before Metropolis (1927) there was ✨“Metro-land”✨ (1910) I think we need to fundamentally rethink our megacities, but that requires thinking about our history, economics, infrastructure, colonial power, cultural pressures — while still retaining some creative imagination and hope for the future 😭

A 1930s horror of urban sprawl shouldn’t be dictating Britain’s housing policy in the 2020s www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

He used his positions to enrich himself. Is that bad now?

The free speech people really don’t like the wrong kind of free speech

Top comment on the FT story

Polesdon Lacey is overflowing with people who simply cannot believe it is closed on a normal winter’s day @nationaltrust.org.uk Nothing on the web site when we set off 1.5 hours ago. I’ve spoken to other people who have traveled similar distances. We are all flabbergasted

Utterly pathetic, @nationaltrust.org.uk

It's New Year, so time to look back and forward. These are 10 things I think we need to recognise in 2026. It’s a response to what I think are profoundly damaging mistaken assumptions I’ve heard and read from practitioners, journalists, and analysts in 2025. Warning: very long🧵

Very much all of this. The many Brits bashing the capital are very useful idiots for overseas efforts to undermine the country imho. As I've said before, it's time to push back at the nonsense

RIP Isiah Whitlock. Another cast member lost from the greatest TV series of all time www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/d...

Brilliant forensic tracing of the shadow Chinese fleet used to evade sanctions on Russia’s LNG www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

The Guardian's Amy Hawkins writes about Kiwi Chow's predicament: he continues to live in Hong Kong while being openly critical of the government. His films can't be shown there. One of a number of HK filmmakers who haven't left but who can't work in the HKSAR. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

Martin Thorley's "All That Glistens" is a salutary tale on what happens when an open and money-driven political culture comes into contact with a highly disciplined, strategically minded and secretive one-party system www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Good interview in the paper, this. I think Sadiq is right: London 'needs' to be less successful than it is for a bunch of political arguments here in the UK to work, hence the fictions being invented about it:

The decade of renewal has not started well. When the policies of left and right prove equally impotent, we should look more closely at the machinery. Loss of state capacity is Britain’s biggest challenge www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

America, land of the free, where they ban books, just like China does and the Nazis did. “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” www.bloomberg.com/opinion/feat...

The tactics bear a striking resemblance to those of private parking management companies ie proceeding straight to threats and intimidation with no good faith process for challenging claims www.theguardian.com/money/2025/d...

“Your words will disappear. Your house will disappear. Your name will disappear. All memory of you will disappear.” Sansa Stark’s last words to Ramsay Bolton come back to me for some reason

Best China Books of 2025 @chinabooksreview.com: great list with @emilyzfeng.bsky.social Dan Wang @evadou.bsky.social @patrickmcgee.bsky.social Barbara Demick and others. I just ordered the book by Minxin Pei. Huge thanks to @vicshih.bsky.social for including me chinabooksreview.com/2025/12/18/b...

Beyond belief He Recorded China’s Detention of Uyghurs. The U.S. Wants to Deport Him to Uganda. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/15/u...

“Truth, though powerless and always defeated in a head-on clash with the powers that be, possesses a strength of its own: whatever those in power may contrive, they are unable to discover or invent a viable substitute for it.” - Hannah Arendt www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

What an incredibly brave man

This is the weirdest photo I’ve seen in quite some while

X est un réseau néo-nazi organisé et orienté pour promouvoir des contenus néonazi. En restant actif là-bas, vous ne luttez pas (et surtout pas à armes égales) mais vous contribuez à le légitimer en lui donnant un vernis de pluralisme. C'est comme écrire pour le courrier des lecteurs de Rivarol.

Great column on dentists from Sarah O’Connor at the FT How can you be a “net contributor” when a shambolic bureaucracy prevents you from becoming one? www.ft.com/content/f4e5...

How can you become a “net contributor” when a shambolic bureaucracy prevents you from doing so? www.ft.com/content/f4e5... Why Britain doesn’t have enough dentists

British universities’ reliance on Chinese fees fuelling self-censorship, say academics www.ft.com/content/a123...

This is so disgusting.

“They can announce to the world that the people still believe in the system, believe in the government and believe in the pro-establishment party,” said Mr. Yam, who now lives in Britain. The problem is that the people very obviously don’t www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/w...

Why bother to participate in this #XiJinping #JohnLee political sham? It is by no stretch an election.

“We are the largest single market — do they want us to close it?” - European diplomat No, Beijing thinks it can make the EU eat it. It’s up to the EU to prove them wrong. Get serious about protectionism or accept accelerated deindustrialisation. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

“just because it’s stupid doesn’t mean it won’t inherit the Earth.”

They have learned nothing. They will squeeze and squeeze and squeeze until they get another reaction, all the while blaming pernicious foreign intervention for the situation they themselves have created hongkongfp.com/2025/12/05/h...

My dad abhors any negative comments about immigrants. Asked him recently why he’s so strong on it: ‘Because we’re always happy to take the rich and clever ones. Which means it’s not about disliking immigrants. It’s about disliking the poor and vulnerable. And that’s a bad human instinct.’

Hong Kong’s “improved” patriots-only democracy at work. Mass apathy and resignation

The Four Seasons Total Landscaping Peace Prize.

Love every word of this www.ft.com/content/ccbe... Maga’s strange rage against Europe

"In his final drive for power Hitler had considerable financial backing from a fairly large chunk of the German business world...What good [that] eventually did these politically childish men of the business world will be seen later in this narrative." -The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 242

More property taxes are coming. Fair enough. Britain’s Mansion Tax Won’t Rest at £2m says @mbrooker.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Surreal, obscene, shameless Fifa to award ‘peace prize’ after Donald Trump pipped to Nobel www.ft.com/content/7781...

Fact-checking is bad. Everyone has the right to choose their own facts 🙄

This is going to be a cliffhanger like the China super embassy in London. Which way will it go?

Longest-running West End farce since No Sex Please, We're British news.sky.com/story/govern...

Great culture can save lives. Literally. Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard

Here is the news. Everything is now great. Sorry for not telling you

This always works. Blocking price transparency famously lowers the risk premium and gives people confidence to buy www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Go against public opinion? After a year of unrest, Hong Kong people gave their verdict on the protests in the 2019 district council elections. The result was a landslide defeat for the government. Afterwards, China abolished democracy so it could never happen again.

1. Hong Kong is still a colony, with an alien system of government imposed by force against the will of the majority. 2. Everything else follows from 1.

The action of a government that knows it is illegitimate and hated by the people

The arrests in Hong Kong right now are déjà vu for mainlanders like me who were active in civil society in the 2000s: citizens demanding investigations and accountability after public disasters are met not with answers, but arrests and intimidation. #mainlandization #香港加速内地化