This government is, at least, going to be a great case study for policy and business schools for decades in how your culture can lead you to just ignoring what every observable metric tells you that you have to do.

Read this. Please.

Think there's something particularly dispiriting about the Greek governments various moves against climate change initiatives because if your country routinely bursting into flames each summer doesn't drive it home, what will?

This is very good from @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk, and gets to the heart of the turmoil engulfing the Conservatives. open.substack.com/pub/joxleywr...

An Irishman went for a job interview on a building site. The foreman asked him "Do you know the difference between a joist and a girder?" The Irishman replied, "Goethe wrote Faust and Joyce wrote Ulysses."

Also find this debate/discussion interesting as having done about as much history as one can do in English schooling, the Empire basically never featured (tho I think the other class did the Decolonisation paper).

Bringing back the stocks is such an insane position I almost respect it.

Suspect this question is often a proxy for "Would you like to be young again?"

Rocking up to my next video interview with a balaclava on like I'm about to read a statement about the armed struggle.

So there’s a website called Deer Of St Nicholas which posts Christmas wish letters from Ukrainian children who had their childhood stolen by the war, anyone can pick a child and get them their present and it’s that time of the year again to achingly scroll it for hours again

🚨🚨NEW BLOGPOST🚨🚨 A few weeks back @strategyaaron.bsky.social asked me whether the return of the centre right is inevitable. I said that I think it depends on whether the rise of open/closed politics is temporary or permanent. I explore that idea further. open.substack.com/pub/joxleywr...

The amount of people I know and suspect to be in the top 5% of earners (and even higher if you control for age) who share "tax the rich" memes...

Weird for the guy from Friends to be lobbying for this.

NEW An instance of the royal prerogative Why an Act of Parliament was not needed to remove the title from the former Duke of York By me Substack: emptycity.substack.com/p/an-instanc... Personal blog: davidallengreen.com/2025/11/an-i...

Runner up: Millwall FC.

The haters said they couldn't do it. And they were right. Honestly, great call from the haters.

Two draws on the trot! We are so back.

Would watch a Trump-Infantino buddy comedy. They'd have to get hold of the world's biggest bribe

Lots of politics nerds would be amazed how little lots of politicians care about political knowledge.

I say this as someone who only just realised this, but I think those of us who spend large portions of our leisure time following/commenting/joking about politics underestimate the big ways that politicians are not more successful versions of ourselves but actually a very different type of person

Maybe the real thing you can learn from the immediate aftermath of election results is that they are (statistically) rare events with lots of confounding factors.

One of the smart bits of the Vote Leave campaign that many have missed - they targetted *streets* rather than *voters*, based on where they predicted to have more than 50% support, so even if they drove up Remain votes, they were beating them.

A popularity contest which usually attracts people who have never been popular and are filled with self-loathing.

My developing theory is that voters are broadly receptive to "Here's what I think will work and I'm doing it because I like you" more than focus grouped or polled policy.

every week trump admin pulls out some new freak and is like "Here's Charles Pepperoni hes in charge of the navy now" and then Charles Pepperoni is like "we use virgins' fingernails instead of dollars now"

This, in bronze:

Not sure who will win out in the New York mayoralty, but I'm hearing some *very* confident noises from Susan Hall's team.

I once diarised a hearing with various people, including the MD of the firm, at "Bow Cunty Court"

Dick Cheney won’t see your jokes, but your friends who orchestrated a destructive and illegal war based on lies and also shot a guy in the face will.

Something which has been evidently going to happen since the moment the pledge was made.

So a weird thing happened to me in Aldi that I cdn't quite place until I was listening to Gabby Bertin talking about choking in porn on the radio this am. (NB: this is 100% not a sex thing). Having the usual polite chitchat with the cashier who is tired from working extra shifts to make £ for xmas..

Oh this reminds me of a fascinating book I read as an undergrad about mad early Soviet sex discourse, where some did argue that masturbation was too individualistic to be permitted in the social utopia

I think it was @twlldun.bsky.social who did a good thread on this a while back - a permeation of violence through society that has largely disappeared.

Its genuinely fascinating how this applies to almost everything: the forces in the UK now lean left, as does (the player base at least) rugby union and the Church. The participants of the worlds most Tory things are now left because theyre A) young B) leave the house

Oh no it doesn't!

Just started saying "oh no" at the second para.

One thing I think we miss, because we live in such a safe and unviolent society, is how for some people violence is the point. Its fun. Its adrenaline. Its imposing yourself on someone. Everyrhing else is cover. And sometimes you dont need cover. Its why contact sports remain such a big thing

The problem lots of people have when thinking about tax (and I suffer from this often) is that we think about (existing) stock rather than (dynamic) flow. That is, we tend to think more about how changes impact people today rather than how they shift incentives in future.

Was looking for something, didn't find it BUT did rediscover one of my favourite souvenirs - from the Serbian National Bank, where they let you print your own face on a 1 dinar (£0.0075) note.

And when a sovereign Ukraine wants to join NATO? Or if Russian troops walk into your "non-militarised European security framework"?

Remember when Farage talks *about* work he is largely talking *to* people who have retired from it

Age restrictions on social media for over 50s.

News should hire someone to come on after frightening events to explain "regression to the mean".

My "I'm not planning nuclear explosions at this time" t-shirt is raising a lot of questions already answered by my t-shirt.

The other problem with this is the vast discrepancies between councils in terms of house prices, wealth, and council tax demands. Band H in Westminster is £2,034.36. Band H in Middlesbrough is £4,973.06.

Normalise seeing a news story and just saying "Oh how awful".

Fascinated to see the leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party respond to this.

A Sudanese mother holds her child moments before being executed by the Rapid Support Forces militia. What is happening in Sudan is not just a war… It is a humanitarian wound, a mother’s cry, a nation’s sorrow calling on the world not to remain silent.

For some Brexit can never fail, only be failed.