Letter XXI: The Quiet Transfer of Authority

Laptop screen stamped “Consent Assumed” symbolising administrative control replacing individual autonomy

How Power Learned to Hide in Plain Sight

By Martyn Walker
Published in Letters from a Nation in Decline

Nations do not collapse in spectacles of ruin. They decline administratively. The erosion of liberty rarely arrives with banners or barricades. It appears instead as guidance, optimisation, and protection, introduced through processes so mundane that resistance feels faintly unreasonable. The modern citizen is not ordered to surrender autonomy. He is persuaded to misplace it.

The evidence is seldom dramatic. It begins in trivial irritations: a device, purchased outright, quietly reconfigured by its manufacturer in the name of preservation. A setting deliberately chosen by the owner reappears in its default state following an update issued without consultation. The justification is rational, even defensible. The owner, it is implied, cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of his own property. The device must be protected from the individual who paid for it.

Such incidents would once have been regarded as impertinent. Today they are routine. Ownership has been replaced by conditional authorship. The citizen is permitted to configure his environment, provided he accepts that it will be periodically corrected by those who know better.

This transformation was not unforeseen. Early scholars of digital governance warned that authority would migrate most effectively when it ceased to rely upon legislation and embedded itself instead within technical architecture. Laws could be challenged, debated, and repealed. Systems, once operational, simply persisted. These thinkers argued that code would not merely enforce regulation but would become regulation — invisible, automatic, and resistant to democratic revision. They were regarded as imaginative theorists. Experience has quietly promoted their warnings into operational reality.

The same migration of authority is visible across British institutional life. The Post Office Horizon scandal demonstrated with exceptional clarity how technological infallibility, once declared, can displace both justice and reason. Hundreds of sub-postmasters were prosecuted, bankrupted, and socially destroyed because an institution found it easier to criminalise human testimony than to question the reliability of its own system. The tragedy was not simply technological failure. It was administrative certainty. The machine could not be wrong because the institution could not afford for it to be wrong. Authority defended software and prosecuted citizens.

The lesson was received with remarkable efficiency, though not in the manner one might have hoped. Banking, once an archetype of reciprocal commercial trust, has undergone a similar evolution. Open banking and strong customer authentication were introduced under the language of empowerment and security. In practice, they have entrenched a regime in which access to one’s own finances requires continuous verification, behavioural monitoring, and tolerance of persistent inconvenience. Banks contact customers urgently when information is required, typically through messages that cannot be answered. When customers require assistance, they encounter automated barriers, rationed human contact, and communication channels designed less for dialogue than for containment.

The commercial asymmetry would be remarkable if it were not now so familiar. Customers deposit capital, entrust personal data, and assume institutional risk, yet must compete for access to services they themselves finance. Increasing numbers have responded with understated pragmatism by withdrawing funds and transferring them to organisations still willing to communicate through email, telephone, or direct messaging. Traditional banks appear increasingly content to retreat from service provision and reconstitute themselves as regulated custodians of trust, extracting revenue from payment infrastructure while ceding innovation to more agile intermediaries.

Energy policy provides an equally instructive example. The smart meter rollout was presented as an instrument of transparency, enabling consumers to monitor consumption and reduce costs. In reality, it created a technological platform capable not merely of measurement but of behavioural enforcement. Pricing, usage, and consumption patterns increasingly fall within the administrative discretion of infrastructure operators rather than household decision-makers. The consumer is encouraged to regard this transfer of authority as environmental virtue. Choice remains available, but only within parameters determined by those insulated from the consequences of their decisions.

Speech, once regarded as the cornerstone of democratic legitimacy, has been subjected to similar administrative refinement. The Online Safety Act establishes a regulatory framework in which lawful expression may nonetheless be suppressed through platform enforcement incentives. Companies are encouraged to remove content pre-emptively, not because the law demands such caution explicitly, but because regulatory penalties reward over-compliance and punish hesitation. Authority is exercised indirectly, through incentive structures that render dissent economically hazardous rather than legally prohibited.

What unites these developments is not ideology but method. Authority has ceased to argue and begun to embed. Political choices are recast as technical necessities. Opposition is reframed as misunderstanding. Compliance becomes the default condition of participation in modern society.

British legal tradition once contained formidable defences against such encroachments. The common law principle that a man’s home is his castle expressed more than property rights; it embodied a presumption of personal sovereignty. The doctrine of administrative reasonableness required state decisions to withstand rational scrutiny. These traditions assumed that authority required justification and that power, to remain legitimate, must remain visible. Contemporary governance increasingly operates through mechanisms that evade these safeguards by translating decisions into technical processes and automated compliance frameworks. Authority is no longer asserted. It is compiled.

The genius of this transformation lies in its civility. No one is dragged from his home for criticising a regulatory regime. Instead, his account is restricted. His transactions are delayed. His content is deprioritised. His choices narrow quietly until dissent becomes administratively exhausting. Coercion is replaced by friction. Consent is replaced by fatigue.

The modern bank exemplifies this evolution. Once sustained by personal relationships and local accountability, it now survives primarily as a certified intermediary between the citizen and financial infrastructure. Trust, formerly cultivated through accessibility and service, is increasingly reduced to regulatory compliance and institutional branding. Payments, lending, and savings services are steadily migrating to technologically agile platforms. The bank’s remaining utility lies in its authority to validate identity and satisfy regulatory expectation. It becomes less a merchant and more a notary.

The small acts of resistance that persist — closing accounts, disabling unwanted functions, declining digital credentials — acquire symbolic significance precisely because their practical impact is limited. They represent attempts to preserve authorship within systems designed to reduce the citizen to a user. They recall an older constitutional settlement in which instructions, once given, remained in force until deliberately changed.

But symbolism cannot substitute for structure. A society that relies upon individual vigilance to preserve autonomy has already conceded the principle of autonomy. Freedom that survives only through constant technical alertness is freedom in retreat.

The transformation of authority into architecture carries one further and rarely acknowledged consequence. When power embeds itself within systems, it becomes insulated not only from public debate but from moral responsibility. Decisions appear as outcomes rather than choices. Accountability dissolves into process. The citizen is left negotiating with interfaces rather than institutions.

It may yet be that none of this is malicious. Indeed, it is far more unsettling if it is not. A society that relinquishes autonomy not through oppression but through administrative convenience demonstrates a subtler and more permanent form of decline. When citizens grow accustomed to being managed rather than represented, corrected rather than persuaded, and optimised rather than trusted, they cease to notice the distinction between governance and supervision. By the time they do, if they do, they will discover that the mechanisms designed to protect them from inconvenience have succeeded only in protecting power from accountability. Nations rarely lose their freedoms in a moment of catastrophe. They misplace them gradually, misfiled among compliance procedures, customer journeys, and software updates that nobody remembers requesting.

Afterword

By Laurence J. Peter (Posthumously, and With Considerable Relief That He Cannot Be Blamed for Any of This)

The study of bureaucratic expansion demonstrates that institutions rise to meet the limits of their competence and then continue rising with admirable indifference to gravity. In previous centuries, this phenomenon expressed itself through memoranda, filing cabinets, and committees convened to explain why earlier committees had failed to produce sufficient memoranda. Modern technology has improved the efficiency of this process while preserving its essential spirit.

One should never underestimate the capacity of a system to protect itself from the inconvenience of the public. The moment a service becomes essential, its providers begin the delicate transition from assistance to administration. This transformation is achieved not through declaration but through refinement. Procedures multiply. Access narrows. Compliance acquires moral overtones.

Several governing principles may be observed. Institutions invariably mistake longevity for legitimacy. Any organisation that describes itself as customer-focused has already redirected its focus elsewhere. The more a system promises frictionless interaction, the more elaborate its hidden mechanisms of friction become. Technology does not eliminate bureaucracy; it digitises it, accelerates it, and renders it permanently accessible.

When an institution assures the public that it acts for their safety, the prudent observer determines whose safety is under discussion. Access that can be granted can be withdrawn with admirable administrative efficiency. Trust transferred from personal relationship to institutional certification becomes indistinguishable from compliance. Citizens repeatedly required to confirm their identity eventually begin to doubt its permanence.

Processes described as streamlined have typically removed the element that permitted dissent. Efficiency, pursued as a moral objective rather than a practical one, produces systems that function flawlessly for everyone except their users. Incompetence rarely destroys institutions. It reorganises them. Failure, sufficiently systematised, becomes policy. Policy, sufficiently complex, becomes immune to reform. Reform, sufficiently delayed, becomes heritage.

The citizen confronting this landscape is advised to cultivate a modest but persistent scepticism toward any authority that offers convenience in exchange for discretion. He should distrust the large promises, read the small print, and retain, wherever possible, the habit of asking why. This will not prevent decline, but it may delay its paperwork.

References

• Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry, Final and Interim Reports, UK Statutory Public Inquiry chaired by Sir Wyn Williams, 2020–present

• House of Commons Business and Trade Committee, Post Office and Horizon IT Inquiry Evidence Sessions and Reports, 2022–2024

• European Union Revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2), Directive (EU) 2015/2366 on payment services in the internal market

• UK Open Banking Implementation Entity, Open Banking Standards and Framework Documentation, mandated by the Competition and Markets Authority following the Retail Banking Market Investigation Order 2017

• Competition and Markets Authority, Retail Banking Market Investigation Final Report, 2016

• Financial Conduct Authority, Strong Customer Authentication and Secure Communication under PSD2, Regulatory Technical Standards and FCA Guidance, 2019 onwards

• National Audit Office, Rolling Out Smart Meters, HC 12 Session 2018–2019

• Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Smart Meter Implementation Programme Annual Reports, various years

• UK Parliament, Online Safety Act 2023, c. 50

• Ofcom, Online Safety Regulation Framework and Risk Assessment Guidance, 2023–2025

• Associated Provincial Picture Houses Ltd v Wednesbury Corporation [1948] 1 KB 223, establishing the Wednesbury principle of administrative reasonableness

• Semayne’s Case (1604) 5 Co Rep 91a, foundational common law authority for the doctrine that a person’s home is their castle

• Dicey, A. V., Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution, first published 1885, for classical articulation of rule of law and limits on administrative authority

• House of Lords Constitution Committee, The Legislative Process: The Delegation of Powers, HL Paper 225, 2017–2018

• National Cyber Security Centre, Guidance on Secure Customer Authentication and Fraud Prevention, supporting regulatory approaches to digital identity and verification

• UK Government, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, UK Digital Identity and Attributes Trust Framework, updated editions 2022–2024

• House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, Smart Meter Rollout Progress Reports, various sessions 2018–2024

• Bank of England and HM Treasury, The Digital Pound Consultation Paper, 2023, discussing centralisation of payment infrastructures and identity verification implications

• Zuboff, Shoshana, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 2019, widely cited academic work on behavioural data control and digital governance trends

• Lessig, Lawrence, Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, 1999 (and Version 2.0, 2006), foundational theory on technological architecture as regulatory authority

May 25, 2025May 25, 2025

Letter XVI: The Development Deception

Stylised tree with yellow and green leaves on an African tricolour background of red, yellow, and green, symbolising independent growth and harmony.

On the UN’s SDGs, Western Paternalism, and the Commodification of Virtue

By Martyn Walker
Published in Letters from a Nation in Decline

Dear Reader,

There was a time when the phrase international development conjured images of progress: clean water flowing from a new pump, a smiling child with a textbook, solar panels glinting on a school roof. Today, it increasingly conjures something else: a Western official in a tailored linen suit, lecturing villagers about climate obligations while their nation’s lithium is quietly sold to Tesla and their diesel generators are shut off.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals—17 of them, each with bullet points and colourful infographics—were meant to herald a new global era. Eradicating poverty. Ending hunger. Empowering women. Who could object?

But slogans are easy. It is the method of implementation, and the selective blindness, that reveal the deeper truth.

The Good

Let us not be unfair. In isolation, many SDG-aligned initiatives have brought tangible benefits. Literacy has risen. Infant mortality has dropped. Boreholes and mobile money have transformed some communities. Life expectancy in many African nations has improved dramatically since the 1990s. We’ve seen school feeding programmes that allowed girls to attend school for the first time. We’ve seen solar panels providing basic electricity where the grid never reached.

But we cannot mistake these successes—often born of local grit and ingenuity—for the triumph of global strategy. The SDGs were not the cause of progress. They became its branding.

The Bad

A closer look reveals a dismal pattern: Western governments, corporations, and NGOs deploy the SDGs not as a framework for empowerment but as an operating licence—a pretext for influence and control.

African nations are told they cannot use their own fossil fuel reserves, lest they “violate SDG 13,” while Europe quietly returns to coal.
Development banks, citing SDG “clean energy targets,” refuse to fund gas power plants in Nigeria or Mozambique—countries rich in natural gas and desperate for reliable electricity.
In the name of SDG 12 (responsible consumption), African textile industries are wiped out by bales of cast-off clothes from Britain, Germany, and the US.
SDG 5 (gender equality) becomes an excuse to impose Western cultural standards with zero regard for local context, alienating both men and women.

Even the roads, ports, and railways built under SDG 9 are often financed by foreign loans, constructed by foreign firms, and designed to facilitate resource extraction, not local resilience.

The Ugly

Worse still is the moral posturing. The SDGs have become an ethical fig leaf for what is, at heart, a continuation of imperial economics by other means. The tools have changed—no more Maxim guns and map lines—but the outcomes are familiar:

Raw materials flow out.
Debt, directives, and donor strings flow in.
Lectures are delivered about “transparency” by those who launder African wealth into London property.

A friend in Kenya recently sent me a photograph—a cardboard sign arguing that fossil fuels are essential to achieving the SDGs, not an obstacle. He is not alone. In Ghana, Senegal, Uganda, there is growing anger that while Western nations enriched themselves through coal, oil, and gas, Africans are now told to leapfrog into solar-powered sewing machines and skip the very industries that built Britain, Germany, and the United States.

They are told they must save the planet. A planet they did not ruin.

And if they object? If their leaders push for resource nationalism or challenge the green dogma? They are punished with bad credit ratings, NGO campaigns, and trade restrictions dressed up as ethics.

“We were told to dream with the SDGs, but woke up in a minefield. They promised us progress, gave us guidelines, then took our resources and told us to be grateful.”

A Personal Turning Point

I was turned against the UN quite a few years ago when I read the transcript of a debate revealing the UN’s outrage that Google did not give UN-backed reports extra weight over non-UN ones—particularly on climate. The irony? Even their own climate scientists had expressed doubts about the overblown rhetoric spewing from the political wing. Shortly thereafter, those inconvenient internal criticisms all but vanished from search results. That was the moment many of us, curious about the truth, heard the alarm bells.

But it didn’t stop there.

What sealed my opinion was not some subtle drift into ideological territory, but the sheer absurdity of its pronouncements. Perhaps the most comical—and simultaneously tragic—example was the moment the UN Secretary-General stood in front of a global audience, announcing with a sanctimonious glare that:
“The oceans are boiling.”
He said it with the air of a pope issuing doctrine—daring anyone to challenge such claptrap. That was the day they lost even the illusion of dignity. That was the day they started believing their own lies.

At the time, I didn’t think much more of it. Like most citizens, I didn’t really know what the UN was, how it was funded, or why it existed in its current form. But since then, I’ve read more. And while I still wholeheartedly approve of the idea of the UN—born from the wreckage of world war, with noble intent—I now wholeheartedly disapprove of its continued existence in this form.

It needs to be dismantled, and rebuilt for the modern age. And crucially, it must come with a known expiry date.

There needs to be a regular renaissance in such powerful institutions. It must be written into their articles of association that they do not exist in perpetuity. That every few generations, they are dissolved, reviewed, restructured, or replaced—by those who live with the consequences of their actions, not those who fund their inertia.

Only then can future generations repair the damage of the past.

Britain’s Role in the Decline

Britain once led the world in infrastructure, finance, and engineering. Today, we lead in hypocrisy.

We pressure African governments to abandon hydrocarbons while issuing new oil licences in the North Sea.
We demand their “transparency” while our banks hold the stolen proceeds of their corruption.
We celebrate our aid budget, yet make it near impossible for African students, scientists, or entrepreneurs to obtain a visa.

We mouth platitudes about “shared prosperity” while making damn sure the terms are written in our favour.

Even our charities—once a source of soft power—now act like minor UN agencies, full of slogans and interns and not much else. Oxfam lectures on social justice from offices built with funds extracted from taxpayer-backed contracts in countries they claim to help.

What Comes Next?

If the SDGs were sincere, they would prioritise energy sovereignty, industrialisation, and fair terms of trade. They would acknowledge that wealth must be created, not merely redistributed. They would empower Africans to determine their own path, even if that path includes diesel trucks, natural gas, and industrial-scale fertiliser.

Instead, they’ve become a system of moral accounting where Western nations get to “offset” their consumption by dictating how others should live. Carbon credits replace common sense. ESG ratings trump economic growth. And development becomes something done to Africa, not with it.

Final Words

The tragedy of the SDGs is not just that they fail. It is that they pretend to succeed, while preserving the very inequalities they claim to abolish. They are the smiling mask of a system that would rather fund a water kiosk than allow Africa to build its own water companies.

So let us end the deceit.

The real goal is not sustainable development.
It is sustainable dependence.

And unless we say so clearly, unapologetically, and publicly, we will continue to be complicit in dressing up domination as partnership—while another generation of Africans is told they must wait, suffer, and obey for the good of the planet.

Let the record show: it wasn’t just the empire that failed Africa.
It was the ideology that replaced it.

Beneath the Halo: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of the 17 SDGs

They came dressed as salvation, wrapped in coloured icons and global applause. But beneath the graphics lies a mess of contradictions, compromises, and collateral damage. Here we unpack each goal—not as it was dreamed up in Geneva, but as it has landed on the ground.

A circular graphic of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with each segment melting like wax, rendered in a surreal Salvador Dalí-inspired style.

SDG 1: No Poverty

The Good: Billions in aid and NGO projects have lifted individuals out of extreme poverty zones temporarily; mobile banking and microcredit schemes have shown promise.
The Bad: Aid dependence fosters inertia, bypasses national institutions, and undermines local agency. Most African nations are still net exporters of capital due to debt servicing.
The Ugly: Western corporations extract billions in raw materials while pontificating about “inclusive growth.” Poverty statistics improve, but wealth inequality worsens. The SDG becomes a photo-op for billionaires with private jets.

SDG 2: Zero Hunger

The Good: Targeted food programmes, agricultural support, and school meal initiatives have helped reduce childhood hunger in some regions.
The Bad: African farmers often sidelined by subsidised Western food imports, distorting markets. GMO push disguised as philanthropy.
The Ugly: Western companies extract palm oil, cocoa, and coffee from African soil while Africa imports wheat and rice from abroad. The hunger remains—homegrown solutions are discouraged or sabotaged.

SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being

The Good: Vaccination campaigns and anti-malaria nets have saved lives. International coordination during outbreaks like Ebola did have positive effects.
The Bad: Health systems remain donor-dependent and brittle. Drug patents and pharmaceutical monopolies keep treatments unaffordable.
The Ugly: The West lectures on population control while funding sterilisation clinics, not hospitals. During COVID, African nations were last in line for vaccines—after being blamed for variants they didn’t cause.

SDG 4: Quality Education

The Good: Literacy rates have risen. Girls’ access to education has improved in measurable ways. Donor-led digital education pilots show promise.
The Bad: Much curriculum remains colonial, prioritising Western languages and values. Local history, trades, and culture are neglected.
The Ugly: Elites send their children abroad while rural schools lack desks. The promise of education is often betrayed by a total lack of post-education opportunity—thus fuelling migration.

SDG 5: Gender Equality

The Good: Gender-based violence laws have improved; access to reproductive healthcare and rights is more prominent in policy.
The Bad: Western ideologies about gender are imposed wholesale, clashing with cultural contexts and often backfiring. Tokenism abounds.
The Ugly: Gender NGOs become tools for regime manipulation—undermining families and traditional structures without offering durable alternatives. Men are alienated and women overburdened.

SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitation

The Good: Boreholes, sanitation drives, and community projects have improved access. Urban water utilities have seen improvements in some cities.
The Bad: Infrastructure aid often bypasses local contractors, leaving no skills behind. Many projects fall apart when donor support ends.
The Ugly: The West donates filtration kits while Coca-Cola and Nestlé extract billions of litres of water from African aquifers tax-free.

SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy

The Good: Solar microgrids and off-grid solutions have brought lighting and phone charging to rural communities.
The Bad: Energy poverty still affects over 600 million Africans. Fossil fuel investment is blocked by Western ESG policy, even while Europe reopens coal plants.
The Ugly: Africans are told to skip fossil fuels and use wind and solar, while the minerals to build those systems are mined from Africa under exploitative conditions.

SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

The Good: Youth employment schemes, support for entrepreneurship, and digital microbusiness infrastructure (e.g. mobile money) have opened doors.
The Bad: Most “growth” is in extractive sectors or the informal economy—precarious, low-paid, and unsustainable. Western firms set the wages.
The Ugly: Africa exports raw materials, imports finished goods, and is then scolded for not being productive. “Decent work” rarely applies to cobalt miners, plantation labourers, or garment workers sewing for Western brands.

SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

The Good: Roads, ports, and telecoms have expanded. Some African nations are incubating home-grown tech hubs.
The Bad: Most large infrastructure is debt-financed, often by China, and subject to foreign engineering, foreign profit, and foreign interests.
The Ugly: The West blocks industrial policy under free-market ideology, then tells Africa to “innovate” without fossil fuels, railways, or steelworks. Sovereign development banks are discouraged; dependency is institutionalised.

SDG 10: Reduced Inequality

The Good: Domestic reforms and global awareness of inequality have gained traction; some inclusive finance models have shown local promise.
The Bad: Inequality between nations is widening, not shrinking. Aid is given with one hand and taken back with interest payments.
The Ugly: The richest 1% are mostly Western, and mostly preaching equity to the poorest 10%—while African minerals fund their electric vehicles. The hypocrisy is baked in.

SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

The Good: Investment in resilient urban planning, public transport systems, and affordable housing is theoretically rising.
The Bad: Urban sprawl without services defines most African megacities. Informal settlements are bulldozed in the name of sustainability.
The Ugly: Climate finance is used to displace communities in favour of eco-projects no one asked for. Slums grow, while the reports boast of “smart city frameworks” and pilot zones built for Western investors.

SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production

The Good: Some shifts toward circular economy practices, especially in agriculture and local craft industries.
The Bad: African consumption is already low—this SDG is effectively aimed at the West, but enforced in the South.
The Ugly: Africa is treated as a dump for used clothing, e-waste, and plastic, while also being blamed for overpopulation and told to “consume responsibly.”

SDG 13: Climate Action

The Good: Regional climate strategies, afforestation, and improved resilience to floods and droughts are active in some nations.
The Bad: Africa contributes only 3% to global CO₂ emissions but is expected to meet the same net zero standards that Germany and the UK now flout.
The Ugly: Fossil fuel exploration is blocked in Africa, but promoted in Norway, the US, and even post-Brexit Britain. Africans are urged to “go solar” by those flying in private jets to climate summits.

SDG 14: Life Below Water

The Good: Marine protected areas and anti-poaching drives are increasing. Some success against illegal fishing.
The Bad: Foreign vessels still overfish African waters under EU licences. Local fishers are criminalised for feeding their families.
The Ugly: Climate treaties now threaten African coastal economies with Western carbon offset schemes. Seaweed farms and “blue carbon” projects are imposed as substitutes for actual fisheries.

SDG 15: Life on Land

The Good: Wildlife preservation, reforestation, and land rehabilitation have seen gains, especially with community-led conservation.
The Bad: Green colonialism resurfaces through carbon markets, displacing pastoralists and farmers for carbon credits.
The Ugly: Land is seized in the name of “protecting the planet.” Western firms buy carbon offsets while Africans lose ancestral homes. Nature is commodified for ESG portfolios.

SDG 16: Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions

The Good: Anti-corruption frameworks and civil society organisations have gained modest influence. Peacekeeping operations have saved lives.
The Bad: Justice is slow, Western-funded NGOs often supplant national systems, and “strong institutions” are redefined as compliant ones.
The Ugly: Foreign donors pick winners and fund “democracy promotion” selectively. When African elections go the wrong way, the SDG missionaries go silent.

SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals

The Good: International cooperation remains necessary; sharing knowledge, tech, and capital has real potential.
The Bad: These partnerships are almost always asymmetrical—dictated by donor terms and priorities.
The Ugly: The language of “partnership” masks dependency. Africa is not an equal at the table—it is the subject of the discussion. The SDG logo sits on documents denying African nations fossil fuel loans, industry funding, or land sovereignty.

We do not reject development. We reject its monopoly. We reject a development that builds solar panels in Switzerland from minerals stolen in the Congo, only to tell the Congolese they cannot burn gas to light their homes. We reject a development that calls us partners while dictating our choices, that builds boreholes with one hand and extracts oil, copper, gold, and dignity with the other.

The SDGs were sold as salvation. What they became was a stick for beating the poor, a branding exercise for rich NGOs, and a conscience balm for corporations whose real goal is profit, not people.

April 18, 2025April 18, 2025

Letter XII 2–0 for the Three Laws

On Womanhood, Banks, and the End of Natural Sanity

By Martyn Walker
Published in Letters from a Nation in Decline

The Supreme Court’s ruling of 17 April 2025 brings brief but blessed clarity to a debate that should never have required adjudication. In upholding the definition of “woman” as a biological adult female, the court aligned itself—at last—with natural law, moral law, and human law. The surprise is not in the judgement, but in the fact that such a judgement was necessary at all [1].

Natural law is written in the structure of the body. It is not a social construct, nor is it open to interpretation by corporate HR departments. Moral law, developed over centuries of religious and philosophical reflection, honours the distinctiveness and dignity of women. And human law, which ought to reflect the wisdom of both, has too long been distorted by ideologues, bureaucrats, and cowards afraid to speak plainly.

With this ruling, the score is 2–0: reason and sanity regain ground against years of orchestrated confusion. The third point—cultural redemption—remains elusive. Corporate Britain, it seems, missed the memo.

Enter Lloyds Banking Group, who, within hours of the judgement, released a statement reaffirming their “support for the trans community” [2]. A curious phrase. What does it mean, in this context? That Lloyds is opposed to the court’s conclusion? That they prefer the legal fiction over biological fact? Or is it, as with so much modern corporate communication, simply a bland virtue-signal intended to prevent offence from a Twitter mob that has never darkened the doorstep of a bank branch?

The damage of such posturing is not abstract. It is real and cruel. Biological women—already silenced in sport, in prisons, in medicine, and in debate—are now told by their employers that their concerns are unwelcome. That they are, in essence, bigots for believing what every generation until 2015 took for granted.

This position is not just morally bankrupt—it is legally dangerous and socially irresponsible. And yet, it reflects a deeper truth about British banking in the twenty-first century: its abandonment of duty in favour of ideology.

These institutions, which once prized prudence, integrity, and public service, now concern themselves with pronouns and hashtags. Their moral compass is no longer set by community or customer, but by a risk-averse legal department obsessed with reputation management. It is not uncommon now to hear of customers being debanked for the crime of holding lawful but unfashionable opinions [3]. You may keep your money—so long as your views align with theirs.

Meanwhile, physical branches continue to vanish from high streets. Between 2015 and 2025, Britain has lost over 5,000 bank branches [4], leaving towns without cash access and elderly customers cut off from essential services. In the 1990s, when RBS attempted a similar retreat, the government blocked the move, recognising that banks are not just businesses but civic institutions [5]. Today’s political class, trained in nothing and employed in everything, lack both the will and the vocabulary to act similarly.

This is what decline looks like. A legal system forced to define “woman.” A bank afraid to state a biological fact. A population silenced by HR managers. All the while, the great financial houses of the country—flush with bailout cash, cradled by taxpayer guarantees—are more interested in gender identity training than interest rate margins.

When institutions forget their purpose, societies lose their memory. And once memory goes, so too does courage. We live in a time when truth requires legal defence, and fiction demands public fealty. But truth is stubborn. It is immune to hashtags, HR workshops, and focus groups. It may be silenced for a while, but it cannot be permanently removed. Not by Lloyds, not by Stonewall, and not by Whitehall.

Yesterday, the three laws spoke in unity. It is up to us to listen, to remember, and—if necessary—to fight for the truth they still protect.

References

Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. (2025). Judgement: For Women Scotland v Scottish Ministers. SC/2023/0493.
Lloyds Banking Group. (2025). Statement on Trans Inclusion. Corporate Newsroom. Retrieved 17 April 2025.
Fairbairn, H. (2024). The Rise of Debanking: Social Credit by Stealth. Civitas Policy Paper.
Which?. (2025). Bank Branch Closures: The State of Access to Cash in 2025. Retrieved from www.which.co.uk
House of Commons Treasury Committee. (1995). Banking Services: Branch Closures and Community Impact.

Metadata

Letter Number: XII
Title: 2–0 for the Three Laws
Collection: Letters from a Nation in Decline
Author: Martyn Walker
Date: 18 April 2025
Word Count: 1,118

BISAC Subject Headings

POL022000: Political Science / Public Policy / Cultural Policy
SOC032000: Social Science / Gender Studies
BUS069000: Business & Economics / Banks & Banking

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)

Women’s Rights—Great Britain
Banks and Banking—Social Aspects—Great Britain
Equality—Law and Legislation—Great Britain
Natural Law—Philosophy

April 18, 2025May 4, 2025

Letter XI – Press One for Betrayal

By Martyn Walker
Published in Letters from a Nation in Decline

The modern call centre was not designed to solve your problem. It was designed to make your problem someone else’s responsibility.

There was a time—not so long ago—when you could pick up the telephone and speak to someone in authority. Not a chatbot, not an overseas “operative,” not an algorithm tasked with guessing which service category most closely matched the thing that was bothering him. A human being. On the premises. With some measure of agency. One might even call it customer service—a phrase now drained of meaning, like so much corporate jargon turned to husk.

It’s easy to sentimentalise the past, but this isn’t nostalgia. It’s an observation. In 1980, if I had a query about a spare part, a refund, or a change to an order, I called the shop. The shop answered. A man in a brown coat wiped his hands and told me the truth. Perhaps he had to check in the storeroom. Perhaps he said no. But he said something. And I was no longer in doubt.

Now, try calling your local Halfords. Or Sainsbury’s. Or Currys. You’ll search for a phone number, find what looks like a local line, dial it with hope—and find yourself deep in the circuitry of a call centre. Often abroad. The voice will be polite, inoffensive, robotic. And its sole mission is to extract your details. Your name, postcode, date of birth, your grievance if you’re lucky. But it cannot solve your problem. It may not even understand it. You are not speaking to someone in the branch. You are speaking to data acquisition software in human form.

This isn’t a bug. It is the design. You, dear customer, are not a person but a unit of behavioural metadata. A record to be “triaged,” escalated, or dropped. The goal is not to help you but to contain you. Hold times, circular menus, dead-end email addresses, disappearing contact forms—these are not symptoms of strained service, but strategies of avoidance. No longer is the customer always right. The customer is barely relevant.

And when you finally breach the firewall—after ten minutes of hold music and a few weak apologies—you’re passed back, with luck, to the store you originally tried to reach. Or worse, told they “can’t connect you but will raise a ticket.” The circle begins again.

This model of service has metastasised. The state has adopted it with vigour. HMRC—an organisation I once respected—now behaves like a digital fortress. I have owed them money and seen the efficiency with which they communicate. But now they owe me a refund—one triggered at the height of the pandemic, over four years ago—and they are unreachable. My letters go unanswered. Emails are met with silence. Phone calls are looped through menus that lead nowhere. I cannot speak to anyone. And yet, if I were late in payment, I have no doubt I would be found [1].

We are told that these systems are more efficient. That technology has made things easier. That chatbots, web portals, apps, and ticketing systems have replaced “old-fashioned” service with something faster and more scalable. But these are lies. The system is not more efficient—it is more opaque. More exhausting. The problem is no longer one of supply, or of timing, but of deliberate misdirection.

You are meant to give up. That is the efficiency: your defeat.

The corporations know you have nowhere else to go. Tesco boasts of “price matching” against Aldi or Lidl, but only for items carefully selected as competitive loss leaders [2]. The supermarkets function as a cartel in all but name. There is no real price war—only a performance of it. And when every supplier adopts the same approach to service—offshored, automated, evasive—what alternative is left? Who do you reward with your custom?

The human voice—the oldest tool in commerce—is now treated as a cost centre. Empathy is expensive. Initiative is a risk. It is far safer, from a boardroom perspective, to channel all contact into a data funnel, log the frustration, and offer a £5 voucher once a month to appear caring.

Meanwhile, the consumer—the citizen, the taxpayer—is left howling into the void. Asking not even for special treatment, but for the basic reciprocity that once governed civil society.

And so I write this not as a technophobe—far from it—but as someone who sees the difference between progress and abandonment. We have not been “streamlined” into a new age of customer empowerment. We have been reduced. Stripped of our right to a voice, replaced with a row of dropdown menus and a number on a dashboard.

What has died is not merely service. It is the principle of response.

And without response, there can be no trust.

References

National Audit Office (2022). Customer Service Performance at HMRC. NAO report showing average call waiting times exceeding 20 minutes, with some refund cases unresolved after more than a year.
Competition & Markets Authority (CMA), 2023. Supermarket Price Competition Review. The report notes that “price match” campaigns often use cherry-picked items, typically loss leaders, creating an illusion of parity while overall basket prices diverge.
Citizens Advice Bureau (2021). The Customer Service Crisis. Documenting the shift to automated and offshore customer service in key industries and its impact on vulnerable groups.
Financial Times (2023). Retailers’ use of behavioural data surpasses customer service investment. A feature highlighting that major UK retailers spend significantly more on data analytics than on staff training or customer resolution.
House of Commons Treasury Committee (2024). Digital Services and the Decline of Public Accountability. Evidence submitted to Parliament showing the impact of digital interfaces on HMRC accountability and customer complaints handling.

Metadata

Title: Press One for Betrayal
Series Title: Letters from a Nation in Decline
Series Volume: Letter XI
Author: Martyn Walker
Language: English (UK)
Date of Publication: 2025-04-16
Edition: First
Abstract / Short Description:
An essay on the erosion of human-centred customer service in modern Britain, revealing how citizens are now treated as data points, not people. Through sharp satire and lived experience, Press One for Betrayal confronts the state and corporate sectors’ weaponisation of digital systems to deflect responsibility and suppress contact. The personal becomes political in this eleventh letter from a nation in visible decline.

BISAC Subject Headings (Book Industry Standards and Communications):

SOC026000 – Social Science / Sociology / General
BUS070060 – Business & Economics / Customer Relations
POL023000 – Political Science / Public Policy / Economic Policy
TEC003070 – Technology / Social Aspects
COM087000 – Computers / Human-Computer Interaction

LCSH (Library of Congress Subject Headings):

Customer services—Great Britain
Call centers—Great Britain
Public administration—Effect of technological innovations on—Great Britain
Data protection—Great Britain
Communication—Technological innovations—Social aspects—Great Britain
Administrative agencies—Great Britain—Public opinion
Surveillance capitalism—Great Britain
Government accountability—Great Britain

Keywords / Tags for Indexing:

customer service, HMRC, UK bureaucracy, call centres, digital inefficiency, datafication, corporate indifference, public sector decay, satire, Letters from a Nation in Decline