"Let me eat cake"

Yes. Ironically the MMT many on the left once supported tells us just this. We need taxes not to raise money but to control inflation. To do this, we need to cut spending rather than saving - which means taxes on the middlingly well-off.

Tax policy on the British left is pure "anti-bedtime left". Bizarre idea that you can have a big social democratic welfare state without everyone contributing properly www.economist.com/britain/2025...

This is a real test of how far gone SCOTUS really is. The legislative text is, imo, quite clear and is unaltered by its context. The tariffs have no legal basis

Isn't this a good sign? It gives Trump a way our in 2028? When the Republican candidate, whoever it is, loses he can say the reason was he wasn't on the ballot, and if he had been he'd have won easily. I doubt Trump cares abour the Republicans, or indeed anything very much than DJT.

Politics for adolescents.

Counterpoint: tax wealth *and* work. Or else explain the radical public service and welfare cuts you’ll make to fund so as not to tax work.

Please do not do retrospectives on how great "Wings" were. Crap then, crap now. McCartney is a clearly lovely and brilliant man, but what a waste of time.

🧵 Here’s why a left-wing Democrat winning in New York is proof that Keir Starmer needs to move further left to win in small red wall towns in Britain. (1/245)

“‘Affordable housing’ feels like it was introduced as a cheat to justify building no actual social housing, and to pretend the market would somehow just fix it all, even with agonisingly strict planning rules. Instead, we’ve just ended up with no market housing and no social housing.”

They shouldn't have been allowed to state the defence as it isn't within its definition. This is a problem with juries. Justice isn't being done according to law. They should all have been convicted. If we don't agree with that, we change the law through democratic process. /1

While it is significant that New York can elect a Mayor who is & so identifies as an immigrant leader, the tendency to conflate Zohran Mamdani & Sadiq Khan as Mayors who are Muslim in high profile national/global cities (by opponents but also fans + media) overlooks significant contrasts

I'm in North America. These election results are mildly interesting, but we've been here before. Structurally the Democrats have a problem because of the absence of any leader. The Republicans suffered from the same problem, which is how they were taken over by a populist insurgent. /1

Being a Brit on BlueSky means seeing 1000x more messaging about an election in New York than your local council. Might as well message Zohran about my bin collection.

God knows how many times this has happened: Zero. Much like Vance lying about Haitian immigrants eating people's pets, this is 100% racist bullshit being spewed by an unabashed white nationalist. Congrats to everyone who patronizes the Nazi bar he runs.

Great works of art are amazing when they catch you unawares. Put on the radio to eat dinner to. Beethoven's 9th. We've all heard it thousands of times. But, my God. A human being did that

World's Wrongest Man calls it correctly. People do indeed sometimes vote for stupid things, cheered on by morons.

Can’t even be a prince anymore, because of revoke

Do you know anybody still on "X"? Please tell them to delete their account. I am really not a harcore lefty, but this stuff is just not ok. /1

Possibly the best film ever made. It is almost an anthology piece, stealing from Hitchcock's earlier, less well known, British films. (Plagiarise from the best). Eve Marie Saint (101) is the best "Hitchcock blond." (Margaret Lockwood a better lead, but not blond). /1

I keep being told spending cuts are easy. Honest proposals such as those recently outlined by Policy Exchange show they are not My column www.ft.com/content/f086...

We're passed the question of whether Starmer will be a failure, and into why he has been a failure. Ignoring politics altogether, why is he so stiff and uncharismatic? Is it an indefinable quintessence, that (very unfortunately) Johnson and Farage have, and this worthy human rights lawyer lacks?

Growth. Be more serious about it. Be bolder. It isn't too late, but it is getting there. That means. 1. Tax reform 2. Either rejoin or get as close as you can to rejoining the SM and CU 3. reform (not abolish) planning But. /1

I can no longer reconstruct why I thought this was something I must read in order to complete the project I am doing. Note to future self: your life is of finite span. You can't spend 20 years writing a book.

1980: NHS spending as a % of GDP: 5.1% Defence spending as a % of GDP: 5% 2024: NHS spending as a % of GDP: 10.9% Defence spending as a % of GDP: 2.2% This is such a common applause line, but it’s also total bullshit.

Yeah. Outrageous. MPs and their staff should sit on the floor or old boxes. Or just stand. What’s wrong with standing?

Rewatching Michael Mann's Heat, a movie I do not like, because my partner hasn't seen it. Pacino's cop is completely incompetent. His actions lead to the deaths of many police and several innocent bystanders. I hope he was disciplined and dismissed from the force.

I've spent a lot of my life listening to others, whilst staring at this ceiling. (It is Elizabethan. The room is about 150 years older).

Nah. She knows that isn't true. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

I've spent a lot of my life listening to others, whilst staring at this ceiling. (It is Elizabethan. The room is about 150 years older).

I think Trump has been told there is a risk he'll lose. My reading of the relevant enactments, fwiiw, is that the tariffs are clearly outside the powers of POTUS. An interesting test case of how far gone SCOTUS is.

Sales is 63 and has already been on the court for nearly seven years. He'll be the next leader of the court. His extra-judicial writing is always good (unlike some members of the court who produce bland stuff), showing a serious mind. supremecourt.uk/news/lord-sa...

Tonight's Old Movie. The Adventures of Tartu, Robert Donat. Really excellent I thought. Donat is brilliant. Real shots of the blitz, dramatic bomb disposal scene, great espionage intrigue, and a wonderful finale in a futuristic secret works. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl9P...

Encouraging. Seems many Conservatives don’t actually want to be the BNP plus plus Idi Amin tribute party. Maybe because such a toxic stance is deeply unpopular. Maybe because it is deeply wrong and cuts against core British values.

Gilts on track for their best week since April and yields now below where they started 2025. Global risk-off move, a little bit more priced for BoE rate cuts, and "right noises" on headroom all helping, say investors Thank you for playing... www.ft.com/content/3295...

O Canada. /1

This is very grim from Flint Global. Tim is campaigning for a racist, authoritarian party. A decent firm would give him and anyone like him a wide berth.

I was once at a dinner where Lord Bingham was the keynote speaker. I'm questions he was asked if he was a liberal judge. "Well, I wouldn't want to be an illiberal one."

Football seems to have gone back to 1994, Graham Taylor, and playing the percentages. Arsenal now are so similar to the same team in the early 90s. The players are fitter, faster, and more technically accomplished, but we've gone back to putting it in the mixer low and hard.

Stop scrolling and post two characters who bring you happiness.

Added in 1942. Can you imagine how long permission would take in the UK to make changes like this to what would be a Grade I listed builded. ["Never? Is never good for you?')

[I find it discombobulating that I thought I was a form of Centrist Dad, and I am to the right of much of bluesky (markets work FFS), but I am quite far to the left of a Labour goverment.]

Given Lam's appalling comments, the UK government needs to make it free for those with permanent leave to remain to obtain British citizenship, to promote people making the change, and to make it quicker. They need to do that to remove understandable anxiety.

Who robbed the Louvre? Right answers only.

Chancellor Merz: "This war could be ended within 24 hours if Ukraine stopped fighting and handed the country over to Russia. But then we can be quite certain that the next country would be attacked by Russia tomorrow."

The problem with AI is not, as suggested, that it cannot mimic human emotion. The problem is that it is not human.

I’m worried by the fact that, from the report, the MR appears to see no inherent value in a decision being made by a human, who has had to sit and hear the evidence and arguments, and articulate their reasons in public. www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/debate-...

The end of endnote misery? Am reading an excellent book (Margaret Radin on Boilerplate) which is maddening because of its use of endnotes. But now, through the miracle of technology, I can open two version of the book, on different screens, have the endnotes in front of me whilst reading.

NEW: Britain’s top libel firm, Carter-Ruck, acted for OneCoin - a $4bn crypto-fraud. The firm threatened whistleblowers, journalists, regulators, and even the police. Carter-Ruck's work helped the fraud continue as long as it did. Was that a crime?