Asking business to sell their products at a loss makes as much sense as your boss asking you to pay *him* for your work instead of vice-versa.

There are many reasons to criticise Starmer's party, and it was certainly an incoherent project. But to describe the economic policy of a government that has increased borrowing by £100bn and passed the Employment + Renters Rights Acts in this way is risible. www.newstatesman.com/politics/lab...

Social Democrat, Libertarian globalist, unsurprisingly. Pretty sure I'm more Left-wing economically, as I'm basically a Nordic model fan, yet it says Sweden is 'Far Left' - a country that has no minimum wage, and low corporate taxes.

this is why I'm really annoyed by the rayner reporting, it's really easy to read "trusts" and "tax" and assume there's something dodgy at play when this is the absolute bare minimum you need to do if you have a child with a severe disability and any expectation of an inheritance at all

Spare a thought for the future children of Boris's children. Always to be denied high office

There should be a convention that if the party is in government, new leaders should only be chosen by MPs, not party members.

Inside you there are two wolves:

I cannot abide this 'we are just smol beans with a majority of 170' attitude.

This kind of crap from the BoD really undermines those of us who are trying to push against antisemitism across the political spectrum. Infuriating.

I have been to a lot of places, Including some that on paper are considerably poorer, and nowhere has filled me with the same kind of despair that the Russian provinces did in the 2000s. Maybe Rhyl.

I firmly believe that a serious and sober call for low business taxes, flexible labour markets, private provision in healthcare, & higher across-the-board taxes to make the UK a modern northern European social democracy would instantly be dismissed as the insane ravings of delusional neoliberal here

My long running theory that buying a car is one of the most radicalising things someone can do hits another datapoint

Looks like Wales's First Minister will lose their seat, with the tipping point issue being Plaid successfully campaigning against affordable green energy infrastructure.

Watching the Welsh-language coverage, and it's very noticeable how many non-white Welsh-speaking candidates, commentators and reporters there are. It wouldn't have been the case even twenty years ago.

Freud on how he felt leaving Vienna in 1938: « I saw the scientific society I had founded dissolved, our institutions destroyed, our printing press taken over by the invaders, the books I had published confiscated or reduced to pulp, and my children expelled from their professions »

Post your warning sign

Subsidising energy consumption in the face of both a short-term supply shock and the long-term need to decarbonise. Bad for the economy, bad for the planet, bad for the world's poor. And *if* you favour a wealth tax (I am sceptical but there's a case) spending it on *this" is just idiotic.

This is pretty bad of the BBC, but I am surprised that the career professional has never come across a case of a fraudulent asylum claim. I've had far less experience, but I know that an ex of mine was one such case, and she worked for a legal firm that helped cases like hers.

This is a valid point, and yes, the public estate should be better managed, but I suspect they'd be less waste if the gov just rented the buildings it needs, when they need it. Once they stop needing it, gov doesn't pay liabilities, and it allows buildings to be reused or replaced more efficiently.

Reports of a third attempted arson attack on Jewish targets in North London this week. It's getting really scary and more people need to start taking it seriously.

Greens: "CLIMATE CHANGE IS AN EXISTENTIAL CRISIS THAT MEANS WE HAVE TO CHANGE EVERYTHING AND DO IT NOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!" 'Ok. Can we put up some solar panels in a field then?' Greens: 'No.' www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I am stronger than Mensa, Miller and Mailer. I spat out Plath and Pinter.

It’s time to post one of my favorite memes of the year.

Weird leader by the Economist this week. It breaks down all the structural reasons why America is in decline to the benefit of China, and then upends the whole piece by concluding the US is the future, because... vibes.

Essentially, this. A major supply cut means the price will have to rise steeply - in order to make it too expensive for people to buy. Us buying it simply means others can't. Any oil and/or gas we don't use, makes life survivable for others in poorer countries.

You're worrying about a concentration of economic inactivity and multiple deprivations in post-industrial South Wales valleys? THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MERTHYR

Given this strain of Carlson et al, the Likudite gamble of putting all their chips on the US hard & far Right coming to their aid looks unwise.

A 'cheese panini' in a riverside cafe in Llangollen. It was a just a plain Kraft slice in cheap white bread, with margarine. Nothing more.

A few weeks ago oil was about $70 a barrel and Iran was mostly selling at an often steep discount to China. The US Treasury will now let them sell at $110 a barrel on the open market for a few weeks at least. I’ve read quite a lot about the history of economic warfare. This is quite new.

“it is difficult to identify any particular part or element as being more hers than all the rest. The whole mode of thinking of which the book was the expression, was emphatically hers. But I also was so thoroughly imbued with it that the same thoughts naturally occurred to us both.” J. S. Mill

I'm compiling a handy thread of things that you really, REALLY should not say in response to this tweet. 1) "Has Matt Lucas said anything on Israel?" No, as it happens. But what if he had? Does that give you the right to try and goad a Jewish celeb in public & then upload your video to socials?

IT'S A DAILY DEALLL!!!!ONE!!! "The Unaccountability Machine" Kindle version is £2.49 in the USA www.amazon.co.uk/Unaccountabi... and $2.99 in the USA www.amazon.com/Unaccountabi... It is sadly no more possible to take advantage of the implicit forex arbitrage than it was for Charles Ponzi.

No other party has even been so single-minded in pandering to a very particular niche of voters to gain seats under FPTP, with so little care for any purpose, values, or even general voter support. It's quite impressive, in its astonishing vacuity and cynicism.

🚨 WATCH: Labour MP Charlotte Nichols reveals she was raped as an MP as she opposes the jury trial reforms "I waited 1,088 days to go to court. We've been told [by the Government] that if we have concerns about this Bill, it's because we've not been raped"

A big factor in the AI consciousness debate is that lots of atheists/agnostics believe in souls and don’t know it

Which way, Western Man?

He tried to get you back to Riyadh and you said "no, no, no"?

I think a big key to understanding at the moment is that "people who grew up in the political religion of Atlanticism are no better equipped to handle the current situation than Jeremy Corbyn was to handle the Salisbury attacks"

Of all the religious festivals I'm aware of, Purim is definitely my favourite.

Postmodernism seems to be a bit out of favour in modern academia, but if this isn’t a validation of Baudrillard I don’t know what is

Five years ago this week, Sarah Everard was murdered by a serving police officer, sparking protests & promises of change But now, woman officers abused by colleagues tell me reforms have victimised them more instead of protecting them For @theobserveruk.bsky.social: observer.co.uk/news/nationa...

Nick Cohen: 'Polanski is a moral disgrace for going on a media outlet that platforms racist far-right figures. 'Read my latest piece in the Spectator. £££ paywall.'

you're right, it IS shocking that professional loser Matt Goodwin still has more newsletter subscribers than I do. If you want to help correct this oversight, here's 12% off annual subs (to reflect how much he lost by)

It's astonishing just how good he is at this.

Parents and Grandparents will get their council tax paid if they do 24 hours of child care a year.

The role of an MP shouldn't be a glorified Citizens Advice Bureau / social worker. I've nothing against the CAB, social workers, or this MP, but the overriding purpose should be to make the country as a whole better.

Initially thought Rand/Foucault. Then I thought what would that look like in practice, and it wouldn't really be too far off Trump mixed with Epstein, which would basically be Trump.

My brother wanted a London pub crawl. The result? My new Substack post: "Britain Lost 14,000 Third Places. They were Called Pubs. Is Your Local Next?" How private equity reshaped the local, which pubs are most at risk and most importantly what to do about it. open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...

Very true, though part of the structural problem is that all the competing, and occasionally contradictory, demands on the Cabinet Secretary have expanded drastically. It should be split-up, with separate roles for fixer, admin manager, policy expert, and constitutional guarantor

My 'I was never a close friend of Peter Mandelson' T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my T-shirt. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...