Case of pot calling the kettle?

ONE OF THE benefits of a change of inhabitant at No 10 might be, one must hope, a rather more robust response to the regular dose of national insult meted out from the White House.and its ageing occupant.

Endless sniping about this country's alleged lack of free speech comes across particularly richly in the light of many of the Trump administrations particularly restrictive actions.

One of the latest – and most chilling – involves the hounding of New York Times journalists in an attempt to discover the source of the information that led Mr Trump and his retinue to discard their newly acquired flying White House (a gift from a sycophantic Gulf State) and revert to the old converted 747 they were accustomed to travel in.

Could hreatening journalists to reveal sources be a chilling tactic Mr Trump has learned from his good friend in the Kremlin?

Taken along with the increasingly repressive actions of Big Tech it adds up to a supremely ironic instance of pot calling the kettle.

Fresh in our memories is the experience of Sarah Wynn-Williams, the author of Careless People, the whistle blowing account of her time at the tech giant Meta.

Subjected to the most intrusive surveillance, she was prevented from speaking at the recent Hay Festival.

To her credit she is now striking back, fighting the interim arbitration ruling sought by Meta preventing her from publicising Careless People

She has called it “improper and unlawful” and a “blatant violation of the first amendment.”

Maybe it's time some of our accusers looked in the mirror? And time also for some rather more robust responses from this side of the pond.

Step forward Andy!

Net zero's net gains? Zero?

THE INDICATIONS seem to be that in the new scheme of things we might finally wish farewell to Mr Net Zero - aka Mr Miliband - who has been responsible for some eye-watering crazy policies in the name of the envirnment.

Example - being happy to import oil and gas from Norway while driving our own indsutry onto the rocks,

There is, luckily, a sane voice with an intimate knowledge of the energy business who is also a dedicated supporter of Labour.

Dale Vince, the boss of the green energy generator Ecotricity, recently expressed some long overdue words of wisdom on the subject of net zero and Labour's (or Mr Miliband's) headlong rush towards it.

He said many of the party's net zero initiatives were “plainly a bad use of money”, and that dedicating billions to them during a cost of living crisis was “indefensible”.

He argued that “any potential leader” of the Labour party should make the Treasury and the Department for Business and Trade responsible for environmental decisions, similar to the system under the previous government.

Vince claimed Mr Miliband had effectively gifted Reform an effective line of attack by pushing the term “net zero”, criticism he said a new party leader could easily avoid. “A change of leader gives Labour the opportunity to take a new approach,” he said.

He went on: “Mr Miliband's Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has given Reform one of their most potent attack lines - stupid net zero' "

It was a line that worked, he claimed, because it contained an element of truth.

And meantime a whole industry has been brought to its

Some data centre sanity at last?

THERE ARE WELCOME signs of sanity prevailing over the vexed question of data centre over-development in Scotland.

The Guardian recently disclosed that a mega development planned for Lanarkshire had no chance of meeting its promise of being powered by renewables.

This revelatiom seems to have prompted very timely concern amongst politicians. The Scottish government is understood to be considerimg a moratorium on building new data centres, in Scotland.

The SNP's national council has passed a motion to freeze all new data centres in Scotland. That motion has been sent to the Scottish government to consider.

The promised land being offered us by Big Tech could well turn out to be a mirage.