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THE PEOPLE WHO CAME FOR YOUR PLASTIC BAG AND STRAW NOW WANT YOUR DOG:
From the people who turned your Mustang into a Prius and made it so your dishwasher does not actually wash dishes comes a new villain, not quite straight from central casting, in the imaginary war on the planet: dogs.
“We are all too aware of the negative effects of cats,” Australian academics Bill Bateman and Lauren Gilson write at The Conversation, “both owned and feral, on wildlife…. Our pet dogs seem to get a free pass.”
With all the charm of Almira Gulch and the subtlety of Michael Vick, Bateman and Gilson argue that man’s best friend really sits, and rolls over, as mankind’s great enemy.
The authors argue, “Our beloved pet dogs have a far greater, more insidious and more concerning effect on wildlife and the environment than we would like to be the case.”
How so?
“The medications we use to rid our pet dogs of fleas or ticks can last weeks on fur, and wash off when they plunge into a creek or river,” they write. “But some of these medications have ingredients highly toxic to aquatic invertebrates, meaning a quick dip can be devastating.”
They point out, “Dogs largely eat meat, meaning millions of cows and chickens are raised just to feed our pets.”
Sod off, swampy.
LABOUR WILL BURY BRITISH STEEL, NOT SAVE IT:
In a rare Saturday sitting of parliament, MPs voted this weekend to allow the UK government to assume operational control of British Steel. The emergency legislation will be used to block the firm’s Chinese owner, Jingye, from closing down its two blast furnaces in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire. Full nationalisation is likely on the way.
There is no doubt that government intervention was necessary to prevent the plant’s closure. Jingye, which claims it was losing £700,000 per day from the Scunthorpe steelworks, was clearly determined to cut its losses and run. Negotiations over a support package broke down last week when Jingye rejected the government’s offer to cover the costs of the iron and coal needed to keep the furnaces running. It also rejected what business secretary Jonathan Reynolds described as ‘one of the largest government grants in British history’. It then became clear that Jingye was selling off its stockpiles and refusing to pay for past orders of raw materials, and thus had hoped to starve the furnaces and render them inoperable (without coal keeping the temperature high, furnaces can sustain permanent damage). Restarting the furnaces would not have been impossible in this event, but it would have been a costly and complex process.
The loss of British Steel’s blast furnaces would have been devastating for the plant’s 2,700 employees and for Scunthorpe, which has been a steelmaking town since the 19th century. But it also would have been devastating for the UK. The nation that invented modern steelmaking would become the only G7 nation incapable of producing ‘primary’ or ‘virgin’ steel. This is essential for carmaking, infrastructure, the defence industry and many other critical manufacturing sectors.
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Labour’s intervention has brought British Steel some time. It may well have prevented the disorderly shutdown of Britain’s last blast furnaces, which would have had devastating consequences for the economy as a whole. Yet far from ‘saving’ British steelmaking, Labour continues to bury it. It’s hard to see heavy industry surviving another four years of eco-vandalism.
But at that point, who will be making plans for Nigel?
ELON CAN LAUNCH THEM FASTER THAN THEY CAN SHOOT THEM DOWN, BUT THERE’S MORE TO IT THAN THAT: Russia and China are threatening SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation, new report finds.
For those scouring the news cycle for the next meme, I offer what seems to me the word of the day: “chaos.” Yes, that’s right, like some character out of the Book of Revelation Donald Trump has unleashed chaos upon the world. He is in the process of gutting, defunding or eliminating all the left’s favorite playpens, from the Department of Education to the National Endowment for Democracy. Thanks to the efforts of Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency, he has revealed the sorry truth that “NGO,” which we were told meant “non-governmental organization,” actually means “nurturing governmental officialdom,” i.e., diverting taxpayer dollars for oneself, one’s relatives and people who can do you some favors. Which is to say that the “non” in “NGO” really means “all” or “limitless.” As one canny commentator on X observed, “Over the last few months, we’ve come to a realization that should have landed much harder: NGOs weren’t just adjacent to government, they were the parallel government.”
Indeed. Remember all that talk about “the deep state?” NGOs were a critical enabling yeast. . . .
Donald Trump has upset that apple cart. For people who care about things like fiscal sanity, accountability and transparency, it is a welcome restoration. For people who have made their living exploiting the many opportunities for corruption the status quo ante offered, it is chaos, a plunge into outer darkness.
Once again, the tergiversations of the punditocracy and the public-teat-sucking political class are amusing to behold. Donald Trump announces a raft of tariffs in an effort to bring critical industries back to the United States and to level the economic playing field. The markets weep for a few days. One by one, countries line up to make a deal with the world’s largest economy. At last count, some 90 countries have signaled their intention to trim the tariffs and other trade barriers they have erected against America. Even China is making some agreeable noises. Trump has responded by delaying the imposition of certain tariffs, a canny bit of flexibility that the anti-Trump chorus has denounced as “panic.” “No One Is Buying the White House Spin,” screams one headline. But in fact, countries are lining up to buy it, and it’s no spin, it’s negotiation. As the investor Bill Ackman put it, “A willingness to adjust a strategy based on new facts and data is a sign of the strength of a leader. It is not an indication of weakness.”
Leftists’ unwillingness — inability? — to live in the real world is one of the right’s hidden strengths. Well, hidden from the left, anyway.