Mickey Mouse economics.

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Good idea - my two penn’orth for insightful legal commentary: @georgeperetzkc.bsky.social @barbararich.bsky.social @bricksilk.bsky.social

Since the beginning of the year/of time, I have been boring people by going on about rules of origin. In particular, why large country-by-country tariff means the US will start to pay more attention to where a product is from. From Feb: open.substack.com/pub/mostfavo...

IYKYK!

Awful news about the death of the great Conor Gearty. Perhaps the kindest and most encouraging law professor imaginable. A dreadful loss to the study of civil liberties and constitutional law.

Follow Miranda - she's wise and writes great stuff.

There's a case the Lucy Connolly sentence was excessive. But Reform's rapturous reception for her suggests a party not *very* appalled by "set fire to all the fucking hotels full of all the bastards". thecritic.co.uk/reforms-uncu...

Reform's Uncut Fringe: my SKETCH of Today at conference, as the nuts get loose.

Posted in the hope that there must be more than 6 of us here 😂 And, yes, I do recognise it’s Saturday, the sun is shining, & we’re spoilt for choice on sporting events today …

Academic authors too. I’m in here. So might you be.

Reform are an eminently beatable prospect, but you know, as David Cameron once said: “lads, it’s the Labour Party“.

Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars. OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.

Ah, looking at the account set out here, it's the kind of fuckup a high-street conveyancer (and quite frankly most real estate lawyers) could make given that there is a discretionary trust involved where she was a settlor but not a beneficiary.

Could I take this opportunity to suggest to all my followers that they follow Barbara? She comes from a different political perspective to me but she is always worth hearing even when (especially when) we disagree.

Result correctly called by the estimable @sirjjkc.bsky.social - formerly the government’s most senior lawyer.

Unlike woke lefties, I'm not offended by the St George's Cross - I'm turned on by it! This has made crossing roads or walking down well lit pavements a real problem of late. I'm due in court in September.

Just reported: a court judgment case with probably the most intriguing first line in UK judicial history: (I can't lie to you; it gets more boring very quickly. But then it gets intriguing again, I promise.)

Ireland: new phone, who dis

(I'm in the unusual position of being over 50 and having a degree in Artificial Intelligence, though I was a poor student of stuff that's out of date and which I've forgotten anyway. But I did write an essay in 1994 about ELIZA which turns out to have stood up amazingly well.)

It is not news that those who hold university purse strings often turn out to be extremely susceptible to salesmanship, particularly when it's framed in terms of missing out on what everyone else is doing. Will they learn from this? If universities survive, will governance change? I'm not hopeful.

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“It was like the world's most elite babysitting team had assembled. As if Thanos had a stroke and the Avengers have to gather around him, as carers, to make sure he doesn't click his fingers. And they may have to do it again tomorrow, and every week for three years, but it's still worth doing.”

Relieved to be a neoliberal again this week. Being a communist was exhausting - the music was pretty good but the food was terrible.

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba... Supporting a Premier League side is basically being repeatedly kicked in the nuts by the owners

Some words on how this mess happens (it does for all Trum deals) - from the point of view of a lawyer /1

Most of adulthood is just whispering “what the hell is going on” and pretending you get it.

One of the great fantasy writers with brilliant points on the un-fantastic, mundane world of media contracts. And with my media lawyer hat on: never fall for the “standard in the industry” line. Every clause can be looked at, every clause can be changed.

This has filled me with so much joy I can't even put it into words. youtu.be/70DDf9OXsFA?...

He's one of Britain's richest men. So why does Asif Aziz's property company keep leasing London gift shops to overseas students based in abandoned offices or flytipped car parks — before vanishing without paying millions of pounds in taxes? www.londoncentric.media/p/asf-aziz-l...

My version of self-care is whispering “you’re doing okay” while staring at a pile of unfolded laundry.

First sign of summer just dropped

Only a small % of people engage in toxic activity online, but they’re responsible for a disproportionate share of hostile or misleading content on nearly every platform Because super-users are so active, they dominate our collective impression of the internet www.theguardian.com/books/2025/j...

Really annoying that there's no such thing as hell, because there's an ever-increasing number of people that I'd like to consign to eternal torment.

Look the art world is deilberately labyrinthine and it seems to my uncultured peasant brain like a vast amount of it is tax avoidance. But this story, where an art dealer lends an £3m painting to the national gallery and now they won't release it to be seen, is nuts www.thetimes.com/culture/art/...

Quite a lot of people have spent 13 hours using their handheld computer to argue with me, a person they have never met and never will, that the changes in the last thirty years haven’t been profound.

Difficult to express how I feel about those in our politics and media who are more concerned about what some rapper said at Glastonbury than fact that, as a matter of deliberate policy, the Israeli government is paying mercenaries to murder starving civilians for fun. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Ok, this is a compelling case for codification.

Worthy cri de cœur

Presumably he’s just plugged in à la The Matrix

As a distraction from the events in the world, the most 80’s video ever filmed youtu.be/iIpfWORQWhU?...

It’s a good thing Congress isn’t alive to see this

It's important to acknowledge when we discuss why a minority of young men are attracted to the radical right that part of the answer is "they're obnoxious". It's not all about being dispossessed and left behind it's also twats.

Battling a theatre company clunky website am amazed anyone manages to book any tickets to anything ever …