Biffer wrote: Mon Sep 04, 2023 10:17 am
Couple of gems in Rory Stewart's book. David Cameron's knowledge of Afghanistan "would have made a good undergraduate PPE essay" and Steve Hilton (Cameron's adviser) was found staring at a map of Scotland saying "Fuck me, look how big Scotland is. This is just fucking mad".
High calibre people in positions of power.
One of my running themes on this thread is that the UK is now run by morons a lot of time. Just shockingly stupid people, many with no excuse having had the best education possible. It's really bad when you can point at a future UK PM over a year in advance (Truss) say "that person is a fucking moron", then say "the moron Tory members will pick her", then say "fuck she's going to blow everything up" ... it all being not much of a big call really, and it all happens.
The really interesting thing, is if you then come to a logical conclusion "UK institutions don't seem to be functioning as they used to, they're now selecting for total morons, trying to change the people/society to fit the institutions is unlikely to work, maybe the UK should change some institutions ... the Lords, the electoral system, the divisions of powers between layers of government". No one wants to hear it. Something something tradition, something something unwritten constitution that is agile and adaptive but must not under any circumstances be used to change anything. Then the claim "it wouldn't make any difference anyway".
There's just total inertia. Lots of waffle and anyone with power demanding everything stays the exact same.
This was in the FT today, the UK is running out of water. There's only some vague plan to stop this happening. I suspect no one with a brain bothers to come up with solutions, because they know none of it will be implemented, so there's no point.
https://www.ft.com/content/19caeb90-b5c ... 69d4c48d53