Writer. 'The Progress Trap' (2025) https://teapawt.net/t.co/O8msNTYAk9 and The Tribe: the liberal-left and system of diversity (2018) https://teapawt.net/t.co/t6erbtL3Sk
Joined February 2009
- Tweets102K
- Following1.4K
- Followers8.9K
- Likes60.2K
Pinned Tweet
I've got to admit failure.
My second book, The Progress Trap, despite having various excellent testimonials and a superb jacket and presentation from Polity Press, has failed.
Aside from the disappointment, it's interesting to reflect on why.
I'm not really sure. I thought it was a cracking book: better than my first, which attracted a lot more attention.
Maybe I gave too much attention - at the last minute - to the current moment and current politics, which distracted readers and reviewers (of which there were very few) from the main arguments.
On one level I might put it down as a lesson learned: that you need to focus on the main task rather than run after 'relevance'. The trouble is that such failure lasts. There will likely be no other books and I'll have to try and find some sort of gainful employment.
C'est la vie.
Brilliant: Why do we wear a poppy on Remembrance Day? youtu.be/8oZYvQqKztc?si=Ltrd… via @YouTube
One of my favourite things: Ralph Vaughan Williams' Six Studies in English Folk Song performed by Oren Shevlin (cello) and Nicholas Rimmer (piano) in a German bierkeller youtu.be/iHvNbWUwRSA?si=_RUp… via @YouTube
Patrick Stewart learning that his brutal, unfeeling father had been on the brunt of the German advance in France in 1940, saw horrendous things and suffered 'shell shock'. youtu.be/Em8Mfiben_k?si=BW7S… via @YouTube
Here we find a shadow minister using the word 'piñata' in a press statement about tube strikes.
Richard Holden, Shadow Transport Secretary:
“These RMT militants who bankroll hand-picked Labour MPs do not care about better services, they do not care about passengers and they do not care about our capital city – all they care about is beating as much cash out of this weak piñata of a Labour Mayor and Government as they can.
They know Labour will cave to their every demand and their latest whim, because that is exactly what Labour always does. Labour hands massive pay deals and the unions come straight back, striking again and bringing the country to a standstill."
Ben Cobley retweeted
Just in time for a youth mobility scheme to a country with the lingua franca and one of the highest minimum wages in Europe.
EU #youth #unemployment in September 2026:
🇷🇴30.8%
🇪🇪23.9%
🇫🇮23.7%
🇸🇪23.2%
🇪🇸22.8%
🇱🇺22.0%
🇫🇷21.9%
🇮🇹19.9%
🇵🇹19.1%
🇧🇪18.0%
🇸🇰17.7%
🇬🇷17.3%
🇱🇻16.5%
🇩🇰16.2%
🇭🇷16.1%
🇪🇺15.5%
🇭🇺14.6%
🇸🇮14.6%
🇱🇹14.0%
🇧🇬13.0%
🇦🇹12.8%
🇮🇪12.5%
🇨🇾11.3%
🇵🇱11.3%
🇲🇹9.6%
🇨🇿8.9%
🇳🇱8.8%
🇩🇪7.5%
@EU_Eurostat
Sartre's diet in the late 50s, while he was writing Critique of Dialectical Reason: two packs of cigarettes and several pipes stuffed with black tobacco per day, more than a quart of alcohol – wine, beer, vodka, whisky, etc – 200mg of amphetamines, 15g of aspirin, several grams of barbiturates, plus coffee, tea and rich meals.
Reminder of O'Brien's book titles:
How to be Right
How Not to be Wrong
How *They* Broke Britain.
Ben Cobley retweeted
"We do need to confront the reality that wrongdoers and predators will exploit our celebration of boundary-breaking, our reluctance to be seen as boring or conventional or part of a moral panic, to get away with their crimes."
I wrote that in @unherd almost six years ago.
The conspiracy theory Marr drops in here is a beguiling one.
The Telegraph, consistently Britain's most effective Eurosceptic voice, purchased by staunchly pro-EU German media conglomerate just as Labour government launches bid to get Britain back into the EU.
First move is to cull the paper's most popular, anti-Establishment, Eurosceptic voices and present an implausible plan to turn what is one of the country's foremost newspapers into a global AI whatever.
Why would you spend half a billion quid buying a national newspaper in order to turn it into something else? The value in the Telegraph is its relationship with audience, which this purchase is evidently looking to destroy.
It makes no sense to me, but then I'm not a global media executive.
Some hacks on the Telegraph believe that Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Axel Springer, is barely aware of what has been going on, having delegated affairs to the London management. But if he intends to return and smooth things out, he’s going to need to move quickly. I don’t mean any of this as a sob story. Many will pitch up on rival papers or start successful independent online writing of their own.
They do not hold political views with which the current writer agrees. But there is a wider story here about the gutting of distinctively British political culture. The Telegraph once mattered to the wider Conservative family in much the same way that the Guardian did to Labour and Liberal Britain: they, as much as the parliamentary parties, were where ideas were thrashed out and reputations made or destroyed.
Naturally, in a globalised digital media environment, the temptation to go international is a big one. But when the Springer manifesto says it wants to turn the paper into a global business driven by AI and “built on trusted journalism [and] direct relationships with our audiences”, one wonders how this chimes with the mass sackings. Given how many “trusted journalists” with direct relationships with Telegraph audiences are currently being put down, perhaps humanely, in clubs around Piccadilly, it reads rather oddly.
@AndrewMarr9
newstatesman.com/politics/me…
Ben Cobley retweeted
I policed in what was effectively a 'mega' area in London. Three Central London boroughs with 500,000 residents combined into a single policing unit. More than 10 police stations reduced to two. A masterclass by Bernard Hogan-Howe.
There were points where we had fewer than 10 police officers available for calls across the division - once we had accounted for officers abstracted for major events, those guarding crime scenes, at hospital, supervising mental health assessments etc.
As @Brick_Cop can testify, every single shift would begin with the news that there were 30 outstanding calls from the night before (including rapes, burglaries, and robberies) that no one had been able to get to.
We would work an entire shift, tackle a dozen of these calls, juggle it with active incidents and then at the end of the day guess what we would be told? There are now 30 outstanding calls. It was intensely demoralising to fight a never-ceasing flood.
Writ large across Britain, this will be a disaster.
12 MEGA forces?
“A smaller number of police forces, supported by a national policing organisation, would enable us to make decisions far quicker & maximise funding to invest in technology & our workforce.” – Chief Constable Gavin Stephens (NPCC)
policepromotion.blog/2025/12…
There's a Christmas tree in the local Sainsburys, 50 days before actual Christmas.
Completely ridiculous and against any conceivable meaning of Christmas, killing the thing with over-exposure.
You're allowed to criticise immigration, but only if the immigrants are Brits.
Ben Cobley retweeted
There is something odd - really odd - about the government’s decision-making.
• Release violent criminals onto the streets… but send people to prison for 14 years for missing the Tourist Tax
• Say we are 1000 days from war but cut funding for army training
• Prepare for blackouts but close refineries
It’s just mad.
Exc: Evasion of Angela Rayner’s new “tourist tax” will carry a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.
The measures, set out in a bill published on Wednesday, target accommodation providers in England who evade the proposed overnight visitor levy.
The new legislation is also designed to prevent property owners offering “mates’ rates” to friends that would reduce the amount of tax paid on temporary stays.
Started reading Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter yesterday. I remember reading it long ago and liking it more than other books of his I've tried. The atmosphere evoked is superb while the story-telling is concise and taut, doesn't get bogged down.
Ben Cobley retweeted
Fascinating
"Among prisoner of war communities, the prisoners who behave worst are Americans." Kurt Vonnegut, 1970. #DeadWrongHistory
The merging of charity work with political interest group campaigning goes against the very purpose of charity work.
Revealed: Charities that called for Mahmood's immigration U-turn received more than £1billion in taxpayers' cash trib.al/ZOIlqE7
I love seeing clips of football before the money properly kicked in: the unabashed, unselfconscious joy of scoring a goal is such a contrast to nowadays.
Ben Cobley retweeted
NEW: Britain faces an “unprecedented” rise in cyberattacks in the coming months and too many businesses and individuals are “wilfully blind” to the looming dangers, its head of cyber security has warned
In a stark message delivered in a speech today, Richard Horne, head of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, says the country is at a “Sliding Doors” moment
“In the coming months, we face a real prospect of an unprecedented rise in the number of cyber incidents.”
“Far too many of our organisations and supply chains rest on weak technology and operational foundations.”
“If leaders of organisations of every size and type do not take the responsibility now to make different choices then they will one day have to look their investors, shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, families and friends in the eye and explain why, despite knowing the consequences, they failed to make the choices required.
“When food isn't on the shelves, when lights aren't on, businesses have gone under. We may have to explain that we saw the warning signs, understood the risks and still didn't make the right choices. Why we remained wilfully blind.”
“Every day, our military networks are subjected to sustained and persistent, widespread attempts to penetrate our systems. Including notable campaigns by Russia that intentionally fall below the threshold of armed conflict as they escalate their attempts at hybrid warfare.”
“Despite the pressures of the Middle East conflict, Iran is still carrying out malicious cyber operations globally including against the UK and individuals that are seen as a threat to the regime putting them at risk of physical harm.”
“And we know that China highly likely has the intent and is best positioned to use AI for operations against our critical national infrastructure and other strategic targets with their activity representing the most sophisticated and sustained cyber challenge the UK faces.”