The way to go viral on twitter now is to complain about quality street

Merry Christmas one and all x

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An insane seven days and I'm finally getting to lay on my sofa with the cat

The best thing about having a cat is when he’ll walk in the room carrying a slice of ham but you don’t have any ham in the house. Where’d you get the ham little guy?

This is a good thread! Every week someone reads out a London Centric story on TikTok without credit and does big views. This isn’t a wah wah moan… more that when a big news outlet steals, they know what they’re doing. I think a lot of content creators sincerely think “reading words” *is* reporting?

This dynamic is in part why Keir Starmer should have a good, regular Substack, because so much of important media is what I think of as 'derived' these days, i.e. it is TikTok or Facebook thread from someone who actually reads journalism repurposed or driving their opinions.

This is a borderline psychotic thing to put in a newspaper.

A hundred times this

I never ever want to hear the word smorgasbord again, thank you.

Festive tradition of my cat immediately trying to toss the tree

If the OBR document is correct, this seems to be the energy bills package: Government taking 75% of the Renewables Obligation levy off electricity bills, at a cost of £2.3bn per year. This is good! The ECO levy (£1.7bn per year to upgrade fuel poor homes) will *end in April 2026*.

I agree with GT here on the actual impact, but if you want to compete politically you need to be a lot less fussy about the rabbits you chase. Do it all.

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Thought this was interesting: medium.com/@jamestplunk...

New essay out today by me and @acjsissons.bsky.social - ‘Getting Britain out of the hole: a plan for the economy’. You can read the whole thing here getting-out-of-the-hole.uk A chart mega-thread follows 🧵

Hard to know if asking your MPs to defend seizing jewellery from asylum seekers will improve morale

Said this a lot before, but there is no politician conveying any sense of what they think the country should look in 2040 or 2050, so no sense they are taking steps to get there.

With the ending of permanent asylum, taxes on foreign students, two U-turns on income tax, a refusal to listen to business concerns about hiring costs, again I ask ‘who are Labour for?’ What is the vision underlying all these choices other than responding to last week’s polls?

The thing to understand about this is that this catastrophe in the UK has redounded to the political benefit of the very same people and political movement that pushed for it! Extremely perverse.

I'm afraid this would push me over the edge

Let us simply not check that figure after they stuck most of the BBC in the US behind a paywall a few months ago to increase revenue at the expense of British soft power and influence.

A new museum will open in London next year, as the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration has confirmed its delayed opening date. www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/que...

Is gas still the reason GB energy prices are high? New Nesta blog by me. There's been a lot of talk about non-commodity costs on electricity bills, and how they're now dominating bill rises. My conclusion is: yes, they're a problem and need tackling; but they're not yet as big a problem as gas.

This such a perfect patriotic 🇬🇧 Fleet Street cock-up. It's one thing for a news outlet to be duped by a competent hoaxer. Excruciating, yes, but there's a fairly long history of such fuck ups. But to put out a statement SAYING you'd been hoaxed but you'd actually just emailed the wrong guy?

hello! I have a big profile of James Orr out now in the New World! it includes: a theory as to why he's been written about so incessantly over the past few months www.thenewworld.co.uk/marie-le-con...

GP sent me to A&E today for what I assumed was a minor thing. I got seen very quickly, triaged to urgent care, no tests at all, given antibiotics and asked to come back if it doesn't improve. Odd care pathway surely

A lovely weekend with friends, babies and dogs. Absolutely no social media for two days - should do that more

Jim came in to chat to us at @nestauk.bsky.social about the news, our messed up information environment and (more cheerily) @londoncentric.media. It was brilliant!

In one crisp para — & the 2 charts he highlights — @chrisgiles.ft.com bursts a huge number of “welfare” myths www.ft.com/content/ee67...

Pretty sunset last night

I'm in Santorini feeding the cats

Good thread on a very interesting discussion.

“An emotional research team became tearful as they described how data shows the disease was slowed by 75% in patients.” What an absolutely incredible, joyous achievement for everyone involved. Hurrah for science and scientists! www.bbc.com/news/article...

when the interview goes well: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

i will concede that if you want to influence other people addicted to X, X is worth using. but if you want to influence the actual public, text-based social media is a fool's errand.

Recommended, not in a „worthy initiative” way but because it’s proper interesting and informative journalism about London and nobody else really does it.

Lol. How well did the last govt insulting load-bearing parts of their electoral coalition work out for them? Like they watched what the Lib Dems did to the home counties and wondered what it'd be like if the Greens did that to the two dozen largest university towns.

Tony Blair used to talk about the difference between the 3-second, 30-second & 3-minute conversation - the point being that simplistic policies, that poll well, collapse under the more sustained scrutiny of an election or time in govt. So what happens when there is *only* the 3-second conversation?

This is incredibly sharp on TikTok, distraction and politics. Current UK government is communicating on terms that no longer exist

Trump's use of the attention economy, by Peter Hyman peterhyman21.substack.com/p/trump-the-...

Strongly agree. The days of just getting to the end with lines to take are over

We should also probably avoid basing our politics on information systems that reward outrage and where the truth has zero value.

This is outstanding. And, while research doesn’t get much of a hearing these days on identity issues, everything in it is consistent with piles of research. Anti-racism norms don’t drop from the sky. They are built and buttressed by elites drawing red lines. They can be eroded when elites don’t.

Bear with me, I anticipate your disagreement. There is a clear pattern to the advice given to those who want to press back against rising racism. What it boils down to is that if you point out that racism is often being dressed up as “legitimate concerns” you will alienate people. /1

Time for the world to install a gigawatt of solar power capacity 2004: A year 2010: ~ a month 2015: ~ a week Now: A day ourworldindata.org/data-insight... 🧪

it's so miserable

Not that anyone in politics listens to research, but there is a bucket of research (including some excellent recent studies) which show exactly this. Voters listen to leaders and respond to what they say.

Dublin photography: A city that has vanished yet feels strangely familiar

this didn’t happen at the height of the Brexit referendum. I don’t *think* it’s happened since National Front were at their peak in 1970s. This is organised racist intimidation & movement building, and it’s happening because Labour Party leaders have not opposed that campaign.