Is there any time, place, or context in which a government hanging enormous banners of the Leader’s face was not a sign of a diseased and authoritarian society? Because I certainly can’t think of one.

Here it is, my magnum opus: an analysis of what’s wrong with the UK’s approach to fiscal policy (under this and previous governments), and a proposal for what an alternative to pass-fail fiscal rules could look like. I’ll follow up with a longer thread later.

“Readers should be able to assume that every word between quotation marks is what the speaker or writer said… The writer should, of course, omit extraneous syllables like ‘um’ and may judiciously delete false starts.” -NYT ethical guidelines

No, I haven't. Though it's interesting that in an article that elbow drops from the top rope onto AOC for stumbling in giving an on-the-spot live answer on a massive stage, the author and New York Times managed to fumble a basic fact about a very prominant public figure.

According to multiple NYT sources, it wasn’t even military personnel at Fort Bliss that fired an anti-drone laser at alleged cartel drones. It was CBP who used the weapon on loan from DoD against a child’s party balloon they mistook for a drone. The Pentagon gave CBP an anti-aircraft weapon.

this may be the most English man ever to exist.

"Top bosses depart Canadian pension fund after Thames Water fiasco"

"a live and open question" HE IS PAID TO WRITE. PAID!

43 wasn't a remotely plausible number. It didn't pass the sniff test.

This is mad. They've all gone mad.

The nation craves chaos with Ed Miliband

Bezos burning the Washington post to the ground is as firm a reason for the continued bbc licence as ever there was. Eventually everything that can be owned by a billionaire will be owned by a billionaire and at that point its future will be determined by the whims of a man making 166k per minute.

We need all our cities to be a little more like Croydon. A local planning reform that allowed developers to replace suburban homes with small blocks of flats that looked like suburban homes led to an unprecedented building boom in Croydon (until it was cancelled):

Hear me out: can we have Gordon back

OK. Interesting, good. Now, with everything we have recently learnt about predatory men, can we all agree it's time to... BAN THE PERVERT GLASSES? how can the pervert glasses NOT be bad for women? Are we relying on awful men just behaving nicely? for reals? as.ft.com/r/0520caa7-4...

generationally good "if my grandmother had wheels she would have been a bike" comment there

Donald Trump threatens to sue Trevor Noah for telling jokes at the Grammy Awards. I'm sure the self-declared free speech absolutists will be rushing to Noah's defence at any moment.

Was it bsky.app/profile/show...

They're there to stop American athletes defecting

The BBC coverage is absolutely terrible. It leads on "sharply contested narratives" It has a dramatic skew to the US government It has posted the video but has failed to report on what it shows: it shows the US govt account is untrue

If this were happening in a Latin American country, ICE would simply be described as a death squad

Competent law enforcement officers can defuse situations involving potentially dangerous individuals. They are trained for this, and they understand it is their job. ICE seems to be the exact opposite: escalating situations to the point of killing peaceful individuals.

Treat the US government and ICE claims like you'd treat a Russian government claim after they've shot down an airliner or bombed a hospital. America 2026.

Quite glad that the big story in British politics is whether Andy Burnham will apply to stand in a by-election and not people being gunned down by state militias. Solidarity with Minnesotans resisting this barbarity.

Big piece on how the UK is not getting the data it needs and how this is affecting policymaking. A key issue seems to be that the shift from surveys to admin data has not worked well as govt departments have not allowed the ONS access to the data it needs on.ft.com/3WSCN6h

Repeat after me - the institutions of this economy depend on the institutions of this democracy, among which is the rule of law

I think part of the reason everyone is so blown away by this Carney speech is it's so long since we heard an actual grown-up articulate serious thoughts about the world. Empty vessels have been making a lot of noise

Very strong demand at this morning's gilt auction - bids worth 3.66 times the £4.75 billion on offer for a 4% gilt due in 2029. It ranks as the 9th strongest out of the 1,208 auctions held since 1998. DMO said to be ecstatic, someone has broken out a packet of Blue Ribands.

So far the "Board of Peace" is Trump, Orban, Lukaschenko and Netanyahu. Which if you wrote in a satire would be considered too outlandish and sent back.

Why would you say this? It's not true!

Mark Carney's speech really is terrific: full text is here and very much worth your time.

I think this is my core geopolitical belief.

It’s Penguin Awareness Day which seems like a great excuse to post the greatest ever Wikipedia edit.

Huge mistake by Mamdani to say clearly that a bad thing is bad. He should first triangulate the message and then remove every aspect that might offend Republicans. That's the savvy Dem consultant way.

Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.

We just visibly are not a country where either the public or the political class has clocked that every couple of months a member of the defence establishment goes 'there is a war going on and we are, at present, losing'.

SCOTUS opinions for the day start dropping in 10 mins

“If I were Prime Minister, Donald Trump would hopefully behave” is honestly world beating levels of delusion but EVEN THEN caveated by the fact that he probably wouldn’t

Why is Donald Trump changing his mind every five minutes and saying completely mad stuff an embarrassment for Keir Starmer? It feels like it should chiefly be seen as an embarrassment for the United States.

Deutsche Bank here with the good stuff. Game on.

1/ Something which I don't think gets articulated clearly often enough is that a system where countries generally respect international sovereignty and territorial integrity is not pure charity or morality by the United States, but in its direct interests. Despite it being the strongest bear.

Reminder that in the UK an incoming radical, populist government would have immediate access to immense, unchecked executive power. And the current government is doing nothing to protect us from that.

I am greatly encouraged that Lars Lokke Rasmussen - Denmark's foreign minister - looks like the sort of chap who could avert a schism in the international order.

The climax of the film features them having to break the undocumented migrant out of ICE detention when he gets grabbed.

Wild reporting from Bloomberg. Jeanine Pirro apparently freelanced the subpoenas and criminal investigation of Jerome Powell.

Maybe AI-powered advanced late capitalism will discover the same instinct for self-preservation that other iterations of late capitalism did. Philanthropy, progressive taxation, the welfare state. And maybe its strongest supporters are so drunk on self-esteem that it won't.

Looking particularly prescient this morning!