NEW ANALYSIS: Record wind and solar generation saved UK from gas imports worth £1bn in March 2026 📈Wind+solar were up 22% year-on-year in March to a record high for the month ⛴️This avoided the need for gas imports worth £1bn at current high prices www.carbonbrief.org/...

It’s been a while since integrity has had such a good day.

Palantir’s technologies are used by the powerful to attack the powerless. This company should not be involved in our public services. Sign this petition if you agree act.globaljustice.org.uk/get-palantir...

The UK’s Labour government has desperately tried to avoid the perception it has broken manifesto pledges. With one exception - The politically easy, yet deeply destructive decision to gut funding for international aid. 1/n

This is great news: an immediate ban on political donations in cryptocurrency & a £100k cap on donations from UK citizens abroad. Yes, there's more that needs doing, & the door is left open to crypto in future. But we should celebrate (& applaud) the wins when they come. www.gov.uk/government/n...

William’s faith … quiet but still just strong enough to legitimise his God given hereditary power

On World Poetry Day, here’s a reminder of the power of poetry and its potential to change the world.

Excl: Labour peer says "children will go hungry" because of foreign aid cuts. Writing for HuffPost UK, Lord Jack McConnell says: "A Labour govt that spends less on the world’s most vulnerable than the Tories will be remembered for the wrong reasons." www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/childr...

Teacher time on task remains a major barrier to learning across sub-Saharan Africa. Absence from school, absence from class, and lost instructional time all play a role. Experts examine potential solutions—and where evidence gaps remain: https://go.cgdev.org/4qhr3G5

The first-ever Land Use Framework for England has been published. I think it is the most far-sighted plan for England's land since the Second World War. Here's my thoughts on what it does (& doesn't) do: 1/ www.gov.uk/government/p...

I’d consider voting green but this is about the worst back story imaginable if you were looking for a party leader with integrity. He’s clearly just a snake oil salesman. The ying to Nigel Farage’s ying.

I once loved Haiku, Until the syllable rule, Started to annoy me.

500000 votes in the Home Counties says Ed Davey doesn’t really care about whether Churchill remains on our bank notes.

Why didn’t the coordinated release of 400m barrels of oil reserves reduce the price of oil? The markets know how big reserves are so whether reserves are released or not doesn’t change the potential supply of oil which is what drives the price.

Might the US engage in a limited land invasion focussed on securing the islands and coastline bordering the Strait of Hormuz? @ldfreedman.bsky.social

Right. And I use mine for hoeing

Right now, if you just watch the oil price, you can avoid following the news altogether.

Life expectancy in the West stopped rising soon after Trump first won the presidency. Just saying …

Absolutely insupportable. Labour have a massive majority. It’s a hugely popular issue. To fail to act would be a dereliction of historic proportions, and utterly inexplicable.

In the second half of 2025, one man accounted for almost 40% of all money donated to political parties in the UK: a crypto-billionaire who lives in Thailand. Britain desperately needs to rewrite its party funding rules. observer.co.uk/news/the-sen...

Trump should back-off criticising Starmer. Starmer may be a slightly ineffectual leader but he’s our slightly ineffectual leader. And he has more moral backbone in his little finger than you might find in the entire mar a lago resort.

Yep. Sadiq Khan is absolutely right to hone in on authenticity as being the key and the big thing that is missing. Voters can sniff out inauthenticity miles off.

Trump seems to have timed this attack to avoid flooding the news space, ensuring the Clintons got maximum embarrassment from their deposition. Dark days.

Do school meals really boost learning? Drawing on evidence from 25+ countries, Biniam Bedasso shows that school feeding programmes consistently increase enrolment, attendance, and test scores – with the biggest gains for the most vulnerable children. 🔗 Link below ⤵️

"The voter is always right.“ A 🧵 about a popular yet misleading sentence, the nature of representation, and a personal argument that got me thinking about (British) democracy.

Bad Bunny has secured the concept of love for the woke liberals. Game over.

It would make much more sense for the government to give RISE funding to the MAT overseeing a school in need of RISE. Gov. could agree a set of clearly defined goals. If the Trust fails to improve the school, the school should be moved to another Trust.

Private equity owns lion’s share of children’s foster services and is ‘bleeding the sector of money’ observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

Very good piece by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com.... The US under Trump 2.0 has shifted towards authoritarianism as record speed but unlike other examples (e.g. Putin, Orban) it's happened by bypassing institutions rather than permanently corrupting them... www.ft.com/content/b474...

My new column is a strange one for an American columnist to write: "Please, world leaders, don't appease America!" All of us, Americans included, will be better off if Europeans have the gumption to stand up to an increasingly erratic Trump. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/21/o...

A lot of my hope these days stems from the idea that bad guys struggle to get along with each other.

Media may not have noticed that Trump’s Board of Peace Charter was drafted so that the US need NOT ratify and become a party.Trump’s current status as US President is a necesary stepping stone but his unitary rule in the new international organisation would be personal, permanent and even hereditary

Are we honestly doing the World Cup over there? For real?

If Europe faces a 25% US tariff from June until Trump is impeached a month or two after the US mid-terms, that’s manageable.

Just remember: The insanity of Trump’s actions rises in close proportion to his level of desperation. The one feeds off the other. Insane actions -> bad results -> falling popularity -> desperation -> even more insane actions.

Stourhead Christmas lights. Mulled wine warming people on a cold winter’s night.

"One Word Describes Trump" www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv... I missed this on its first trip around, then saw it on the "most popular with readers" list for 2025. Recommended, despite the cheesy headline. Especially valuable if you have ever compared him to a mob boss. [Gift link]

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This is a crucial opportunity for the U.K. to defend our shared values and show solidarity with the EU. Our future as a trusted, integral part of Europe depends on doing the right thing at moments like this.

Our top 3 Substack posts of 2025. 1. Are we living in a stupidogenic society? 2. Why education can never be fun 3. So, can AI assess writing? substack.nomoremarking.com/p/are-we-liv... substack.nomoremarking.com/p/why-educat... substack.nomoremarking.com/p/so-can-ai-...

Despite air pollution stealing more years from our lives than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined, it receives less than 0.1% of global philanthropy. In early 2025 Trump shut down the USA's overseas air-quality monitoring program, removing 97% of high-precision air monitors from high-need countries.

Air pollution erases roughly 6% of global GDP every year. That’s 3 to 6 times the economic growth expected from AI. In Africa, the crisis is even more acute: sub-Saharan Africa has just one high-grade air quality monitor for every 16 million people, compared to one per 500,000 in the US & Europe.

There seems to be a Starc difference between England and Australia in the #Ashescricket

How investors plunder the care system: the owners of the children’s homes company Your Chapter have paid themselves £11 million in dividends this year.

NEW: Labour just announced the biggest change in planning policy in 80 years. My breakdown of the key measures and whether they will succeed. www.samdumitriu.com/p/labour-are...

In 2024, the UK had the lowest taxes on an average employee of any G7 country. UK taxes for lower earners were also the lowest in the G7. But the UK's position might change in 2025.

Woah. Argentina's 1990s preschool expansion program appears to have been a smashing success. The program increased high school completion by a whole 11.9 percentage points. The authors estimate that for every $1 spent, the preschool expansion generated about $11 in benefits.

I avoid travelling to any country which bans entry for people who use social media to call its leader a dangerous, vane, incompetent, plump, fascist.

Turns out Trump is less like a king and more like Elizabeth 1st sending privateers to capture treasure laden boats in the Caribbean.

I argue in this piece that the nonprofit sector should be thinking more about the counterfactual when assessing fundraising success: winning a $2M competitive bid over capable peers advances the cause less than convincing someone to donate $1M they'd have spent on a yacht.