 1947. And Roll 'Em Pete threatens to push the birth of rock back to 1938. Here's Larry Birnbaum: "Roll 'Em Pete" may well be regarded as the first rock'n'roll record. Although earlier songs contain elements of rock'n'roll, "Roll 'Em Pete" is a full-fledged rocker in all but instrumentation ... Johnson's bass line is a simple Chuck Berry-like chug, and his furious right hand embellishments anticipate Berry's ...
France France's Marine Le Pen has been hoisted upon her own petard. At the National Rally's annual convention in 2015 she stood at the podium and declared that any politician found guilty of a crime should be barred from office. Of course, she wasn't talking about herself. She was referring to the long parade of French political leaders who had fallen foul of the law and been convicted of everything from incitement to hate crimes to pimping to old-fashioned corruption. They included her own father (Jean-Marie Le Pen) and two French presidents (Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy). Most of them ...
I'm just about to head down the road home from a very buoyant and confident Scottish Conference in the beautiful Highland capital of Inverness. I shall have more reflections later, but first here is Alex Cole-Hamilton's leader's speech. Here's the livestream which picks up some interesting snippets of conversation in the build up. The first phases also include the fundraiser from our new chief executive Paul Trollope and introduction from Edinburgh Northern PPC Sanne Djikstra-Downie. The full text is below. Conference, Sanne was selected to fight the new seat of Edinburgh Northern just a few short weeks ago and she ...
A great historic photograph of Lawrence Street :
The Guardian reports Labour party research has found that more than 60 of Reform UK's council candidates standing in this year's elections are defectors from the Conservative party. The paper says that Reform has also selected an ex-Conservative for its candidate in the upcoming Runcorn and Helsby byelection, while the party's mayoral candidate for Greater Lincolnshire is the former Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns, who lost her parliamentary seat in West Yorkshire last July: All but one of Reform's MPs, including the party leader, Nigel Farage, were previously members of the Conservative party. Labour has accused Farage's party of a "mass ...
The new Liberator - issue 428 - has been published and you can download it free of charge from the magazine's website. Here's a slightly blurred contents page to whet your appetite.
