The Robots Are Coming!

 In 1963, Harold Wilson spoke, with as much passion as the dour Yorkshireman could muster, of harnessing the white heat of technology. He wanted Britain to become a leader once again, an industrial giant, a powerhouse, if you will. Yesterday the charisma-free, black hole of charm, Keir Starmer, brought his Wilson tribute act to the screen and told us all, to our utter disbelief that he is determined to harness the power of AI.

Harness AI? I doubt he can even spell it. It wouldn’t surprise me if he thinks it is a southern version of the Geordie, “Way aye!” Or maybe he believes it is something to with levelling up and that the north in general could benefit from a good helping of “Ey up!” Whatever, I wonder what he thinks AI really is and if he has any grasp of what he is saying. Although, I have to admit I am looking forward to having my bins emptied by AI and my drains unblocked by Robo-Rod.

As with all things political, I have absolutely no faith that any of this has been thought through. A vague statement of getting with the programme or being left behind really doesn’t cut it. Perhaps he would be advised to consult some true industry experts who can put him straight. I’m thinking of Ed Miliband… on the downside, however, that is a more likely trajectory towards net-zero intelligence.

These who cheerlead for AI are a mixed bunch: The eggheads who foresee a life of indolence and luxury as the robots do the heavy lifting. The Luddite tendency which sees forever the coming of the age of robots, as Asimov imagined, which will one day supplant humanity. The manipulators who are already using AI to spread disinformation. And, of course, the rest of us, the little people who will have no say.

Of course, the obvious immediate reaction is to question whether Starmer is a real boy at all, and not an early prototype human-acting droid. A moment’s thought, however, would dismiss that idea; Two-tier, free-gear, no-idea Keir would fail the Turin test in three sentences. Nobody would believe he was human. Every time he speaks, the part of the population over 50 sees the shrivelled being inside the boss Dalek. No wonder Starmer himself has said he prefers Davros[sic] to Westminster.

At least they have fixed the “free the sausages” bug with the latest update, but therein lies another issue. First world problem it may be, but my how we rage against yet another Microsoft update. The computer virus which is politics today is forever resetting itself, shutting down all your tabs, rearranging your interface to make it unusable (I’m looking at you, Facebook) and claiming it as an upgrade.

I asked Grok to make me a robot Keir, 

but this just looks like normal Keir to me.

Well, this time maybe we do want the upgrade. We could download government which is pragmatic and bases decisions on what will work, not on what its ideological outcomes may be. A government unbiased by its cultural preferences and one which will automate the mundane aspects of governance. Given that 650 shouting faces do not seem capable of organising a piss-up in a distillery, maybe Starmer is right. Maybe it really is time we gave the robots a go.

And then things got worse...

You hear it everywhere, every day. The other morning, I listened to The Climate Question podcast, recorded shortly after the UK and EU elections. Concern was expressed that the ‘progressive left’ was ceding ground to the ‘populist far right’, and this was a concern for the fight against climate change because the ‘populist far right’ clearly means ordinary working class people; people who simply don’t have the intellect to grasp the issues. It didn't take long for our new government to revert to type.

Tough words, yesterday, from Sir Kneeler Starmer regarding the white riots. I didn’t notice any Prime Ministerial press conferences when the Harehills riot kicked off in Leeds. Starmer didn’t feel the need to call a press conference when the Rochdale police station was under siege. Similarly no government intervention when children were slaughtered by a knife-wielding non-white. Yet the second a small bunch of desperately disenfranchised white people kick off we get an emergency press conference, and the police are awarded special powers to deal with the scourge of the far right.

Our new useful idiot ‘leader’ went further when he stated that would not allow the far-right to co-ordinate a “summer of riots” after violence spread across the country over the Southport stabbings. The violence, he said, was a “coordinated” action by the far-right, which must be met with ‘the most robust response’ in the coming days and weeks.” He has even gone so far as to demand the roll-out of facial recognition software throughout the U.K. (What’s the betting no brown-skinned rapists, murderers or jihadis will be recognised by the technology?)

The police said “This type of violent disorder is completely inexcusable [when white people do it] and forces will be using every tool at their disposal to identify those involved [unless, of course, they are foreign]. Anyone found responsible will face the full force of the law, and we will make sure our communities get justice.” Clearly, white people who are thoroughly pissed off with how their governments have treated them with contempt for decades don't count as 'communities', and certain 'communities' will only be subject to law if their imams agree.

Whenever anybody observes that we have a two-tier justice system, they are excoriated in the press and roundly condemned by those who perpetuate this obviously corrupt and highly visible practice. It appears to be assumed that anybody who votes for Labour, or the LibDems, or the Greens has to be highly intelligent, informed, thoughtful and kind. Progressive, they are, which sounds so clearly on the side of the angels that nobody in any position to do so questions their motives.

Well, of course they don’t question them, they are all cut from the same egregious cloth. Progressive is an adjective coined by groups like the narcissistically self-praising Fabians to deliberately obscure the essentially authoritarian nature of socialism. You know, Socialism, exactly as practiced by the National Socialist German Workers Party in the 1920s and 30s. And yet it is only anybody who dares question them who is labelled ‘literally Hitler’.

It is astonishing that people still fall for it, but it turns out that you have to be highly ‘educated’ to accept that the left can do no wrong and only want to bring about peace, prosperity and islam. Unfortunately, the left lacks any means of doing this because the only thing the left can ever do is boss people about… issue orders and mandates, rush to judicial intervention, dictate how people will behave, like... er, like little Hitlers.

So, I look forward to a summer (what’s left of it) of white riots. I would welcome a popular uprising and a concerted, coordinated campaign against the wilfully blind establishment. I have said since before Brexit that we are overdue for a revolution. Brexit confirmed it, then the duplicitous pretend-Tories made it even more necessary. And Keir Starmer has no idea how to contain it.

So what if we look like France for a while? What’s a few bonfired police cars in the greater scheme of things? And if it makes the poor, indoctrinated university students cower, and question their ideals, so much the better. The best result of all, of course, would be queues of muslims at all our ports, desperate to leave the country. To cure the disease, we must first remove the cause.

A Fair COP?

In a world where ignorance and incompetence rule the day it was only natural that the charisma vacuum known as Keir Starmer would want to capitalise on both with this ridiculous article in The Guardian in which he attacks Rishi Sunak’s stance on COP27. The Guardian readership, that well established echo chamber of leftist thought, that self-regarding intelligentsia will likely lap it up, but will they either understand it, or challenge its trite and simple lies?

It is all very well saying that Labour would bring about an economic and energy miracle that has defeated the best minds of the most capable countries in the world, but where is the policy, the detail? In every case where Labour says they would do better, that their solutions are ‘fully costed’, that they would bring peace and prosperity, the solution seems to hinge far more on simple faith than hard science.

Goons like Richard Burgon keep bleating on about wealth taxes, with no real argument as to what they mean by wealth. Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, likewise, has never been quick to publish the means by which Labour would reverse the declines in our fortunes. And Starmer himself is a mere, adenoidal talking head, repeating the mantra of opposition: we will make it better, but we can’t tell you how. ‘We will be better than them’ has never sounded anything other than infantile.

100% ‘green’ energy by 2030 sounds great, but it is not possible without redefining what you mean by ‘green’. The target he is proposing is at best an accounting fraud, but it gets nowhere that good. It would mean off-shoring our CO₂ emissions by a combination of shifting even more industry abroad and by counting some emissions as ‘better’ than others. Drax, for instance, gets away with both and despite it creating more CO₂ than when it burned coal, it counts as zero because it burns wood. (The carbon-neutral cycle it claims to be part of has a cycle time measured not in tens but in hundreds of years.)

To get to where we need to be, we need a better educated population – that’s a timescale of a generation, or more likely two. To get towards zero emissions we need reliable technology at an affordable price and thus we can rule out the contributions made by average families. Those of you luxuriating in your off-grid, low-energy, prosumer (producer and consumer – yes, it’s a real word now) world where you hand knit your own electricity from golden yarn spun from the sun’s rays can pat yourselves on the back all you like – it will probably take the lifetime of the tech to negate the environmental cost of creating it.

The bare facts are that if the world genuinely takes climate change and the role of CO₂ in creating it seriously, then the world needs to work together. Starmer is right about that. But if he thinks that in a mere six years, assuming he takes power in 2024, his motley bunch of angry class warriors are going to bring that about, he is either spectacularly stupid, or fundamentally dishonest. If he wanted to do what he says he wants to do, he would be better to join forces with, rather than attack, the government of the day.

Blaming the Conservatives for the globalist economic mess gets us nowhere. ‘Holding government to account’ is a hollow, meaningless phrase trotted out for the tabloids. The very language of opposition is mere petulant foot stamping. And as for all the supposed green jobs, they are already there, in China, in India, in Korea, in Germany. But they are not coming here and are not likely to come here; the UK's net-zero future is a fairy-tale and all the initiatives have already been taken by others. World leading in green energy, my arse. 

Something is Rotten in the State of Denmark

It turns out that Britain is so systemically racist that we just can’t see it. We are blind to the infinite number of ways that our very existence is an affront to decent people of a different ethnicity. White people need to be trained, coerced, convinced of the harm we do with every breath we take, much as Hans Christian Anderson wrote in 1837 about the emperor, his courtiers and the clothes of materials so fine they were invisible to all but the educated eye.

In the original two conmen posing as weavers and tailors manage to convince the emperor, his officials, his government and all who surround him that only the stupid cannot see the magnificent new wardrobe they have conjured up from literally nothing. The looms clack but no thread is woven. The sewing machines purr yet no cloth is stitched. Money changes hands and at every turn, despite their being no substance at all, the self-importance of all involved prevents them from seeing what their eyes are telling them.

This is, of course, a well-loved fairy tale and a caution against the folly of arrogance and ready acceptance of charlatans and mountebanks. It is told to children in their formative years, or at least it was. I wonder if it has been quietly put aside because heaven forfend we prepare kids to exercise an open mind as they enter the wider world. Not everything is as it seems. Not every tale you hear is true and nobody is too clever they can’t be fooled.

So, you might be forgiven for assuming that Keir Starmer, of a certain age, would be entirely familiar with this principle. But, steeped in the rarefied broth of the legal human rights industry and desperate to garner votes from every corner he has volunteered to submit himself to ‘unconscious bias training’. The principle job of a salesman is to persuade you of your need for his product. The principle job of a snake oil salesman is to part you from your money for nothing of value in return.

In the 1990s we were alerted to false memory syndrome after a series of cases where women had been hypnotised in therapy and miraculously ‘remembered’ abusive events from their childhood which had never happened. Families were broken up and ancient trusts were shattered by this traumatic false remembering. In 1991 the police and social services embarked on a dawn raid and took into care the children of families in the Orkneys on the false premise that they had been involved in ritual child abuse. This is some sick shit.

Unconscious bias training sounds an awful lot like ‘re-education’; the kind of thing engaged in by despotic communist regimes many times over. Mao, Pol Pot, the Romanian communist prisons, the Russian gulags; all had programmes to break and reconfigure the thinking of its citizens in a way that better fitted their purpose. The Chinese Communist Party, North Korea and to an arguably less extreme extent, the European Union, have all coerced their populations to love Big Brother, embrace the party doctrines and accept the edicts.

Actually, it is little surprise that Starmzy is setting this example to his troops because the Labour movement has a track record in creating this kind of ‘industry’. Take another recent headline: “Lack of BAME councillors 'perpetuating racial inequality' says report.” It goes on to say “Campaigners say the findings are a ‘wake-up call’ and that communities feel like these institutions don't belong to us". Well, that is because ‘these institutions’ don’t belong to those who live by different rules from the rest. The fault is theirs, not ours. But that is what unconscious bias training seeks to reverse.

Taken to its extremes we could end up with whole sectors involved in ‘training’ about diversity and why white is bad, about inclusion and how white is bad, equality and how whites have more of it… We could see entire academic faculties engaged in discovering all the ways that BAME people suffer and have always suffered at that hands of white people. We might even discover that the judiciary seems to represent the perpetrator more than they do the victim, something from which Mr Starmer has profited in the past.

The Keir is in the altogether...

Oh, wait, isn’t this what we – the child in the crowd – have been yelling about for years, only for our protestations to be dismissed as ignorant, racist and hateful? Haven’t we pointed out, time and time again, how diverting so many resources to this burgeoning promotion of malcontent is counter-productive, costly and even malevolent? Learn the past so you don’t make the same mistakes, we say. But in the original story even though the crowd realises it has been tricked the emperor walks on, as proud as ever. It’s not looking good.

Moira and Me

It’s a tough old life, this being a beacon of hope and enlightenment in a dim and dismal universe, but what’s a future King to do, eh? A couple of days ago, a random visitor to my blog - we’ll call her Moira - had this to say, by way of comment:

“…you appear to be a merciless, pitiless person.”

So far, so good. But Moira had more:

“With all your rage against [the world] I came to the conclusion that it is YOU who feel the self-pity you so readily scorn,”

Nah, not really, love, you’re kind of missing the point. What you don’t like, my dear, is me having opinions which don’t chime with your chakras.  Although she did then redeem herself by signing off with:

“I expect you will reply to this with your usual rapier sarcasm…”

Oh good. At least she’s sort of getting it. But you should never assume I don’t mean what I say; I prefer to think of my rapier as being more sincerely sardonic than merely sarcastic. You can make up your own mind, but maybe Moira cannot. She came over not so much despairing as simply humourless. A bland and predictable response to a world she fears, full of merciless, pitiless people spoiling it for everybody. Maybe she believes in the human spirit, free of reality and deadly earnest in its mission to bring peace and contentment to all?

And that’s the trouble, isn’t it? Had she read further she may have seen that I harbour little in the way of spite (way too much effort) more a resignation to the simple and often humorous realities of human frailty. You want nobility? There’s plenty of bloggers regularly posting feelgood, aphoristic nonsense out there; happy, clappy, hippy shit about being lovely to one another. If it only it were true. Life in Britain may have taken a downward turn but not because people are nasty, rather because people have let themselves become helpless.

The DPP, Keir Starmer, has had to be brought in to give his verdict on Twitter prosecutions – the more followers you have, the more guilty you are, apparently. Of what, you ask? Of causing offence, naturally; the big crime explosion of the decade. Since when did the police and courts system become our moral shepherds? I thought their role was to nab the bad guys, not police our beliefs – that’s the job of community, not coppers.

Yesterday I heard Labour’s Margaret Hodge on Radio Four bleating on about tax avoidance being unfair and an abuse of the system. I’m sure the many who owe their livelihoods to the tax regime in the UK, or are directly involved in assisting and advising companies and individuals would be delighted to hear her wringing condemnation of their legally playing by the rules. Who makes those rules in the first place? What a pity Labour didn’t have the luxury of office in order to bring about the great social changes they now demand. Oh, wait…

The BBC is current undergoing a period of hand-wringing self-immolation over the McAlpine affair for which George Entwistle has paid the ultimate sacrifice of having a wad of cash stuffed in his back pocket. The ensuing expensive inquiry circus will conclude, as everybody else already has, that the BBC should stick to reporting the facts, unadulterated by partisan views. The Beeb should be the voice of the nation, but why does it feel the need to be our conscience as well? (I much preferred it when Mr Entwistle wore a skeleton costume and played bass for The Who!)

The NHS is full of willing, dedicated staff who will cut you open, take out stuff, put stuff in, stitch you back together and ply you with ‘care’ until you get better. But, just like any other bloated behemoth it is also somewhat self-serving. The job of any industry is to find new markets and medicine is no different. As the list of physical illnesses nears a finite total, there are much richer pickings to be had on the mental bandwagon, where barely credible research ‘discovers’ things for people to feel bad about. Is the medical profession partly the CAUSE of mental illness?

Whatever happened to Individual responsibility? It seems to have sunk beneath a sea of collectivism, where what we do and what we say and how we feel about things is no longer in our hands. The more we expect other people (society) to direct us and protect us, the less happiness and freedom we achieve and far too many people now rely on the state to take care of every aspect of their lives. (I believe they tried that in Russia in the last century… how did that turn out?)

Yes! We are ALL individuals!

THAT, Moira is what happens when you lose your sense of perspective, your sense of humour, your grip on reality. I see my role in all this as the small boy in the crowd, pointing out what is plain to see if you only look properly. Merciless and pitiless, Moira? I prefer to believe I’m being cruel to be kind.