Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander sent a letter to the chairman of the Transport Committee to talk about buses manufactured by China. In it she wrote:
“It is important to reiterate the context I set out to the Committee. There are approximately 30,000 buses in England, of which about 8 per cent are electric. Of those 5,000 electric buses, just over 600 are manufactured by Yutong – representing about 2 per cent of buses operating in England.”
She’s right on the rough number of buses – can co-conspirators spot the maths flub. This is one of those percentage exam question examples you give to 12-year-olds…
According to reports the Russian frigate Admiral Grigorovich has fired warning shots in the Channel at a British yacht. In the Channel…
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: “We are investigating reports of an incident in the Channel.” The Times reports:
“A UK-registered yacht alleged that the Russian Navy vessel fired warning shots nearby at a distance of approximately 500 yards.
The incident is understood to have taken place about 20 nautical miles south of the Isle of Wight, outside UK territorial waters.
No injuries or damage have been reported by the yacht, which is continuing its journey.
HMS MERSEY was monitoring the Russian vessel at the time.
A seaboat from HMS TYNE has visited the yacht to gather details and check that they are safe.”
A report by a group of international leftist economists calling for an end to global growth was part-funded by the British taxpayer. Of course it was…
Thomas Piketty, increasingly deranged ‘inequality economist’ and darling of social democrats everywhere, penned The Global Justice Report this month which called for GDP per capita in wealthy countries to be capped at roughly $69,000, far below America’s current $94,430 but ironically above Britain’s $61,006. It also called for a global wealth tax, an international three-day work week and reduce construction activity by 70% manufacturing by 87& and leisure-sector activity by 58%…
The report and its many authors were funded by the World Inequality Lab, which receives funding from UK Research and Innovation’s Economic and Social Research Council (up to 4%). It is also part-funded by the United Nations Development Programme, to which the British taxpayer is a contributor…
A World Inequality Lab report prior to that one calls for a global tax on the carbon held in all private assets and a ban on any investment at all in fossil fuels. Piketty’s effort is meanwhile receiving the heavy PR treatment in the Guardian and so on. Chainsaw…
Guido thought he would check in on how Darren Jones’ new Civil Service school is going. Civil servants are being trained on clay modelling…
A report published this month by the Cabinet Office and the government agency Policy Lab details a programme “to explore how civil servants navigate Learning & Development across their current roles and wider career journeys, aiming to ensure that the skills system is grounded in lived experience and co-designed with those it serves.” Whatever that means…
To provide feedback on their experience in government last year civil servants tried “sensory ethnography… rooted in the principles of both sensory and participatory ethnography, which allowed us to elicit deeper responses and experiences which are often not volunteered in interviews or similar research approaches.” They played with clay models…
Policy Lab boasted about designing “creative, self-guided exercises.”
“The exercises were tactile, varied and experimental, inspired by a wide set of references from ancient Andean knotting and record keeping practices (khipu) to British popular culture (my career radio), and clay modelling.”
The rest of the report is full of meaningless jargon. Policy Lab said it “translated insights” into “speculative proposals” for learning in the civil Service and its project “informed the creation of the National School of Government and Public Services, announced by the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister in 2026, and offers a model for how government can move from lived experience to system‑level insight, and from insight to delivery.” Darren Jones is moulding the Civil Servants, it gets him fired up, co-conspirators can put their own clay puns below…
Guido’s Adam Cherry headed up to Makerfield ahead of this Thursday’s historic by-election. What do voters really think? Will Andy Burnham win? Will Restore Britain cost Reform the victory? Watch the video above to find out…
Subscribe to Guido on YouTube to get ALL our exclusive videos sent straight to your inbox. Never miss a scoop…
Speaking at his speech on how to achieve “progressive capitalism” Wes Streeting fired a dig and Andy Burnham:
“Bond markets are not bond villains and fiscal rules matter.”