How it started/how it's going

Revealed preferences suggest this 37% drop in small boat nunbers (first two quarters) is treated as ×10-x50 times less newsworthy than a 37% increase has been. Given high salience of the issue, should broadcasters try to check/balance that instinct?

The National Endowment for the Arts stage has a solo performer up there right now. He is playing an audience of one. He just urged her to follow him on Instagram. I have seen larger audiences at 8am academic panels. I feel bad for the guy.

I've attended party conference fringes with ten times the audience of this

I was intrigued by Burnham's reference to Stockport because 8 years ago I met an excellent economic geographer about the whole chicken-and-egg problem of getting smart people to move to failing places, and he *definitely* used Stockport as an example of "just not a good place to live"* Now>>>>> 1/

awkward

This was the work of @thegodshow.com , right?

Heatwave halts Reform bid to scrap climate emergency A council debate on scrapping West Norfolk's climate emergency was postponed after extreme heat made the chamber unusable | Henry Durand

Badenoch can't decide if Burnham is meant to have all the answers (her case against devolution bsky.app/profile/gile...) or thinks "government creates growth". There's no stable theory here.

Interesting choice from Badenoch here: just as Labour has taken a turn towards likeability/affability, the Conservatives appear to placing their chips on the opposite vibe.

The view from the People’s History Museum: Andy Burnham’s first big speech as prime minister presumptive was deceptively substantial. No 10 North is the most concerted challenge to Treasury authority in half a century, hiding in plain sight. www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/...

They just continue to insist that there are massive crowds showing up to this thing despite the fact that this is also the 200th anniversary of the invention of the camera.

The key part of my bit:

future Prime Ministerial speeches do not need all that much detail. This one pitched at the right level, imho gileswilkes.substack.com/p/how-much-d...

when do we get the text of the Burnham speech? Asking for an infovorous LLM keen to compare it to some previous efforts

Very little evidence really that you can ’compensate’ people out of support for radical right populism.

Badenoch has managed to be 100% wrong here, and reveal the weirdly statist mindset of some politicians - the (foolish) idea that we appoint them because they "have the answers" - oh do tell us them! - and are just going to direct the system to deliver them... Not how governing works!! 1/

I like Simon Jack so this is not a reflection on him, but I think the months ahead might prove testing for commentators only able to see economic policy through the prism of fiscal decisions, bond market reaction, repeat. ....

There's more substantial policy direction in this Burnham speech than the median commentator expected, I hope it's not too tedious for them to rewrite their articles...

Anyway what I was doing was trying to answer @gilesyb.bsky.social question which was roughly 'what are Putin fans like Cummings saying about the war now?' and the answer might be 'find an anecdote that shows the Russians doing something winning and amplify it'.

very rare sighting of a Barley Shark

open.substack.com/pub/scottsum... A feast of good content from Sumner

"ignore the wild-eyed polemics about bond investors recoiling from this change of personnel in Number 10. The bulk of the problem was never Burnham. It was the war in Iran." giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... By @katie0martin.ft.com

This town received a £96mn post-Brexit makeover. It voted Reform anyway - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... There never has been a straightforward translation of regeneration or industrial strategy money into votes. See also: Regional Growth Fund

Zack Polanski at the British chambers of commerce conference asks: What if D-O-G was spelled C-A-T?

During the worst moments of the illegal war, there were a bunch of British newfound experts insistent on how Ukraine should basically surrender to Putin's demands. Cummings one obvious example. Were there any others? What are they saying now?

Today I learned that Roblox, with 100m users, enjoys revenues of $7bn, which is apparently two times the 2025 revenues of XAi, the lagging AI model behind Xitter, home of mechaHitler and all that. XAI is now part of SpaceX, valued at over $2tn, presumably for other reasons

Jfc

I'm pro air-conditioning, but I do feel like the intensity of the AC debate has got a bit out of hand. London has had an average of six days a year with temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius (86F) in the past decade. Chicago has 30+ days at 90F (32C) a year. There's a reason Brits didn't have AC

Skyla is welcome to try doing this, but would lose her face pretty soon

Extraordinary detail in the new book on Trump's second term administration

Almost a year since this hopeful skeet, and I am enjoying the downfall of these stupid grifts every bit as much as I hoped I would www.ft.com/content/1cf8...

I caught Holly about to toy with a baby frog, and in return for rescuing it, I insisted it pose for photos on a lily pad

- giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... Fascinating (to me) that if you want to avoid exposure to OpenAI, you now need to worry about having the (checks notes) Nikkei in your portfolio

The shrinking arguments for degrowth - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... so much good material in this @jburnmurdoch.ft.com piece. I'm picking on this part - growth no longer has the same disastrous relationship with resources - but read the whole thing.

you try and drag me back to France yourself, you weasel-faced I'm not going to finish that sentence publicly because unfortunately I would like to remain gainfully employed

this house believes crypto treasury companies are the silliest thing to come out of public markets so far this decade. can anyone think of anything sillier? (you can't say crypto because that was born much earlier and STILL has no serious use case)

"In forecasts that are now very hard to find, [Economists for Brexit] saw a Leave vote creating a rapid improvement in economic performance with growth rates just shy of 3 per cent a year up to 2020" www.ft.com/content/f99c... by @chrisgiles.ft.com

'UNASHAMEDLY FEMALE AGENDA' Well, pass me the kittens and the lippy and oh, I've forgotten what else, silly little me *giggles*

The absolute dead giveaway that you're dealing with a third rate economic mind is if they elevate policy towards North Sea licences towards the top of their agenda. On either side of the question. It shows they're incapable of doing basic calculations of significance.

I don’t think this was the moment where it became inevitable that Starmer would flame out after two years, but I do think it was the clearest illustration that he was terminally prone to panic and unable to grasp “the mayor is doing a difficult thing years before his re-election is due”.

The story of social media’s problem with news, in two posts (these are from X)

Peter Thiel. All that money and he can't buy a clue?

Talk to me some more about climate change being a hoax…

35°C is normal, we used to just call that summer! Here's how many summers topped 32°C 70s 4 80s 2 90s 8 2000s 6 2010s all of them 2020s all of them And here's how many summers topped 35°C 70s 1 80s 0 90s 2 2000s 2 2010s 3 2020s 4 (out of 6 so far)

I know some of you will be worrying about how Skyla is coping in this heat, so here she is saying: don't

imagine being an energy superpower and yet a country with a GDP smaller than Scotland can do this to you

FT exclusive: Andy Burnham is looking to set up a 'Number 10 in the north', moving part of his prime ministerial operation to Manchester, in a radical attempt to shift power beyond Westminster ft.trib.al/49mgac4

Duncan is right. That ridiculous moment in March when the market was apparently pricing in three hikes this year looked daft at the time, and now the buying opportunity of the year ...

incredible to think that the Makerfield by-election is still less than a week ago