Weekend plug.

Latest post covers the continuing pressure on Crimea and fuel shortages in Russia, Moscow’s anxiety about Trump tilting away from them and back to Kyiv, and Putin’s determination to insist all is well and that his forces are on the advance. (£/free trial), open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/h...?

Love it.

Some wonderful specially commissioned steaming London photos in here >> open.substack.com/pub/londonce...

I enjoy watching Harry Brook bat. But I wish I’d had to wait longer to see this

“Now, I’m afraid the time has come to acknowledge that the relationship between the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence is fundamentally broken. This cannot be easily fixed through clever tweaks; radical reform is needed” www.ft.com/content/4914...

SoH traffic continued on 25 June, with 54 verified crossings across a broad mix of commercial and energy-linked vessels. Traffic data showed 39 West-to-East movements and 15 East-to-West movements, with vessels using the Omani, IMO and Iranian routes, alongside a smaller Unknown route category.

On another hot day, we are glad not to be subject to the same sartorial standards as the 19th century Manchester MP Thomas Bazley. The fact that he took off his jacket when giving election speeches in an unpleasantly warm room in 1868 was felt worthy of mentioning in his obituary 17 years later!

Hugely going to regret doing an essay based on a @stephenkb.bsky.social rant.

Monday morning me is going to hate Friday afternoon me. Yes there is something else I could be doing right now but I’ve had a very productive day so far, there is a Test Match on and I am simply too hot to do anymore work.

This is one helluva Test match.

I enjoyed writing this Hopefully some of you will enjoy reading it. But let’s be honest: that’s my secondary concern here.

I like this one.

Some economists argue that the strain led to technological change that only amplified substitution

Ponder: I think if you were designing the system from scratch, cash ISAs wouldn’t exist and instead we’d have a series of tax-free Gilts available (subject to an individual cap) at various maturities to domestic retail savers.

Loads more PUNCH cartoons on the subject. This one is "King Cotton Bound; Or, The Modern Prometheus" by John Tenniel from 1861 #Secession #CivilWar #America #USA #history #Britain

Wrote an essay for Engelsberg. Something I’ve been thinking about recently, inspired by the Strait of Hormuz closure. engelsbergideas.com/essays/abrah...

Good read. cepr.org/voxeu/column...

I'm not sure how much it matters economically (I could be persuaded) but the vibes about Britain and European AI might be very different if ARM and DeepMind were listed in Britain.

Stepping off a train in Britain at 10pm into “feels like 29”. A new experience.

Adding a trillion pounds to UK GDP - the kind of thing I’m surprised no one has thought of before.

If I were in government I'd be scoping an announcement to have solar, batteries and air conditioning (heating and cooling) in every school and hospital by 2030

Not only do I have to head to a meeting in London but I have to wear a shirt, long trousers and socks. I’m probably the bravest man in Britain.

My tactical advice to the England team at the moment is that they should consider taking a wicket. Or ideally, multiple wickets.

The curious case of why UK and Canada CPI use grocery scanner data but the US can’t A deep dive on why the US's—the world's most important economy—inflation statistics enhancement progress has surprisingly... https://en.econreporter.com/58106/why-uk-canada-cpi-use-grocery-scanner-data-us-cant/

Kinda fascinating how the ”who should be chancellor” debate is becoming a kind of factional Labour Party fight. Denied a leadership contest, this has become the proxy battle.

Me on the heatwave www.economist.com/science-and-...

www.theguardian.com/politics/202... Feels really quite strange that ‘senior officials’ in Number Ten are lobbying Burnham for this.

Yes, obviously it is suspended, but is it operating or not? Useless TfL app.

The standard of cricket writing at the BBC is very high. Gives any of the broadsheets a run for their money. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricke...

This is the most important Andy Burnham story around today - far more consequential than oil and gas jobs or even who the Chancellor is imo. Tax, like migration, is one of the foundational things a new government has to get right. So many other policies will be downstream of these choices

I am quite pleased with my coinage of ‘Betamax anxiety’.

Premium unleaded petrol and unleaded petrol are the same thing.

Vaguely similar to the Uber story a few weeks ago. This sort of stuff is surely a challenge to the AI business model. We’ve gone from big corporates encouraging adoption and having staff league tables of usage to corporates shouting at their staff “you’ve spent how much?”

Brits, Our Friends In The North, one of the finest drama series of the past 35 years, is starting a run of repeats on BBC Four this evening from 10.20pm. (I feel old; I watched this when it was new.) www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

22, feels like 27, at midnight feels unreasonable. The heat dome must be destroyed.

Twenty round trip walk to school pick up. 32 degrees but feels like 40. Passed by two joggers. Insane behaviour.

Have now read this and plan on dedicating all of my energy to the destruction of the “heat dome”. www.bbc.co.uk/weather/arti...

The FT app reckons I probably want to read my piece. Fair play to the algorithm, I probably do.

Britain Beyond Brexit 7 years ago we published @gavin-kelly.bsky.social @iprnickp.bsky.social collection with articles by @duncanweldon.bsky.social @sjwrenlewis.bsky.social @profsob.bsky.social @robfordmancs.bsky.social @drjennings.bsky.social + more (no £) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/1467923x...

The ‘too long, didn’t read’ here is: Andy Burnham isn’t going to blow up the gilts market. www.ft.com/content/8aa0...

“Not a disaster”, “plenty of room for improvement”. Really upbeat commentary.

Completely unclear to me what this bandage is supposed to achieve?

I completely get that the DIP delays have been a nightmare for the defence sector and already caused damage to the industry and delayed investment. But at this point, it surely makes more sense to delay the whole thing to September? New team, new mini-review of the SDR and DIP in parallel?

JUST IN: Ben Stokes, Gus Atkinson and Jamie Smith return as England make four changes to their XI for the third Test against New Zealand in Nottingham 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 IN: Stokes, Smith, Atkinson, Bashir OUT: Cox, Rew, Baker, Fisher

Went outside. That was a mistake.

Because we are 10 years on. I still don’t really understand that period of 60-90 minutes after the Sunderland results when people still thought remain would win and markets didn’t react. Absolutely mad twilight zone experience.

Jonathan Haskel has been nominated to be the next Chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility. Currently a Professor at Imperial, he's done lots of research into productivity (including the role of AI), economic inactivity, and various other issues highly relevant to the OBR.

BBC reckons about 250 schools closed during the heatwave. Call it about 400 students per school. Assume that maybe 25% of those absences mean a parent missing a day of work and two days of closure mean something like 50,000 lost working days, three days more like 75,000.