Politics Posts
The murky origins of Human Resources
The Hawthorne experiments 100 years ago birthed a new, intrusive approach to managing workers
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Why Labour’s ‘right to switch off’ is bad for workers
Obsessing over work-life balance is a poor substitute for raising living standards
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Starmer will let the ‘Blob’ take over Britain
Britain’s unelected and ineffective quangocrats are already amassing more power under Labour
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Net Zero is a war on the working class
We are sleepwalking towards a social and economic catastrophe
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The battle for the Arctic
Russia, China and the West are scrambling for control over the frozen tundra
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The electric-car fantasy
Rishi Sunak’s green diktats are a recipe for disaster
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The Dutch revolt against Net Zero
Voters have sent Frans Timmermans, the EU’s ‘climate pope’, packing
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The Remainer outrage over Horizon is entirely confected
The EU science scheme is really not all it’s cracked up to be
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Britain’s elites need to own up to their failures
Responsibility dodging is now endemic among our leaders
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The green roots of the UK’s water crisis
Climate-change alarmism has throttled innovation in the water industry
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Labour could not be more wrong about working from home
Keir Starmer’s plan for a ‘right to work from home’ will let work take over our lives
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Just say no to digital ID
Tony Blair and William Hague’s scheme would rob us of our civil liberties
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Digital ID, A Tool To Control Thee?
This week, once again, Tony Blair has been bleating on about ID cards
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Labour is living in eco-dreamland
Recycling failed policies will do nothing to solve the energy crisis
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John Kerry’s climate colonialism
Biden’s climate envoy wants to restrict Africa’s ability to grow
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That’s enough eco-propaganda, Sir David
David Attenborough should stick to educating us about animals rather than bashing human beings
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Renewables will not solve the energy crisis
Wind and solar are far too unreliable to meet Britain’s energy needs
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Why Britain’s water industry stinks
The sewage crisis is a damning indictment of the water firms and our state bureaucracy
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We need democratic control over the Bank of England
‘Independence’ was a terrible idea. It’s time to reverse it
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How many generals is Putin prepared to lose?
The loss of so many high-ranking generals is a sign of Russia’s meat-grinder militarism
Read the full article...James on GBN’s Debs & Co 13 January 2022
James discusses some key elements of the news on GBN’s Dews & Co.
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Debate on PartyGate police inquiry on talkRADIO tv
James on the on Darryl Morris show, talkRADIO TV, 11 February 2022, discussing PartyGate police inquiry
Read the full article...How work took over our lives
The growth of the office gave employers unparalleled insight into their workers’ private lives
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From profits to prophets: why has big business gone woke?
James joined this panel led audience discussion at the Battle of Ideas festival 2021 on the pros & cons of Woke Capitalism and what’s driving it.
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Why working from home is bad news for workers
Employers will intrude ever more deeply into employees’ private lives.
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Could the borderless home be worse than the open office?
At a time when the future of open-plan space is under review, a re-reading of Billy Wilder classic 1960 movie The Apartment reminds us of the dangers of a corporate over-reach into private lives
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In defence of Mark Twain
He was many things — an idealist, a wit, a supreme writer — but he was not a racist
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Trial of the Chicago 7: great cinema, bad politics
Despite its overbearing liberalism, Aaron Sorkin’s new film is a cinematic triumph
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Nudging: an elite disease
No10’s Behavioural Insights Team deserves close scrutiny. So do its critics.
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Flood warnings: prevention and the Environment Agency
Sky News discussion on the Environment Agency’s gospel of despair in response to recent floods
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Climate protests and Extinction Rebellion
Sky News on climate protests with Richard Ecclestone of Extinction Rebellion
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Greta Thunberg and climate change
Sky News discussion on Greta Thunberg and climate change
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Massacre of the (future) innocents
Two key papers form the theory behind today’s anti-natalism. They are junk science.
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Prince Harry’s climate pledge
Sky News discussion on Prince Harry’s climate pledge to only have two children with Clare Farrell from Extinction Rebellion
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July 2019 heat wave and climate change
Sky News debate with Angela Terry of One Home on the July 2019 heat wave in the UK and climate change
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Trump’s trade war with Huawei
Sky News discussion on Trump’s trade war with Huawei
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Climate protests
Sky News discussion on the climate change protests by Extinction Rebellion with George Monbiot and James Woudhuysen
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‘The Post’: missing the big story
Back in 1971, when this docudrama is set, it must have been tough being a newspaper baroness.
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The silent war against population growth in Africa
Once again, Westerners are foisting population control on Africa.
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How the EU is holding Africa back
It’s long been known, but often hushed over, that the subsidies the EU pays its farmers under the Common Agricultural Policy, plus the bureaucratic rules and standards it wields against food imports, have discriminated against African farmers.
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Africa: what would real progress look like?
After the faltering of Angela Merkel and the fall of Robert Mugabe, here are some principles of economic development that could form an alternative to Germany’s policy and practice in Africa
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Is globalisation over? The future of world trade
Listen to the debate ‘Is globalisation over? The future of world trade‘ from Battle of Ideas 2017
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China isn’t the only country censoring the web
Last weekend, that supreme and unimpeachable force for worldwide progress, Apple Computer, withdrew perhaps 60 Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) from its App Store in China.
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The liberal West was protectionist before Trump
Obama and the EU pursued their own PC-flavoured trade wars before the Donald arrived
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A postcapitalist pseuds’ corner
Two books prophesying the future show a distinct ignorance about present-day capitalism
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Child migrants: Britain is far from full
David Cameron says he hates racism. He says he cares, deeply, about children – enough to cosset the charity Kids Company until well past its sell-by date.
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Why Alice is still wonderful
In July 1865, the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematics lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford, published the first edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll.
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Transport in the UK election, 2015
While Japan is building floating trains, British politicians are promising (slightly) lower fares.
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The greening of the ivory towers in education
A National Association of Scholars report interrogates the tyranny of sustainability in education.
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Dangerous dogs or feckless owners?
If you own a dog in Britain and it hurts someone, you can now be sent to prison for five years.
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Banning fur is not a political statement
Call me sentimental, but I like animals. But I don’t like celebrity culture, and not just because I don’t know who many of the top celebs are nowadays. Don’t know, don’t want to know.
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Humanity: alive and well in the fast lane
The human spirit – motorists emphatically included – remains intrepid, indomitable, and impervious to differences of race, age or gender.
Read the full article...A tax obsession with diminishing returns
Politicians fetishise tax avoidance because they have little clue how to generate wealth.
Read the full article...Dangerous dogs: not that dangerous
Further proposed state restrictions on pets always mean yet more state restrictions on humans.
Read the full article...The robots are coming – but not fast enough
The claim that mechanisation is sweeping away jobs in a wave of innovation bears little relation to reality.
Read the full article...From red peril to green panic
America’s military industrial complex once chased communists. Now it obsesses over CO2 emissions.
Read the full article...The right to bear 3D-printed arms
The US authorities are armed to the teeth, and we’re panicking about citizens printing out rubbish guns?
Read the full article...Rare earths and not-so-rare tensions
The US government’s threat to take China to court for hoarding precious elements is more than just a trade dispute.
Read the full article...All this carbon-cutting is a waste of energy
Neither Boris Johnson nor Ken Livingstone is willing to deliver the uninterrupted, cheap energy London needs.
Read the full article...Making a molehill out of a mountain
Clint Eastwood’s biopic of J Edgar Hoover is more about the man’s personal identity than his historical significance.
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Manias about change
Just because your email Inbox is brimming doesn’t mean that the real pace of change is accelerating. Panel discussion.
Read the full article...Fracking and Fukushima: our energy security fears
When I hear the phrase “energy security”, I reach for my revolver’.
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The end is nigh: is survival all we can hope for?
In their policies for energy and for the economy, British politicians hold up continued existence as the maximum goal we should strive for.
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BP’s Deepwater Horizon and Loren Steffy, Drowning in oil
BP became so obsessed with irrational management practices and petty health-and-safety measures that it overlooked the real safety of its workers
Read the full article...Budgeting for a dismal no‑growth future
For all their talk of innovation, the Lib-Cons are more concerned with pinching pennies than investing.
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‘Lifestyles will have to be redesigned’
A Guardian journalist’s ranting about the ‘neglect, greed and human filth’ of modern China shows that new prejudices about a Green Peril have replaced old fears of the Yellow Peril.
Read the full article...An exhausted approach to the energy issue
The Lib-Cons ‘energy policy’ is to encourage people to use less of it rather than to generate more of it.
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An engaging tale, packed with myths
Christian Salmon’s book rightly notes the increasing use of narrative in modern life, but his ‘anti-capitalist’ instincts get in the way of understanding why.
Read the full article...Election 2010: question everything on innovation!
James Woudhuysen explores the roots of the establishment’s neglect of scientific and technological innovation.
Read the full article...How the state is a roadblock to progress
Red tape-obsessed, visionless governments are holding back the kind of big and risky innovation society needs.
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On a recent trip to India, James Woudhuysen collected a prize for Excellence in Innovation. As proof, he records the boom and dust of his travels.
Read the full article...Still no clear policy on nuclear energy
New Labour’s commitment to nuclear is half-hearted at best, and goes hand in hand with more policing of our energy use.
Read the full article...State intervention is no substitute for innovation
British industry isn’t dead by any means, but if low-carbon jobs and protectionism trump new research and development, it soon will be.
Read the full article...New Labour’s power vacuum
The UK government’s obsession with energy self-sufficiency and renewables looks set to lead to blackouts in the next few years.
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What movies tell us about work
Movies, as everyone knows, form a powerful medium. So when we consider movies and the world of work, one thing ought to be obvious: to show a few classic movies at normal workplaces would be a useful innovation.
Read the full article...Gladwell: hero or zero?
Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers reveals more about the author’s prejudices than it does the nature of success.
Read the full article...An R&D recession
Today’s economic crisis partly springs from years and years of under-investment in research and development.
Read the full article...A Fu Manchu of the dot com age?
Claims that Chinese cyber-spies are plotting world domination through the World Wide Web are greatly exaggerated.
Read the full article...The recession and the Politics of Fumbling
The consistent incompetence of politicians is no accident: it is testament to their lack of a cohering ideology.
Read the full article...The CFLs are on, but nobody’s home
The mad green war on light bulbs won’t save much electricity – it’s about enforcing moral rectitude in the home.
Read the full article...Global rivalries go green
Climate change will be a central part of government agendas in 2009 – and a rich source of diplomatic squabbles, too.
Read the full article...Nothing Romantic about environmentalists
The great nineteenth-century English poets waxed lyrical about nature, but they still believed in humanity – unlike today’s eco-pessimists.
Read the full article...Eco-imperialism is alive and well in the West
The West’s pleading with China to cut carbon emissions bursts with ulterior motives
Read the full article...London 2012: where’s the Olympic Spirit?
Officials don’t care about sport for sport’s sake: they want the Games to boost British self-esteem, fix public transport and solve global warming.
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Brown’s ‘get fit’ towns: Kim Jong-il would be proud
With its new towns that will force people to keep fit, New Labour is pushing an authoritarian health agenda that will be the envy of tinpot dictators.
Read the full article...Why greens don’t want to ‘solve’ climate change
Environmentalists are cagey about techno-fixes to climate change because berating mankind for its impact on nature is their raison d’être.
Read the full article...It’s official: the masses are not gullible
A new British government survey suggests that lots of us have an agnostic or atheist attitude to the cult of environmentalism.
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This land is our land
If New Labour is serious about making homes more affordable, then it should allow members of the public to buy land and build homes where they please.
Read the full article...Let’s fight back against the new Model Army
Like voodoo forecasts, computer models of climate change are being used to stifle political discussion and resign man to his Fate
Read the full article...Take a PEW, hear a sermon
With three new tracts on planning, energy and waste, the government shows it would rather change our habits than encourage innovation.
Read the full article...Did Rachel Carson really kill more people than Stalin?
On the centenary of her birth, the author of Silent Spring is idolised by greens and demonised by the right. Both sides need to turn over a new leaf.
Read the full article...Come, friendly bombs, fall on Brown’s eco-towns
With his plans to erect zero-carbon homes in zero-car suburbs, Gordon Brown builds on the Blairites’ small-minded approach to housing
Read the full article...Remembering the Moscow Trials
Amid today’s craze for anniversaries, there’s one episode in history that nobody – especially on the left – wants to talk about.
Read the full article...Gambling addiction: a panic at odds with reality
Top doctors, business consultants and officials reckon we could all end up enslaved by the slot machines. Wanna bet?
Read the full article...Beware the New Parochialism
The Blair-Schwarzenegger and Clinton-Livingstone love-ins on tackling climate change summed up the Lilliputian localism of today’s Green lobby.
Read the full article...Carbon ration cards
Debate on BBC Breakfast between Professor Mayer Hillman and Professor James Woudhuysen about the Carbon Ration Card proposal announced by Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs David Miliband
Read the full article...Windmills of the mind
Why the UK government’s energy policy is more concerned with changing our behaviour and mindset than with actually supplying more energy.
Read the full article...The folly of carbon swipe cards
David Miliband is right: his plan for all citizens to carry around a card that measures their use of carbon will be seen as ‘burden’ by most of us.
Read the full article...Computer games and sex difference
The suspicion exists that there are not enough computer games being programmed by women for women. Yet women do play computer games.
Read the full article...ID cards yes, mobile government no
The government’s enthusiasm for ID cards is in stark contrast to its lukewarm attitude to mobile IT
Read the full article...All’s quiet on the Trafalgar front
Why the British elite won’t utter the v-word on the bicentennial of Nelson’s battle
Read the full article...All eyes on the future
New Labour invests a lot in cloudy crystal balls – a professor of forecasting explains why.
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The future of work in Ireland
Looking beyond the myths toward the Big Picture: speech at Industrial Relations News, Dublin, February 2005
Read the full article...Brands: don’t buy the hype
Both corporations and their critics are so obsessed with brands that they ignore the real worlds of work and politics.
Read the full article...Putting the IT into politics
A little more conviction and a little less ‘compulsion’ might get people interested in e-government.
Read the full article...Playing at democracy
Reality TV is no model for voting reform. In the US, Fox TV’s cable channel, FX, plans to broadcast a new kind of gameshow.
Read the full article...Brands demystified
Throughout the world of business, people believe in the magic of brands
Read the full article...Government and City literature
The presentation of important information from government and the City should be more efficient – and legible.
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A licence to print money?
The other day, I found myself in a book auction organised by Sotheby’s, in the West End.
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KOWTOWING TO BEIJING DEPT: Whaddya know? Keir Starmer finally discovers his ‘growth agenda’! As my piece also suggests, the portents don't look good for Labour to protect the UK from CCP operations https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britain-pares-back-secretive-china-strategy-review-seeking-closer-ties-2024-12-16/
"By all means, keep up the salty, anti-Starmer tweets, Elon. But kindly keep your mega-bucks to yourself."
At the #ECB, convicted lawyer #ChristineLagarde has just beaten inflation, oh yes. But #AndrewBailey's many forecasts of lower interest rates have excelled again, with UK inflation now at 2.6 per cent
Painting: Thomas Couture, A SLEEPING JUDGE, 1859
Innovators I like
Robert Furchgott – discovered that nitric oxide transmits signals within the human body
Barry Marshall – showed that the bacterium Helicobacter pylori is the cause of most peptic ulcers, reversing decades of medical doctrine holding that ulcers were caused by stress, spicy foods, and too much acid
N Joseph Woodland – co-inventor of the barcode
Jocelyn Bell Burnell – she discovered the first radio pulsars
John Tyndall – the man who worked out why the sky was blue
Rosalind Franklin co-discovered the structure of DNA, with Crick and Watson
Rosalyn Sussman Yallow – development of radioimmunoassay (RIA), a method of quantifying minute amounts of biological substances in the body
Jonas Salk – discovery and development of the first successful polio vaccine
John Waterlow – discovered that lack of body potassium causes altitude sickness. First experiment: on himself
Werner Forssmann – the first man to insert a catheter into a human heart: his own
Bruce Bayer – scientist with Kodak whose invention of a colour filter array enabled digital imaging sensors to capture colour
Yuri Gagarin – first man in space. My piece of fandom: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/10421
Sir Godfrey Hounsfield – inventor, with Robert Ledley, of the CAT scanner
Martin Cooper – inventor of the mobile phone
George Devol – 'father of robotics’ who helped to revolutionise carmaking
Thomas Tuohy – Windscale manager who doused the flames of the 1957 fire
Eugene Polley – TV remote controls