Despite becoming a yawn-inducing attack line it is still *extraordinary* that in the early 2000s Britain's Labour government decided to sell off half the country's gold reserves when the price was where it was. 395 tonnes, which then netted $6.3bn (adjusted), would today fetch $52bn 😳

I'm a "glass is half-full" kinda guy, so let's look at the upside of the Riyadh Comedy Festival: We never, ever have to even pretend to take any of these "anti-woke" "free speech warriors" seriously, ever again. New from me at @opinion.bloomberg.com (gift link): bit.ly/4h51JjF

I put together our third annual Carrie Bradshaw index, measuring how affordable it is to rent alone in America's 100 biggest cities, for @economist.com www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

With about a month to go until a salary renegotiation deadline on October 31st, I looked at why America's women basketball players are scandalously underpaid, for @economist.com www.economist.com/united-state...

Who knew the Lib Dems were the chilled ones about tax returns! But overall that's a striking consensus, and a potentially big problem brewing for Farage

Now two years after this was announced and (by my reckoning at least) still no sign? 🤔 Curieux www.theguardian.com/politics/art...

Lovely vignette on the making of Gone With The Wind (from Bruce Chadwick’s Reel Civil War)

“My characters exist,” snapped Candace Bushnell at her critics. “Go to enough parties, and you’ll meet all of them.” First appearing on TV in 1998, I wrote about the (perhaps slightly overdue) end of her Sex and the City universe last week, for @economist.com www.economist.com/culture/2025...

Our polling with YouGov has found nearly a third of under-30s listen to audio sped up (compared to 8% of those 45+). A sign of brain-frazzling madness, or an ingenious time-saver? I had a closer look for @economist.com www.economist.com/culture/2025...

A reminder that when Kemi Badenoch was offered a security briefing on this earlier this year she decided that it wasn't important enough for her to bother turning up

There's a lot of 'the spendthrift PLP versus the Iron Downing Street' about, which ignores that the PLP accepted a deferment of scrapping the two child limit and voted to means-test winter fuel.

Shout out to Catherine Corless, independent local historian. who has made a difference.

🚨 BREAKING: Zia Yusuf has resigned as Chairman of Reform UK, saying “I no longer believe working to get a Reform government is a good use of my time.”

Another excellent column by @michellegoldberg.bsky.social, this one about the amazing play John Proctor is the Villain: www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/o...

"It's not a magic trick to get people to watch women's sports", one analyst told me. As the new WNBA season starts tonight, I wrote for @economist.com about how women's basketball exploded in America www.economist.com/culture/2025...

One lesson of the local elections is that it's time to take Reform seriously, not just as a political movement but as a possible party of government. So I spent a few days digging into their economic plans—and found hair-raising, Truss-adjacent stuff. www.economist.com/britain/202...

NEW: The rate of sepsis in Houston surged 63% after Texas banned abortion. In the Dallas-Fort Worth area, where hospital leaders empowered doctors to intervene before patients’ conditions worsened, it rose just 29%.

Australia heads to the polls on Saturday, in an election dominated by the cost of living crisis - housing in particular. I put together the latest version of our "Carrie Bradshaw index", measuring how affordable it is to rent alone in six major Australian cities 👇 www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

The problem with the theory that FPTP keeps fringe parties out is that it does until it doesn't, at which point it creates a massive ratchet effect. Having FPTP and a successful radical right party is essentially a gamble of sorts.

Imagine being lectured by RFK Jr about how to be healthy and then having Mark Zuckerberg tell you how many friends normal people should have

Australia heads to the polls on Saturday, in an election dominated by the cost of living crisis - housing in particular. I put together the latest version of our "Carrie Bradshaw index", measuring how affordable it is to rent alone in six major Australian cities 👇 www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

This isn’t the first time America’s credibility as an ally has been questioned. 50 years ago today Saigon fell, the Vietnam war ended and American pride took a big hit. My piece looks at The Economist’s coverage from April 1975. Much of it will sound familiar. www.economist.com/interactive/...

Birth bonus. Sigh.

So. In the spirit of being fair, I have now read Nick Clegg‘s Essay about the Future of Europe - and Britain‘s Part in it. I have also done my best to ignore who wrote it, and focus on the arguments in it. A few thoughts observer.co.uk/news/opinion...

Shoutout to Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, who’s been on the Judge Dugan story all week. You can catch up on his coverage here www.jsonline.com/staff/264800...

The cover of this week’s Economist.

On being called DEI and why it isn’t the burn they think it is

NEW: Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has declared April 2025 as Confederate Heritage Month. He did so at the behest of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a neo-Confederate organization that espouses “Lost Cause” ideology, which whitewashes the role of slavery in the Civil War. 🧵

Not knocking Luke & MoreInCommon work here, but I am going to be a broken record on *all* MRPs from here to 2028: They are IMHO pretty useless as guide to potential results because how voters behave will depend hugely on which parties are competitive in their area & what they think of those parties

11 days to go until Canada's election, and I'm struggling to think of a poll swing quite as extraordinary in such a short space of time. Corbyn/May 2017? Check out our full tracker here: www.economist.com/interactive/...

Great piece from our Lexington columnist, on how progressives need to start building things again and bring housing costs down. "Where one in three Americans moved in any given year at the end of the 19th century.... today the figure is closer to one in 12" www.economist.com/united-state...

Six months apart. 🇺🇸 @economist.com

It's insane how congestion pricing in NYC has been just about *the* most unambiguously successful new policy implemented in my lifetime and still all the dumbest people in government want to get rid of it

Joe Rogan: "Did he really say that? What?! Trump said that?" (54:40, yesterday's show) On being reminded of those February comments blaming Zelensky for starting the war and calling him a dictator, which dominated global news coverage for *days* www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah6k...

Check back in four years time

Ah Broadway, never change...

Nobel Prizes by country and year. The dominance of Germany is striking every time. Before 1933, that is. And the utter dominance of America (and the UK) after 1945.

Sarah Wynn-Williams should write a new chapter on Facebook's absurd efforts to shut her book down... "Careless People", a brilliant read, currently tops the NYT bestsellers list 👀

Said this many years ago and I will repeat: The subscription model was always a bait-and-switch and the end goal was to return to the movies as Thomas Edison envisioned: pay to play on a solo screen every single time

Good news from the British Election Study: there's no sign of the reported uptick in sexism among young British men Bad news: what's going on with middle aged men?

Fascinating new paper on the effects of personality traits on wages/labor market outcomes forthcoming in @jpolecon.bsky.social. Now I can confidently state that science/research dictates that women be less agreeable to raise their wages. Happy Women's History Month! #econsky

Nigel Farage's favourability among Reform UK voters has fallen sharply following his row with Rupert Lowe Among 2024 Reform UK voters Favourable: 73% (-13 from 4-5 Mar) Unfavourable: 23% (+11) Net: +50 (-24) yougov.co.uk/politics/art...

Britain has been quietly making significant progress in women's representation across business and politics. Data for all 29 OECD countries in our annual glass-ceiling index 👇 www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

Unless Mr Philp believes that naturalised British citizens should be called "people who are foreign", the correct stat is 17%. He has been misled by Professor Goodwin

Wow. One of the Post's longest-serving journos, having joined in 1984. 💥

Boris Johnson’s million-pound Daily Mail gig continues to be farcical. A recent column, confidently praising Trump’s Ukraine stance, was swiftly pulled after Trump and JD Vance launched a scathing attack on Zelensky. Full story online and in the latest issue: www.private-eye.co.uk/news

Reform UK's surge has been a huge development- for one thing because Badenoch has (so far) been dismal. But then you remember Farage's record as a party manager, and stories like this start popping up. Has everyone been getting ahead of themselves? 🤔 www.bbc.com/news/article...

It's a well-known fact that women earn less than men. But efforts to close the gender wage gap seem to have stalled recently. Across the OECD it's been stuck at 11% for the past four years; in some countries it's grown slightly. I asked why, for @economist.com www.economist.com/business/202...