Sadiq Khan's "London Growth Plan" must be a joke

Stabbings, phone snatching, robberies and train drivers' strikes: living in London is a survival game that isn't for the faint of heart. To our rescue comes our saviour Sadiq Khan with a plan to "turbocharge" economic growth.

No, your council tax isn't going down as part of this plan. And neither are any of your other taxes. To fuel economic growth across the capital, the mayor has unleashed the full power of his creativity and is going to try something that has never been tried before: an innovative mix of socialism and wishful thinking.

To be fair, the plan does have a few interesting bits, mostly around investments in tech and AI. But considering that most of our trains aren't allowed to drive themselves thanks to the train drivers' unions, who would starve without drivers, I will not be holding my breath for "AI" to make London's bloated public sector more efficient. Today's technology could solve many issues already, but it isn't being used due to political blockers. AI will soon face the same challenges.

The mayor's plan will supposedly create 150,000 new jobs -- who knows if this will be enough to make up for the jobs we're losing thanks to his party's hike in national insurance. Rent controls will be part of the plan (don't we love regulating our way to a "perfect" society), and so will even more public spending and asking the central government for more devolved powers for London.

The plan is, of course, for Sadiq Khan to keep even more money for his administration to spend, because the recent record hikes in council tax just weren't enough.

We're just a few tax increases away from making the economy better and crime disappear. Just another little bit of tax and everything will get better. It will happen any moment now.

The UK needs more, not less, austerity

First of all let me say that this is a hill I’m willing to die on. In fact, when I hit “publish” and Starmer’s thought police inevitably come knocking on my door, I will proudly tell them that I regret none of what I’m about to write. My goal with this article is to divide my readers into two groups: the ones who love austerity (most of you will fall into this category by the time I’m done brainwashing you) and the ones who never have, and never will, understand the intricacies of primary school maths. Let’s start with a definition: what is austerity? Austerity is a broad term used to refer to policies that reduce the deficit/debt of a country, either via spending cuts, increased taxation, or both. The objective is to drive the deficit (and ultimately the debt) down, something that can hardly be argued is a bad thing to do, especially in countries that face the challenges of a rapidly ageing population. Quick note for everyone: the deficit is the difference between what the state...

Introduction

Each one of us has a set of guiding principles that shape our thought. These may be principles we have blindly inherited from our family, surroundings, or cultural exposure, or they may be ideas we have spent countless hours actively thinking about and debating, maybe even changing our mind a few times along the way before ultimately settling on a set of core principles we felt comfortable with. Regardless of where your principles come from, or how you came to holding them dear, I believe that the vast majority of us have at least some of these in common, and that it is very rare for someone to have a completely unoverlapping set of core beliefs with the rest of the population. Extremes do exist, of course, but I (maybe naively) believe that most people are good-natured, and that at least on the theoretical plane common ground can be found with almost anyone. Before we get to my core beliefs, I should say three things. The first is that core principles can translate differently into ac...

Italy’s love for the big state is a cultural remnant of fascism

Today we are going to make Italians mad. And no, we will not be breaking spaghetti – something that my Italian family has been doing for generations, no, centuries, before TikTok videos started circulating claiming that Italians don’t break spaghetti. We do, in fact, break our spaghetti, just like any sane person with a functioning brain would do when the spaghetti clearly doesn't fit into the pot. I actually used to sometimes not break my spaghetti, but now I always do so out of spite: it gives me both physical and emotional pleasure to know that the Italian gods are frowning upon my heartless breaking of spaghetti. As much as I would love to talk about how only people living in a hopeless country could get brutally angry about other people’s freedom to break spaghetti, and how this relates to Italy still being a fundamentally fascist-loving country at heart, the topic I suggest for today is the following: the link between Italians loving the big state and Italy having experienc...

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