With men such as these what hope have we got?

You mean people such as these?

“Brexit is a con, a trick, a swindle, a fraud, a deception that will hurt most of those people it promised to help, a dangerous fantasy which will make every problem it claims to solve worse . Friends on this side of the House tell me to appease Labour voters in industrial towns - the former miners, the factory workers, those who feel they’ve been left behind. I say we must not patronise them with cowardice, let’s tell them the truth - you were old a lie. Immigrants have not taken your jobs, our schools and colleges failed to give you the skills, hospitals are not crumbling because of health tourists but decades of austerity that ground them down to the bone, you cannot afford a house because both parties failed to build, not because of Mohammed down the road who moved in, and wealth was hoarded in London when it should have been shared across the country. Blame us, blame Westminster, do not blame Brussels for our own country’s mistakes and do not be angry at us for telling you the truth, be angry at the chancers who sold you a lie … Just as I speak plainly to the government this time around, let me also speak to the opposition about some home truths. There is no leftwing justification for Brexit. Ditching workers’ rights, social protections and ending environmental cooperation is not progressive. This is a project about neo-liberal deregulation, it’s Thatcherism on steroids pushed by her modern-day disciples. Leaving the EU will not free us from the injustices of global capitalism, it will make us subordinate to Trump’s US. Socialism confined to one country will not work, whether you like it or not, the world we live in is global, we can only fix the rigged system if we cooperate across border lines. The party of Keir Hardie has always been international. We must not let down our young supporters by failing to stand with them at the biggest issue of our lives."

Britain does not need to fear a Russian invasion. It needs to wake up to the one that has already happened in our politics, our economy, and our national soul.

‘For years, British politicians warned that “the Russians are coming.” The phrase conjured images of spies, hackers, and shadowy figures manipulating Western democracies from afar. But the truth is starker: they are not coming they are already here. The influence of Putin’s Russia has seeped deep into British political life, reshaping the nation’s direction through propaganda, financial infiltration, and the nurturing of divisive political figures. The evidence is all around us in the rise of Nigel Farage, Reform, the toxicity of Brexit, and the slow, deliberate decline of Britain’s economic and democratic strength. The seeds were planted long before the referendum. When UKIP and later the Brexit Party now Reform UK surged to prominence, their rhetoric carried echoes of Russian disinformation: anti-EU, anti-immigrant, anti-establishment. Each slogan was designed to pit neighbour against neighbour, region against region, and Britain against its own interests. Russia’s playbook has always been about destabilisation, and few events have destabilised Britain more than Brexit. Nigel Farage, feted by Russian state media as a “man of the people” and given disproportionate airtime by RT (Russia Today), became the perfect vehicle. His populism masked a geopolitically convenient mission: to weaken the European Union and fracture Western unity. Nathan Gill, Farage’s close ally and UKIP MEP, echoed the same anti-Brussels line, parroting narratives that dovetailed neatly with Kremlin talking points. The push for Brexit was not simply a domestic rebellion it was a geopolitical victory for Moscow. By removing Britain from the EU, Putin achieved through propaganda what decades of espionage never could: a divided, isolated Britain, struggling to find its footing in a global economy that has moved on without it. The results are plain to see. The UK’s economy is shrinking relative to its peers. Public services are starved of funds. Inflation and interest rates squeeze households while infrastructure crumbles. Britain, once a pillar of European stability, is now plagued by instability of its own making. And who benefits? Russia watching gleefully as one of NATO’s key members turns inward, distracted by culture wars and internal strife. The links between Russian money and the British right are no longer mere conspiracy. Under Boris Johnson, the Tory Party accepted millions in donations from individuals with ties to the Russian elite even as intelligence agencies warned of growing Kremlin interference. Johnson himself shelved the long-delayed “Russia Report,” which detailed how deeply Moscow had infiltrated British political and financial systems. Instead of confronting the threat, he and his allies downplayed it while their media surrogates, The Daily Mail, branded anyone who raised concerns as “Remoaners” or “traitors.” Meanwhile, Nigel Farage continues to parrot lines that have been written in the Kremlin press office. His public sympathy for Putin’s “understandable” invasion of Ukraine, his criticism of NATO expansion, and his insistence that the West “provoked” Russia reveal the depth of his alignment with Moscow’s worldview. Farage and his Reform movement are the tools in a decades-long campaign through direct command, and through shared goals: dismantle trust in democracy, erode Western alliances, and replace reasoned politics with perpetual anger. Farage as a fascist knows his next move is to gain power through the ballot box. Following that, the dismantling of the democratic system and replacement with his authoritarian regime. The Russians are not coming. They have already won their quiet war not with tanks or troops, but with propaganda, money, and manipulation, and the active participation of Farage and his secret army of Fascists. Their victory is visible every time a politician like Farage blames Britain’s struggles on migrants instead of oligarchic corruption, every time the Daily Mail echoes disinformation, and every time the government prioritises division over unity.’

You may like this. “From a distance, Portrait of Edmond de Belamy, which has just sold at Christie’s in New York for $432,000 (£337,000), looks almost plausible. Up close, however, the paintwork becomes a grid of mechanical-looking dots, the man’s face a golden blur with black holes for eyes. Look into those eyes. They show no sign of feeling or life. Did a computer make this? The answer is yes. The first artwork generated by AI to be sold at Christie’s, its impressive price would seem to suggest that in future we will get computers to make art for us. Robot van Gogh will harmlessly cut its ear off and robot Picasso will be a genius, minus the misogyny. Is this the future AI art visionaries such as the French collective Obvious, which programmed this “painter” by getting it to compare its own work with 15,000 pre-20th century portraits, have in mind? Or are they just, God forbid, making a fast buck from gullible art collectors? Because believing the algorithm that knocked this up to be in any meaningful way an “artist” is like thinking your voice-interaction programme is out to get you. Dream on. Computers would need to replicate human consciousness before they could replicate the funny thing humans do called “art”. Art is a way in which human consciousness expresses itself, and is equally true of the earliest cave art, Rembrandt’s portraits and Duchamp’s urinal. And that is what is missing from Portrait of Edmond Bellamy. Art is a way humans communicate ideas, perceptions and feelings to each other. It has no existence outside the human passion to communicate. So in what meaningful sense can an AI replica of certain physical traits of old master paintings be called art? For a robot to really make art, it would need an autonomous mind that was emotional as well as rational. No AI developer has yet claimed to be anywhere near achieving that and if they ever do, their creation will probably have better things to do than paint portraits – like destroy humanity. Maybe afterwards robots will invent their own kind of art, but it won’t be some poor pastiche of human genius. It will be beyond anything we organics could imagine." guardian ai generated portrait.docx

Trump supporters will not know what an ad hominems attack is. The average American Trump supporter is a gun toting, neoliberal, bear shooting, death penalty supporting, misogynist, who believe that LGBT people should be stoned to death Old Testament style, a white supremacist, anti-vaccine, climate change denying, anti-evolution, anti- science, flat earth believing, pro-life, anti- intellectual, sanctimonious evangelical Christian, Islamophobic bigot. Chem trail obsessive, xenophobic and a racist. Also ignorant, stupid, perverted and possibly demented.

Dated but still true. “But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason it will never, ever, EVER be fixed. It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got. Because the owners, the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The Wealthy… the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests. Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that! You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place! It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club. By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care! Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you….they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a FUCK about you. They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that’s being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth. It’s called the American Dream,because you have to be asleep to believe it. George Carlin

This is a good account of the sort of thing this creep caused. “Driving through Nazi Germany today- I mean middle England…. Outside Birmingham Airport. And this is what greets people arriving in Britain. Flags everywhere, not as welcome or pride, but as intimidation. Weaponised symbolism. A message that says exclusion before it says hello. Is this how we want to present ourselves to the world? The first thing visitors see is not culture, innovation, or hospitality, but nationalism turned aggressive and hostile. Tourism, trade, investment, students, business confidence. All of it relies on Britain looking open, stable, and serious. Turning national symbols into threats does the opposite. You do not strengthen an economy by making the country look angry and closed. You do not attract growth by signalling fear of outsiders. You do not build pride by turning identity into a warning sign. This is not patriotism. It is posturing. And it makes Britain look smaller, not stronger. So do the news reports of Brits falling off ladders while the country argues about flags instead of fixing what is broken. If you want a weaker economy and a poorer future, keep choosing distraction over reality. That is the path you are on. And when the consequences arrive, I hope those flags come in handy. You may need them for tents sooner than you think. Some councils have paid £75,000 for these flags instead of helping people out on the lead up to Christmas. We should replace them all with rainbow flags in June. I do also think we should start writing refugees welcome on them with permanent markers. A national campaign. Vote Reform to be poorer! Just look at the new reform councils. If you cannot grasp what is being said here, then pause. This is not about flags. It was never about flags. It is about the people holding them. The intent behind them. The way symbols are picked up sharpened and used to hit other people with. The way patriotism gets turned into a weapon and then pointed downward. If you are still arguing about bunting while missing the cruelty, the contempt then that is the point being made. If all you see is cloth and colour and not who is being targeted underneath it then you might be the problem. This shabby, yobbish, and offensive behaviour makes be ashamed of being British.”

'The Trump regime continues to attack all the independent institutions in this country that have traditionally served as buffers against tyranny – universities, non-profits, lawyers and law firms, the media, science and researchers, libraries and museums, the civil service and independent agencies – threatening them with extermination or loss of funding if they do not submit to its oversight and dictatorial demands. Trump even instructed the Department of Justice to investigate ActBlue, the platform that handles the fundraising for almost all Democratic candidates and the issues Democrats support. We are no longer Democrats or Republicans. We are either patriots fighting the regime or we are complicit in its tyranny. There is no middle ground. Trump is still actively destroying the economy. His proposed tariffs are still raising prices. His attacks on the Fed chief, Jerome Powell, persist in causing tremors around the world. Trump wants total power, even at the cost of our democracy and economy. His polls are plummeting yet many Americans are still in denial. “He’s getting things done!” some say. “He’s tough and strong!” Every American with any shred of authority must loudly and boldly explain the danger we are still in.

"Donald Trump has spent a decade poisoning American politics, destroying reputations, threatening opponents and bending the Republican Party to his will. Today, finally, America turned on him. But the sheer scale of his humiliation could prove every bit as devastating as the reckoning now awaiting him. In the USA there are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection. Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder. And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here. That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality. And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has many months in power. In his inaugural address he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element. As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in future it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he returns in some way, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics. Either way, it will be a very long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.’

You are right.

What a surprise!

Reform candidates come in three types. Those motivated by crazy neoliberal ideology based on the sociopathic views of Ayn Rand (“The virtue of selfishness”) Hayek and Friedman. Both social Darwinists who thought that the markets should decide everything. Xenophobic, usually homophobic, and some overtly racist. Some just want to enrich themselves at the expense of others, seek attention, and thirdly a hate fuelled repugnant mixture of both. Inept, ignorant, incompetent, stupid, perverted, or deranged.

“I used to wonder how it was possible that Trump could have won in 2016 and then again in 2024, given how emotionally toxic, morally vacant, and psychologically mangled he is. I do not wonder anymore. He won for that exact reason. He was not a candidate. He was a mirror. If you were a racist, you found your guy. If you were a misogynist, you found your guy. If money was your only religion, you found your guy. If your heart was armoured shut, you found your guy. If you mocked disabled people, you found your guy. If you hated intelligent people, you found your guy. If you were a rapist, you found your guy. If you enjoyed golden showers with Russian sex workers, you found your guy. If you had done absolutely nothing to confront your emotional wreckage, you found your guy. If you were a serial cheater, you found your guy. If you were a perpetual bankrupt, you found your guy. If you stiffed honest workers, you found your guy. If you were a conman, you found your guy. If you mocked people’s appearances, you found your guy. If you longed for a toxic Daddy, you found your guy. If you were dissociated and disembodied, you found your guy. If you were unconscionable in every economic dealing, you found your guy. If you lied as naturally as breathing, you found your guy. If you had never eaten a green vegetable, you found your guy. If you were a white supremacist, you found your guy. If your ego contained a hole so large not even the presidency could fill it, you found your guy. If you were a sociopath who cared not one molecule about other humans, you found your guy. If he had only two of these traits, he never would have won. He won because he had hundreds of them, and millions of people recognized themselves in at least one. This has never been about Trump. It has always been about the people who finally had their worst instincts validated. Trump did not create the cruelty, he licensed it. He handed out permission slips for hate. He is merely a symptom of a far deeper disease: collective toxicity. If there is one sentence that explains Trump’s power, it is this: “He says the things I’m thinking.” That is the part that should chill the spine. Who knew that tens of millions of Americans were thinking such unconscionable things about their fellow citizens? Who knew how many white men felt so threatened by women and challenged by minorities that they were ready to torch democracy to feel big again? Who knew that after decades of apparent progress on race and gender, so many people were living in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to legitimize their worst selves and convert their bitterness into political power? We were living in a fool’s paradise. We aren’t anymore." — Michael Jochum

Agree totally. ‘The most uneducated buffoon in history stands at a podium, bloated with self-importance, lips pursed like a carnival barker ready to sell turd milk to the unsuspecting. He grins a grotesque smirk stretched across his face as he scrawls his name onto a hollow decree, a sham celebration of the dismantling of knowledge itself. The Department of Education falls, not with a bang, but with wheezing verbs, suffocated under the weight of his own staggering ignorance. Surrounding him are the usual suspects: cowards in expensive suits, servile sycophants clapping like trained seals, and racist opportunistic ghouls picking clean the bones of democracy. Liars, fools, and thieves all parasites fattening themselves on the hardships of the many. They stand in rigid formation, dead-eyed and soulless, their allegiance sworn not to country, not to principle, but to power, and the dark, festering rot that clings to it. And there he is the convicted wrong, the living embodiment of septic tank spew, his voice a noxious fog of grift and grievance. He lectures the world on right and wrong, irony clawing at the walls, desperate to escape the grotesque theatre of his moral void. The stomach turns, the air curdles, and for a moment, history itself recoils watching, in horror, as the great American experiment teeters on the precipice, led by a man who couldn’t spell “precipice” if his life depended on it.’

Evidence for your assertion? Research including meta-analyses of multiple studies shows that empathy is a trainable capacity that can measurably improve through structured education, practice, and social-emotional learning. Schools, workplaces, and medical institutions use specific programs (such as role-playing, active listening exercises, reading literature, and film-based discussions) to boost emotional literacy and perspective-taking. Schools in Denmark set aside one mandatory hour per week for a dedicated class called Klassens Tid (Class Time) for students aged 6 to 16. Problem-Solving & Listening: Rather than focusing on grades or traditional academic subjects during this hour, students sit together to discuss personal or group problems, practice active listening, and find collective solutions to issues like bullying or social exclusion. Around 60% of schoolwork in Denmark is group-based, emphasizing teamwork and supporting peers rather than individual competition. Finland treats empathy as a core competency woven into daily school life rather than a stand alone subject. Students analyze characters’ emotions during reading, mediate their own peer conflicts, and practice emotional resilience through hands-on projects and peer mentoring.

Empathy is the ability to recognize, understand, and share the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another person while keeping them distinct from your own.

Solitude is being by yourself by **choice **for peace and restoration, whereas loneliness is an unfulfilled biological need for connection. Solitary confinement is a form of imprisonment where an incarcerated person is isolated in a single cell for 22 to 24 hours a day with little or no meaningful human contact. In confinement is not a choice.

Reform candidates come in three types. Those motivated by crazy neoliberal ideology based on the sociopathic views of Ayn Rand (“The virtue of selfishness”) Hayek and Friedman. Both social Darwinists who thought that the markets should decide everything. Xenophobic, usually homophobic, and some overtly racist. Some just want to enrich themselves at the expense of others, seek attention, and thirdly a hate fuelled repugnant mixture of both. Inept, ignorant, incompetent, stupid, deranged and perverted.

Someone asked, “Why do some British people not like Farage?” Nate White, an articulate and witty writer wrote the following response: “A few things spring to mind. Farage lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which Boris lacked. So, the stark contrast does throw Farage’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief. Plus, we like a laugh. And while Farage may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty, or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I do not say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Farage, it is a fact. He does not even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. Farage is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he does not just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and automatic nastiness. There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance, or depth. It is all surface. Some might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we do not. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Farage is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He is not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He is more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege. And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully and racist. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down. So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a few of us– of look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that: You do not need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man. This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty hard to miss. After all, it is impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Johnson look trustworthy and Liz Truss look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Farage. And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumps of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created? If being a twat was a TV show, Farage would be the boxed set.