Wednesday, 4 February 2026

The Case Against AI

Let’s look at artificial intelligence (AI) through the lens of reality. AI gets things wrong. Yet it is touted as a “co-pilot” and advisor.

But humans get things wrong, you may say. Does that mean that I can’t accept advice from other humans?

No, because humans learn. From experience.

Oh, you may say, but AI can learn too.

But what does it learn? Where does its learning come from?

From the data on which it is trained, you say.

Yes, but who decides on what data it will be trained?

Let me try to put this more clearly. Early in life, children are taught by their parents; and good parents beget good children. Once children have learned how to learn, they learn bottom-up, from experience.

But AI does not learn. It is trained. From the top down.

And if people are fooled into trusting AI, do you not see what will happen?

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Thursday, 29 January 2026

Who’s a Fascist?

 


Image credit: Wikipedia

This essay is about Nigel Farage, and his party Reform UK. Among Farage’s opponents, it is all the rage today to accuse him and the party of being fascist. If not also racist and anti-semitic.

The first wave of accusations came in 2013, and concerned incidents from the early 1980s. The story seems to be that, while in 1981 Farage was being considered to be made a prefect at school, one teacher wrote a letter to the headmaster, accusing him of all manner of things. This story was picked up by a Channel 4 news reporter, who accused him of having held “neo-Fascist views” and shouted Hitler Youth songs during his schooldays. It was later repeated in a 2022 book by the same reporter.

Singing rowdy songs is a perfectly normal thing for schoolboys to do. I did it myself! Ours were rugby songs, not political ones. But they would have enraged today’s politically correct prudes just as much as anything nazi propagandists could have penned. That said, Nigel Farage was an army cadet while at school; and their conduct is notorious.

As to him having ever had neo-fascist views, I have not managed to find any substantive evidence of such a thing. The only sane verdict, then, has to be “not proven.”

Recent developments

Beginning in September 2025, there was more of the same. The timing was, perhaps, not unconnected with a poll which had just shown Reform with 35% of the vote share nationally. It began with Zack Polanski, Green party leader, declaiming: “Fascism is at our doorstep – we’ve seen that with Nigel Farage’s press conferences.” It was followed up by deputy prime minister David Lammy, who accused Farage of “flirting with the Hitler Youth.” A claim backed up by nothing but the same old 2013 story. Lammy later retracted it.

Things started to heat up in November. There is a timeline, here: [[i]]. Initially, the allegations were made almost entirely by the Guardian. Later on, the BBC, ITV and the Morning Star joined in. The whole thing was, clearly, choreographed. Then Keir Starmer got in on the act, calling Farage “spineless.”

Again, it was all about what (may or may not have) happened back in 1981, 45 years ago. The accusations this time were not being fascist per se, nor even singing nazi songs, but racism and anti-semitism. Moving the goalposts, no? And even those who have exceptional memories will be untrustworthy after such a long time.

The Attorney General, Lord Hermer, then demanded that Farage apologize for his anti-semitism. This was a typical political catch-22 ploy. He’d be damned if he did it, yet open to more harassment if he didn’t. We the people can see through that kind of crap nowadays.

Then, in early January, culture secretary Lisa Nandy, when asked on air by Trevor Phillips if a Farage-led government would be fascist, eventually answered: “If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, in my experience, it usually is a duck.”

What do fascists do?

If I didn’t know what a duck was, and had to work out whether an animal was a duck or not, I’d have to start by finding out what ducks do. Then I could judge the animal by comparing what it does with the actions to be expected of a duck. I call this “judgement by behaviour.”

So, what do fascists do, as and when they get government power? Says Britannica: they show “extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of élites, and the desire to create a community in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation.”

They oppose Marxism and socialism, even though there are strong similarities between fascist régimes and communist ones. They oppose democracy, and favour the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo. They have zero concern for the rights and freedoms of individuals. They are authoritarian, with a desire to become totalitarian. They want the state to take control over the economy. And most favour the interests of the very rich over the middle and working classes and the poor. They have a liking for violence and intimidation, and a high regard for military exploits. They indoctrinate the people with propaganda. They like to hold mass ceremonies of affirmation and conformity. And they like to pick on scapegoats for persecution (often on the basis of their race).

Are Nigel Farage and Reform UK fascists?

I’ll break this question into four parts. One, is Reform a fascist party? Two, is it racist? Three, is it anti-semitic? And four, what of Nigel Farage as an individual? If the party is convicted on any of the first three, then because he is its leader, it would be reasonable to suppose that Nigel was guilty of the same, absent specific evidence to the contrary.

How to answer these questions? Where necessary, I will use quotes from the “Contract with You,” the party’s 2024 election manifesto, together with a few things I have found out since then. Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating; for politicians of all parties routinely renege on their promises. But these quotes will give us a good start.

Does Reform oppose Marxism and socialism? Well, yes. But so does anyone who cares about the rights and freedoms of individual human beings.

Does Reform oppose democracy? The Contract promises to “end the corruption of our government and politics by an out-of-touch, London-centric élite to make Britain a more democratic, accountable and therefore more prosperous nation.” They will legislate “to stop … politically correct ideology that threatens personal freedom and democracy.” And they want to “replace the crony-filled House of Lords with a much smaller, more democratic second chamber.” So, the answer is No.

Does Reform favour strong central power, and the current political establishment? No: for it seeks, among other things, to “cut nanny state regulations” and to convene an “excess deaths and vaccine harms public enquiry.” It is also opposed to Labour’s schemes that seek to centralize powers in local government.

Does Reform lack concern for the rights and freedoms of individuals? No. It offers “to stop politically correct ideology that threatens personal freedom,” and a British Bill of Rights in which our rights and freedoms “must be codified and guaranteed.” It “opposes a cashless society.” And Nigel Farage strongly says No to any UK digital ID. As a civil liberties activist myself, I say that’s a lot better than Tories or Labour. But again, the pudding must be proven.

Does Reform want to create a totalitarian state? Not if the Contract with You can be believed.

Does Reform want state control over the economy? No. Indeed, it wants to “abolish IR35” (of which I myself am a victim) and to “support small and medium-sized enterprises.” They do, however, propose “tighter regulation and a new ownership model for critical national infrastructure.” Like roads, railways and water. But this is understandable, given that it’s an area in which the current system has totally failed.

Does Reform favour the very rich over the middle and working classes? No. They want to “cut taxes to make work pay.” And they are against “complex offshore property company structures and high interest shareholder loans.”

Does Reform set a high priority on military activity? Well, yes, considering the low state to which the UK military has fallen. But enemies and potential enemies are not going away quite yet. So, the problems do need to be addressed.

Is Reform a racist party? I quote from its constitution: it “does not discriminate against or in favour of any person on the grounds of their race, religion, gender, ethnic origin, education, beliefs, sexual orientation, social class, sectarianism or any other basis prescribed by law.”

Does Reform pick scapegoats? Some would say that it targets “illegal” immigrants. But why are they here, without first having been accepted by the community of British people? And why are they showered with benefits, without ever having paid any UK taxes?

But maybe there is a group of immigrants Reform would victimize. That is, those who came “legally” from the EU before 2020, and have settled and integrated here. If Reform gets power, they face a future in which they must again and again re-apply for UK residence.

To anti-semitism. I don’t know of any Jewish members in our local branch of Reform. But I certainly wouldn’t object to them; because I operate “judgement by behaviour,” as I described above. I don’t care who someone is. Just what they do.

As to Nigel Farage, he positively supports Israel in the conflict in Gaza. You can accuse him of being callous to Palestinians, if you will; but he is no Jew-hater.

That’s a pretty meagre ration of similarities between, on the one hand, Nigel Farage and Reform UK, and on the other, fascists. Do you not agree?

Are Labour fascists?

Now for the (first) fun bit. Let’s apply the same test to Labour. I do realize that I’m being a little generous to Farage and Reform, because I’m going to compare Reform’s manifesto promises with the records of Labour and Tories when in power. But here goes, anyway.

Are Labour against Marxism and socialism? Maybe. Before Blair, they used to be socialists. But today, they abhor real socialists like George Galloway or Jeremy Corbyn.

Opposing democracy? Check. They have imposed a re-organization of local government, that nobody outside the establishment blob wants. They have cancelled elections in the process, in some cases two years in a row. And they seek to impose a mayoral system, that is totally inappropriate for people in rural areas, without even an attempt at “consultation.” Meanwhile, they present this as “devolution,” whereas in reality it is centralization of power.

On top of all that, they eagerly support agendas being forced on us by the activist, unelected, unaccountable United Nations. Like “15-minute cities.” And they want to take us back into the EU.

They want the state to control the economy, too. With swingeing taxes and burgeoning regulations. And with Mad Miliband and his nett zero morons making energy prices higher than almost anywhere else in the world. Moreover, while they claim to despise “the rich,” everything they do increases the power of the politically rich, at everyone else’s expense.

Zero concern for rights and freedoms? Check. Indeed, they are putting in place, piece by piece, a plenitude of “final solutions” to kill our human rights and freedoms. Such as: Digital ID. A database they want to be a “single source of truth.” Using facial recognition cameras to construct a totalitarian “panopticon” to imprison and surveil us all. And abolishing jury trials.

Do they favour military escapades? You bet. Tony Blair lied to fabricate an excuse to start a war in Iraq. More recently, Labour have sought to re-position themselves as a pro-NATO party of national security. And Starmer is happy to use nuclear weapons. And didn’t say he wouldn’t use them pre-emptively.

Indoctrination and propaganda? Do they ever say anything that isn’t propaganda? And lying to and gaslighting the people are second nature to them. As Reform’s by-election candidate in Gorton and Denton, Matt Goodwin, can attest: [[ii]].

As to scapegoating, Labour are past masters. I myself have been a victim of IR35 for a quarter of a century now. Labour have always hated people who want to be independent. And today, more and more groups of innocent, valuable people are being singled out for persecution. Car drivers. Pensioners. Farmers. Family businesses. Who will be next?

What about racism and anti-semitism? Labour claim to be against both. But historically, that claim cannot be sustained. Even one of their own former MPs, Chuka Umunna, has described them as “institutionally racist.” And there is a significant faction within the party that supports Palestinians against Jews. Moreover, their mad rush to take in immigrants, of any quality and at any cost, has led them to discriminate against the indigenous populations, the English, Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish, who are expected both to tolerate a hugely increased population density, and to pay for it all.

To sum up: Labour are a lot closer to being fascists than either Reform or Nigel Farage! If it behaves like a fascist, and talks like a fascist, then at least if you can believe Lisa Nandy, it probably is a fascist.

Are the Tories fascists?

And here’s the second fun bit. Same questions, but a slightly different target.

Are the Tories against Marxism and socialism? They have long claimed that they are. And yet, in practice they have maintained a cosy arrangement that has allowed Tories and Labour to alternate power, with the Tories usually in government about two-thirds of the time. They may disown the devil, yet they have danced with it for decades.

Do they oppose democracy? The Tories have never really respected the people they are charged to serve. This is because they are arrogant bastards, and they think they are élites who have a right to rule us. That they have managed to rule for as long as they have, is only because very many people have seen them as the lesser of two evils. But they are still evil.

Moreover, they changed the voting system so that, according to the Electoral Reform Society, “mayors with sweeping powers are now taking office with the backing of a small minority of voters.” Which is just how Labour got into power nationally in 2024.

More recently, where I live, the local Tories have fallen over themselves in their rush to get in on Labour’s centralizing schemes, and to keep themselves in unelected power in the process. It looks as if they are working together in tandem.

Do they want the state to control the economy? Not quite as much as Labour. But they had already raised taxes to record levels even before Labour got in. Moreover, for decades Tories and Labour have both kow-towed to bad policies being imposed by the UN and policed by the EU. Particularly on “climate change,” nett zero and air pollution. They have conjoined to de-industrialize Britain, and make us all unnecessarily poorer and colder.

Yet the Tories still want to make sure that big profits accrue to their cronies. And that they get a good cut for themselves. They tend to like billionaires, perhaps for their “generosity.” They favour multi-national companies and Big Business, but don’t care a damn about the “little people.” Their failure to repeal IR35 is evidence of this. As is the draconian way they closed down so many small businesses over COVID.

Rights and freedoms? It was the Tories that suppressed free speech with their “on-line safety bill,” and exposed us all to false accusations of “misinformation.” They stomped on the right to protest. They forced many people to take an untried COVID “vaccine,” whose side-effects can include death. They also promoted a “cashless society” and central bank digital currencies, with obvious intent to end financial privacy. And it is impossible to believe that Labour’s ever-increasing assaults on our rights and freedoms over the past year and a half were not planned by the Tories when they had power.

On the subject of war, I need give you only one example. Six weeks after the Ukraine war began, there was a situation where Putin was willing to negotiate, and Zelenskiy was in two minds. Boris Johnson was despatched to Kiev to “persuade” Zelenskiy to continue fighting, despite Russia’s overwhelming long-term superiority in resources. Despite academic waffles to the contrary, it looks as if Johnson did the dirty work for the Western military-industrial complex, and ensured that the war continued. He has blood on his hands.

Indoctrination and propaganda? Suffice it to say that “if a politician’s lips are moving, he or she is lying.” Oh, and as to mass ceremonies of affirmation and conformity, it was the Tories who instituted the Orwellian “one minute clap” for NHS and key workers during COVID.

And while not quite as quick as Labour at creating new groups of scapegoats, the Tories, through decades of much the same agendas as Labour, have victimized many innocent people, such as with green levies and anti-car policies.

For more than half a century, the Tories have repeatedly been labelled as racist by their opponents. And sexist, to boot. Some of these arrows have stuck, so that a perception of Tories as racists has become widespread. There have also been, over the decades, many incidents of anti-semitism shown by Tories, including Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan.

All in all, the Tories are not far away from Labour in their level of fascism. Not really surprising, as despite their different rhetoric, there aren’t a lot of differences between Tories and Labour in their attitudes to the people they are supposed to serve. The Tories do, however, tend to be a little bit cleverer than Labour in the way they disguise things.

To sum up

I could carry on to test the Lib Dems and Greens for symptoms of fascism. But I have neither space here, nor time or energy today. So, I will finish simply by outlining my conclusions.

Whatever its detractors may say, Reform UK is not a fascist party. And on the evidence which I have examined, Nigel Farage does not behave like a fascist. Nor can he justly be accused of racism or anti-semitism.

In contrast, both Labour and the Tories have shown plenty of evidence of racist and anti-semitic tendencies in their pasts. And both of them include elements in their agendas which, even if not strictly Fascist, are nevertheless fascistic in tone. These include: Contempt for democracy. Ever increasing taxation and state control. Green and anti-car policies. Increasing violations of human rights and freedoms. And lack of respect for the individual human beings, whom they are supposed to serve.

Who's a fascist?

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Sunday, 11 January 2026

Microslop

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

In recent days, there has been an eruption in the tech world. It is unlike anything I have seen in my more than half a century as a software developer, consultant and project manager. Microsoft, its Windows 11 operating system in particular, and artificial intelligence (AI), are in trouble. Big trouble.

The pressures leading to this eruption have been building for a year or so. Right now, the effects are confined mostly to tech blogs and tech people in the USA. But they are spreading. And fast.

Slop

In the last couple of years, AI-generated content has become ubiquitous on the Internet. It may consist of text, images or videos. Some of it is dangerous – for example, erroneous medical information. Most of it is of low to very low quality. And some of it is just bizarre. Such as the infamous “shrimp Jesus” I used as the featured image for this post.

In tech circles, the stuff has become known as “slop.” When you do a Google search, you may see more links to slop than to human-produced material. It looks as if “sloppers” have been using AI to generate large amounts of clickbait, not to mention content that may be misleading or downright dangerous.

In February 2025, Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, pleaded in an interview for people to stop using the term “slop.” Saying “people are getting too precious about this.” The response could not have been further from what he asked for. The word “slop” went viral.

So much so, that last month Merriam-Webster, the dictionary publishers, declared “slop” to be their “word of the year.” Nadella responded huffily to this, saying: “we need to get beyond the arguments of slop versus sophistication.” The Internet tech community disagreed. And they took their revenge [[i]] by re-naming the phenomenon “Microslop.”

Windows 10 and Windows 11

All tied up with this is Microsoft’s botched transition from Windows 10 to Windows 11.

Windows 11 was launched in October 2021. Due to higher hardware requirements, it would not run on around 60% of the PCs then running Windows 10. Including mine. That was already a time-bomb.

Support for Windows 10 was withdrawn for general customers on October 14th, 2025. Although Extended Security Updates (ESUs) remained available for corporate customers who wanted to keep Windows 10 running.

At no point has Windows 11 been popular with users. It had only about half the take-up Microsoft had expected. And by February 2025, many companies who had “upgraded” their staff’s PCs to Windows 11 had started returning them to Windows 10. It’s estimated that 400 million computers world-wide are still running Windows 10 without any Microsoft software support, simply because the users cannot, or do not wish to, “upgrade” to Windows 11.

Worse, some of Microsoft’s biggest corporate clients, with hundreds of thousands of users each, are switching to Apple Mac. And tech-savvy customers, including gamers and many smaller professional firms, are moving towards platforms like Linux.

My own experience of Windows

I bought my first PC in 1991. It had DOS 3.3 as its operating system (OS). As a tech professional, I was comfortable with that. I told it what to do, and it did it. (Usually).

There was also something called “Windows 3.1” installed. I tried it, and it was rubbish. Slow, and what’s the point? The previous year, while working in the US, I had been using OS/2, IBM’s answer to Windows. OS/2 was a proper operating system, with some new and interesting possibilities built in. By comparison, Windows felt like a kludge.

It is part of my character that, whatever product I am looking for, I like to buy the very best I can possibly afford, then run it into the ground. My car history bears this out; in 56 years of driving, I have had only seven cars. My attitude to PCs has been the same. In 35 years, I have had only five computers – two desktops and three laptops. I have gone from DOS 3.3 to Windows 95, Windows Vista, and since 2018 Windows 10.

My computer hardware (along with 25% of all Windows 10 PCs!) is insufficient to run Windows 11, even if I wanted to. So, when support for Windows 10 was withdrawn on October 14th, I just shrugged and said, “at least that’s the end of those pesky updates.” (Which, by the way, it isn’t…)

Besides which, in my view, it shouldn’t be Microsoft’s job to secure computer systems. That would be better left to security specialists like ESET. Microsoft’s part of the job should be to provide an OS that works, performs well, and doesn’t give trouble. An operating system that does these things shouldn’t need any support at all, once its users are familiar with it.

But even Windows 10 hasn’t lived up to anywhere near that standard. At one stage, I found Windows updates taking hours to download (though this turned out, eventually, to be due to a dicky hard disk). There was an occasion on which, after an update one Saturday morning, both the touchpad and my USB mouse stopped working. The keyboard was my only way to communicate with the machine! It was obvious that someone was working on the problem, as the touchpad came back relatively quickly. But it was 36 hours before the mouse worked again. And then, there are printer drivers… don’t get me worked up.

More generally, I feel that Microsoft has violated, again and again, one of the most fundamental rules of software design. What you could do yesterday, you must still be able to do today (if maybe using a different method). Microsoft has all but destroyed the concept of backwards compatibility. We have lost the DOS box, 32-bit compatibility, and much more.

And don’t even think about the hoops that third-party software vendors had to jump through to port their products from DOS to Windows. Some didn’t make it through at all.

My view of AI

AI seems to have a lot of hype around it. As one who finds that, generally, hype is inversely proportional to substance, I expected to be severely disappointed by AI. And I was right. I wrote about my first test of it here: [[ii]]. Google’s AI told me a blatant falsehood, that anyone who would think to ask my question would know was wrong.

Imagine you are interviewing someone for a job. And right at the beginning, they say something that you know, with absolute certainty, is untrue. Then, when you ask them the same question later, they give you a different answer that is also wrong. Are they going to get the job? Not from me. That’s the trap Google’s AI fell into.

A computer, to me, is a tool; as is the software that runs on it. One of the key things about a tool is that what it does must be reproducible. For example, the same Excel spreadsheet, run on the same data, must always produce the same results. Yet AI just makes stuff up as it goes along. And this is presented as “learning,” and as a virtue? You would not expect a power drill to drill holes one day, and just blow hot air the next. So, if your computer or software does anything like that, it’s time to take it to the repair shop.

I don’t see a need for AI. I don’t want AI. So, until AI starts provably and reliably solving real-world problems, I don’t want to touch it. Not even with the proverbial bargepole.

Problems with Windows 11

This video from Tech Report gives an account of some of the problems users are suffering with Windows 11: [[iii]].

In a law firm’s office, they have had, at least: Performance issues. Application crashes. A new taskbar positioning, that slows users down, and can’t be changed. Users forced to log in to a Microsoft account, which doesn’t work. Annoying ads popping up in low-level Windows facilities. And Copilot prompts interrupting work. Overall, productivity is well down.

Meanwhile, gamers are finding Windows 11 slower than Windows 10, even on the same hardware. And experts can’t speed it up again. Similar problems are affecting video editors, computer assisted design (CAD) users, and even – irony of ironies – AI researchers!

Other gripes include: People being forced to use features no-one asked for or wanted. Features they are accustomed to, like local accounts, being taken away. Ads are intrusive and hard to turn off. Copilot not only interrupts work, but gets things wrong, and doesn’t understand the context in which the user is working. And options the user doesn’t want, and has laboriously switched off, are automatically switched back on at every update.

More generally, users – and their bosses – have lost trust in an operating system that is, in almost every way, worse than its predecessor.

Microsoft ought to be developing their software to better meet the requirements of their users. But instead, they seem to be expecting the users to adapt themselves to whatever they decide to put out there. I regard that attitude as arrogant and irresponsible. Indeed, it is all but psychopathic.

Summing up

Towards the end of the video, the narrator sums up his views of what is wrong. Here is my paraphrase.

Microsoft have stopped serving users, and instead started serving shareholders, revenue targets, subscription metrics, and data collection goals. It’s all about the money. And users have become resources to be mined, not customers to be respected.

Forced hardware requirements are driving PC sales for Microsoft’s hardware partners. Mandatory accounts are driving adoption of cloud services for Microsoft’s cloud partners. AI features are there to “justify” the huge financial investment Microsoft has made in the company OpenAI. And large amounts of “telemetry” data are collected on users’ activity. Who knows where that data goes, or what it is used for?

When an OS spies on them, advertises to them, forces computer upgrades, includes AI that interrupts work, and performs worse than its predecessor, the users don’t like it. So, they’re leaving. This is the biggest user revolt in tech history. Caused by Microsoft’s greed, arrogance, and disrespect for the very users who helped make Windows successful.

My own conclusions

Judging by this video, even if my PC had the hardware to run Windows 11, I wouldn’t want it to. When I am working, whether paid or not, I screw myself up to a level of concentration few people are capable of. And I hate, hate, HATE being interrupted by anything outside my work. After just one interrupt, it can easily take me half an hour to get back to where I was. That is why I never answer the phone when I am working. It’s also one reason why I have never carried a mobile phone; I use a phone only to access WhatsApp from my laptop.

Moreover, I strongly resent ads of all kinds through any channel. I feel an urge to boycott companies that pollute my life with ads; I want to do my bit towards bankrupting them. Oh, and I don’t want to have to log in to any external account, or to store anything in the cloud. If my data isn’t physically on my PC, it isn’t under my control, and that’s a security risk. I don’t want to send anything I am working on outside my PC, until I’m satisfied it is as good as I can make it at the time.

So, I’m never going to run Windows 11. I’ll soldier on with the PC I have until it dies. Then, I’ll decide what to replace it with. Might be Mac. Might be Linux. Might be – who knows?

But… there’s more

But there are more problems in Windows 11, beyond the ones which the video I linked to above focuses on.

“Windows Recall” is a function that takes periodic snapshots of your screen. It takes a screenshot every few seconds, analyzes what you are doing, and stores the results. Initially, it stored the results as plain text – including sensitive information like credit card numbers! And it was active by default – though since, it has been changed to require opt-in.

Windows 11 has been measured as running 2 to 3 times slower than Windows 10 on the same hardware. Even (perhaps, most of all) on high-end computers!

Updates install themselves without asking. Even in the middle of people’s work day! And they can fail, or go into fail-and-retry loops, or freeze for hours at a time. For anyone who has to work to deadlines measured in minutes, like journalists, Windows 11 is a no-no.

Some “power users” have had to resort to third-party software just to restore features they depended on in Windows 10.

The user interface changes in Windows 11 remind some pundits of the 2012 disaster of Windows 8, when Microsoft tried to force desktop and laptop users to use an interface that was only workable on a mobile phone.

In January 2025, what was billed as a routine security update caused many computers to crash. And in November 2025, Microsoft admitted that almost all the core features of Windows 11 are broken.

Subscription-based pricing

Another thing Microsoft has done in recent years, that angers users like me, is their move away from selling their software and towards a subscription-based approach.

When I bought my Windows 10 PC, I paid a couple of hundred pounds for a Microsoft Office 2016 licence. I have been using that software now for more than seven years; it’s mine! And it works for me. Why would I ever want to change it?

If I were to move to Windows 11, I would need to buy an Office 365 licence, which currently costs about £85 a year. I might well need several more licences beyond this, too. It’s a rip-off. And… how do I know Office 365 is bug-free? And still has all the functions I rely on?

Pushbacks from governments

The first sign of ructions against the way Windows was moving came in 2017: [[iv]]. A Dutch government department determined that Microsoft was violating Dutch data protection laws.

More recently, the Dutch parliament has been urging their government to stop using cloud services based in the US: [[v]]. A Danish government department, and the Schleswig-Holstein state government in Germany, are planning to end use of Microsoft software by their workers. And European governments, citing reasons like “digital sovereignty,” are now moving away from Microsoft’s proprietary platforms like Windows and Office 365: [[vi]].

The future? Or not?

And where do Microsoft, Windows and AI seem to be going in the future?

Microsoft’s sales patter includes buzz-phrases like: “Windows is now your canvas for AI and agents.” “Integrating AI and agents in your flow.” “Microsoft 365 Copilot where you need it.” “Enhanced capacities on Copilot+ PCs.” Microsoft executives have described Windows 11 as an “agentic operating system.” Meaning, its main function is to run AI agents.

AI agents are built on top of the “large language models” that most people think of as AI. They do things like running code, learning from feedback, and deciding what to do next. They are, in essence, applications with AI capabilities built in. An example is Windows Recall, which I mentioned above.

A key concern is that, though they are on your own computer, AI agents are not under your control. And they can have read and write access to your data files. What harm could such agents do, inadvertently or by design, to your data or to the computer itself? Indeed, Microsoft has already issued a warning that the new “agentic” features in Windows 11 may be vulnerable to malware.

It looks to me as if Microsoft are seeking to turn the PC, which ought to be a tool under the user’s control, into an instrument over which Microsoft and AI developers have more control than the user does.

Could AI agents even harm you? There is, for example, a worry among many office workers in the US that AI-generated detailed reports on what you do on the computer might be used to train an AI, that can then be sold to your bosses as a cheaper replacement for you.

Moreover, Microsoft’s approach of “Continuous Innovation” leads them to force new features on you whenever they feel like it. This is hardly a recipe for a stable working environment. One pundit described it as: “users have to make do with Microsoft constantly moving the deck chairs.” I am tempted to add to that: “on the Titanic.”

All this is leading to the beginnings of an anti-AI political movement. As the New York Times recently reported: [[vii]] (paywalled). One anti-AI website is here: [[viii]]. I confess that, from my admittedly limited experience with AI, it would not take much to push me into the anti-AI camp.

In my view, the prognosis is not good. Not good for Windows as a product. Not good for AI as a technology. And not good for Microsoft as a company. It looks as if the eruption, which is starting to build today, may well lead to Microsoft’s greed and arrogance coming back to haunt them.

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Tuesday, 6 January 2026

Just governance

Image credit: Freepik

Today, I’ll look towards the future. It’s becoming obvious to just about everyone that the political system, under which we have lived all our lives, has failed. So, I think it’s time to try to sketch out an alternative system; one that can give us some hope of a better future.

I see a need for discussion of fresh ideas about politics. Few people today are in any position to spark such a discussion; yet, so it seems, my philosophical work over the last few decades may perhaps have put me in such a place. So, here goes!

This essay is a re-working and update of some ideas I first articulated in early 2023. Of course, there are many details left to be filled in. Despite this, I will, no doubt, be accused of being Utopian, or of peddling pie-in-the-sky. There will also be those who will ululate “it won’t work,” without ever showing good reasons why. To all these, I say: if you don’t like my approach, grow and show your own!

Governance versus government

I call my system “just governance.” Its principal function is to deliver, to everyone, the justice which each individual deserves. I define the ideal I call “common-sense justice” as follows: “The condition in which each individual is to be treated, over the long run, in the round and as far as practicable, as he or she treats others.” And because of this, everyone is responsible for the reasonably foreseeable effects of their voluntary actions on others.

I shall dub the old system “government,” in contrast to the new “governance.”

The purpose of governance

According to John Locke, the main reason why people should seek to work together to form a government is “their comfortable, safe and peaceable living.” Specifically, the objectives are the preservation of their property, and the preservation and enlargement of their freedoms.

My own take is that the purpose of building civilizations, and in the process forming some kind of governance, is to provide for ourselves a habitat of: Peace and tranquillity. Respect for our humanity and dignity. Objective, individual justice. Human rights and freedoms. A free market, and free trade. In such an environment, we human beings can all be free, prosperous and happy.

Constraints on governance

In terms of my ethical and political philosophy, as expressed at [[1]] and [[2]]:

1)     Governance must satisfy the ethical equality principle: Among human beings, what is right for one to do, is right for another to do in similar circumstances, and vice versa. Thus, governance must deliver the rule of law, and must not arrogate to itself moral privileges.

2)     The law to be upheld, and at need enforced, by governance must be the natural law of humanity. Its essence, it forbids doing unjust harm to others in their life, health, liberty or possessions. In particular, no-one – including anyone in governance – may unjustly harm any human being who adheres to this natural law.

3)     Governance must uphold the rights and freedoms of all human beings who respect the equal rights and freedoms of others. This includes the right to dignity: that is, to be treated with the respect due to a human being.

4)     Governance must satisfy the common-sense justice principle. That is, that every individual should be treated, over the long run, in the round and as far as practicable, as he or she treats others.

5)     Governance must satisfy the maximum freedom principle. Every individual is free to choose and act as he or she wishes. Provided only that their actions do not unjustly violate the rights or freedoms of, cause harm to, or impose unreasonable risks of harm on, others.

In addition, to measure up to the Enlightenment values, to which all governance must keep:

6)     Governance must have a clear and publicly available constitution, specifying the limits of what it may and may not do.

7)     No part of the power of governance may ever be transferred to any external party or parties.

8)     Everything governance does must be directed to the benefit of those it governs. Indeed, to the benefit of every single individual among them; except only those that violate the natural law of humanity.

9)     Governance must never undertake any project for which the costs to the governed, financial or otherwise, are greater than the benefits which accrue to them from the project.

10) Governance may not unjustly put any obstacle in the way of the economic free market, or of anyone’s access to it; or in the way of honest business activity.

Just governance

Here is my outline proposal for a new, bottom-up system of governance, which can replace, and fix the problems with, the current, top-down, failed system of political states and governments.

The new system will govern communities of individuals, in much the same way as a referee governs a football match. It will also adjudicate as needed on the relationships between those individuals, the voluntary societies to which they belong, and other individuals and societies they interact with.

Just governance will be bottom-up and de-politicized. It will focus on the individual, and on small communities. It will not allow any political or religious ideology or agenda to be imposed on any of the governed against their wills. Moreover, it will not seek to control or to meddle with economic activity in any way, unless that activity unjustly causes objective damage to others, or violates their rights, or imposes on others unreasonable risks of harm.

In structure, it will be like a network, not a hierarchy. It will have no central or commanding point, at which undue concentration of political power can collect. Except in clear emergency, it will be reactive rather than pro-active. And it will have no mechanisms to enable one interest group unjustly to override the interests of others.

Just governance need not be territorial. Indeed, in the future, most just governances will not be territorial. But as long as there still exist legacy states, to defend against their aggressions the community such a governance serves will need to be defined as the inhabitants of a particular territory. I refer to such a governance as an “area of just governance.”

The natural law of humanity and the Convivial Code

I addressed the natural law of humanity, and the “Convivial Code” which will encapsulate it, at [[3]]. I quoted John Locke’s one-sentence statement of it: “being all equal and independent, no-one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.” And I gave my own “code lite” of 25 obligations, positive and negative. Principal among these is to respect the human rights and freedoms of all those who respect the equal rights and freedoms of other human beings.

I also gave some draft outlines of the rights, which each of us earns by keeping to the natural law of humanity, at [[4]]. I couched those rights specifically in terms of how governance ought to treat us. But under the ethical equality principle, how individuals in governance should behave, and how everyone else should behave, must be the same.

One major way in which the Code will differ from systems of political laws is that for long periods, sometimes over many centuries, it will be timeless. Changes only become necessary when circumstances occur which have not been envisaged before, or human nature itself changes, or new knowledge becomes available about it. And these events are rare. So, absent such events, the Code will be applicable retrospectively.

The functions of just governance

I recently addressed, at [[5]], the question “what should be the functions of government?” I came up with these:

1)     A legislative with extremely circumscribed powers.

2)     A police force or equivalent, to assure peace and tranquillity among the governed, and to uphold the rights and freedoms – including property rights – of all who respect the equal rights and freedoms of others.

3)     A defensive and at need retaliatory military, to defend against violent aggressors.

4)     Impartial, objective and honest courts of justice, covering compensatory and penal law. With the associated support services, such as prisons.

5)     A quality assurance system, to ensure that governance always acts for the public good.

6)     A fair and just system of financing the other governance functions.

There are also a few subsidiary functions.

The legislative

In contrast to today, once just governance is up and running, the legislative will be a fairly unimportant part of it. For its code of law, the natural law of humanity, comes from human nature, not from edicts made by political élites. So, it must be discovered, not invented.

Moreover, under that code of law, every human being is ethically equal. Unlike today, there will be no moral privileges for governance or its officials – including those in the legislative.

As I identified at [5], just governance will have power to make laws. But these laws must always aim at the good of all the governed – every individual human being. When put into effect, they must defend the lives, liberties and possessions of the governed, never destroy or damage them. Further, laws made by just governance may only explicate or interpret the natural law of humanity. They must never contradict it, violate it, or go beyond its bounds.

Thus, in just governance, the legislative will be needed in only a few situations:

1)     Initial construction and agreement of the Code.

2)     Determining when a change is necessary to the Code.

3)     Specifying the changes.

4)     Managing the introduction of a new version of the Code.

So, crucially, just governance will not have any permanent legislative. As to who should be part of it when it is required, its work will require significant input from “experts.” But what it does must be validated by the governed, with everyone’s views taken into account.

Local and emergency rules

There will, at times and in places, be a need to make what I call “local rules.” These are sane, sensible, non-politicized conventions for the benefit of all users of the public space (that is, space open to all) in an area. Like which side of the road you should drive on. But local rules must be kept to a minimum.

There may also be a need to make temporary rules in the event of a clear emergency, such as a flood or an epidemic. But the scope and period of such rules must be as limited as possible.

Assurance of peace, tranquillity, rights and freedoms

The function of just governance, which assures peace and tranquillity and defends rights and freedoms, must be able to intervene in the event of breaches or planned breaches of peace, tranquillity, rights or freedoms.

If one or more individuals have violated the natural law of humanity and brought about, or planned to bring about, such a breach, and there is no doubt as to the perpetrators, then just governance must be able to detain them for the purpose of examination by a court of justice. This represents another deviation from the natural law of humanity, beyond self-defence and defence of others, to be allowed for the purpose of bringing wrongdoers to justice.

Because of the ethical equality principle, what is right for anyone to do if employed by governance to seek out and detain wrongdoers, must also be right for anyone else. Thus, just governance will enable a “citizen’s arrest” of wrongdoers, with the same safeguards as for an arrest by agents of governance. Such as requiring reasonable grounds for detention, and suspects to be clearly told what they are accused of.

Just governance will also need to investigate likely suspects for real wrongdoings which have taken place. Or to monitor those reasonably suspected of carrying out, having carried out, or planning to carry out, real wrongdoings. As with the citizen’s arrest, anyone who can show reasonable suspicions about someone’s conduct may monitor them, provided this does not violate their rights or freedoms. This forms another exceptional reason to allow deviation from the natural law of humanity.

Another aspect of the upholding rights function might be the emergency services which today are often required, with or without police, at or after incidents.

Rights against unjustified privacy or dignity violations

But in contrast to today, there will be rights explicitly specified in the Convivial Code against unjustified invasions of privacy, or violations of the dignity appropriate to a human being. These will provide protections against unjust surveillance or detention, similar to those of the US fourth amendment against unjust search or seizure.

Random stop-and-search will be prohibited, as will be use of facial recognition technology in public places. Moreover, neither governance nor anyone else will be allowed to record people’s movements using cameras, except in proven and clearly signed crime “hot spots,” or for a specific purpose like collecting tolls on new infrastructure. Nor will it be allowed to track individuals from place to place as they travel around, without reasonable suspicion of them having committed, committing, or planning to commit, a real wrongdoing. Nor will data in a database ever be allowed to take precedence over evidence in a court of justice.

Defence against violent aggressors

Under the current system, the UK military and police are separate entities, with separate purposes. I envisage that in just governance, the differences between the equivalent functions will be mainly in the kinds of crimes they defend people against. The police function, above, will deal mainly with non-violent wrongdoings. Whereas the defence-against-aggressors function will deal with violent actors, whether from inside or outside the people governed.

The defence-against-aggressors function will be able to defend people throughout the governance, and to retaliate against aggressors where appropriate. But it will not have any right to use violence against non-aggressors. Just governances will not carry out unprovoked military adventures such as Donald Trump’s invasion of Venezuela.

The judicial function

The primary institutions of just governance will be judicial, including impartial arbitration of disputes and objective assessment of externalities and risks. The major institution will be courts of just governance. Where appropriate, pre-existing local procedures will be used, like jury trials.

Ultimately, the authority of just governance can only come from its objectivity, its honesty, its impartiality, and the common-sense nature of its principles.

As in today’s legal systems, I expect there will be two main areas of justice. On one hand, arbitration and restorative justice; that is, the resolution of disputes, and the calculation and ordering of restitution for wrongs. And on the other, criminal or retributive justice.

Unlike today, in criminal justice there will be no kind of “strict liability.” No-one will suffer any punishment beyond being made to provide restitution, unless they have acted with extreme recklessness, or with intent to harm, or otherwise to violate the natural law of humanity.

Another aspect of the judicial function will be to make objective assessments of actual or alleged externalities (side effects), such as pollution or noise, which can reasonably be expected to cause damage to others. If appropriate, those that cause such externalities will be made to compensate the individuals and groups provenly affected by the damage they caused, each in proportion to the amount of harm they suffer. The judicial function will also be able to analyze and assess actual or alleged risks, in much the same way as for externalities.

Quality assurance

Just governance will also include strong quality assurance on its own processes. For example, lying, or any kind of dishonesty, by officials of governance against the interests of the people they are supposed to be serving will be a dismissal offence.

Regular audits will also be conducted on both the value-for-money to the governed of all projects of governance, and the honesty, objectivity, openness and transparency of all those in positions of any power. Any violation of ethical principles of public life, such as the Nolan Principles I discussed at [[6]], will also be treated as very serious.

How to pay for just governance

What an individual is expected to pay for just governance should be strictly in proportion to the benefit he or she gets from it. I see the benefits provided by just governance – for example, protection of property – as being in direct relation to the individual’s total wealth. Thus, periodic payments should be in proportion to the individual’s total wealth at the time.

There will be no taxes on incomes or on transactions. Nor will there be any kind of re-distributory or confiscatory taxation.

In the best of all worlds, just governance might be funded, in an area with a common currency, without any form of taxation resembling today’s. This could be done by allowing the currency to be inflated by a small percentage each month or year. About 1.5% a year (0.125% a month) was my back-of-an-envelope figure for what might be needed to support the core functions of just governance.

Subsidiary functions

Just governance will also need some extra minor functions, such as diplomacy with other just governances and, for a time, with legacy states. Another possible function would be some level of co-ordination of infrastructure development between neighbouring communities.

Comparison with today’s governments

In stark contrast to today’s governments, a just governance will have no political or religious agendas. It will not pick favourites to be treated better than they deserve, or scapegoats to be treated worse. And it will never intentionally impose costs on groups or individuals for anything that does not bring corresponding benefits to those same groups or individuals.

If an apparent problem surfaces, it will be evaluated objectively and honestly before any action is taken on it. The true version of the precautionary principle, “look before you leap,” will be restored. No precipitate action will be taken unless the claimed problem is shown to be, beyond reasonable doubt, real. No action will be taken that imposes costs on anyone who is not provably a part of the cause of a problem. And should a problem raised be found to have been based on false claims, just governance will take appropriate action against those that made, or aided or abetted, the false claims.

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