Artemis 2, Forget Mandelson, Quote for the Month

Artemis 2

The Artemis 2 mission to the moon has brought interest in space to a new generation and is a welcome diversion from depressing world and home events. 

The mission was a huge success and delivered some of the most beautiful photos ever seen.

A view of Earth captured from an Orion spacecraft window. (Image credit: NASA)

The Orion spacecraft traveled 694,481 miles (1,117,659 km) and carried the first humans to the moon since the crew of Apollo 17 in December 1972.

They sustained temperatures up to 5,000F (2,760C) as they re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere at 25,000 mph !!

Integrity splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean under deployed parachutes. (Image credit: NASA)

Forget Peter Mandelson

It has been going on for years now. Or it seems like it. First it was the Epstein scandal that has really been going on for years, decades. Then it was everyone else who knew Epstein getting dragged into it. The former Prince Andrew, his associates, then anyone involved with his appointment process and on it goes...

The real tragedy of Mandelson's involvement is that at a time of acute economic distress for the UK, our senior politicians are arguing over his role, what he did, who appointed him rather than concentrating on addressing the real issues facing our country. And of course the opposition leaders are instrumental in raising it over and over again and calling for the PM to resign.

The Times 23rd April 2026

Should it really be the major topic of conversation at Prime Minister's Questions, Wednesday after Wednesday, when the Middle East War is fast leading to a world oil crisis? A crisis that will impact every person to a greater or lesser extent. Even the newspaper headlines are fixated with the next Mandelson tidbit or resignation.

Is this really what the public is most concerned about? Our leaders fail us once again.  

We all know that the reason Mandelson was appointed as UK Ambassador to the US was that he was a good match for Trump. He got the UK the best tarrof deal of all countries worldwide. Why will nobody say the truth?

Quote for the Month

“Our four Artemis II astronauts, Reid, Victor, Christina and Jeremy, took humanity on an incredible journey around the moon and brought back images so exquisite and brimming with science, they will inspire generations to come,” said Nasa

The Greens are shockingly Bad, Don't Criticise unless you can do better

The Greens not so Green after all?

The Deputy Leader of the Green Party since last September is Mothin Ali.  According to the Times newspaper, he supported the Hamas attacks of October 2023 on Israel:

Ali was elected as a Green Party councillor in May last year. During his victory speech he promised to “raise the voice of Palestine” while in office and shouted “Allahu akbar”. He later apologised for those comments.

His social media history also revealed that he had supported the attacks on October 7, 2023, in a post defending the right of “indigenous people to fight back”.

Sunday September 21 2025, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

More from The Spectator:

"Polanski’s deputy, Mothin Ali, makes YouTube videos in a Palestine beanie teaching viewers ‘how to cut down trees for profit’. He’s a vehement supporter of a motion at this weekend’s online conference declaring that ‘Zionism is racism’. Other motions up for debate, which have gone unreported until now, call for the demolition of London City airport, ending ‘gender-based blanket bans in sport’ and leaving Nato."  

The Spectator 26/03/2026

I am Critical of Criticism

People should only criticise when they have a better solution. Criticism alone is not helpful, it's harmful.  Unlike non democratic countries, people here are free to speak their minds so long as they don't incite violence. People seem to be increasingly critical of our way of life and the problem is that when you hear it every day from so many people, it can really affect what you think.

More recently, Brits and French people who have moved to the Middle East for better lifestyles and lower taxes have been heavily critical of the British and French governments' efforts to get them 'home' following the outbreak of war. A service for which they no longer pay. Justified?

Quotes for the Month

“The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient.” Warren Buffet

"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils." Hector Berlioz

No Justice, The Greens Win, Iran attacked by USA and Israel

No Justice: Court acquits Palestine Action terrorists

I can't tell you how shocked I am. Woolwich Crown Court was shown a video in which 6 members Palestine Action (now a proscribed terrorist organisation) smashed their van into Elbit Systems, an Israeli defence company’s British factory, destroyed military equipment worth more than £1 million using sledgehammers and left a female police officer with a fractured spine.

Live footage of the attack published by The Independent

The jury was influenced and intimidated by supporters of Palestine Action and ended up acquitting them. "Lord Walney, the former government anti-extremism tsar, told The Times: “It is deeply disappointing that the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the sledgehammer attack that caused grievous bodily harm to a police sergeant who approached the Palestine Action saboteurs."

Their van shames through the doors to enter

Chris Phelps, Shadow Home Secretary said the verdict “risks giving the green light to mob violence in pursuit of a political objective. This is a shocking verdict. Smashing up property and attacking a female police officer with a sledgehammer, leaving her with a fractured spine, is despicable. There is no justification for this, no matter how strongly someone feels about something. In this country, we decide issues by debate and elections, not by violence.”

4 women and 2 men smash up equipment and attack police officers

Are we really in the UK? This seems more like the outcome from a court in Iran. I am deeply shocked but I have confidence that our judicial system will review, re-try and convict. 

They celebrate following their acquittal and release

The Greens win Gorton & Denton By-Election

With a majority of over 4,000, the Green Party pushed Reform into 2nd place and Labour into 3rd place. This brings me little comfort as in this anti-establishment mid term by-election, the voters have chosen to vote Green to express their discontent. Furthermore, about 30% of the constituency are Muslims who would have been attracted to the Green's pro Palestine policy.

The Greens are basically a bunch of clueless people who, when it comes to business and economy, don't know their arse from their elbow. And that's being kind. They are also massively pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel which brings them huge support from the UK Muslim communities who they go out of their way to attract by leafleting in local language and wearing traditional Palestinian clothing. Their leader, Zac Polanski, criticised the USA and Israel this morning for their attack against the Iranian regime saying they should have continued negotiations indefinitely.

Reform are a bunch of nasty people who attract extremists in society, frequently being called out for racism, antisemitism and other criminality.

This means the people of Gorton & Denton have chosen to protest their unhappiness with our political leadership by siding with a bunch of dangerous idiots rather than with a bunch closely aligned with fascists. All of the mainstream parties took a battering showing that trust has evaporated following years of their leadership.

Most advanced western economies are facing similar dilemmas and nobody has a coherent solution that will re-build our countries and stop the relative decline. Parties such as Greens and Reform (extreme left and right) will hasten our decline.

Iran attacked by USA and Israel

As I write this on March 1st, the USA and Israel have just launched a massive attack on Iran designed at removing the nuclear threat and at regime change. They have killed the 'Supreme Leader' Ayatollah Khamenei and various other senior leaders. 

The people of Iran deserve to have this oppressive regime removed after decades of brutal dictatorship and murder in the name of religion. I hope that a replacement plan is ready to replace the regime when it falls. 

Quotes of the Month

"Socialism’s answer to poverty is the equivalent of helping wheelchair users by cutting everyone else’s legs off."

Konstantin Kisin in his book 'An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West'

EUROPE IS facing a “geopolitical and geo-economic state of emergency”, declares Emmanuel Macron. If the continent does not invest in its economy and lift barriers to growth more quickly, it will be “swept aside” by technology from America and imports from China. The Economist 

Quantum Computing, Double Standards

Quantum Computing

People are starting to talk about Quantum Computing as the next story after AI.  What is QC? Here is Gemini's one sentence explanation: 

"Quantum computing uses qubits (which can exist in multiple states at once) instead of standard bits (0s and 1s) to solve complex problems exponentially faster than today's most powerful supercomputers."

To put that into context, Google's latest quantum chip Willow shows its best performance on speed tests: it solved a specific problem in less than five minutes. For comparison, even the fastest supercomputer today would need 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years to finish the same task. That's quite a difference!

Google's Willow Quantum chip and the computer they operate in

Massive unrest in Iran: Double Standards in the West?

The regime has killed thousands of protesters in cold blood and arrested many more after the Iranian people who are fed up with the shortages, restrictions and brutality of their regime took to the streets in their hundreds of thousands. Latest estimates suggest that as many as tens of thousands of protesters were slaughtered by the regime.

According to the US government website:

Iran’s Islamic regime is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.

I utterly condemn this brutal evil regime who not only persecute and murder their own people, but sponsor, train and fund Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houtis and other terrorist groups.

Do you remember the hundreds of thousands of people who demonstrated in major cities across the free world in support of the Palestinian people following Hamas' 7th October attack on Israel and Israel's brutal response? They were demonstrating against Israel's use of force to destroy Hamas in Gaza and the large number of casualties resulting from this action in Gaza. They accused Israel of genocide.

Why don't we see those mass demonstrations in support of the Iranian people? Do the Palestinians command more support than the Iranians? Both have equally repressive and barbarian regimes. The Hamas led terrorist attack on Israel on October 7th unleashed the wrath of Israel on Palestine. The Iranian regime funded Hamas and are turning on their own people, slaughtering thousands in cold blood for merely going out in the streets to demonstrate. Why don't any of the hundreds of thousands of people in Western countries who marched in support of the people of Palestine march in support of the people of Iran?

I suspect many of these people have been misled about the issues

What about the Ukrainian people who are suffering hugely after more than 3 years of Russian invasion? The dead and injured must be far greater in number than in Gaza. This very day vast numbers of Ukrainians are living in unheated homes with temperatures at and below zero. Why? Because the Russians have been targeting residential power generation in order to create these freezing conditions in mid winter. Experts estimate that as many as 325,000 Russian troops have been killed, compared with 100,000-140,000 for Ukraine.

Why is it that the Palestinian cause prompts mass demonstrations in their support but the people of Ukraine and Iran are ignored? Is it because the protesters support Hamas and the Iranian regime? If, not why? This makes me angry :(

Quotes for the Month

"How do you titillate an ocelot? 

You oscillate its tits a lot."

BBC Amandaland Christmas Special 2025

“The big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting.” 

Charlie Munger 

Happy New Year! Is Immigration the Problem?

Generated by Gemini 3 Nano Banana from my instructions

The Problem is Not Immigration, it's a lack of British Values

What is making the British population angry and driving support for the extreme right, is repeatedly seeing foreign looking people committing criminal acts and mis-behaving. 

The four fundamental British values promoted in the UK national curriculum are:

Democracy

The Rule of Law

Individual Liberty, and 

Mutual Respect and Tolerance

Schools are required to promote these values, which are seen as underpinning what it means to be a citizen in a modern and diverse Britain. 

Democracy

This includes respect for democracy and support for participation in the democratic process. 

The Rule of Law

This involves respecting the laws that underpin society and understanding the difference between right and wrong. 

Individual Liberty

This means encouraging children to make their own decisions, understanding their individual rights and responsibilities, and respecting the liberties of others, all within the law.

Mutual Respect and Tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs

This involves an understanding and knowledge of world cultures, faiths, and beliefs. It also means accepting that people with different faiths or no faith should be tolerated and not face discrimination.

If everyone adhered to these values, we would all be living together in loving harmony. Unfortunately there has always been a criminal and an anti-social element in our society. And in recent years the media have highlighted acts of terror which have clearly been committed by immigrants or people of foreign heritage who have not adopted British Values. Most recently, I am thinking of the Manchester synagogue attack, but unfortunately this was not the worst.

Recent terror attacks include:

• Manchester Synagogue attack killing 2 people by Jihad Al-Shamie in October 2025
• Southport Murder of 3 girls at a Taylor Swift themed dance workshop by Axel Rudakubana in July 2024
• Conservative MP Sir David Amess stabbed to death by an Islamic State sympathizer in October 2021
• Westminster Bridge Attack: Khalid Masood drove a car into pedestrians and stabbed a police officer, killing 5 people in March 2017
• London Bridge & Borough Market Attack killing 8 people by Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba  in June 2017 
• Manchester Arena bombing (Ariana Grande Concert) killing 23 poeple by Salman and Hashem Abedi in May 2017

This is by no means an exhaustive list unfortunately but in most of these cases the murderers are influenced and/or acting for extremist Islamist networks including Al Qaeda and ISIS. There is also a string of planned attacks that have been foiled by the police.

I think it would be extraordinary if the British population did not want to take more extreme measures to stop these people entering our country. Even those who were born here clearly did not embrace our culture and values and sought to destroy us.

Yes the authorities fail to call out the facts for fear of upsetting Muslim communities and creating division. And I don't see the Muslim leaders doing sufficient to stamp out extremism in their communities. We need to talk in facts and not hide or obscure the truth. We don't see attacks from other faith communities do we? British Hindus, Jews, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists live together in relative harmony. So do most Muslims but unfortunately the repeated terror attacks are dividing our society and pushing the country towards the far right.  

My wish for 2026 is that this stops and that we can recover our tolerance, mutual respect and democracy that has served us well for so long. And that everyone remembers that it's Immigration that has made this country great. More about that soon.

Quotes for the Month

"Political questions are far too serious to be left to the politicians."
Hannah Arendt

"What is worng with people is that they are vulnerable to stupid ideas and philosophies of hate"

Daniel Finkelstein commenting on the Bondi Beach terrorist attack that killed 15 Jewish people celebrating Chanukkah.

Beware the AI Scam, Candles at the Holywell Music Room, Why I disagree with Gary Stevenson, Autumn Again & The Budget in 1 sentence.

Beware the AI scam coming your way

A 'friend' calls your mobile and asks for £15,000. You know it's him because his name and number are displayed on your phone in the usual way. He says it's an emergency and he's in an awful mess and needs your help. You saw him a few weeks back and he seemed fine. You tell him his voice sounds a little odd and he says he has a cold. You listen to him and say you will call him back.

This is exactly what happened to a friend of mine as he was driving on the motorway last month. His 'friend' it turns out was a scammer using AI to imitate the real friend's voice and somehow they can 'adopt' the genuine phone number. My friend rang around and others had received a similar call. When he finally made contact with his genuine friend it turned out his phone had been hacked.

Apparently the scam was quite convincing and they will improve rapidly. BEWARE when talking to anyone - even if you know them well - if they ask you for something. Assume every request is fake unless you are certain it is NOT!!! It's going to get much much worse.

I have just activated a 'scam alert' feature on my phone. Apparently Google can identify many scams and a warning will flash up on my phone to alert me. This is great use of technology counteracting the criminal use of technology that professional scammers are using with more and more sophistication.

Candlelight Concert at the Holywell Music Room

The Unity String Quartet, Holywell Music Room

Our first visit to the Holywell Music Room in Oxford was to experience a string quartet playing some of Abba and Queen's greatest music. 

It was an elegant and beautiful evening in what is said to be the first purpose built music room in Europe.

By J.M. Lystad - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0
Holywell Music Room built in 1748, Holywell St, Oxford

Why I disagree with Gary Stevenson

Gary Stevenson is a high profile British political Youtuber who has created a large following advocating higher taxes on the very rich. I have been following him; he is a successful economist and he understands his stuff and has a talent for explaining complex issues simply. However, where I fail to agree (and I wish I could agree with him) is that he believes there are ways of taxing the super-rich without making them leave the UK. 

Here are some facts:

1. The top 5% of earners pay almost half all income tax collected by the government. The top 1% pay over a quarter.

An article in the FT on November 21st shows that the average Brit pays less tax than average Americans and that top earners pay equivalent to Norway and Denmark, among the highest in the world:

The idea that we need to tax the rich more is quite insane. The opposite is true if we want to revive the economy.

2. Income tax is the single largest stream of government revenue by a large factor even if you exclude the national insurance contributions paid alongside it. And now we know who pays for half of it:

3. There is now clear evidence that many rich people have left the country. Sales of luxury items have fallen significantly in the last couple of years. This is because people are leaving the country, fewer wealthy tourists are visiting and the middle classes are being squeezed and purchasing fewer luxuries.

"Emigration is rising — and it’s not just millionaires. Data from the Office for National Statistics this week showed that the number of people leaving Britain for good rose 39 per cent in the past three years, to 669,000 in 2024." The Times 21/11/2025

Surely the answer is to make our country MORE and not LESS attractive to rich people so that they come and live here, spend money here and pay taxes here. They are subsidising the rest of us. As they go, the rest of us are having to pay more and more in tax to make up for their loss.

This shows how the tax revenues start to decline as the tax rate goes over 40%.
Real data is very hard to find but each time the UK (e.g. Wilson) or the French (e.g. Hollande) have hiked
tax rates for the very rich, it has failed and they have had to put them back down.

In the last few weeks, more very wealthy people have left the UK, including Laksmi Mittal (to Switzerland and Dubai) who has regularly topped the Sunday Times Rich List, and James Brocklebank, senior partner at a Private Equity firm (to Luxembourg). We will be much poorer without them. Popular destinations are the UAE (especially Dubai/Abu Dhabi), Switzerland, EU countries (Italy, Malta, Portugal, Cyprus), and other tax-friendlier jurisdictions.

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the top UK 1000 earners pay an average of £4 to £6 million in income tax annually.

You can do the maths. If a quarter of the Top 5% of tax payers left, 12% of the current total tax take would need to be found elsewhere. (Around £40bn or an extra 6p on the basic rate of tax). This would be 're-distributed' to the rest of us with the middle classes taking a hefty slice. It's called socialism.

Those Autumn Leaves

It's that time of year again and it's spectacular!

Cotinus in my garden

Liquid Ambers at the Said Business School

Rachel Reeves' November 26th Budget in one sentence (ish)

Taxes up and Spending Up = Socialism; growth will remain anemic (scarcely over 1% for the next years) so the country's economic malaise will continue to deteriorate. The only way out of the mess is to get a big boost to growth. GDP growth in the USA is almost 4%. 

The budget did not address this, proving socialists don't understand economics.

Quote for the Month

Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. 

Miles Kington.

Prosperity is growing the economy to make everyone richer; Socialism is growing the welfare budget to make everyone poorer.
La prospérité consiste à faire croître l'économie pour enrichir tout le monde ; le socialisme consiste à augmenter le budget de la protection sociale pour appauvrir tout le monde.

Adam Sidbury

Peace in the Middle East? Lee Miller, Pete Firman

A step towards Peace in the Middle East?

All credit to Donald Trump's peace plan for the Israel Gaza war. Hostages have been released and we move on to the second phase of the plan which involves dis-arming Hamas and putting in place an international governing force in Gaza.

US President Donald Trump addresses the Knesset, Oct. 13, 2025. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool via AP)

Let there be no doubt, this is extremely hard, almost impossible. If Trump and his team pull this off, he really does deserve the Nobel Peace Prize next year.

And can he do the same with Russia?

Pete Firman - Magician Extraordinaire

I had the pleasure of spending an evening watching Pete Firman, magician and entertainer on his current UK tour. His magic was extraordinary alongside his comedy. Very entertaining!

Pete at The Bloomsbury Theatre, London

Lee Miller at Tate Britain

                            

The work of Lee Miller was largely unknown until her son, Anthony Penrose, discovered 60,000 negatives hidden in the attic of their family home in East Sussex. He has since dedicated his life to bringing Lee's work to the attention of the world.  In addition to the books he has written about her, a superb film 'Lee' was released last year with Kate Winslet playing Miller. Following that is this significant exhibition of her photographs at Tate Britain.

Rene Magritte with Loulou by Lee Miller

Lee was American and following her modeling career in New York, decided she wanted to become a photographer. She moved to Paris to meet Man Ray and moved in with him as muse and student. Together they developed new photographic techniques. She married Roland Penrose, 'the English Surrealist' and mixed with the famous Surrealists of the day.  During the war, she became Vogue's war correspondent and took extraordinary photos on the front line including at concentration camps. These photos were too disturbing for Vogue to publish so remained unknown for decades.

'Hotline to God' Strasbourg 1945

She never recovered mentally following her war experiences and relied on alcohol to cope with what we would now diagnose as PTSD. But she clearly knew what was wrong with her: “I never got the scent of Dachau out of my nostrils.”

Lee in Hitler's bath shortly after he fled.
Taken by David Sherman with mud from Dachau on the carpet.

Her beautiful photos fall into three categories; to start with the experimental photographic and modelling pictures; then the mostly poignant and sometimes disturbing war pictures; and then later and throughout her career, the sometimes remarkable pictures of friends and famous people.

Lee Miller's Rolleiflex camera (no zoom lens)

This Month's Quotes

Rest In Peace, Diane Keaton

"You look so good tonight I can barely keep my eye on the meter."

Woody Allen's character in Manhattan, speaking to Diane Keaton's character in a New York taxi.

Party Conference Quotes

"And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years"

Abraham Lincoln

Used by Wes Streeting (Health Minister) in his speech at the Labour Party Conference.

‘Never wrestle with a pig; you both get dirty and the pig likes it.’

Kemi Badenoch only mentioned Farage once at her party conference and quoted George Bernard Shaw: 

The end of the Welfare State as we know it?

President Macron can't hide from his troubles (WSJ)

The end of the welfare state as we know it?

Having just spent time in France, it seems to me that the French state's financial problems are even worse than the UK's. 

According to Françoise Fressoz of Le Monde newspaper, "We have all become totally addicted to public spending. It's been the method used by every government for half a century – of left and right – to put out the fires of discontent and buy social peace."

"Everyone can sense now that this system has run its course. We're at the end of the old welfare state. But no one wants to pay the price or face up to the reforms which need to be made."

I think that sums up very neatly the near impossible challenge faced by France, UK and most well established democratic countries. 

Working People Pay Pensioners More

"French pensioners are making more than the average wage. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development puts France as the only developed country where average incomes for the over-65s are higher than for working-age citizens.

The average income for over-65s in France is about 1 per cent higher than it is for workers, after taking into account taxes and other social contributions, according to analysis by the Financial Times of figures from the OECD group of advanced economies and the Luxembourg Income Study, a not-for-profit group.

The state pension can pay as much as €23,184 (£20,135) a year in France, while in the UK the full new state pension pays £11,973 a year, going up 4.7 per cent to £12,535 next year, in line with average wage growth."

"France’s pension spending accounts for nearly 14 per cent of its GDP, compared with 5 per cent in Britain. France spends more than €400 billion (£347 billion) a year on pensions."

The Times September 17th 2025

How incompetent are our governments when they changed the pension source from each individual creating a future funding pot to to a system where today's workers fund today's pensioners. That released that valuable future pot which got spent and left us in an unenviable situation where today's workers can't afford to fund today's pensioners! Another example of short term-ism to win the next election regardless of the consequences.

So we know that the big problem in the UK, France and many other countries is that we can no longer afford to fund state services. The state is living beyond its means and it literally cannot continue. The two big ones are welfare and pensions, both far far more generous than our states can afford. As Margaret Thatcher once said "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of somebody else's money". And the failure of successive governments to act means we are reaching that point. The economy is not growing fast enough to make up for all the extra spending.

So what is the answer?

The solutions are: reducing expenditure, increasing taxation and growing the economy. We will need to do all three. In spades. We will have no choice. But any government that really goes to town on this will be voted out. That's the dichotomy!

Quote of the Month

"Almost everything that I dislike about the right in America, and here and in Europe, I can say is probably the fault of the left..... The left's greatest sin - and I say this as a sort of leftist - is that it would rather be right than effective."

Stephen Fry at an interview on Triggernometry, December 2024.

The Oleander, David Hockney, Jobless Benefits, Quote from C.S. Lewis

The Oleander

The Oleander or Laurier Rose, is one of my favourite plants. It loves the Mediterranean climate and can grow into a tree with beautiful green leaves and stunning flowers, usually pink, red or white. I associate it with warm sunshine and it is a symbol of everlasting love.

In Greek mythology, Hero is a priestess of Aphrodite (the goddess of love). She lived in a tower in Sestos and fell in love with Leander who was from Abydos on the opposite side of the Hellespont (the Dardenelles today). Hero would light a torch on the top of her tower and Leander would swim across to see her. One stormy winter's night, she lit the torch and Leander got lost as he swam across and the torch was blown out. Hero found his body washed up on the beach and she jumped off the tower to join him in death. It is said that she found him surrounded by the flowers and she screamed 'O Leander, O Leander' and this is how the Oleander got its name. 

It's more likely that the plant's name comes from the Latin word for olive 'Olea' and the Greek word for tree 'Dendron'. It was thought that the leaves were very similar to olive trees.

David Hockey at the Fondation Louis Vuitton

My children gave me tickets to go to Paris to visit the David Hockney exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton. I have never been a Hockney fan prior to this but I am now. The 88 year artist's latest works are absolutely extraordinary and I love them!  His landscapes techniques combined with his vivid use of colour make for remarkable pictures that are both realistic and imaginative at the same time. He now uses an iPad in some of his art and the impact is magnified as the pictures in front of you transform. A few of my favourites are below. 

Finally I should say that the newish Fondation Louis Vuitton and the surrounding attractions in the Bois de Boulogne are worth a visit in their own right. Spectacular!

Jobless benefits reach record high

By Ross Clark in The Spectator 26/08/2025

"Quietly, without even a press release, let alone a fanfare, Britain over the past 12 months has just passed a grim milestone. The number of people on out of work benefits has surpassed the peak reached in the early 1990s. It is higher now than it was at the peak of Covid-19 in 2020.

Remember when unemployment of three million used to generate headlines every week, in the early 1980s and then again a decade later? Well, there are now 6.5 million people living on out of work benefits. Yet it hardly causes a ripple in the political pond because most of them are not officially ‘unemployed’ – they are either on disability benefits or on Universal Credit, many of them without any requirement to look for work.

Official unemployment figures – which since the 1990s have been based on a questionnaire called the Labour Force Survey rather than on the number of claimants – have become a scam. They enable the government to boast of apparently low unemployment while the real picture is one of mass worklessness.

There is a terrible price to pay for this sleight of hand. While the unemployed used to be highly visible, the growing millions who have been signed off as unfit for work are not. They don’t necessarily have to visit Job Centres or unemployment offices in order to sign on every other week, as claimants had to do in the 1980s. Since the pandemic, many claimants do not even have to present themselves for a face-to-face assessment; rather, they are carried out over the telephone. It has become laughably easy to play the system, with numerous TikTok accounts even providing coaching on how to get signed off, in many cases by claiming mental ill-health.

Keir Starmer came to power a year ago promising to get people back to work, but then cowered at the first hurdle when his own backbenchers revolted at the very principle of trimming the benefits. There is now zero hope of reform during the current Parliament. The economy is being compromised by having to lug along an ever-heavier deadweight of the economically inactive. And all the government will do is try to cover up the scale of the disaster."

C.S. Lewis Quote from 'Learning in Wartime, his 1939 sermon at St Mary the Virgin in Oxford

"If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with 'normal life'. Life has never been normal. Even those periods which we think most tranquil... turn out, on closer inspection, to be full of cries, alarms, difficulties, emergencies".

The Unsustainable Welfare Bill, UK Financial Services, Joke for the Month

The Welfare Bill keeps rising

I struggle to understand why the forecasts for the Welfare Bill show that it is ballooning to astronomical sums of money that we clearly can't afford, despite the House just voting not to make many cuts. Then I saw this graph in the Spectator.  It explains the numbers but not Why.

It shows the increase in the number of claimants over the last 3 years. By far the largest category, 'CTA' or Common Travel Area, is basically regular UK citizens (and Irish people who live here). According to data released by the Department for Work and Pensions on July 15, 2025, households with a single person and no children received the lowest average monthly payment of £740. At the other end of the scale, couples with children received the highest average payment of £1,290 per month. So let's say it's around £1,000 per claimant per month to make the maths easier. The increase in the last years for the largest category, CTA, is 2 million people. That means an extra £24 billion pounds is now being paid out just in that category! To give some context, the annual budget for working age benefits is £117.6bn and disability benefits are £90.4bn.

So the question is not whether this is sustainable (it most clearly is NOT) but more about why on earth on the numbers shooting up like this? Why do more than 1 in 5 people between the ages of 16 and 64 claim some from of benefit? By July 2022, there were 30,000 new claimants a month, double that of the previous year. That's 1,000 new recipients of benefits EVERY SINGLE DAY!  We are heading in a very dangerous direction very rapidly and the House just voted to reduce by not very much following a rebellion of Labour MPs who don;t want any cuts to benefits.

People are very upset by the number of immigrants coming to 'sponge off our benefits system' but the stark reality is that 95% of NEW claimants are regular Brits who have full citizens' rights. 

The UK Stock Market may become irrelevant

The decline in the value of the UK Stock Market as a percentage of global markets is probably inevitable as the emerging markets develop and is not necessarily a bad thing. BUT, UK government policy has allowed the UK to decline at a faster rate than necessary. 

Graphic from Visual Capitalise showing the value of global markets

In 2023, financial services contributed £208.2 billion to the UK economy, which accounted for 8.8% of the total economic output. 

In the first quarter of 2024, there were 1.17 million jobs in the financial services sector, representing 3.1% of all jobs in the UK.  When related professional services such as legal and accounting are included, this figure rises to over 2.4 million people. 

The total tax contribution of the financial and related professional services industry reached a record £110.2 billion, equating to 12.3% of total UK tax receipts. That equates to over 60% of the total NHS budget. [data gathered by Gemini].

So that's 7% of all jobs creating over 12% of our tax receipts. More of that please!

The UK is the world's largest net exporter of financial services, making it absolutely critical to the UK's economic success.

Yet, we have allowed it to whither. Look at these statistics gathered by David Kempton using Chat GPT:

• In the UK 26% of the adult population invests in quoted companies; in the US 62% invest directly or through their retirement accounts
• Foreign investors own 57% of UK shares, pension funds 6%, funds and institutions 26%, and individuals 11%
• Since 2013 the number of listed companies on all UK markets has decreased from 2,448 to 1,836 – a decline of 25%. The AIM market is down from 1,700 in 2007 to 700 today
• In 2024, 88 companies left the market with only 18 new IPOs (initial public offerings)
• In 2000, UK pension funds had 48% of their £3trn of assets in UK equities – now only 6%
• BP and Shell are on price-to-earnings (PE) ratios of 8.5 times, compared to Exxon Mobil and Chevron on more like 13 times. This 50% variation is typical of the increased valuation of US over UK stocks across the respective equity sectors

What is the government waiting for? Why do financial services often still have a poor reputation? 

The London Stock Exchange Group has its HQ in Paternoster Square, St Pauls.

Individuals should be encouraged to invest sensibly. AIM type companies should be celebrated and encouraged (the government removed half of the IHT tax break on AIM companies last year!). Investing should be taught in schools! We should aim to match the USA where 62% of adults invest in stocks and shares.

The City of London is known globally and needs to be promoted. Red tape needs to be reduced, costs of trading and doing business needs to be slashed and there needs to be a huge PR and marketing campaign to put British Financial Services firmly back on the map. Let's expand please!

Joke for the Month

Do you think humans eat more bananas than monkeys?

Don't know?

Well generally humans don't eat monkeys.