A thirty-minute stroll in New York is one of life's great pleasures www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Dickie Bird obituary

For the European economy, the unfortunate reality is that it is trapped between the hammer of China's export-led growth and the anvil of US tariffs. Trade deals with new partners can help, but domestic demand and internal reforms matter far more.

Forgive the all caps but we have a FULLY FUNDED PHD SCHOLARSHIP at UWE Bristol Research in Economics for a project under the banner of “Just transition to net zero.” Deadline is 12 October. Please share with interested candidates and free to drop us a line. www.uwe.ac.uk/research/pos...

Sad news. www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricke...

Result would be:

Not so long ago the Conservative Party would have seized upon the notion of deporting Ukrainians and Hong Kongers and extracted a heavy political price for it. Instead the position yesterday from CCHQ was that Farage is "once again copying Conservative ideas."

Fascinating discussion below on why this madness hasn't been dealt with

Cricket. PG Wodehouse. Gun dogs

UK medicine regulator confirms there is no evidence paracetamol causes autism in children www.gov.uk/government/n...

This is a good policy. Tax wonks are pretty united on national insurance being a bad tax, because it means labour income is taxed more than other forms, and adds to complexity

I reviewed Steven Pinker's new book on common knowledge. Tl;dr: "A book can be bad without its thesis being untrue".

I see the CPS is desperately trying to repair the damage. The claim that their clear errors were down to "changes in definitions" is a lie. Journalists should treat any new estimates with appropriate scepticism. archive.ph/JSo7O#select...

The BBC covers politics the way it does because they're fighting for attention with other news sources. The Lib Dems are a bit boring compared to the Farage show. So dial back the dudgeon, Mason

Sounds like an economist's rebranding -- see also Econometrics as dressed up Statistics

Sadiq Khan condemns Nigel Farage's threat to deport hundreds of thousands of Londoners with settled status. “They have legal rights and are our friends, neighbours and colleagues, contributing hugely to our city. “Threatening to deport people living and working here legally is unacceptable.”

"cheap foreign labour" is just the ugliest, nastiest phrase.

This episode rather demonstrates the damage you can do by getting it wrong in the first place. Later corrections never make the same splash as the initial 'mistake'.

Any journalist quoting this absurd, invented £234 billion number cited by Farage/Reform should make absolutely clear that it has been withdrawn by *its own authors* (the Centre for Policy Studies) after they admitted it contained several major errors (1/3)

This is outrageous. All people with an ounce of empathy in them must oppose it. Families will be torn apart, people will be plunged into poverty, and the state will be in chaos.

AI is taking mediums' jobs

Perhaps similarly, I think this is why a lot of political comedy falls flat because to properly lampoon something you have to both understand it and have a bit of affection for it.

In which, remarkably, while talking about the fiscal bind, and even after Jeremy Hunt goes on about acting in the interests of the country, no one brings up the TWO NI cuts carried out largely if not solely for narrow party political ends. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/h...

If you want to be on X, go ahead, no one's stopping you. Free country. You can read The Mail or watch rage-inducing videos on YouTube. Do what you like.

“Queuing in pubs combines the worst elements of communism – yes, the very worst elements – without any of the good stuff, like free housing or hastily built nuclear power stations.”

It's not just ageing. It's all the benefits and costs that come with also not banning migration across regions or towns or streets. Also the same doom loop is operating on the misdiagnosis of our problems as caused by openness to trade.

Journalist from The Sun complaining about inaccurate reporting

So Trump tells Europeans to increase their defence budgets & buy more US kit, & the Pentagon tells them they can’t have it. Maybe it’s time for Europe to stop thinking it can rely on the US, & start investing in a rapid build-up of domestic arms production, even if it’s slightly lower quality.

@jonathanfreedland.bsky.social is bang on here. It has to be a broad effort www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Also, IIRC successful entrepreneurs are typically *in their 40s* because they need experience, it takes time to spot opportunities etc. You need to work some jobs before you strike out on your own!

This is bad advice on an individual level: most entrepreneurs fail, and it's better to get a good job in an existing business. On a social level, entrepreneurship matters, but it's determined by access to finance, things other entrepreneurs do, market size, not 'drive'.

Tell me I'm not an eeyore, @sentimentbot.bsky.social

The nuclear 'debate' falls away when you accept that it is both necessary, complementary to renewables, not substituting for them, and unlikely to be cheap.

Britain to pay Palantir £750m in defence contract as Trump visits www.thetimes.com/uk/defence/a...

It is extraordinary how utterly ignorant of modern technology they are Yesterday Octopus had an hour of free electricity. So I got paid to discharge my batteries in advance, then filled them for free. I charged my car, heated the water and put the washing & dishwasher on - all for no cost

It's quite important that journalists learn about time of use tariffs when writing about energy policy. This is a good example of how easy it is to mislead your readers www.thetimes.com/life-style/p...

Yet economic planners have bounded knowledge. An individual applicant to a low-ranking university may or may not earn more by going. And since the returns for women are positive across almost all institutions, restricting places would hurt them disproportionately.

GB News asked me on to discuss the views of Arthur Laffer. We ended up discussing the role of GB News in spreading misinformation and inciting anti-immigrant sentiment. youtu.be/44kozl7GZp0?...

If you want to help with anti-racism campaigning, you can sign up/donate to Hope Not Hate here hopenothate.org.uk

On freedom of speech - the reason the police were attacked was they were trying to stop the fascists physically attacking the counter-protesters. Freedom of speech wasn't 'alive and well', it was hanging by a thread.

Rebecca Solnit on Jeffrey Epstein's birthday album as a "late relic" of 1970s culture www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

It's not like writing an op-ed for a minister in The Sun - it's a platform run by someone who wants to over-ride parliamentary democracy.

Happy 4th anniversary to the time this happened on Twitter.

Calling all students: You could have access to a free FT subscription without even knowing it. Check here: www.ft.com/schoolsarefree

I finally wrote about being continually mistaken for David Baddiel maxnathan.medium.com/baddieled-2b...

America is so behind

Nutpicking.

Is there internet jargon for portraying an extreme view as widely held among your political opponents? Fringenorming? In-fringing?

Is it moral to pay ~0.2% of your income for 25 years, in order to help save yourself and other humans from far greater costs, including death? 🤔 www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...