The causes of the Indian Mutiny of 1857 are many and varied — there’s a whole separate wiki article on it — but the one “everyone knows” is the cartridge to the Enfield rifle. The Enfield was a muzzle loader. The soldier had to tear the cartridge with his teeth in order to load it. The cartridges were greased with a mixture of cow fat and lard. That was the rumor, anyway, and since Indian soldiers (called “sepoys”) were primarily Hindu and Muslim, biting the cartridge would violate everyone’s ritual purity.
This is a near-perfect synecdoche for the Raj’s problems. British Army officers weren’t stupid — lots of them commented on the issue. But they were isolated. For one thing, lots of them weren’t regular army — they were attached to the East India Company army, a separate formation, and within the Company’s army were different formations with different service requirements. And the army — whichever army — was deeply isolated from the civilian administration. For one thing, India’s huge, and there were never more than about 200,000 British in the whole place. The army was mostly on the frontier; the Government hung around primarily in a few big cities: Bombay, Calcutta, the summer capital at Simla (way up in the Himalayas).
So stop me if this sounds familiar: The civilian administration didn’t really know anything about the group upon which their peace, their security, their very lives depended. Actively despised them, in fact — oh, those wogs and their silly customs. But also look at it from the bottom up: What could the civilian administration really have done, with the best will and deepest knowledge in the world? […]
What could the leadership really have done at that point? Send a select group of brahmins and imams to tour the grease factory? The rumor would be that the British set up a Potemkin factory just for them; the real factory was using cow and pig fat. Reissue the old rifle? Recall that they already changed their drill — a pretty big deal in any army; a huge deal in a mid-19th century one — and that just added to the paranoia. Anyone who has ever been on the Internet knows how these things work once they get started: Evidence of an evil conspiracy is evidence of an evil conspiracy, but no evidence of an evil conspiracy is even more evidence of an evil conspiracy!
The root cause of the Mutiny, in other words, wasn’t political or economic (despite what Karl Marx said). It wasn’t even “cultural” in a lot of senses, and you can tell by the actions of the mutineers — or, rather, the non-actions. They simply had no idea what to do. They had no leadership (though some of them tried to install one of the remaining Mughal rulers in Delhi as an expedient; there’s a great book about it). The “Mutiny” was really just generalized beefing and score-settling on a continent-wide scale. They all had grief with the British, of course, and that was a convenient rallying cry. Once the British were gone — and see above, there were never very many of them — the guys down south quickly realized they had nothing in common with the guys up north. Ditto the guys on the east coast, the west coast, the hill country, the jungles …
Again, stop me if this sounds familiar: Stuffing a bunch of alien groups together inside artificial boundaries under a capricious, purposefully out-of-touch “government” that obviously hates every single one of those alien groups more than each one of the groups hates all the others, is kind of a bad idea. With the exception, of course, of that capricious government’s goon squad, the one group they obviously favor because that group can be counted on to knock heads on all the other groups whenever the government lets them off the chain (I’m talking about the Sikhs, obviously).
It doesn’t matter, in other words, what the rifle cartridges were greased with, or if they were greased at all. In this historical timeline, the precipitating cause of the Sepoy Rebellion was “the Enfield Rifle”. In the next timeline over, it’s something else — something equally minor — but the rebellion still happens, at pretty much the same time and in pretty much the same way.
In other words: It’s not that the British were alien to their subjects. Most groups in most places have been ruled by aliens, and trust me, the brahmin caste is far, far more alien to the castes below it than the British were to all of them combined. Nor was it that the British were high-handed administrators, as incompetent as they were arrogant. They were actually pretty good administrators, all things considered — “government competence” is always one of life’s lower bars, but the Raj cleared it easily. The guys running the “princely states” that made up the majority of the “British” Raj were every bit as alien to “their” people as the British, and in general spectacularly incompetent too.
Severian, “The Ruling Caste”, Founding Questions, 2022-03-09.
October 1, 2025
QotD: The Indian Mutiny of 1857
September 29, 2025
Powderkeg Britain
The ever-expanding anti-immigration protests in Britain are an unmissable flashing red alert to the British government … which seems determined to ignore it and continue to plough ahead with their MOAR immigrants policies despite the anger of the public. Spaceman Spiff characterizes it as a revolt:
Multi-ethnic and multicultural societies do not function in the way homogenous nations do. People of radically different origins, culture and beliefs often trigger conflict as incompatible aptitudes, temperaments and worldviews operate within a shared territory.
Artificial situations like this do not naturally harmonize, despite the rhetoric. Instead, competition for resources emerges. Power sharing between rival groups is fantasy. Life is winner takes all.
This can be disconcerting as reality asserts itself and the cost of large-scale migration becomes obvious.
Some in Britain already understand the dangers we now face at home. Others are waking up and looking for answers as their world declines. They are the ones who will grasp at anything to reset society.
Racists and hatemongers
Critics of mass immigration in Britain are often branded as racists and hatemongers.
We see blanket condemnation from establishment figures for even mild observations about the effects of this deeply unpopular policy.
The noticers of reality are derided as far-right extremists even when they are evidently normal people exhausted with unwanted demographic change.
The approved media and political spokespersons insist those who make observations have become radicalized by extremist writers and thinkers. Little more needs to be added. The labels do much of the work; Nazi, fascist, racist.
It doesn’t matter that many who are critical of mass immigration are not extremists calling for violence. They are just normal people who notice what is happening.
One of the unfortunate things the noticers recognize is mixing distinct cultures inside a single geographical area might be dangerous. They sometimes read material based on government statistics that tells them mass immigration infers almost no benefits on the host nation while extracting potentially catastrophic costs.
To ordinary people that sounds like something worth discussing to determine if it is true.
Normal people are revolting
Western countries have endured unexpected demographic shifts in recent years.
The only acceptable view is this is always a net positive. We are told group differences do not exist except in the minds of racists. Foreigners are already very like us and any deviation from our norms are superficial or unworthy of comment.
It is therefore all the more shocking when this is proven wrong. From dress and manners to dietary habits, to the treatment of women and children, the world beyond our borders is quite alien when seen up close.
London’s vibrantly diverse bus riders
All this alienness was once elsewhere with oceans to protect us. Now it is here in our midst.
This is becoming obvious and is at odds with all we have been told. What we see does not match the harmonious melting pot we were sold.
Inevitably this encourages people to seek out information.
Bomber Command 1943 – Reap What You Sow – The Bomber War Episode 6.
HardThrasher
Published 26 Sep 2025Part 1 of a 2 Part Series covering Bomber Command in 1943 — this is the background and build up, the aircraft, the founding of pathfidner force and the mechanics behind the mass use of incendiaries
References from the video below
i Battle of the Beams, Tom Whipple, Penguin, 2003, p.209
ii The Battle of the Beams, Whipple, Penguin, 2003, p.213
iii The Bombing War, Overy, Penguin, 2012, p.345
iv The Pathfinders, Will Iredale, Penguin, 2021, p.116 and on
v The Bombing War, Overy, Penguin, 2012, p.238
vi See Caliban Rising’s excellent video on statistical deaths for Bomber Command
vii B12/36, The British Aircraft Specifications File, Meekcoms & Morgan, Air-Britain, 1994, p.228
viii The Bombing War, Overy, Penguin, 2012, p.290-91
ix The Pathfinders, Will Iredale, Penguin, 2021 p.74
x Proceedings of the Royal Air Force Historical Society, Issue No 6, Sept 1989, p.22
xi The Pathfinders, Iredale, Penguin, 2021, p.75
xii The Pathfinders, Iredale, Penguin, 2021, 2021 p.79
xiii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfrid… – yes, yes I know, a Wiki reference.
xiv Interview 1977 for the RAF Centre for Air Power Studies (CASPS) – • RAF CASPS Historic Interview | Group Capta…
xv Pathfinder, Goodall, 1988 pp. 102, 158, 205email – hardthrasher@gmail.com
Merch – https://hardthrasher-shop.fourthwall.com
Patreon – patreon.com/LordHardThrasher
September 28, 2025
North Africa Episode 1: Hitler’s Hand Forced
World War Two
Published 27 Sept 2025As Italy’s war effort collapses across Greece and North Africa, Hitler is forced to intervene. This episode explains why German troops are sent to Africa in early 1941 and sets the stage for Rommel’s arrival and the birth of the Desert War. The North African campaign begins not with a plan — but with a crisis.
(more…)
September 24, 2025
Zardoz: A Technocratic Parody
Feral Historian
Published 30 Jun 2023After another viewing, I now think of Zardoz as an unintentional parody of the technocratic mindset that was congealing in the 1970s. It’s a strange film, a sometimes tedious film, but it’s worth a look if only because there’s nothing else quite like Zardoz.
I keep saying “Immortals” when I mean “Eternals” and I had to recut this one a bit due to some semi-random copyright issues so I apologize for any perceptible jank.
The tip jar at Ko-Fi helps keep Feral Historians in the woods and off the streets.
🔹 Ko-Fi | ko-fi.com/feralhistorian
September 21, 2025
“What do you remember of the summer when the English awoke?”
In The Critic, David Shipley says that the rapid, visible rise in English nationalism is a new and positive thing in Britain:
“Union Jacks and crosses of St George” by Ben Sutherland is licensed under CC BY 2.0 
.
What do you remember of the summer when the English awoke? The summer of arguments over what “English” means, hotel protests, and of “flagging”. Overnight the England flag was everywhere. On lampposts, on bridges over motorways, and even painted on roundabouts, the St George’s cross appeared, as a challenge to the old regime, and a threat, or promise, of something new.
For this is new, make no mistake. In my lifetime, England’s flag has only been seen in force during football tournaments and at the rugby. Political figures of the left have seized upon this novelty as they have tried to resist the challenge. The Green Party leadership candidate Ellie Chowns insisted that “it’s traditionally not part of British culture to hang flags”, while Zack Polanski, the party’s new leader, said he wouldn’t fly the flag outside of football tournaments because “of what it represents to people who worry about that problematic history”, before going on to say he’s “worried that we’re importing fascism”. Meanwhile John McTernan, former advisor to Tony Blair insisted that flag flying isn’t an expression of “national pride”, but rather “being used to other people” (my italics).
Notionally sensible centrists, The News Agents suggested that the flag should be redefined as representing “tolerance, liberalism, democracy and Shakespeare” and that would deter “right-wing thugs” from using it. The propagandists of the regime recognise that it is in danger, and seem to believe that “British Values” are enough to hold back the tide.
York Council went ever further, saying that flagging has “coincided with a rise in racist incidents” and have decided to remove hundreds of England and Union flags, to which York’s “Flag Force” responded by announcing they would promptly replace every flag which was removed.
England’s flag was everywhere at the hotel protests too — standing for resistance against a Westminster regime that continues to force migrants upon communities which do not want them.
At the end of the summer, as the Last Night of the Proms coincided with the “Unite the Kingdom” march, the flag divide could not have been wider. On the streets of London that Saturday a sea of Union and St George flags, while at the Albert Hall it seemed one could wave any nation’s flag but England’s.
A Times cartoon from July caught the year’s mood. It depicted a group of unthreatening families protesting, holding signs saying We’re not far right – we’re worried about our kids and Deport Foreign Criminals. Beneath them, buried in the earth lurks a bald, beefy man with H A T E tattooed on his knuckles, and Made in England alongside the red cross of St George tattooed on his shoulder. Here, in the favoured paper of the British establishment, we see their fear that a deeper, more dangerous Englishness threatens to rise up, and threaten, or even destroy their order.
Chatham Dockyard – Half a millennium of supporting the Royal Navy
Drachinifel
Published 16 Feb 2022Today we take an overview look at the history of Chatham Royal Dockyard and some of what you can find today at in its preserved premises!
Visit the dockyard – https://thedockyard.co.uk/
(more…)
September 19, 2025
Edmund Burke, lawfare, and the East India Company
In The Coolidge Review, Amity Shlaes discusses “the most outrageous campaign of lawfare in the history of the Anglosphere”, as Edmund Burke assailed Warren Hastings, the first governor general of India:
Why do even principled statesmen — and there are some in this administration, too — not dig in their heels and try to arrest the chain of revenge? Why do even cautious, logical men and women succumb to the passion of lawfare?
The most outrageous campaign of lawfare in the history of the Anglosphere, the impeachment and trial of the first governor general of India, Warren Hastings, was mounted by Mr. Incrementalism himself, Edmund Burke. The father of modern conservatism spent nearly a decade of his time in Parliament—from 1787 to 1795—crusading against Hastings, antagonizing allies all around.
Impeaching the “Wicked Wretch”
There were reasons to investigate what was going on in India: Hastings exploited the fact that the East India Company was, at that time, an adjunct of the Crown. That connection between a powerful company and a government — a far more powerful company than, say, Intel — was the trouble, for as Burke would put it, it created “a state in disguise of a merchant“.
Burke chose to prosecute Hastings — and failed. The “wicked wretch”, one of Burke’s slime phrases for Hastings, emerged from the ordeal with a pension, not a conviction. Burke biographer Russell Kirk has argued that the public flaying of Hastings served posterity — in England at least. After Burke’s death, at “every grammar and public school”, the story of Burke and Hastings “impressed upon the boys who would become colonial officers or members of Parliament some part of Burke’s sense of duty and consecration in the civil social order”. That slowed another chain, the chain of abuse by Britons of Indians. After Burke, England recognized that, as Kirk puts it, she had a “duty to her subject peoples in the East”.
Still, even Kirk’s excellent biography leaves readers wondering: Was Hastings truly the archest of the arch villains, as Burke maintained? And is this the right way to go about it all? A book that Burke penned in the same years that he waged his Hastings war, Reflections on the Revolution in France, influenced a far greater number, and in a greater number of lands, than the Hastings story. Burke might have had the same reach with a Reflections on the Abuses of the East India Company.
All the more welcome then is James Grant’s Friends Until the End, which gives the best-yet account of the chain reaction in Burke’s soul that drove him to weaponize government, what his crusade cost him, and what such crusades may cost all of us.
[…]
Next, however, came a challenge that deeply frustrated Burke. Scanning the empire’s horizon for a place to commence a model reform, Fox and Burke settled on the East India Company, which abused the some thirty million Indians it oversaw with the same admixture of plunder, condescension, and cruelty familiar to Catholics of Ireland. The pair put their hearts into the Indian reform: Fox promised a “great and glorious” reform to save “many, many millions of souls”. They also put their minds into the project. To track the East India Company, Burke personally purchased sufficient shares to win him rights to attend and vote at quarterly meetings. He steeped himself in knowledge of a land he’d never seen, learning names of “numerous Indian nawabs, rajas, nizams, subahs, sultans, viziers, and begums“.
Such prep work, as Grant points out, enabled the Whigs to identify the correct solution: de-mercantilization. “Separate the company’s two incompatible missions: sovereign rule and moneymaking”, Grant writes. The compromised statute that emerged from the House of Commons was not as neat: A seven-man commission would rule India, while a board would govern East India’s commercial operations. But the commercial board would be a subsidiary to the commission. And in marshaling their votes for the measure, the pair still confronted the formidable obstacle of East India shareholders in Britain, furious at the threat to their fortunes that such reform represented. Fox might emancipate Hindus, their opponent William Pitt warned, but he must also “take care that he did not destroy the liberties of Englishmen”.
The king and his allies in any case defeated Fox’s India Bill, as it was known, in the House of Lords. The king, who had that prerogative, booted Fox and Burke from paid posts. In the 1784 general election, Burke held on to his seat in Parliament, as did Fox (by a hair), but so many Whigs, now labeled “Fox’s martyrs”, were ousted by voters from Parliament that the Whigs’ opponent, Pitt, became prime minister. Burke’s disillusionment ran deep: “I consider the House of Commons as something worse than extinguishd”, he wrote.
It was thus, at the age of fifty-nine and merely an opposition parliamentarian, that Burke risked his high-stakes lawfare. He commenced impeachment proceedings with a four-day anti-Hastings polemic. Of course, Burke universalized his point: The Hastings trial was “not solely whether the prisoner at the bar be found innocent or guilty, but whether millions of mankind shall be made miserable or happy”. And of course he raised the stakes for fellow lawmakers by appealing to their honor: “Faults this nation may have; but God forbid we should pass judgment upon people who framed their laws and institutions prior to our insect origin of yesterday!” The House must join him in impeachment, the Lords convict Hastings.
The House did join him, handing to the Lords charges that Hastings had “desolated the most flourishing provinces”, “pressed, ruined, and destroyed the natives of those provinces”, and violated “the most solemn treaties”. In thousands of hours of speeches before a jury from the House of Lords, the eager prosecutor, Burke, dwelt on Hastings’s cruelty to the Rohillas, an Afghan tribe from land bordering Nepal. He also charged that Hastings had taken revenge on a crooked tax collector, Nandakumar, for alleging that he — Hastings — had taken a bribe, seeing to it that Nandakumar was convicted and hanged for forgery. Not all of this was proven. And, as the jury of Lords slowly considered the charges, as the months and years passed, Burke found himself more and more isolated. Fox, Burke’s initial ally in the undertaking, faded. By the time the Lords’ jury voted not to convict, eight years on, a full third of their original number had already passed away.
What Medieval Fast Food Restaurants Were Like
Tasting History with Max Miller
Published 15 Apr 2025Golden brown fried pastries filled with a fruit and spice paste
City/Region: Paris
Time Period: c. 1393Fast food has been around since the Middle Ages, and while a lot has changed in food production and cooking in the last six hundred years or so, then, as now, you could get a fried apple pie.
Rissoles were fried filled pastries (modern versions are usually some kind of filling rolled in breadcrumbs and fried), and they could be made savory or sweet. These ones are made with roasted apples, raisins, figs, and sweet spices. I chose cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg, but you can choose whatever spices you like.
It is common that rissoles are made of figs, raisins, roast apples, and nuts peeled to imitate pine nuts, and powder of spices [and a little fine salt]; and let the paste be well saffroned and then let them be fried in oil [and sugar them].
— Le Ménagier de Paris, c. 1393
September 18, 2025
Broken feedback paths lead to broken organizations … like government
Lorenzo Warby on the ever-increasing dysfunction of most western governments due to the deliberate sabotage of what used to be functional feedback paths:
That institutions within Western democracies have deteriorated in recent decades is clear. That the march of progressivism through the institutions is at the heart of this deterioration is also clear.1
This has been progressives acting like progressives, with all the perverse relationship with information that is at the heart of progressivism. A perverse relationship that leads directly to their degradation of institutions.
Progressives use the imagined future as their benchmark of judgement, but there is no information from the future, so there is no reality-test in their benchmark of judgement. The imagined future can, however, be as glorious as one likes.
Conversely, anything actually created by humans will have downsides and even sins attached. This gives progressives a great rhetorical advantage over anyone who attempts to defend anything humans have actually built. All of the painful history of human achievement is rendered as naught, as mute, in the face of the splendours in their head.
Arnold Kling’s Three Languages of Politics model.
If a group is disproportionately successful, that is not an example to emulate but a sign of their oppressor status. If they are comparatively unsuccessful, that is not a warning about what to avoid, but a sign of their oppressed status. This is an outlook deeply hostile to learning from what does, and does not, work.
For using the glorious imagined future as the benchmark of judgement creates the basis for denigrating anything that comes from the past: which is all the information we have about what works and does not. This includes denigrating the embedded learning in institutions. Even fundamental questions about what is required to sustain a social order get written out of acceptable discourse as not fitting with their imagined-future benchmark of judgement, with the splendours in their heads.
Using the imagined future as one’s benchmark of judgement also naturally leads to concluding that one owns morality, as any opposition to the glorious imagined future is clearly immoral. This leads to, at best, comprehensive disengagement with, and at worse, systematic denigration and delegitimisation of, those who disagree. A systematic denigration and delegitimisation that often involves systematic misrepresentation of those who disagree. The consequence of all this is to block feedback about one’s political projects.
The most extreme instance of this has been the UK, where the Blair–Brown Governments of 1997-2010 took power away from elected officials (apart from the PM) and handed it to “experts” in quangoes, to judges via human rights legislation and to the EU. Those with the “correct” understandings could do their thing, insulated from voters. This made the UK a state, a polity, with broken feedbacks.
Modern Western civilisation is a civilisation with broken feedbacks — as I discuss here, here, here, here and here — but the Blair-Brown constitutional vandalism extended that pattern of broken feedbacks systematically to the British state. The consequences have become grimly obvious. Massive waves of unwanted migrants as part of a massively dysfunctional British state.
If you systematically kill feedbacks from voters, you systematically kill accountability. Of course dysfunction will spread across the organs of the state, as it has. (See here for a discussion of aspects of that horrifying dysfunction.)
- Feminisation of institutions has also been a corrosive factor, but that is deeply intertwined with the march of progressivism through the institutions.
Update, 19 September: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please do have a look around at some of my other posts you may find of interest. I send out a daily summary of posts here through my Substack – https://substack.com/@nicholasrusson that you can subscribe to if you’d like to be informed of new posts in the future.
“The British fleet is strong and at the ready” (1939)
British Pathé
Published 12 Nov 2020GAUMONT BRITISH NEWSREEL (REUTERS)
Comprehensive documentary of the Royal Navy in the lead up to war
Full Description:
SLATE INFORMATION: Britain’s Navy Ready for Any Challenge, The Combined Fleets Filmed by Gaumont-British News
Comprehensive documentary of the British fleet and their preparedness for action including shots of numerous ships at sea and at anchor, sailors on deck, aircraft on deck, ship’s guns, officers in quarters, destroyers, aircraft flying off deck and landing on water
Archive: Reuters
Archive managed by: British Pathé
September 16, 2025
Fenian Needham Conversion: Just the Thing for Invading Canada
Forgotten Weapons
Published 10 May 2025The Fenian Brotherhood was formed in the US in 1858, a partner organization to the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The groups were militant organizations looking to procure Irish independence from the British, and they found significant support among the Irish-American immigrant community. In November 1865 they purchased some 7500 1861- and 1863-pattern muskets left over from Civil War production, and used them to invade Canada in April 1866. The idea was to capture the country and then trade it to the British in exchange for Irish independence … but the invasion went quite badly. The Fenians briefly held Fort Erie, but were pushed out after a few hours and largely arrested by American forces.
The Fenians’ muskets were confiscated, but all returned by the end of 1866 in exchange for promised Irish-American support of embattled President Johnson. By 1868, the group was making plans for another attempt at conquering Canada. This time they would have better arms — they obtained a disused locomotive factory in Trenton NJ and set up the Pioneer Arms Works to convert 5,020 muskets into centerfire Needham Conversion breechloaders. These were given chambers that could fire standard .58 centerfire ammunition, or the .577 Snider ammunition that the Fenians expected to be able to procure once in Canada. Most of the guns also had their stocks cut, to allow them to be packed in shorter crates for transit. These usually have a distinctive “V” cut in the stock, which was spliced back together before use.
When the second invasion came in April 1870, it was again a failure. Only 800-1000 men turned out of the 5,000+ expected. They were scattered among several different muster points on the border, and the Canadians were once again aware of their plans. The most substantial fight was at a place called Eccles Hill, where the Missisiquoi Home Guard was ready and waiting for them with good Ballard rifles. Upon crossing the border, the Fenians were soundly defeated.
This second time, the guns were confiscated and not returned. Instead, the Watervliet Arsenal sold them as surplus in 1871. They were purchased by Schuyler, Hartley & Graham for commercial resale, and thanks to that several hundred remain in collector hands today.
(more…)
September 15, 2025
A few thousand deplorable “gammons” disrupt the peace in London
At least, the headline is how I assume most establishment types in Britain would try to describe the Unite the Kingdom march in London over the weekend (all photos by Esmeralda Weatherwax of the New English Review):
As I said earlier I have never seen a crowd like it – the police were overwhelmed with the numbers and I think even the organisers were pleasantly surprised at the turnout.
I gave up all hope early on of getting near enough to a screen to see or hear the speakers. But you can catch them up on line. I’m sure there are already links to Katie Hopkins, Laurence Fox, Tommy himself, Elon Musk by video link and the others.
I decided I was of most use photographing the numbers and variety, talking to people and following events away from the stage.
The march was scheduled to muster at Waterloo on the south bank. Knowing the turn out would be good attendees were advised to leave at Blackfriars Station and cross Blackfriars Bridge to join the march in Stamford Street east of Waterloo Station. The route was to be along the South Bank, over Westminster Bridge and into Whitehall at the south end. Antifa and Stand up to Racism were expected to march from Russell Square and would be rallying in the north end of Whitehall by Trafalgar Square with a long corden sanitaire between. Well that worked well last time.
I went straight to Whitehall and went to greet friends who were involved as marshals. Already the area was filling up fast and there were queues for the portaloos. They had to be provided as Westminster Council had shut and locked the public ones outside Westminster Station and on Westminster Pier. I don’t know why they do this. There will be mess afterwards.
September 14, 2025
History of Britain VIII: Welsh, Picts, and Irish in the Early Middle Ages
Thersites the Historian
Published 7 Mar 2025In this video, we look at the other major ethnic groups in the British Isles and trace their development, insofar as our limited sources allow.
September 12, 2025
Britain’s network of weather stations is becoming less and less reliable
Well-sited weather stations can provide useful raw data on temperature ranges, wind speed, precipitation, and other measurables, but that “well-sited” makes a huge difference. Older weather stations situated in areas of rapid urban expansion will often be less reliable as they become part of the urban heat island and report higher temperatures due to locally generated heat sources rather than the ambient temperature they were able to record before. This is what has apparently happened to far too many of the UK’s temperature measuring sites, according to Chris Morrison in The Daily Sceptic:
The latest WMO Class figures at the Met Office shown in block graph form. The higher the class number, the less reliable the station reports become.
Image from The Daily Sceptic
In March 2024 the Daily Sceptic shocked the science and political world by disclosing that nearly 80% of the UK Met Office’s temperature measuring sites were so poorly located that potential “uncertainties” could corrupt the readings by a numbers of degrees of centigrade. World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) Classes 4 and 5 in its CIMO scale come with “uncertainties” up to 2°C and 5°C respectively, and a Freedom of Information (FOI) request found that 77.9% of its sites were in these two “junk” categories. It should have been a wake-up call demanding immediate improvement of the nationwide network, not least because the Met Office frequently catastrophises its temperature figures in the interest of promoting the Net Zero fantasy. Alas, no. A new FOI has found that the Classes 4 and 5 junk sites have increased significantly over the last 18 months and now total an appalling 80.6% of the entire network. Pristine Class 1 sites – which measure a credible ambient air temperature with little chance of unnatural heat corruption – are just 4.9% of the total, having fallen in number in this short period from 24 to 19.
Hundreds of millions of pounds have flowed through this Government department over the last 18 months but little effort seems to have been made to improve its basic and important meteorological measuring function. What is worse is that the Met Office doesn’t seem to understand the scale of the problem. Over the 18 months, it appears that 20 new sites have been opened in its now 387-strong network. Seventeen of these have been given WMO classifications, of which a frankly ludicrous 64.7% are starting life in the Class 4/5 junk lane.
The WMO rates weather stations by the degree of possible temperature corruption caused by nearby unnatural or natural influences. Classes 1 and 2 are considered what we might call pristine, with no significant errors arising from artificial influences. The latest figures show that the Met Office has just 12.1% of its sites in these two unadulterated categories. Class 3 comes with an uncertainty of up to 1°C and accounts for 7.23% of the total. The real shocker is Class 4 where the percentage of the total has risen from 48.7% to over half at 50.1%. Class 5 has no defining conditions and could be located next to a blast furnace door. It has risen over the last 18 months from 29.2% to 30.5%. The WMO states that a Class 1 location can be considered a “reference site”. A Class 5 site is said to be a location “where nearby obstacles create an inappropriate environment for a meteorological measurement that is intended to be representative of a wide area”.
Despite this, Class 5 “extremes”, often caused by temporary but obvious heat spikes, litter the Met Office databases and record books. Of course such Class 5 data, unsuitable for providing an accurate temperature for a “wide area”, are loaded into databases producing “hottest evah” days, months, seasons and years. Their final destinations are the global datasets that exaggerate recent warming, again to promote Net Zero. Sprinkling the Class 4 and 5 fairy dust over the figures adds a bit more of the urgency required for elite political purposes.
