Graeme Archer

Mario is completely right This decent bloke's frustration will be mirrored across the country. More and more businesses being squeezed out by *deliberate policy choices of the government* to make wages more expensive, utilities more expensive, NI more expensive, business rates more expensive. All to gouge more money from value-adders like this man ... to spend on welfare. Free cars for the mildly anxious, free homes for - you know who. I pray this budget is a national turning point, the "cut through" where enough people realise that while governments can't control what happens in Iraq, they *can* and *do* control the chance of a business being solvent. This isn't to pretend that the previous Tory govts were perfect, but it's *as* absurd to pretend that this one is somehow no different. It is significantly, malevolently worse.

Despairing after the budget? Might I recommend running into the late October sea off the coast of Plymouth? It helped me this afternoon anyway.

The burden of taxation - and the forms that it takes - in the UK is, indeed, insane. We are well beyond the Laffer turning point now.

Don't judge me, I'm installing the C4 player on our TV so we can watch Bake Off. Judge me all you like tbf, I don't care. Unfortunately C4 makes you select three of its other programmes as your "favourites" in order to register. I picked Friday Night Dinner, Inbetweeners, and then ran out of choices. Something called "Pierre" - not for me. "Derry Girls" - not for me. "Degenerate freaks screeching while staying in a B&B/ cooking a meal/ throwing a pot" - not for me. And on and on and on, though mostly just versions of that last one. (As, sadly, is Bake Off now.) btw while I'm moaning about algorithmic rubbish, has anyone else been subjected to the new X "pointing finger"?

I absolutely love the “Our Regulars”board in this cafe. The view’s not bad either!

I’ve never been a huge fan of the Rolling Stones (or anti them either) but if you’ve not heard their new single Mr Charm I am *begging* you to stop what you’re doing and give it a listen. It’s great, that’s official! youtu.be/3e5LxvRZjVw

One aspect of work I most enjoyed was teaching statistical thinking to scientists and medics. I used the analogy of Plato's Cave - a lot! - as a way of helping colleagues understand that the data collected in experiments and clinical trials weren't the truth about a drug (or whatever), but, rather, its reflection on the walls of the cave in which we were bound. Prisoners in the epistemological cave, never able to turn our heads and gaze directly upon the unblemished true forms we spent our lives investigating. That's (almost) a depressing though, but - ta-da! - thanks to Bayes' theorem, we can use those imperfect data, and our knowledge [whatever that means - insert David Hume here], to make valid statements about the true forms. That's quite a feat of human reasoning, and is one of my favourite "facts" about our human condition that makes me remain optimistic for our future. There's a slide I made below to show the concept, from some talk yonks ago. The problem of the inductive logic ("How can these observations let us know that which we want to know?") might not have a perfect solution in the universe we inhabit, but that we have *a* solution that works is quite encouraging. (There is another, competing solution to the problem, but it doesn't work at all, even on its own terms, and need not trouble us here.) Anyway this morning a friend texted me, to let me know that someone who spent time in my department is now a consultant, and is advertising his services using that Plato's Cave metaphor. I didn't know how I felt about this. Obviously I didn't copywrite a metaphor I came up with for work, and obviously Plato had the idea first - I just nicked it and refashioned it for statistical inference. On reflection though, it's wonderful - life-affirming - to realise that at least one of my ideas has achieved a resonance that's still audible, even as the incoming tide washes the footprints of my career clean from the beach. The more I think about it, the more chuffed I feel. "Retiring" is a verb I loathe, because it sounds as though one is withdrawing from the world, and I've gone out of my way not to use it to describe the life that Keith and I lead, not even in my head. And yet, of course, withdraw we all do, sooner or later. I doubt many of the people with whom I worked for decades could recall my name by now, so this flash from the past has made me feel just a little more solid.

Everyone of a certain age will remember watching Mavis Nicholson in the afternoons I should think (I think I can still sing the jingle theme tune.) Finlay is right - she was a very talented interviewer, an art that seems to have vanished. Also, while her programmes were entertaining, they were also quite serious. Joke countries don't do "serious" though, do they? They put the party's selected mannequin on "Gogglebox" for the lolz.

We aren't governed by anyone who loves Britain. Quite the reverse.

Gareth @OldRoberts953 writes such great stuff on so many topics: don't miss his takedown of Ian Dunt; it is sublime - someone of whom I'm only vaguely aware, as a sort of everpresent background chuntering noise. We should have grabbed the pen from these moronic grifters in 2016. We are living through our failure to do so. theageofstupid.substack.com/…

Every institution, every single one, now seems to be controlled by an enemy of the West. I think the least that should be asked is that the individuals who are engaged in this frenzy of destruction be named. Who desecrated the Kelvingrove in this way, and who appointed her?

How dare you, Daily Mail. How dare you.

I'm no fan of Apple and bitterly regret becoming locked into its ecosystem. But for a Saturday evening g&t, its "Mendelssohn essentials" playlist is pretty beautiful. (Except when the third movement of the violin concerto comes on, because then you want to hear the whole thing! Plus I always skip past the wedding march.) music.apple.com/gb/playlist/…

This is subjective but ... name three PERFECT movies. No argument. Not explanation. Here's mine. Night of the Demon The Cat and the Canary (the Bob Hope one) The Earth Dies Screaming I mean I could have put The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover Elizabeth Cyrano de Bergerac Or Vertigo Dial M for Murder North by Northwest Each triple is my "favourite". But when it's Sunday afternoon, and it's raining outside, and there's a cup of tea and some cake on the go, it's one of the first three I'm most likely to put on!

I wrote a piece just after the referendum about the importance of grabbing the pen - the "narrative pen" - from the Remainers. Alas, we let them hold onto it. And so here we are, ten years later, with a pipsqueak nothing, who owes his entire existence to his gravy-train parents, attacking a patriot on the poll-tax funded BBC. I know it's not kind of me, but I despise this Kinnock even more strongly than I disliked his father when my 1992 vote helped prevent him from gaining power. No more Kinnocks: I think that's what I dared to dream in 2016. No more Kinnocks telling us how we should be British.

I must admit - I mean, I don't *have* to admit, but I'm going to - we went to see Ian McKellen in "Player Kings", which was Henry IV parts 1 & 2, in the west end in summer 2024. We were excited to see a great actor - it was the day before his tumble - and I know I love Shakespeare. However. It turns out that the Shakespeare I love is the tragedies wot we dun at school: Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Hamlet. And I saw a dazzling genuine-lolz As You Like It in Glasgow in the 90s. Great character arcs, fast-moving stories. But. I'd never seen one of the history plays before and it bored me to tears. Even with the fabulous SIr Ian. It reminded me of Game of Thrones, which I hate ("Now my army moves from X, to Y, ha! ha!" "Ha! But I shall move my army from Y, to X! Ha! Ha!" [insert rubbish bit of gore for interest].) We were two couples and at the interval I confessed I was bored; Keith said he'd lost track; Jacquie admitted to falling asleep. So we left. I think Andrew Scott overdoes the hand-waving here. But I understand his pace - it does make it sound like someone thinking aloud, rather than an actor reciting a speech, even if he establishes that early and then overdoes it a bit. I find it, and him, compelling. And an early memory of mine is sadness at Ian Charleson's death, so I will watch Elsinore. But I understand what Christopher means.