The same with libertarians cracking down on speech they dislike. When push comes to shove, both conservatives and libertarians believe in one rule for us...

The reluctance among media outlets to specify that these pogroms are the work of far-right loyalist thugs is particularly weird, given that they sign their work! The LVF spray tags on the houses of the people they burn out, whether Catholics, migrants or refugees. They've done this for decades!

Per most recent figures, net migration to NI *over the past 22 years* has been ~62,000 people. Only 3% of Northern Ireland’s population currently belong to an ethnic minority. Pogroms in Belfast (as with Ballymena last year) are just gutter-level "One Is One Too Many" racism, and nothing else.

DEFRA values a company that couldn't be sold last year for £4bn at £21bn? Ersatz maths used to camouflage market fundamentalist reasoning?

...and do they appreciate their part in creating the conditions for one.

One of the earliest designs for a bridge across the Avon Gorge was submitted by William Bridges in 1793. This extraordinary proposal, which would’ve featured around 40 homes, a pub, gallery and chapel was intended to pay for itself via rents and tolls to cross the gorge.

Yup, despite all this being downstream of the hostile environment, it's those who merely question bond market/fiscal rule orthodoxy who are the reckless, naive, crazy ones?

Is the environment hostile enough yet, or should Labour keep going if it's 'popular' with certain voters? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

The whole point of "hostile environment" is to create an environment that is unsafe for difference - migrants, refugees, trans people, POC, anyone identified as vaguely "progressive". Then the state can step in to allegedly 'mediate' and 'appease' "both sides". How is this not obvious?

I grew up in Northern Ireland during the conflict. I was nearly murdered once and hospitalised twice. I covered the Troubles as a reporter. Be in no doubt: this is frightening & real. Violence in Northern Ireland is of a type that folk in England, Scotland and Wales don’t understand. This scares me.

Has the PGMOL said anything?

OH MY GOD HE LITERALLY GRABBED HER HAIR IT WASN'T JUST "ASKING FOR A KISS" GO FUCK YOURSELVES, BBC NEWS www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The Cure's Robert Smith perfectly sums up the difference between Americans and Brits.

“Art is not made to decorate rooms. It is an offensive weapon in the defense against the enemy.” — Pablo Picasso, Les lettres françaises (1943-03-24)

'Tis all vibes (waves hands airily) www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

Top notch.

The Common Good Economy: A New Compass is out today! It draws together a decade of work and asks a different question: not just what the state can do, or how missions can be governed, but what principles have to be in place for any of that to deliver genuine transformation for people and planet.

Davey's here all week folks! 👏

And there it is, PFIs + de-risking that saddle future generations with excess debt. 'Under RAB, a private consortium finances and operates a piece of infrastructure.... and recovers its investment through a regulated revenue stream.' So like Thames Water then? 👌 www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

I guess resurrecting PFIs was always the logical endgame of balancing budgets. But I can't help imagining Brenda from Bristol.

'Febrile', anUzZza DriNk yAll, hic!

'Eh so I did da thing, so whut?! I was set up by Dat dirty louse Fat Vlad!' Next week, 'Eh, so it wasn't Fat Vlad, so whut?!'

Sunak to homeless man "Is that (finance) something you'd like to get into?" Whilst they want an educated productive army of drones, they don't want an informed citizenry rocking the boat. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

''No personnel were harmed in the incident, the company said on social media, calling the explosion an ‘anomaly’''😆 www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

Virginia Schau: the first woman & first woman amateur photographer to win the Pulitzer Prize for #Photography. On a fishing trip in 1953, she saw a semi-truck cab dangling over the edge of a bridge. "Rescue on Pit River Bridge" won the 1954 Pulitzer. She died #OTD in 1989. #photography

#ResistanceRoots Dashiell Hammett was born on this day in 1894 in St. Mary’s County, Md. He pioneered hard-boiled detective fiction by drawing from his real-life experiences as a detective for the Pinkerton Agency. Those same experiences ultimately drove his radical, left-wing politics. /1

Has his logic changed? If 'the end of boom and bust' means goodies to dispense (three budget surpluses without trying), then 'inefficient' government can afford displays of largesse. With the outlook bad and piggybank empty, a neolib giving 9 market-led solutions (+ one on immigration) is logical.

Good stuff! But as Sandel emphasises, we shouldn't conflate the expertise of pilots and surgeons with (political and economic) technocratic expertise that paint matters of opinion as neutral science. Unlike what Blair suggests, we can't neoliberal ourselves out of this mess.

Can confirm a combination of the banal and the sociopathic. Thought he was going to write 'Rosebud' and it would just end. institute.global/insights/pol...

Here are Blair's principles and if you don't like them he has others.

If a simple concept can be explained in plain English, can we avoid obscure classical references such as Thucydides Trap?

JUST DROPPED: Europe thought it won the energy war. Build LNG terminals, swap Russian pipelines for LNG, job done. Then Hormuz closed & prices doubled. We didn't end our dependency. We just changed who we are dependent on. But bright spots on horizon. open.substack.com/pub/janrosen...

oh look, the derisking state is getting a long @FT read: what it calls 'industrial policy' is really 'carrots for capital policy'. there is not one word on sticks, or capital discipline in this piece. its title should be 'How European capitalists taught Brussels carrots is the way'

"I want this strong institutional relationship with the European Union, but then I know the deal we had until 2016 is not available now; we’re not going to be able to get that deal again.” Whilst Brexit was a huge error, the price of re-entry may be too high. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

@mayor.nyc.gov: “I have thought often of the "Margeret Thatcher quote: ‘the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.’ If anything, my friends, it seems that you eventually need a socialist to clean up the mess."

“...the proliferation of defects is going to get worse and worse – which will mean there’s even less money for doing proper road maintenance that actually fixes the underlying asset." The false economy of not investing in public assets. The story of our times. www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

Reports of fuel riots in Kenya and official warnings in India to prepare for an economic crisis equivalent to Covid reconfirms what we already knew: the damage of war descends preexisting hierarchies, inconvenience in the North is disaster in the South.

"Taking macroeconomic advice from bond market traders is like taking advice on how to deal with pandemics from undertakers".

@mrjamesob.bsky.social is very well read. I wonder has he seen this new title?

MPs shouldn't be voting drunk. MPs shouldn't have their at-work booze subsidised. What the fuck is this discourse? Briefcase weirdos shouting down Hannah Spencer definitely wouldn't be doing so if, say, Farage and Tice showed up hammered to vote. Stupid country.

damn. how do you look at these charts and think "we just didn't mindless centrism hard enough"

In the kingdom of the policy blind, the man with one good idea is king.

"You see, Andy, the ruling class controls the means of production. That gives them power over the state, no matter what you or I think. The government depends on business confidence, signalled via the bond market. At the end of the day, Makerfield—it just doesn't matter. Read a book."

I think the pencil and paper got there first. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Its the same people who advocate freedom of speech whilst cracking down on DEI etc.

BREAKING: The fight over the prices of essentials is out in the open. What you pay for the things you can’t do without is a political question. Affordability in this crisis means facing up to corporations. The supermarkets aren’t thrilled with the cap, even though it’s voluntary.

He's managerial. Starmer avoids addressing issues not in his in-tray and moves in-tray items to the out-tray as fast as possible (which invariably involves sticking plaster solutions). If all else fails, blame 'others'.

If the economy is a study of human nature and....