Dr Johnson famously said: “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford.”

Well, don’t tell Donald Trump for he seems to hate London, reserving especial contempt for its mayor, Sir Sadiq Khan.

On his recent golfing jolly to Scotland, the US President took time out to lay into ‘windmills’ – and into Mr Khan.

When a man is tired of hearing Trump blather on about everything, he is perhaps tired of life as it is presently being played out, for there is in Trump all that life can ill afford.

When a man is tired of Trump – well, you get the picture, one fuzzy with contempt and corruption (how else do you describe a sitting President using US taxpayer dollars to fund a five-day business trip to promote his own golf clubs?).

Those windmills tilted at by the orange Don Quixote are in fact wind turbines. Trump hates them in an unhinged manner, but then he does most things without calling on a hinge.

At one of his audiences with the press, Trump said wind turbines compared unfavourably to a small hole in the ground. He didn’t elaborate, but he was talking oil, and that ‘small hole’ would need to have a massive oil rig built on top.

To Trump the turbines spoil the view from his golf courses. I’d say Trump spoils the view of every horizon along which he shambles and halters, but there you go.

Anyway, isn’t there something beautiful about a line of wind turbines, touching the sky, and generating power only from what blows by.

Nigel Farage, that Trump Mini-Me, is turning Reform UK against all eco-energy, but then his party is said to be funded by big oil (small man, big oil; small man, big noise).

But let’s return to London. I love our capital city and earlier this year spent a great weekend there with our eldest son, as written up in a blog published on March 10.

There is so much to see and do in London; so much culture; and it is a fully multicultural city. All that culture, all those diverse people – that must be why Trump so often disparages London. The city is the opposite of his low-culture, fools-gold glistering world of tasteless glitz.

And while Trump’s behaviour is killing tourism to the US, London has just been named the world’s top destination for 2025 by Tripadvisor. Maybe he just can’t stomach that.

Why he hates Mr Khan isn’t clear, but it’s a long-time antipathy. No-one would be surprised if race came into it, and Trump last week called Mr Khan “a nasty person” who has “done a terrible job”. He previously called Mr Khan a “stone cold loser who should focus on crime in London”, proving once again that Trump insults are schoolboy slights spat from an old man’s mouth.

Nigel Farage is always talking down London by exaggerating crime in the capital. He does this by referring to his favoured statistical measure: the department of things he just made up or wildly exaggerated.

It’s an odd sort of patriot who so often talks down the country he is supposed to love. Wearing Union Jack socks is no defence either and probably should be recorded in the crime statistics Farage chooses to ignore.

In the far-right conspiracy world – also known, sadly, as ‘the world’ – just saying that London is ridden with crime is enough for that to be true. No dry statistical heckle will silence those who shout.

Sadiq Khan and his team conducted ‘social listening’ research after Trump’s verbal assault in Scotland. This concluded that 94 per cent of those commenting online posted from outside London: 94 per cent as opposed to 6 per cent of Londoners. Maybe it’s because I’m not a Londoner, as the old song almost has it.

Not sure what Dr Johnson would have made of all this. When a man is tired of social media he is probably just tired. I’ll plead guilty to that.

Johnson, by the way, was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, and later moved to London where he struggled to support himself through journalism. Well, echo me that one, if you replace Lichfield with Cheadle Hulme.

Despite his travails, he remains known today mostly for his Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755.

“The task took eight years, and Johnson employed six assistants, all of them working in his house off Fleet Street,” according to BBC History.

His quotation about London took less time and is surely remembered by more people. By literary law, those words are also dug up every time Dr Johnson is mentioned.

As for London today, here to close are wise words on Threads from a woman called Jenna Chowdhury. I know nothing about Jenna but like what she has to say:

“London thrives BECAUSE of its diversity, not despite it. It’s not perfect. Racism exists. Inequality is real. But Londoners show up —for protests, pride, for each other. We don’t just talk diversity — we fight for it! Next time someone says multiculturalism has failed tell them: It’s alive & thriving. It’s called London.”

There is a file I keep for blog ideas. At present it’s swollen like an appendix fit to burst, but mostly that’s down to Nigel Farage.

Many of the bits and pieces put into the ‘blog stuff’ folder are examples on social media of what seems to be growing agitation with the BBC for giving undue prominence to Reform UK. This has only grown after Farage was granted yet another audience with Laura Kuenssberg on her Sunday programme last weekend.

Let’s have an investigatory prod at that aching appendix to see what pops out.

Oh look, here is Farage fuming that anger in the UK is the worst it’s been for 60 years. Small boats are to blame – of course they are. Farage would be quieter than a Trappist monk in a library if he didn’t have disadvantaged migrants to complain about.

Every time he or anyone else jabs a mean finger at migrants, just remember that deeply disadvantaged people in small boats don’t cause all your problems. I’d worry more about the ones in big boats who hoard wealth to themselves and resent paying their fair share of taxes.

Migrants fleeing here on inflatable dinghies have surmounted problems a privileged moneyed man like Farage has never encountered – and anyway they constitute a tiny fraction of immigration to this country.

Sadly, Farage has been horribly efficient at tricking people into believing what he says. Just remember it’s always about the moan; just remember he’s a shoddy peddler of grievance politics.

After his Sunday outing, Farage was back on the BBC the following day with a televised press conference about crime, almost as if there was an election round the corner, which there isn’t. Britain faces societal collapse, he spouted. Not true, but Farage just tramples the truth to create the impression that this is so.

He’s like an arsonist who sets a blaze, runs around shouting that he warned everyone there would be an inflagration, then seeks praise for phoning the fire brigade.

Let’s take another tentative prod. What emerges this time is Caroline Lucas, the former Green MP, saying sensibly: “Farage should never be interviewed without being forced to answer for the failures of Brexit.”

Quite right – but good luck with that. No one ever asks him about Brexit on the BBC, preferring to let him spout off on his chosen topics.

As you will have noticed, much of Farage’s shtick is to suggest that we are not being told the truth about something, even after he’s just been presented with the evidence. Crime is rising dramatically, he says, only to grumble about the reliability of crime statistics if anyone points out this isn’t true.

Let’s prod another infected spot.

Ah, yes, here is Farage claiming on social media that Essex Police bussed counter-demonstrators to a far-right protest earlier this week outside a migrant hotel in Epping. The chief constable should resign Farage blabbered.

He showed footage of what had “happened”, only for Essex police to say he was “categorically wrong”. Some of the counter-demonstrators were instead “escorted by vehicle away from the area for their safety”.

What a typical Farage move – being inflammatory before the truth.

He later issued a sort of apology to Essex Live, containing this slippery line: “I was slightly out on accuracy, I apologise, but I think the gist of what I was saying was right.”

After that press conference, the right-wing papers were happy to be Farage’s echo chamber. “Police not ready for summer of unrest” wailed the Telegraph. The Mail went for a splash about asylum seekers “gambling away taxpayer cash”. They were, in fact, using some of their meagre allowance to gamble, and in a sense you can understand why, foolish hope perhaps being their last resort.

Here’s a confession: I gamble away a small portion of my pension on doing the lottery, but don’t tell the Daily Mail.

Oh well, right-wing papers do what right-wing papers do. I am more concerned about the BBC giving Farage endless free publicity without ever asking tough questions.

Another prod, yet more septic politics. This time on climate denial. Reform UK is reportedly funded in part by big oil, hence its hatred of anything to do with climate change. Deputy leader Richard Tice wrote an alarming, if absurd, threatening  letter to energy firms warning them against bidding to provide clean power provision as Reform would do away with all that.

Never mind that the clean energy industry has seen a growth of 10% and now supports nearly a million people in well-paid jobs in the UK, according to the CBI.

Almost there now, although this file sure is bursting. Another prod finds Farage moaning about the government’s plans to give 16-year-olds the vote, saying it’s an attempt to rig the system.

Ah, yes – 16-year-olds are too young to vote but it’s perfectly OK to have a 19-year-old Reform councillor as leader of Warwickshire County Council. A little hypocrisy goes a long way.

A final dip into the infected file brings up something heartening at last. On Threads you will find an excellent account called Reform Are Not Your Friends. This has endless examples of how you really don’t want to end up with a Reform government.

I rather liked this one…

Reform really need to do better with their attack bot accounts… 😬

😂 They’re almost always called “Derek”, “Brian” or “Graham”.

😂 They typically have 0-4 followers.

😂 They’ve never posted anything other than rant responses to us and others.

😂 They don’t respond to any facts.

If you’re on Threads, given them a follow.

And to conclude, if you want a climate denying, gun toting far-right grifter who uses politics to enrich himself – he has nine jobs now, apparently – who says he will his install multi-millionaire mates as Cabinet ministers, and is basically a Trump tribute act, go on and vote for Reform.

Just remember they’re not your friends.

Footnote: Sarah Pochin, the Reform MP for Runcorn, filmed herself for her YouTube channel saying that Greenway Road in her constituency was riddled with crime and social unrest because of illegal immigrants. BBC North West Tonight interviewed locals on the street who said that’s not true and it’s a lovely place to live.

Here are pieces of flotsam found in the stagnant pool of my mind.

You can’t move nowadays without tripping over two vowels yoked together in the name of progress. No prizes for guessing those letters.

Great things are being promised in the name of artificial intelligence (AI). Putting a search in Google brought up the following:

“Artificial intelligence refers to the ability of computer systems to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. According to a BBC article, these tasks include learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making…”

That was how artificial intelligence explained artificial intelligence to me – a sort of tech version of mansplaining. Tech-splaining, perhaps.

In a sense I don’t know enough to be writing this, but such a deficiency doesn’t bother others, including our government which is setting great store by AI. Something we don’t fully understand is going to perform miracles of efficiency, apparently.

Perhaps it will; perhaps it won’t.

I worry we are being oversold something that isn’t finished yet. And fret that many of those doing the selling are US tech bros, a cold clan who already seduced us with social media, upending the world and in the process hoarding all the available money; or much of it, at least.

Are we willing to trust them all over again – and what are they going to take as their reward this time?

My other doubts lie in the admittedly small matter of my first novel, which was among those appropriated by Meta without permission or reward. An investigation by The Atlantic magazine in March revealed that Meta “may have accessed millions of pirated books and research papers through LibGen – Library Genesis – to train its generative AI (Gen-AI) system, Llama,” according to the BBC.

I typed in my title, and there it was, nicked.

Our own government seems dangerously relaxed about American tech companies conducting a smash-and-grab raid on the creative vaults, all to train their AI systems.

The word processing system I type this on also interrupts me all the time, asking if I’d like help writing. No thanks – I know how to write, and even if I don’t, those are my mistakes to make, my own stumble towards something complete and human made.

Then again, on the BBC news just now was a breathless report about switching on the UK’s most powerful supercomputer. It’s called the Isambard-AI machine and apparently hails a new age of artificial intelligence. A surgeon interviewed praised the medical work of AI, adding that his job might not exist in the same way in the future.

Incidentally, I am rereading my three Rounder Brothers novels as I am trying to find a way to bring them back. They were written long enough ago for me to have half-forgotten the plot, as it were. Some parts seem good; others leave me wondering why did I write that? No artificial intelligence was used in writing those novels, just the rusty old-fashioned sort.

KEIR Starmer was foolish to suspend seven of his more left-wing MPs last year; and now he’s banished four more, again for ideological insubordination.

He’d do better to keep MPs who disagree with him onside; and to admit that perhaps sometimes they might have a point. But no, it’s the naughty step for them.

It’s one problem with what some describe as Labour’s ‘loveless majority’. Last year’s general election saw a whopping win for Labour, yet no-one much seems to like them. As it happens, I mostly think they’re doing an OK job compared to what went before.

But having so many MPs does allow Starmer to make an example of those who step out of line; a small majority would make such bullying behaviour unwise.

York Central MP Rachael Maskell is one of the recently expunged MPs; her ‘sin’ was to have led a rebellion against disability benefit cuts.

I don’t know Rachael, but she is my MP, and we have met on the doorstep. She seems to be serious-minded and not someone you would recklessly call light-hearted. Yet she is hard-working, principled, willing to stick to her beliefs, and a good local MP.

She knocked on our door while electioneering last year. She had time for a chat, was pleasant, listened, and spoke like a normal person, not a party robot.

Making this hardworking Labour MP sit as an independent seems shameful and a little stupid. If an election were called tomorrow, Rachael would probably keep her seat, and Labour would be down another one.

Here I am, cycling to the university for a game of squash (result foretold, as usual). On the iron girder bridge in Holgate, a woman whizzes past as I am about to signal right. Oh, she’s on one of those cheating electric bicycles, I think. But no – turns out she is using those cheating young legs, the ones that don’t get tired. I follow her for a while but soon she is a bobbing speck on the horizon, rushing to wherever it is that young women on bicycles go in such a hurry. There is a metaphor in here somewhere, one that I will leave unturned.

Even younger legs now in a small family story. That same morning the alarm went off at 6.20am at our daughter’s house. She asked her own daughter, heading for three, if she’d go to work for her instead. The little one got out of bed so that she could stand to her full height and deliver her indignant rely: “Just look at the size of my legs. They’re teeny.”

WHAT links Jeremy Corbyn and Elon Musk? Both have announced they are establishing a new political party, that’s what.

Musk, former Trump buddy and backer turned fury-spitting frenemy, is setting up the America Party to “give you back your freedom”.

Might that be freedom from the Trump autocracy – a rotten state Musk himself helped secure?

A madman’s vanity project to counter the other madman’s vanity project. It can only end well if one undermines the other, but Trump seems immune from harm or consequence, although death can’t be ruled out. That applies to us all, of course, but Trump stands haltingly near the front of the queue, bathed in cholesterol and sociopathic ill will.

In the thankfully calmer waters of British politics former Labour MP Zarah Sultana has said she is quitting to co-lead a new left-wing party with Jeremy Corbyn.

The man himself, seemingly not expecting her announcement quite yet, said “discussions are ongoing”. One of his allies told the FT that “Zarah has really overplayed her hand” by speaking too soon.

That’s the sort of squabble more commonly found in Reform UK when underlings cross Nigel Farage, although, to be fair, Corbyn is said to favour a collaborative party, and no-one could accuse Farage of running one of those.

Corbyn released a statement saying just what you’d expect, really.

“One year on from the election, this Labour Government has refused to deliver the change people expected and deserved. Poverty, inequality and war are not inevitable. Our country needs to change direction, now.”

Well, a year isn’t exactly long to achieve any of that, and ‘refuse’ is only one way to sum up Keir Starmer’s dull stubborn pragmatism, and former leaders have a weak hand when making demands.

Dissatisfied Labour supporters may well rally to that flag, especially those usual suspects who like Labour until they’re in power when they say, oh, this is the wrong sort of Labour.

Names for the new party are reported to include The Collective and Arise, neither of which seems likely to set hearts racing.

Still, Starmer created this problem thanks to his bad habit of suspending MPs who disagree with him. Sultana and six other MPs faced that fate last year after voting against the government. Corbyn too was suspended and now stands as in independent.

Better, surely, to contain and appease your internal critics rather than erecting a righteous platform for them to stand on.

One fear in all this is that Jeremy Corbyn, who has already lost two elections for Labour, could help them chuck another by diluting the vote and accidentally giving Farage a piggyback.

Still, Farage usually manages to trip himself up. I’m no political Nostradamus, but I’d wager he’ll end up doing the same again, never mind what the polls are saying now. Reform UK is a ragbag protest movement, not a party that deserves to be anywhere near government.

Front pages about the BBC and Glastonbury, as highlighted on Threads by Adam Bienkov

Zarah Sultana is among those who’ve been critical of Keir Starmer’s response to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as inflicted by Israeli troops. Isn’t it more a case that Starmer has simply gone with the misguided western consensus that supports and funds Israel, never mind what its government does?

It is no longer a stretch to suppose that history will eventually record what is happening as genocide. In that context, the row last weekend about an unknown band leading chants of ‘Death, Death to the IDF’ at Glastonbury seems wildly overblown, as these matters often are.

Sadly, our newspapers and broadcasters seem much more agitated about that chant than by the Israeli military killing innocent Palestinians in Gaza, including those reportedly hit by a 500lb bomb aimed at a Gaza café (The Guardian, July 2).

We seem intent on turning our eyes away from Gaza, much as we are similarly intent on ignoring the climate crisis, even as countries burn and floods in Texas sweep away nearly 50 people.

Incidentally, if you can hold your nerve, Gaza: Doctors Under Attack – the documentary dropped by the BBC and picked up by Channel 4 – is shocking beyond words but deserves to be watched.

With so much that is gloomy, here is a chuckle. Trashy Trump has released two colognes called, would you believe it, Fight Fight Fight. They embody “strength, power and victory”, apparently.

My juvenile side prefers Shite Shite Shite, but there you go.

Here is a splendid response on Threads from Sir Michael Take CBE, a satirical account that sometimes sounds all too real:

Jill has a bumper stock of cut price Donald Trump fragrances in the village shop. I bought a bottle yesterday. I immediately liked the subtle scent of sausage & chive. However later in the day I started talking gibberish, became incontinent & tried grabbing my wife Bunty’s crevice.