Doing something about climate change is essential. And as recent bills have shown, doing something about being self-sufficient in energy production is also essential. So who wouldn't love something that helps with both? The government's MPs, apparently. They seem to be distinctly against onshore wind turbines, a preference that also seems baked into the government's plans: A massive 64% of Conservative MPs think that most voters in their constituency would oppose wind turbines. But here's the thing. When YouGov asked the actual people, there was a very different picture: Over 70% of Conservative voters support wind farms in their local area. The overwhelming NIMBY attitude to wind turbines is a myth. Of course you can always find someone who will moan about having anything whatsoever built within a 10 mile radius of where they live. But they are in the minority on this one. From the stats, there's a vast gap between what Conservative MP think people want, and what t...

At the weekend I had the pleasure of appearing on literary agent Peter Cox's internet TV show Litopia Pop Up Submissions . In this, five brave souls provide a title, a blurb and the first 700 words of a book for comments from three industry experts and the extremely helpful online comments of viewers. This particular edition happened to have a focus on historical fiction, but I've done a few of these before and whatever the topic, one thing repeatedly comes across in that opening sample from the books - the author hasn't thought enough about how to engage their readers early on.  If you start a book with a set of facts (one example here was described as like reading a Wikipedia entry), you will rapidly lose your readers. Similarly, if the opening is totally introspective with nothing actually happening, an opening that is all tell and no show, it's hard for the reader to engage fully. The 'show don't tell' thing is a hoary old piece of writing advice - but t...

A fair number of people on Twitter have informed their followers that they have also set up on Mastodon just in case the world ends or some such. I don't doubt that Elon Musk could mess the whole thing up - but chances are things will stay fine in the Twitter world. Okay, I may lose my blue tick, which would be sad. I was told I ought to get one by an Olympic martial arts competitor, the way you do. We were at some sort of careers fair in Devizes (don't ask me why - I can't remember) and no one seemed to want to talk to either of us, so we chatted for a while and she was adamant that having a blue tick would make all the difference to my social media presence. But looking over the people I follow on Twitter, a mix do and don't have one and it's never made any difference to me - I certainly won't be paying getting on for £100 a year to keep it. That apart, the outrage seems to be because Twitter may allow various dubious characters  individuals back on. But for m...

I don't usually review two seasons of a TV show separately, but I'd like to follow up my review of the first series of The Capture , partly because the second series is better than the first (though like the first it had some credibility issues) and partly because the political context (as opposed to criminal law) brings into sharper focus the way this kind of information technology can be misused. As before, writer Ben Chanan proves good at giving us shocking scenes where deepfake videos and audio are used both to conceal what's really happening from security cameras and police radios and to replace broadcast video, totally twisting the content of a political interview. This seems to be intended to ruin rising political star Isaac Turner's career - though in reality things are far more complex. We get the same state actors - MI5, CIA and SO15 - as in the previous season, plus Truro Analytics (surely not a name that is supposed to bring Cambridge Analytica to mind?), a...