"I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of piss."

As I've said before the lack of focus on A&E in govt plans is bewildering even just from a political perspective. For many people it's their most viseral and memorable interaction with the state.

The US approach to geopolitics mirrors the libertarian oligarch's approach to government and regulation: those who benefit most from the current system want to tear it down because they believe it's holding them back from even greater wealth that their intrinsic superiority would otherwise deliver.

Possible my memory is failing me, but I feel like it's a while since I saw one of these charts shaped like this, because it's a while since we meaningfully increased benefits - which is the only way to support the lowest income groups, who pay very little in tax, so don't benefit from tax cuts.

This SUNDAY - COLCHESTER!! A solo show for @samaritans.bsky.social Tickets here www.redlionbooks.co.uk/product/poet... Tell your friends

For 90% of people there is no good reason these days to own a high value phone when a second hand one from several years ago can do everything you need it to and more. The added bonus appears to be that would-be muggers won't want to take it from you.

[the sound of a million people searching for HotDogGuy.jpg]

New post just out: "On the edge" On my unexpected week in hospital and five things I learnt about the state of the NHS. (Free to read) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/o...

It's almost like... this is the point of a narrow tax base and heavily means-tested benefits.

It's been a rough two decades for non-pensioner real income growth after housing costs, especially for the poorest households. www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications...

You do, but most analysis suggests this is massively outweighed by cost increases from technology. Some helpful discussion from @policysketch.bsky.social here policysketchbook.wordpress.com/2018/01/06/p...

The obvious conclusion from this article is "don't use age verification yet unless you absolutely have to". It's in its chaotic infancy and will probably be much safer at some point in the future. www.pcgamer.com/hardware/the...

Dazed and confused? Policy ideas behind the NHS 10 year plan www.health.org.uk/reports-and-...

Policy exchange, backed by Sajid Javid, think we need to switch the NHS funding model to social insurance, and introduce new charges for NHS services, like to see a GP policyexchange.org.uk/publication/... These are not new ideas, but they are bad ideas A thread with some evidence

Have to wonder how much of an issue is that we hold the chief accountant responsible for economic growth. Accountancy and growth are really not the same thing!

The fact that Bluesky is, as far as most people will care, a functionally identical app to Twitter, but even a Nazi chatbot doesn't shift user numbers across, is a pretty strong demonstration of the power of network effects in generating social media monopolies.

The "welfare spending out of control" narrative is nonsense. But this chart tells us almost nothing. Not comparing like-with-like ("social protection" ≠ DWP welfare spend). And most of the difference driven by fact UK has (private) occupational pensions, other countries have state schemes

Didn't promote my latest properly, so, yeah - NEW BLOGPOST Basically, Britain is bad at management, it's fucking our economy, and politicians and journalists don't address it because they are the worst exemplars of it. www.joxleywrites.jmoxley.co.uk/p/britain-ca...

The OBR enhances the power of the chancellor by giving them more tools to push their preferences onto other departments, rather than undermining elected politicians. Truss and Kwarteng were simply bad at this game.

I think my view on this is that we should absolutely recognise that people struggle to assimilate the information they get from various sources and do indeed end up with skewed opinions as a result. But we should also be very sceptical of our own abilities to avoid these pitfalls.

A great example of using (very) small area geographies to generate headline-grabbing statistics. Bradford Central is a mid-level super output area, one of 63 in the Bradford local authority area. It accounts for 1.2% of the population. 81% of Bradford residents were born in the UK (Census 2021).

I do not want to vote for a party led by a former hypnotist (breast-related or otherwise) but also we elected the sensible guy with the impeccable CV and now he has gone hard right on immigration rhetoric so where do we go now?

a society where "bad immigrants" are demonised is a society where no immigrant can truly feel welcome, because aren't we all just one wrong turn or accident away from being unemployed? on disability benefits? unable to care for our children without state help? just no such thing as a safe immigrant

For those who voted Labour in 2024 immigration (5%) was behind The Economy (49%), Health (19%), Environment (8%) and Inequality (7%) in their most important issues. /3

An excellent summary of why Labour is doomed and will simply open the door to Farage and his outriders. As Wilson famously remarked, the Labour Party is a moral crusade, or it is nothing. Looks like they've made their choice

It follows that Labour are governing on behalf of the 20% of voters who want immigration from pretty much all professional groups reduced, and to hell with the other 80% of us.

We are stuck in a loop of politicians promising us whatever we want, with no trade-offs, because everyone is scared that if they admit to the downsides, someone else will "outflank" them by promising all the good stuff with no drawbacks.

Another thing about this - often ignored - is that not just are Labour already losing a higher % of voters to LD/Grn than to Ref, but a much higher % of the potential Reform defectors have defected than potential LD/Grn defectors. Future pain is not going to come from Reform.

Streeting banging on about deportations here is clearly part of a very clever Labour strategy to tackle Reform. If voters are choosing a Reform then they must have Real Concerns about the things that Reform focus on, so to head off the threat you need to show that you also care about these things.

another example of unseriousness. everyone who has looked at this question for more than a minute realizes that the only way to stop boats in the channel is to process asylum applications in France. but everyone also knows that the "stop the boats" idiots would immediately pivot ...

tbh we have the Dilnot Report here, which is a classic example of "consensus, meaning that something both sides know they have to do but can't resist viciously attacking the other whenever they try to do it"

Sarah Neville in the FT on lunch with Amanda Pritchard: "The NHS contributes between 10 and 20 per cent to people’s health, she says — a figure I find startlingly low" This widely quoted figure is startlingly low because it's probably wrong.🧵 www.ft.com/content/5cf4...

The NHS leadership needs to use reliable metrics for improvement programmes. Propaganda will blur the ability to tell failure from success: www.hsj.co.uk/daily-insigh...

Combine the two roles as part of an efficiency drive to slash the cost of senior management.

Lots of differences but the similarity with Truss is that a lot of the market response is less about the specific event and more the realisation that these people really are total clowns and there's no clever plan behind the public statements of blathering ignorance.

Sure, NHSE is a failed organisation who repeatedly made bad decisions. It deserves to go. But don't thrown the baby out with the bathwater by cutting management across the system. Or by sending a general message reinforcing that mistake.

Huge success for the UK in getting a lower tariff rate by [checks notes] not making much stuff that anyone in the US wants to buy.

Excellent succinct 🧵 and article from Andrew.

Reminded on @peterdonaghy.bsky.social's excellent chart of the price of beer over time.

Hearing rumours that this is actually because the Trump team were down the Rose and Crown for the pub quiz on Saturday and came second to a team called Norfolk and Chance.

The really dumb thing about charts like this showing that the share of tax paid by the top 1% has more than doubled since 1980 is that the share of income going to the top 1% has also more than doubled since 1980 so there is in fact nothing to see here.

Fascinating graph that I’ve never seen before - govt spending vs tax for age groups from the FT

another opportunity for economists and good government types to explain that this is much better than the bad old days, when Britain was cursed with overinvestment and goldplated public services because Chancellors were allowed to make their own inaccurate forecasts.

This is really good: "Large Models should not be viewed primarily as intelligent agents, but as a new kind of cultural and social technology, allowing humans to take advantage of information other humans have accumulated."

CHART OF THE WEEK: Where would plans to scrap #NHSE and cut ICB staff leave levels of central and support staffing capacity compared to historic levels? 📊 @billypalmer.bsky.social explores: buff.ly/GdaBpke