jamescalumcampbell

The Hiroshima Men

Iain MacGregor

(Constable, 2025)

This coming Thursday will be the 81^st anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.  And on the following Sunday it will be 81 years since Nagasaki.  The New Yorker will reprint, as it does every year, John Hersey’s 30,000 word essay, an account of what actually happened at Hiroshima, which he wrote when he visited the city, or where the city once stood, shortly after Japan’s unconditional surrender, and the end of the Second World War.  I learned about the New Yorker’s annual homage to Hersey from Iain MacGregor’s book, which is really an account of America’s campaign waged against Japan, following the Pearl Harbour attack of December 7^th, 1941, and ending abruptly, after the atomic weapons “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” had been cast.

Every year the question arises: was the deployment of these weapons “justified”?  It’s the sort of question Michael Buerk might pose to the panel on BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze.  The fault lines are well rehearsed.  Hiroshima was an attack upon a civilian population, already in a state of collapse and undefended, and a war crime.  Hiroshima obviated the need to invade and occupy Japan, at enormous cost in lives to both sides, and effectively brought the war to an abrupt end.  In the human calculus, it saved lives.  Iain MacGregor raises the subject but does not explicitly answer it.  Rather he renders an account that does not shrink from depicting the full horror of the event in graphic detail; then he leaves you to make up our own mind.       

The whole saga is seen through the eyes of the men – and it is men – who featured prominently and at a senior level, on both sides.  Something strikes me about the fate of men who are called upon by the state to take up the cudgels, to undertake a Herculean task, to cast aside moral scruples, and to see a thing through to the bitter end.  I wonder if when they rise to the challenge, perhaps seeing it as a golden opportunity, they realise that despite, or perhaps because of their eventual achievement and success, it will be the last time they will be called upon to do the state some service.  They will be cast aside.  It happened to Major General Leslie R. Groves who ran the Manhattan Project; to J. Robert Oppenheimer who masterminded the science and who eventually fell foul of the McCarthy witch hunts, and was denied security clearance.  Something similar happened in Europe to “Bomber” Harris who advocated the carpet bombing of German cities, culminating in the destruction of Dresden between February 13^th and 15^th, 1945.  In a sense it even happened to Winston, who saved Britain from invasion, won the war in Europe, and then was unceremoniously dumped.  It’s as if the state recognises the peculiar talents of such men in a peculiar situation.  They are men of their time.  But when times become less fraught, people develop a distaste, and they are effectively cancelled.   

The theatre of war was the Pacific.  The Americans and the Japanese fought over tiny islands, tiny scraps of land, at enormous cost to both sides.  Guadalcanal, Guam, Tinian, Iwo Jima, Okinawa…  One is reminded of Jorge Luis Borges’ description of the Falkland’s Conflict of 1982.  “Two bald men fighting over a comb.”  Why sacrifice all these men, in order to raise a flag on a miniscule atoll?  But the Americans needed an airbase from which to launch an attack upon the Homeland.  In the end, it was Tinian. 

Some people argued that there was really no difference, neither qualitative nor quantitative, between the destruction of Tokyo by a huge armada of B29 Superfortresses, and of Hiroshima by a single uranium bomb, or of Nagasaki, by a single plutonium bomb.  After all, they used napalm over Tokyo, particularly effective in a city made of wood and paper.  The bomb was just more efficient.  But this was before the effects of radiation sickness were known.  Groves tried to play down the radiation effects.  They would be short-lived.   It would be John Hersey’s work which enlightened the American public.   

In the end, we achieved what Orwell called “a peace that is no peace”.  The victors in the east, Russia and America, started squabbling amongst themselves, and the Cold War was born.

I found the most sympathetic character in The Hiroshima Men to be Senkichi Awaya, the mayor of Hiroshima, whose family and administrative life is recounted in some detail.  He seems to have been a man of peace, a devoted family man who conscientiously tried to do the best for the city he served.  There is a memorial to him beside the Motoyasu River, near the Atomic Bomb Dome, a simple stone pillar and a sign. 

It will be interesting to see if Hiroshima is remembered in our newspapers this Thursday.  I suspect that any reference will be scant.  We are a forgetful species.  And besides, memorials to peace are not currently the flavour of the month.  The jungle drums are beating.  I recently said to somebody that I thought it would be a good idea if we started a campaign to abolish war.  He snorted and said, “Aye, right.”  He might have said, as our politicians often do, “Now is not the time.”  I was reminded of the man who stopped an Irishman in the street to ask for directions, and was advised, “If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.”   

The other day I was atop Dumyat, the modest peak at the west end of the Ochils, silently contemplating a memorial there to the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.  Ne Obliviscaris, Sans Peur.  Do not forget, without fear.  A child – he couldn’t have been more than 11 years old – approached me and said, “Are you good?”

“What?”

“Are you good?”

I shrugged and said, “I dunno.”

“It’s just that I thought you looked a bit sad.”

He was right.  I was mourning the sudden and unexpected loss of a dear friend.  I thanked him for asking.  I was heartened.  I have great faith in the younger generation.                                      

Ten Steps to Prevent World War Three

Tobias Ellwood

(Blink, 2026)

It’s the kind of book I find hard to walk past while browsing the shelves in Waterstone’s.  After all, I, along with about 8 billion others, have a vested interest in preventing WWIII.  It’s a question I’ve been pondering for quite some time.  How best can we all get along together, without destroying ourselves and the planet?  So I bought the book, and read it over three days. 

Tobias Ellwood was an MP between 2005 and 2024, during which time he has been a Foreign Minister, Defence Minister, and Chair of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee.  On the book’s jacket his interests and expertise are listed as geopolitics, foreign relations, military strategy, terrorism, defence, British politics, Ukraine, the Middle East, and NATO.  He attended Sandhurst and he served in the British Army.  So it would be fair to expect that he knows what he is talking about.  

His thesis, in brief, is that the global order is fracturing, conflict is returning, and we are not prepared.  Hard to argue with that.  But here is a plan that may allow us to step back from the unthinkable:  Stand for something, Know our enemies, Stop repeating history, Spot the new battlefields, Regroup with our allies, Get stronger and smarter, Move to a war footing, Put our house in order, Build the off-ramps, and Reassert Statecraft. 

I confess I was flummoxed right from the start.  Stand for Something (Step 1).  But stand for what?  I thought it might be Christian values.  But had that been the case, Step 2 would surely not have been “Know our enemies”, but rather “Love our enemies”.  However Jesus does not feature in the index.  Neither, incidentally, does Scotland, the UK’s depository of nuclear weapons.  “Soft power” is extensively indexed.  It’s an expression I detest.  You can try to hijack them for nefarious purposes, but culture, music, the arts, have got nothing to do with military might.               

Was I convinced by the overall argument?  I have to admit I’m viscerally biased against anybody who can write a sentence like “A coherent, confident Europe can serve as a stabilising counterweight, reinforcing off-ramps with credibility and leverage.”  (Step 9).  Coherent?  Does he mean cohesive?  You can reinforce an off-ramp with concrete, but with credibility?  I’m not a fan of abstract language.

But we have to consider what is meant by “World War Three”.  The book’s cover depicts a fiery mushroom cloud atop billowing smoke.  We are talking here about nuclear Armageddon, and how to avoid it.  The question arises, have we ever demonstrably avoided it in the past?  And if so, how did we do it?  It is said that the closest we have ever come to a nuclear exchange occurred at the time of the Cuban missile crisis.  I believe on that occasion it was averted by a Soviet submarine commander lurking somewhere off New York who decided to ignore an order to launch.  We certainly owe him a debt of gratitude.  Since then, the aptly named MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) has held us back from the brink.  Nobody in their right mind would initiate an attack.  But that presupposes that our world leaders are in their right mind. 

A more probable scenario is that a nuclear exchange will occur by accident.  This I think is where Mr Ellwood’s book falls short.  It’s all very well to say “Move to a War Footing” (Step 7) but, as is explained in detail, this involves developing more and more sophisticated applications of surveillance, drone technology, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and the myriad fiendish devices of the new Cold War that is occurring in a cyber Grey Zone.  As the systems become more and more complex, and indeed more autonomous, it seems likely that a mistake, an irreversible mistake, will occur.  That would suggest that a more appropriate title to Mr Ellwood’s book might be “Ten Steps to Guarantee World War Three”.

Even without the nuclear threat, the arms race that already exists guarantees a world of perpetual war, as so presciently described by Orwell in his depiction of the three great spheres of influence in 1984, Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia.  We in the UK are a satellite of Oceania, known as Airstrip One; a refuelling station for US bombers en route to the Middle East.

Mr Ellwood doesn’t actually address the fundamental question: how can we free ourselves from this bondage?  How can we get over our apparent addiction to violence?  How, indeed, can we all get along together, without destroying ourselves and the planet?  Mr Ellwood doesn’t seem to think this is a question worth considering.  War, perpetual war, he tells us, is the natural state.  We used to say the same thing about disease.  And poverty.

I don’t know about you, but this depiction of humanity as inherently violent doesn’t fit in with my personal experience.  I spent a large part of my career amid the blood and thunder of the hospital Emergency Department.  People say to me, “You must have seen life in the raw there!”  In fact, my own experience was that most people I encountered were very nice.  Of course there was the odd sociopath.  One or two people did threaten to kill me.  But they represented a vanishingly small minority.  At home and abroad, any time I’ve been in trouble, I’ve been overwhelmed by the kindness of strangers.

It seems to me that wars are not instigated by ordinary folk.  They are waged between the rich and powerful. They always have been.  Therefore the last people to tell us how to avoid war are the people who are in charge. 

I think we should ask our young people.  They don’t want to go to war either.  We should ask them to turn all their creative talents, scientific and humanitarian, towards abolishing it.  Don’t go into the world of finance, or IT, or AI.  Figure out how to achieve and maintain a lasting peace.

But Mr Ellwood wants to bring back national service.  He assures us it won’t be like Dad’s Army.  Our youth can perfect their skills, in drone technology, in quantum computing, in AI…  What was it Private Frazer said to Captain Mainwaring? “We’re all doomed.”                   

“No British Prime Minister since Ramsay MacDonald has been a bastard.”

Hold that thought.

I was slightly discombobulated this morning to open the Herald at the Letters page and find myself reading myself.  I’d written in on July 15^th, and when my letter had not appeared over the next couple of days, I shrugged and let it go.  If a week is a long time in politics, it is an eternity in the newspaper world, where today’s newsprint is wrapping the fish and chips by teatime.  The news junket moves on; so does my letter of the 15^th make sense on the 20^th?  Here it is:

Your correspondent (name provided) encapsulates, albeit inadvertently, the beauty of our democracy (Herald Letters, July 15).  Any “Tom, Dick, or Harry”, and “fool”, can stand for election, and that is the electorate’s opportunity for “scrutiny of their past, persona, on what they hope to achieve”.   

The correspondent seems to imply that some body, other than the people, should “prevent this sort of thing happening”.

Who are they?  Were they elected?

It’s all about Count Binface of Clacton fame, or notoriety.  Last week in this blog I’d written a response to a remark in another Herald letter: “When a clown dressed as a dustbin can stand for election to Parliament, we have surely reached the dead end of democracy.”  I forwarded the gist of my blog’s last two paragraphs to the Herald, who kindly published me on the 14^th.  Indeed they put my letter in pole position, with a banner headline.  Then on the 15^th there came a couple of rejoinders of the “The good doctor needs to wake up and smell the coffee” variety.  Hence, my riposte. 

Last week I made the rather tentative suggestion that the Count might win the Clacton by-election.  That’s probably put the kybosh on it.  After all, I did say England were going to win the World Cup.  They got the bronze medal.  Not bad.  England 6, France 4 sounds a lot more interesting than Spain 1, Argentina 0.  I watched the second half of the final last night, having listened to the BBC London Prom which, serendipitously, was given by the Spanish National Orchestra (SNO, I suppose).  I wondered if they’d all be glancing at their cell phones.  But it certainly didn’t sound like it.  Wonderful renditions of Ravel, Rodrigo, and Falla, played with great clarity, and astringent bite.  Much more interesting than the football, which looked nervy, scrappy, and bad-tempered.  I wonder if President Trump enjoyed the match.  Did he dispute the red card?  He’s good at that sort of thing.  Meanwhile Josh Kerr has broken, nay smashed, by nearly half a second, the world record for the mile.  3.42.66!  Rather puts the footie in the shade.

There was outrage down south when England lost to Argentina in the semi-final, and Argentina celebrated, flying a flag of the Malvinas. Questions were asked in the House.  “The World Cup may not be England’s, but the Falklands definitely are.”  Ha!  Back to today’s Herald Letters, where somebody has written, “How unbelievably crass to suggest that the Falkland Islands belong to England.  What in insult to the Scottish, Welsh, Irish and other members of our armed forces who fought, and died, while liberating the Falklands.”

Good point.

Meanwhile the news junket moves on, and today will all be about the podium outside No. 10, and the dumb crambo of kissing hands.  It occurs to me that today’s Prime Ministers are rather like football managers.  If they don’t secure instant results, and guarantee instant gratification, they are discarded.  I imagine Mr Burnham will signal the dawn of a new age, and the resurgence of Hope.  He will sound a fanfare for the common man, and indeed the uncommon woman.  But his opponents will be out to get him, to hobble him in his endeavours at every turn.  I wonder which previous Labour PM he will most be like.  I’ve just read a most fascinating book, The Cancelled Prime Minister, the extraordinary rise and tragic fall of Ramsay MacDonald, by Walter Reid, whom I quoted at the start of this blog, (Hurst and Company, London, 2026).  MacDonald suffered the lurch from rapturous adulation, to savage vituperation, not once but twice.  First, when he failed to support Britain’s entry into the Great War.  A newspaper printed a facsimile reproduction of his birth certificate.  “The man who calls himself James Ramsay McDonald, but whose real name is James McDonald Ramsay…libeller and slanderer of his country…the illegitimate son of a Scottish servant girl!”  In Lossiemouth, Moray Golf Club removed him from the roll of members because his membership endangered the reputation of the club. 

Yet this man of humblest origin went on to be the first Labour Prime Minister, in 1924.  During that brief first term MacDonald received some financial support from an entrepreneur in the bakery company McVitie & Price, of digestive biscuit fame.  Some rumours of financial irregularity prompted political opponents, when MacDonald entered the Commons Chamber, to cry out, “Biscuits, biscuits!”  That story has a very contemporary feel.  It, or something like it, could have happened last week.  “Every man has his price, but not every man has his McVitie & Price.”

MacDonald became Prime Minister again in 1929.  Then came the crash, and the great depression, and he felt compelled, in the national interest, to lead a national government, dominated by the Conservatives, in 1931.  This was seen by many, perhaps by most in the Labour movement, as a betrayal.  He had sold them out.  His reputation has never really recovered.  He has indeed been cancelled. 

I find him to be a very sympathetic character; intelligent, conscious of a personal charisma, at ease with himself, spiritual, perhaps a little fey.  He was a great pal of King George V, while he wanted to improve the lot of the poor, incrementally.  He made possible the future coalition government of the Second World War, and then the great Attlee government of 1945. 

Mr Burnham, likewise, wants to give succour to the neglected and downtrodden.  He is bound to come up against the unforeseen and unpredictable challenges of “events”.  I wish him all the luck in the world.  By heaven he’ll need it.                        

On US podcaster Joe Rogan’s show last week MP Rupert Lowe, the leader of the Restore Britain Party, bemoaned the fact that his father had had to surrender his gun collection all on account of one murder in Dunblane in 1996.  “One murder?” queried the talk show host.  “One murder.”

In fact, Thomas Hamilton had entered Dunblane Primary School on March 13^th, 1996 with a number of firearms, shot dead 16 children, their teacher Gwen Mayor, and had seriously injured 15 others, mostly children, before he turned the gun on himself.  Following this dreadful event, Parliament essentially outlawed the possession of handguns in the UK. 

I happened to attend the church service in Dunblane Cathedral yesterday morning, as is my wont.  The minister, speaking from the pulpit, was highly critical of this dissemination of misinformation, or disinformation, from across the Pond.  You could have heard a pin drop.  That was hardly surprising.  There were people sitting in the congregation who had been personally affected by that tragedy, and who continue to suffer and endure its effects to this day.  The Restore leader’s father had had his guns taken away; members of the congregation had had their children taken away.   

Is there a difference between misinformation and disinformation?  I would hazard that the former is a factual inaccuracy that might be a slip of the tongue, while the latter is deliberate, that is, the dissemination of a lie.  Which was this?  I believe a spokesman for Restore made the case that the quote had been taken out of context, and that the word “murder” was being used to refer to an “incident”.  The minister in Dunblane was not convinced.  Neither am I.  In any case, you would have thought that, confronted with the truth, the perpetrator of its exact opposite might put his hand up and apologise for causing so much hurt.  Mea culpa.  But that is not the modern way.  Rather it is to “double down”. 

Recently we have seen the extreme right, and indeed the gun lobby, espouse, or perhaps hijack, “Christian values”.  The preservation of a “Christian society” is conflated with the need rigidly to control a potential influx of strangers who follow a different creed.  President Trump, and his henchmen, have warned that European civilisation will collapse if it can’t control its own borders.  This should prompt us to reconsider just precisely what “Christian values” might be.  I think of verses from St. Matthew.

For I was hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:

I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not…

…inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not for me.

I confess it’s a passage which haunts me.  I suppose I’m generous enough with my money; but I’m not generous with my time.  And I haven’t done much prison visiting lately.  If I may borrow a line from Dunblane Cathedral’s minister, if ever I were persecuted for being a Christian, I fear the case against me would collapse from lack of evidence. 

There was, however, a murder, one murder, last week; the murder of Ann Widdecombe, former Conservative government minister and then Immigration and Justice Spokesperson for the Reform Party.  I first heard of her passing on BBC Radio 2’s lunchtime Jeremy Vine show on Friday, when there was no inkling of foul play.  There were warm tributes.  The steadfastness with which she had held her own convictions, and her directness of speech, was much admired, even by her political opponents, as was her sense of fun, and willingness not to take herself too seriously, as evidenced by her appearances on Strictly. 

But later that afternoon the police announced that a murder investigation had been launched.  The delay to divulge this information to the public was apparently down to the police’s desire to inform next of kin first.  But it is also clear that the police were very aware of the possibility, the likelihood, that misinformation and disinformation would rapidly disseminate across social media, and potentially cause considerable unrest.  They were at pains to tell us that there was no evidence of a political or terrorist motive to the crime.  Be that as it may, Mr Farage has organised increased security for his parliamentarians.  I think it was while he was campaigning in Clacton-on-Sea that somebody threw a milkshake at Mr Farage.  I wish Mr Hamilton, when he entered Dunlane Primary School, had only been armed with a milkshake. 

There is currently much controversy over the financial dealings of Mr Farage, and Reform.  Mr Farage says, “Nobody cares.”  In a “put up, or shut up” moment, he resigned his seat in order to trigger a Clacton by-election, in which he himself will stand.  Let the people of Clacton decide.  I wonder if he anticipated that the other main parties would not play along.  At the moment, the only person who will stand against him is a man dressed as an intergalactic dustbin.  Jeremy Vine interviewed Count Binface last week and I must say I was impressed.  He is a sharp cookie.  I particularly admired his manifesto policy to invest £100,000,000,000 in Trident, then to divert all the money to the NHS without telling anybody. 

Some people think that the whole Count Binface thing demeans politics, and makes the UK a laughing stock.  Somebody has written into The Herald today.  “When a clown dressed as a dustbin can stand for election to Parliament, we have surely reached the dead end of democracy.”  I disagree.  All these monster raving loony parties flourish precisely because they exist in a vibrant democracy.  Anybody can stand, if they are prepared to put up the deposit.  I imagine Count Binface would not be able to stand if he were in China.  I remember in 2008 when China handed over the Olympic Torch to London, they were completely bemused by the whimsical, self-deprecatory, farcical trailer for the 2012 opening ceremony.  Totalitarian regimes don’t like farce.  It is because they know it can undermine them. 

So Count Binface has my support.  Having stuck my neck out last week re England and the World Cup, I’ll venture another punt.  The winner of the Clacton by-election might, just might, be Count Binface.        

On rising this morning, I was curious to know how England had got on during the night in the seething cauldron of the Estadio Azteca in Mexico.  I flicked the radio on and it was immediately apparent, not from the information delivered, but by the tone, that they had won.  I was mildly surprised to find myself elated.  There’s a gag up here does the rounds: I once drank a can of Irn Bru in 1966, but I don’t keep going on about it.  I cracked it at my German conversation class just before we broke up for the summer.  I’m not sure that it went down that well with my English Mitschüler.  I remember that Andy Murray, in his pomp, was asked during Wimbledon, which coincided with a previous major football tournament, who he was supporting since Scotland had not qualified.  He said, “Anybody but England” – which might have been taken as “banter”, but it didn’t go down well at all.  He had to apologise. 

You might say that my delight that England beat Mexico drei zu zwei, “three to two”, as the Germans would have it, was a kind of act of courtesy, and generosity of spirit, towards our near neighbour.  I gather the Germans, having been knocked out, are supporting England.  Komm schon England!  But that is because the England manager is German.  I didn’t consciously “decide” to support England.  It was more visceral than that.  I greatly admire the English.  I remarked to somebody yesterday afternoon that if any team could play away in a stadium where they would be up against overwhelming home support, playing in sweltering heat in a thin atmosphere, it would be England.  The Dunkirk spirit, the Nelson touch, and all that.  The Americans compared Harry Kane to a Spitfire pilot.  But good heavens, if they go all the way, we’ll never hear the end of it. 

But then it occurred to me that all my apparent altruistic largesse might after all have a baser ulterior motive.  I have a notion that, during the semiquincentennial celebrations of the Declaration of Independence, an England win might not go down that well with the Grand Old Party.  They are after all celebrating a victory of the thirteen states over Great Britain.  Wouldn’t it be amusing if England rained on their parade?  But why would I wish to rain on their parade?  Could it be because J. D. Vance is highly critical of our politics?  He’s all over yesterday’s Sunday Times.  I suppose he has struck a nerve.  7 PMs in 10 years is not good, there’s no denying it, even if his own politics are not to my taste.  But any desire of mine to place a cloud over the White House is neither here nor there. The elements need no assistance.  In Washington, before the fireworks, everybody had to take a rain check and shelter inside the nearest museum, in more sweltering heat, during the thunder and lightning. 

During the current celebrations, I haven’t heard much reference to America’s first peoples.  They say that America is 250 years old, just as it is said that Australia is 238 years old.  But the original Australian civilisation is about 60,000 years old, and I dare say American civilisation is similarly ancient.  Thomas Jefferson said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”  In the event, this proposed equality did not extend to the first peoples, just as it didn’t, at least initially, extend to African-American slaves.  That raises the possibility that the high-flown language in the Declaration of Independence, and its current celebration, might merely be humbug.

But I don’t think so.  George Orwell quotes the Declaration of Independence on the very last page of 1984.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.  That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.  That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government…

Orwell quotes this within the context of an appendix which is a treatise, The Principles of Newspeak.  He envisaged a totalitarian government having taken absolute control of language, and its use, such as to make independence of thought, and creativity, impossible.  In Newspeak, it would be impossible to render Jefferson’s words, or his thought.  The political threat to language, and lucidity, is a constant theme in Orwell’s writing.  In Politics and the English Language he deplores the use in language of the abstract over the concrete.  We see Newspeak now, do we not, in the abbreviated language of social media, just as we see abstraction in the language churned out by Artificial Intelligence.   

Orwell didn’t think much of sport.  He thought it had base motives.  It was war, only without the firearms.  I imagine he would have admired James Kirkup’s Rugby League Game.

Sport is absurd, and sad,

These grown men, just look.

So I don’t suppose he would have had much interest in the World Cup.  I think under the circumstances he would have found the invocation of the spirit of Henry V completely absurd.  I don’t know how the fixtures work out, I haven’t checked, but if England end up playing France, they’d better not bang on about Agincourt.  Crispan Crispian, gentlemen abed will think themselves accursed, and all that.  That would be the height of bad manners, considering M. Macron has just lent the British Museum the Bayeux Tapestry (which, I’m told, is not a tapestry; it’s an embroidery, embroidered by women, who don’t get a mention in the Declaration of Independence either).  Maybe when the British Museum gets the embroidery, they won’t give it back.  They’ve got form here after all.  The Elgin Marbles.  The Lewis Chessmen.  But I’m just being mischievous.  The Entente Cordiale is in rude health.  How sweet it is to be loved, Bayeux.

Meanwhile across the Pond, I hope the current administration manage to live up to the words of Jefferson, and not distort them.  I have high hopes.  Winston, half American, it is said one thirty-second Iroquois, reminded us that the Americans can always be relied upon to do the right thing, after they have exhausted every other possibility.  So every success to the 250^th celebrations.

And every success to England.  I have this sneaking suspicion.  I think they’re going to win.       

Last week I got a reminder from the travel insurance people that I was due to pay my annual surcharge levied upon me because I am so ancient.  But on perusing the small print they seemed to be insuring me, not against falling ill while abroad, but encountering a sudden emergency in my home.  I phoned them up.

We have grown used to hearing that this call may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes, along with a battery of preliminary announcements relating to codes of practice.  I remember when I was a child and I wanted to make a call I would lift the receiver and immediately – immediately – a voice would say, “Number please?”  This was before telephone dials came into use, although we were aware of them because Perry Mason would make a call with them on the telly, and we thought they were terribly sophisticated.  I suppose automatic dialling made all these telephone operators redundant.  The telephone exchange serving the West End of Glasgow was a substantial and handsome building on the corner of Dowanside Road and Caledon Street.  It has been converted into private flats. 

Back on the phone to the insurance company, I listened patiently throughout all the caveats, and the suggestion that I might prefer to conduct business online.  Until recently the next set of hurdles would have been a series of options requiring a keyboard response.  “To make a claim, press one…”  But this has been superseded by Artificial Intelligence.  A robot asked me to state the reason for my call.  I feel rather ridiculous talking to a robot.  There’s no point in saying, “It’s rather complicated.  You see, to let you understand…”  This will be followed by a pause, and then, “Please state in a few words the reason for your call.”

“An enquiry about my travel insurance.”

“I’m sorry.  I didn’t quite catch that.  Do you wish to make a claim?”

“No.”

“Please state, in a few words…”  And so on. 

After a while, the robot cottons on to the fact that this is going nowhere.  You can almost hear the robot sigh.  It must all be my fault.  But finally you are put through to a real live person of flesh and blood.  You might imagine this might be a blessing, but increasingly, this is where your troubles start.  I have a notion that call handlers are being trained to resemble robots as far as possible.  The person I got through to spoke sotto voce, had an accent I struggled to identify, and also spoke incredibly rapidly.  I have a notion that if the constitutional arrangements of these islands are ever radically modified, it will not be because of any provincial disillusionment with centralised government policy, but simply because the people at one end of the nation will cease to understand the people at the other end.  It will be a Tower of Babel moment.

I said, “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.  Could you speak up, and speak a little slower?”

He said, or I think he said, “I’ll make a note you are hard of hearing.”

“I’m not hard of hearing.  I just can’t hear you.”

We struggled on.  I explained that my travel insurer seemed to be trying to sell me home insurance.  Nothing to do with us, he said.  You’ll need to phone your home insurer.  So it went on.  I could describe the rest of this ghastly interaction in laborious detail, but I’m sure you get the picture.  At the end of it all, I was asked to stay on the line to take part in a short satisfaction survey.  I hung up.  I know I should have stayed on, to tell them how awful it all was. 

Two questions arise.  How has it come to this?  And why do we put up with it?

You need to understand the motivation of the masters of the universe.  They want to automate everything.  Doesn’t it make sound business sense?  Robots are not salaried; they don’t require holiday or sickness pay; they don’t even need a tea break.  What is the point of employing low grade human resources? 

This argument is flawed; fatally flawed.  The masters of the universe are trying to create a perpetual motion machine.  It might look a little bit like one of these gigantic, windowless, dark satanic mills threatening to spring up usually in delectable areas of countryside, beside a river, ideal for cooling.    They want the engine quietly to tick over, creating wealth from its own machinations.  But life, real life, is not remotely like that.  The machine tries to fit real life into a template, an algorithm, but real life is not remotely susceptible to algorithmic analysis.  That is why we endlessly iterate and reiterate these conversations on the telephone:

“Please sate the reason for you call in a few words.”

“It’s rather complicated.  You see, to let you understand…”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.  Please state…”

So why do we put up with it?  It is because we have been conned.  We think this is the future.  Our politicians are besotted with this madness.  That is why they woo the masters of the universe.  They imagine that if the tech giants moved offshore we would somehow lag behind, and lose out.    

You know what it’s like when occasionally, just occasionally, you cut through all this drivel on the phone and have a conversation with somebody who is not artificial, but who is actually intelligent.  The ability to understand a human problem, to cut through extraneous material and reach the kernel of the matter, and then to solve the problem, has nothing to do with algorithms, and everything to do with human experience, compassion, and, often, humour. 

I have a yen to start a movement against this latest evolution of automation.  It would be a call to eschew endless telephone menus and insist on talking to a real person.  It should have a name, an acronym like LAITY:  Leave Artificial Intelligence to Yuppies.  (Needs work I grant.)  But I’m conscious that the masters of the universe, and the politicians in their pocket, won’t like it.  Somewhere in the bowels of a vast shed on Lammermoor there will be a faint whisper.  LAITY will come to the attention of the Thought Police.  It will be seen as seditious, and banned as a terrorist organisation.

The supercomputers are beginning to sprout.  They will spring up in remote areas, and stand, impassive, watching over us like the ancient ancestral faces of the statues on Easter Island, not looking out to sea, but gazing inward, intently, upon us.  I remember what Jacob Bronowski said of the Easter Island statues.  He was rather fond of them, “but in the end, all of them are not worth one child’s dimpled face.”            

Over the course of the weekend the Prime Minister repaired to Chequers, we are told, to consider his position.  At 9.00 am this morning, at least according to BBC Radio 4, he was still considering it.  But it would appear to be a rapidly evolving situation so while I write this, I will listen into the news bulletins. 

If he goes, we will have gone through seven PMs in a decade, the entire length of Sir Tony Blair’s three terms in office.  After Blair, Gordon Brown took over.  He seemed to be dogged by bad luck; foot and mouth, the global financial collapse and so on.  Early in his term he thought of calling a snap general election to secure a mandate.  But, it is said, he dithered, changed his mind, and when he eventually went to the country in 2010, he failed to gain a majority.  Big Broon was respected, but he was never popular in Middle England.  The 2010 election threatened a hung parliament.  Brown tried to form a government but the numbers just didn’t stack up.  Hence the Tories and the Lib Dems formed a coalition, and David Cameron became Prime Minister.  Gordon Brown had been PM for just under three years.  Cameron lasted six years.  Brown subsequently said that he thought the days of the PM securing a prolonged term in office were over.  How prescient was that?  By current standards, his own term seems quite protracted.  Some of the subsequent PMs toppled like ninepins.  May: 13/7/16 – 24/7/19; Johnson: 24/7/19 – 5/9/22; Truss: 5/9/22 – 24/10/22! (Somebody in the EU said rather unkindly that Liz Truss’s term was shorter than the shelf life of a lettuce.) Sunak:  25/10/22 – 5/7/24; and now Starmer: 5/7/24 – 22/6/26.  It’s all beginning to look quite Italianate. 

But why is Starmer required to go?  He succeeded Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party in 2020, when the Labour Party was widely regarded as unelectable.  He turned that around within a remarkably short period of time and in 2024 he won the general election with a huge majority which should have held him secure at least until 2029.  But a series of misjudgements and policy U-turns, poor PR and a failure to articulate “mission” have made him unpopular in the country.  The polls have turned against him.  This is what is making the Parliamentary Labour Party so disgruntled, and so nervous.  Frankly, they are all terrified of losing their jobs.  And this, at heart, is what has sent Sir Keir to Chequers to contemplate his situation.  He will be looking for support, and counting up the numbers.  But the numbers are not stacking up.   

The event that has brought this situation to a crisis is the convincing victory at the Makerfield by-election of Andy Burnham.  As Mayor of Manchester, Mr Burnham has been very popular.  He is charismatic, down to earth, and very good at fighting for his corner.  He is a “leveller-up”.  And he is due to be sworn in as an MP in Westminster this afternoon.

10.00 am, BBC Radio 4.  That’s it.  Sir Keir has gone.  Or at least, is going.  If Mr Burnham becomes PM by coronation, it will all happen in July.  Sir Keir will take that short car journey to the Palace to resign, and Mr Burnham will follow, and be asked by the king to form a government.  If somebody else, Wes Streeting for example, decides to run, there will be a contest, and an election by September, before the party conference.  Some people favour a contest; it would give Mr Burnham, and any rivals, a chance to articulate policy in greater detail.  But I suspect a lot of labour MPs will hope for a coronation.  Enough “churn”.

Within the PLP, high hopes rest on Mr Burnham.  He is a magic bullet; a deus ex machina.  But is the replacement of one PM by another – No. 7 within a decade – really the answer to the woes, not just of the government, but of the United Kingdom as a whole?  It is said that the definition of insanity is the hope that by repeating the same action over and over again one will achieve a different outcome.

Sometimes I think it would be better if we ran the country the way we run a golf club, by electing individuals, for one term only, who might be persuaded to sit on a committee, not for any personal ambition or craving for self-aggrandisement, but, perhaps somewhat reluctantly, out of a sense of civic duty.  They might be shopkeepers, garbage collectors, plumbers, teachers, doctors, even lawyers or, God help us, hedge fund managers, all men and women of independent mind, striving under no whip.  They might form a government in a collegiate fashion.  (Call me naïve.)  The government wouldn’t “run” the country.  Rather they would introduce new legislation and repeal old; and from taxation assign a budget to public services, largely allowing the people running the services to make policy. For in truth it is you and I, the shopkeepers, garbage collectors, plumbers, teachers, doctors and so on, who run the country.  The prosperity of the country, in every sense, arises from a Grand Integral of personal endeavour.  MPs, government ministers, and Prime Ministers are here to serve us, but for a season, and then leave the stage.    

I listened to the Prime Minister this morning, giving his statement from Downing Street on the banning of social media for under sixteen year olds.  I thought he spoke very well.  He clearly had a lot of support within the room.  It must have been an unusual experience for him, to be greeted with prolonged applause, and even a few whoops.  Sometimes I think he must be the loneliest man in the UK, certainly the most beleaguered, constantly being written off by the right wing press, constantly the butt of criticism not only from His Majesty’s Opposition, but from within his own party.  I hold no brief or remit for the Parliamentary Labour Party, but I find all the intrigue, the backstairs jobbery, the jockeying for position and the ministerial resignations “on grounds of principle”, deeply distasteful.  I rather admire Sir Keir’s doggedness.  He must have a core of steel.  His people underestimate him.

With respect to the proposed social media ban, he, the father of teenagers, was clearly speaking from the heart.  He only wants his children, everybody’s children, to be happy, and safe.  We all know of the tragedies of teenagers who have been bullied on line, who have been repeatedly exposed to harmful content, and who have taken their own lives.  He wants children to log off, to read a book, to go outside to see their friends in the real world, and to go to bed at a reasonable hour.

It is perhaps surprising that some of the bereaved parents of these children oppose the ban.  But their opposition is quite coherent.  They feel the ban puts responsibility on the shoulders of children, and parents, while letting the big tech companies off the hook.  After all, if there is a problem with content, shouldn’t the problem itself be fixed?  We may anticipate that such contentious issues will be hotly debated over the next few months, until the legislation is put in place, probably next spring.

Some people think the outright ban will be futile, because tech-savvy teenagers will merely find a way around it.  But that, pointed out the PM, is not a reason to abandon the legislation.  After all, he said, we don’t allow children to drink alcohol, just because some kids manage to get served in the pub.  Good point.

But I think there’s an aspect of this debate that has been overlooked.  If social media are inherently bad for children, why are they not also bad for adults?  Perhaps they are like cigarettes, poisonous and addictive.  We don’t sell cigarettes to children.  And if we adults are reckless enough to buy them, well, on our own heads be it.  We put a label, perhaps atop the image of a diseased lung, stating that this product will kill you.  We are even seriously considering incrementally banning smoking across all ages, by making it illegal for anybody born after a given year ever to purchase tobacco products.  Such legislation seeks to avoid the recognised difficulties of prohibition, by seeking to ensure that successive cohorts never become addicted.  But then there are vapes.  And vapes are attractive to children.   

But on the whole, the government, and society in general, does not believe that social media per se are bad for adults.  In fact, the government is greatly enamoured of the products of Big Tech.  They see the commercial possibilities.  Big Tech, and “Growth”, are inextricably bound.  The government is fearful of missing out on the economic possibilities of Artificial Intelligence.  They don’t want to get offside with the big companies who might take the huff and move offshore. 

So a trope you often hear is that Social Media are inherently neither good nor bad.  What matters is how they are used.  If, for example, they are used to disseminate misinformation, as appears to have happened in Southampton and Belfast last week, then clearly this is an abuse of the facility.  On the other hand if my German conversation class chooses to chat in German on WhatsApp, then this is surely pretty harmless and might even be quite useful.  (Though I have to say I opt out; I don’t want my phone to be pinging all the time.)   

I would question this notion of the amorality of social media platforms.  You have to look at a social entity, not as it might be in theory, but as it exists in practice in the real world.  The harms inflicted upon adults are not that different from those experienced by children.  The algorithms designed to addict, the fatal attraction of doom scrolling, the deliberate dissemination of lies, the channelling of specific content designed to lure the most vulnerable, the ready availability of violence and pornography, the anarchic, wild-west lack of editorial control in what are essentially online publishing houses, what’s possibly to like?

I’m aware of a certain irony in that I am making these comments on an electronic blogsite.  I think of my weekly blogs much as I think of my occasional letters to the newspapers.  They are publications.  I must take care what I say.  Most of all I must believe that what I say is true.  I have professional indemnity in case I get it wrong.  Currently it is up for its annual renewal, and this year my insurance brokers are asking me some questions.  Do I write or publish any religious or political content?  Well, yes.  Do I write biography/autobiography?  Well, I often write about people, and I have just sent a memoir to a publishing company.  Do I actively disseminate content in the USA?  No.  But I’m sure over the course of the last 11 years blogging I must have said something less than complimentary about the current resident of the White House.  Heaven forfend!  Nowadays, these things can be picked up by immense computers, using up vast amounts of water and energy, scrolling for data, in these dark satanic mills cropping up all over the country.      

I’m not sure whether to be reassured or intimidated by these questions.  The world is becoming more litigious.  But I write, much as I used to practise medicine, hopefully in good faith.  You decide upon an action that you think is right, commit to it, and then move on.

But of course as a doctor I also I took out professional indemnity.  I still have it.  Just in case I’m called upon to be a Good Samaritan.                              

The trip down the M80 from the Kildean Service Station at Stirling to the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall should take abut forty minutes.  On the edge of Glasgow the M80 merges with the M8 and I like to time this with the Shipping Forecast on BBC Radio 4.  “Dogger…Fisher…German Bite…”  Then I know I will swing into Concert Square car park just after the six o’clock bongs and thus take advantage of the Saturday night reduced parking fee.  However this cunning plan has been scuppered by the roadworks on Cathedral Street, where you must attempt to follow a bundle of self-contradictory diversion signs likely to propel you into a bus lane and a hefty fine.  I decided on this occasion to come off the M8 at Charing Cross and approach the Concert Hall from the west.

The best laid schemes…  In fact I encountered the de rigueur traffic jam, which usually starts abeam Glasgow Royal Infirmary, about twenty miles to the north east.  Had there been a crash?  I switched from Radio 4 to Radio nan Gàidheal in the hope of picking up a traffic report.  No crash.  It was simply roadworks, in the vicinity of Cumbernauld.  

The trouble with the M80 is that once you are on it, there are few options to get off again.  At an average speed of about 5 mph, I calculated I wasn’t going to make it, though I did notice it did wonders for the range of my electric vehicle.  I would get over 300 miles on a full charge.  I pulled on to the hard shoulder and made a phone call.  Don’t worry if I don’t get there.

I was indeed tempted to get off, if I could, and go home.  Why attend an orchestral concert when my right ear’s full of wax, and everything’s going to sound mezzo-piano?  At least, I think my right ear’s full of wax.  Self-diagnosis is always a dodgy pursuit.  Following my recent upper respiratory infection, I reasoned, I could have a middle ear effusion.  So the olive oil I’m religiously applying to the external canal might be useless.  Moreover, I’ve got earache, with lancinating “stouns” of pain, we call them north of the border, keeping me awake at night.  Am I being cavalier?  I’ve organised to see an audiologist tomorrow morning, who might at least, with the aid of an auroscope, confirm that I’m waxy.  In the meantime I feel like Beethoven, somewhat remote from my fellow man. 

Anyway I stuck with the M80, motivated as much as anything by a sickly fascination as to the nature of the hold-up.  There were indeed roadworks, in the region of Castlecary.  They only covered a distance of about 50 metres, and indeed they occupied the opposite carriageway, but a contraflow system was in operation.  The sheer volume of traffic more or less brought everything to a halt.  I don’t suppose we should be surprised that an arterial route should be so compromised by, as it were, one single little atheromatous plaque. 

After Castlecary, things got moving again, and the Charing Cross strategy worked well.  I took my seat in the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall with about two minutes to spare.  Then the hall was plunged into darkness, and cellist Kian Soltani played the short “God-music” from Black Angels, by George Crumb, accompanied by twenty wine glasses whose moistened rims emanated an eerie tone. 

Then, un coup de théâtre.  The entire Royal Scottish National Orchestra was suddenly illuminated, exactly in time with a low pitched pedal and a thump from the tympani.  And we were into Benjamin Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem.  I’m not generally fond of segues and attacas from one piece to another, but this seemed to work, perhaps because there was a thematic overlap.  When Crumb composed Black Angels in 1970, the Vietnam War was at its height.  And Britten composed his Sinfonia da Requiem under the looming shadow of the Second World War.

Next up, Kian Soltani returned to play Elgar’s Cello Concerto, and you might argue that the thematic link, the shadow of war, remained.  Elgar composed it after the end of the Great War, and it is suffused in sadness.

After the interval we had another segue, between Wagner’s Prelude to Act 1 from Tristan and Isolde, and Scriabin’s Poem of Ecstasy.  I’d noticed that during the Elgar, the audience clapped after its second movement.  So we have this odd contrast in concert manners, custom and usage, in which a work, a single musical entity, can be interrupted by applause, and two works, two disparate musical entities, cannot.  Strange. 

Personally I’m for no applause between movements, and applause at conclusions.  Call me old fashioned.  The thing to do is to watch the conductor.  The conductor is not simply in charge of the orchestra; he, or she, is in charge of the hall.  We too, in the audience, are being conducted.  Watch the stick.  Maestro Patrick Hahn, for example, wanted to hold a silence at the end of the Sinfonia da Requiem, but precipitate applause denied him the opportunity.  I was recently very amused by a remark of Antonio Pappano, conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.  In his experience, virtually all audiences applaud at the end of the third movement of Tchaikovsky’s sixth symphony, with two exceptions – the audiences in Vienna, and in Weston-super-Mare.

Re the Tchaik 6 conundrum, I’m not terribly exercised, so long as people switch their mobile phones off.  I see that last week a thespian in London addressed the audience at the end of a performance to say how distracted she had been by somebody in the audience sending a text during the play.  It completely destroys the suspension of disbelief, both for actors and audience.  And it’s the same, the actor pointed out, for the performative arts generally – music, opera, ballet.  It is surely the case that in our social-media-dominated culture people are finding it harder and harder to switch off all the white noise that surrounds us, and give themselves over, heart and soul, to a shared communal experience.    

Talking of white noise, the muffling tinnitus and “stouns” of pain in my right ear continue.  Fingers crossed it’s a temporary phenomenon, and I can hold off writing my Heiligenstadt Testament.  I will seize fate by the throat.  I’m eternally optimistic that episodes of unwellness are self-limiting.  Sooner or later of course, one must encounter the pathological entity for which, as my mother used to say, “There is no betterment.”

While I was recovering from my recentest rheum, I was getting these vivid dreams.  I took a taxi, and a loquacious cabby, as was his wont, said, “I had that Jacqueline du Pré in the back last night.  With her cello.  It’s a Strad, called David.  I said, ‘Give us a tune, luv.’  So blow me, she did!  Bach.  It were beautiful.  Then she says, ‘What’s the fare?’ and I say, ‘Jacqueline du Pré, you don’t owe me a thing.’  So she left her beloved David on the seat.  Maybe she knew there was to be no betterment.” 

Last week, two rather distinguished Roman Catholics voiced strong, and seemingly conflicting opinions on the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI).  In his “essay” (sic), “The Labour Party Is Playing With Fire Over Its Future and the Future of the Country”, discussing what might be called the State of the Union, Sir Tony Blair said that AI was the next Industrial Revolution, and that if we didn’t embrace it wholeheartedly, the United Kingdom would cease to be a serious power.  By way of contrast, in his Encyclical Letter Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV warned that AI posed a threat to our humanity, and, drawing attention to the fact that he was deliberately using strong language, he said we needed to “disarm” it. 

“Disarm” was an interesting choice of word.  People can be disarming by being charming.  The ability to disarm is part of the armamentarium of the diplomat.  On the other hand, you can disarm by force, by issuing the order, “Drop your weapons.”  Thus you render an opponent powerless.  I have a notion that the Pope was using the word in the latter sense.  If AI is going to play a role in our lives at all, then it needs to be totally subservient, a tool, of itself, powerless.  Otherwise it will be an existential threat. 

Pope Leo has his critics.  Religious leaders are frequently criticised when they are perceived to venture into the political realm.  I was amused that somebody wrote into the papers saying that Leo had no right to “pontificate” on such matters.  I would have thought that if anybody in the world had the right to pontificate on anything, it would be the Pope.  But the Pope exercises a huge influence on a sizeable chunk of humanity, and when people feel their vested interests to be under attack, when they feel themselves in danger of being disarmed, they are liable to respond with an argument ad hominem.  Don’t tackle the issue; undermine the office. 

Of course Sir Tony has his critics too.  I heard an interview with a couple of university literary academics on BBC Radio 4.  They were asked to mark Sir Tony’s Essay.  One gave it 61%, “a low 2/1”, but the other failed it.  Apparently it wasn’t really an essay, but more a polemic, full of clichés and soundbites.  It wasn’t Montaigne.  Reading the essay, which covers a very wide range of current geopolitical issues, I confess I got the sense that Sir Tony – I won’t say doesn’t know what he’s talking about – but rather that he himself is not that interested.  Twenty five years ago when he was Prime Minister he was talking up the dawning age of Information Technology, and I recall somebody close to him saying that the PM himself never used computers.      

What exactly is an essay?  Chambers says it is a written composition less elaborate than a dissertation or treatise.  An attempt; a tentative effort.  I’m thinking of writing an essay and submitting it to the Margaret Brown Essay Competition, run by the Wigtown Book Festival, the closing date being June 15^th, so I’d better get on with it.  I see that the competition organisers reserve the right to say what constitutes an essay.  I read last year’s winner, Firle by Tamara Fulcher, which touches on themes of homelessness and in particular the unaffordability of homes.  I thought it was very good, but I wouldn’t have called it an essay, rather something more along the lines of a memoir.  Another stipulation of this essay competition is that you must not utilise AI to generate the essay, or part of it, or if you do, you will be disqualified, and for good.  The Radio 4 university academics were asked how good the current body of English Literature undergraduates are at writing essays.  In the closed book environment, under exam conditions, apparently they are not very good.  They have become too reliant on all sorts of apps and platforms, including AI.

At school, we studied the English essayists, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele (who published The Spectator between 1711 and 1712), Charles Lamb and so on.  They seemed rather remote from us.  Sir Roger de Coverley, A Dissertation upon Roast Pig, Mrs Battle’s Opinions on Whist, etc.  I think I would have preferred to have been given something by George Orwell, but maybe that was too political.  After all, T. S. Eliot turned down Animal Farm, on behalf of Faber & Faber, perhaps because people didn’t want to offend Uncle Joe so soon after the end of the Second World War.  If I were to give a fine example of the essay form, I would go for Orwell’s Politics and the English Language.  I think we can be certain that Orwell would have abhorred the notion of Artificial Intelligence.  He would have been on the side of the Pope.    

Meanwhile an old colleague of Sir Tony, Alan Milburn, is trying to figure out what to do about “NEETS”, people who are not in employment, education, or training.  It sounds like a definition of the aristocracy.  You might suppose – I dare say many people do – that NEETS are pretty demotivated, but it turns out that many of them have been educated and trained, but nobody will employ them.  I gather from the Radio 4 Public Relations programme When It Hits the Fan, in a discussion between David Yelland and Farzana Baduel, that a distinguished financier, addressing a room of bankers in Hong Kong, talked up AI and spoke of the need to discard “lower value human capital”. 

This is the real threat of AI.  It’s all about power.  It centralises power in the hands of the very few.  I think Pope Leo is right.  It needs to be disarmed.