The biggest puzzle in the UK economy is why non pension savings are so high For decades no one could get Brits to save. Now they won’t stop. That this has happened without a recession shows UK economy under last and this govt is not the basket case I read about

Premier League open play expected goals are down 35% from what has been created in the three previous seasons

We all know where the next blowup will come from. One/all of: -people realise US = EM -AI music stops -Some huge fuck-up in private markets It's just, like, when

The amount of press Reform is getting atm is mad given this. But it also makes sense as it’s causing a reaction which is what the media wants (engagement in their platform) rather than accurate reporting

This is beautiful writing

After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.

LiveAI demo fails on the first prompt at Meta Connect 2025. #Meta #AI #LiveAI

Just to confirm my suspicions that people’s perception of the national position (via social/media) is very different from their local perceptions, these graphs from @moreincommonuk.bsky.social via @samfr.bsky.social’s sane and vital Substack, illustrate the difference

Shot, chaser Young men more likely to vote Green than Reform. Young men second most progressive group of any demographic. Combined right-wing vote barely bigger than Green vote alone for young men

New post: Key myths on asylum, immigration and how to take on the far right mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/09/key-... Few issues are so contaminated by disinformation as immigration/asylum. While some have motives to push these myths, the government has its own myths that stop it explaining facts.

We're recreating the US media environment and nobody cares

As Russia's refining sector is reduced to ash I think defence planners have some interesting question to ask about the security implications of running on fossil fuels for transport. Hitting a nuclear plant is high stakes / escalatory, solar and wind too diffuse but refineries? Game on. #EnergySky

Why didn't you just try to win, Arne?

You can't what?

Whatever the opposite of “down bad” is, that’s what Arsenal fans are for Martinelli right now. So here’s raw output per touch for the past two league seasons as a reminder

Labour needs to come for the far right in the UK with arguments and the law. It needs to fight the far right and name them as the racists, grifters and fossil fuel funded spivs they are, instead of pandering to them. Labour needs to remember what it’s for. It needs to stop being pathetically weak.

The difference in the comments to this post on X and Bsky might be one of the prime examples of the problem with social media (i.e. X) and how it's shaping society

The employment rate of non-EU born migrants exceeded that of the UK-born for the first time on record. Confirms other evidence that recent migrants (even if they did not arrive on work visas) are very likely to be working/have high employment rates.

Real bad. The person reviewing the ONS basically concludes it’s broken on.ft.com/4olbXQa

I had access to GPT-5. I think it is a very big deal as it is very smart & just does stuff for you This is “make a procedural brutalist building creator where i can drag and edit buildings in cool ways" & "make it better" a bunch. I touched no code Full post: www.oneusefulthing.org/p/gpt-5-it-j...

Beautiful part of this is the one piece of consensus for “what could this government do to at least appear like it’s delivering in the electoral timeframe it has” is increase local government spending to improve high salience basic services. And the solution is, umm, to make it a postcode lottery.

Wanna see a crazy chart? Of course you do. Spending on constructing datacenters and manufacturing facilities for computers & electronic products in the US now exceeds the entire retail and wholesale industry and almost as much as the rest of the office and manufacturing sectors combined.

This is a key table to understanding public opinion on migration. *When confronted with the real trade offs* people go for protecting the NHS and the economy over reducing migration. The problem as per the rest of the thread is many don't believe those trade offs exist.

So, I think this piece is helpful in explaining why the inter-generational resource distribution discussion tends to involve people talking past each other. But gonna spend a second on the housing question open.substack.com/pub/martinro...

A fascinating read as always

This is an interesting analysis, less sever and doomerish than many analysis written these days: warwickpowell.substack.com/p/the-great-...

Believe it or not, the EU-US trade deal just got messier. The White House has published a fact-sheet about the agreement with claims that directly contradict the European Commission's version of events. Let's take a closer look.

UK is not close to societal collapse, nor anywhere near boiling point. It’s more that a load of commentators have pickled their brains from being submerged in the brine of their social media bubbles.

The sad thing about tech bros is that they largely lost their popular support by diluting their brands for $ chasing and, instead of trying to improve the product, they tacked towards an audience that was comfortable with the deterioration. And that cycle is now feeding off itself.

This is a real and significant achievement for Europe – and I'm surprised that European leaders don't make more of it publicly. (That's not to say it's sufficient to meet what Ukraine needs, especially given where the conflict stands right now)

Of all of this thread, this is the bit I think about most - the crypto wealth illusion.

I know this grates against the “buy equity ETFs and forget about them” retail investment advice (usually correct) but were I *this particular Labour government and this specific moment in history* why wouldn’t you be encouraging people to…buy the bonds?

Probably no one here needs this, but just in case, what might happen if Reform got into power and actually did cancel contracts under AR7 (and let’s assume other all other renewable energy contracts)? Spoiler: I think it would be disastrous…

As I keep saying, if I cut down on the midweek drinking I will live to see a Royal Commission on the immigrant shortage and measures for Britain to attract more workers, and I would not be surprised if quite a lot of today's biggest ethnonationalists end up serving on it

Review of parental leave and pay is great, but the framing is all wrong: it is not about being "generous and supportive," it is (or should be) about basic equality, and addressing what is currently flagrantly sexist government policy. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

"The success of London is a point-blank, up-against-the-wall-motherfucker refutation of the right-wing populist world view." 👏👏👏👏👏 @iandunt.bsky.social iandunt.substack.com/p/they-hate-...

The two most common questions I get asked about AI are “which AI should I use” and “how do I start using AI?” I wrote a short guide attempting to answer both questions. www.oneusefulthing.org/p/using-ai-r...

Grok’s going to get one of Musk’s updates again. Can’t wait to see what conspiracy theory it just repeats nonstop this time.

Interesting to hear a Ukrainian official state the theory of victory simply & explicitly. Ukrainian deputy defence minister: “This is a war of technology: whoever has the bigger amount and the faster scaling solution will win”

Ukrainian dep def minister says his country producing 10m drones per year. Drones do 80% of damage in battlefield he says. Ukrainian made FPV IS $500, he says, in contrast to $1,500 for foreign models. Low-cost interceptor drones at $5,000 “affordable alternative” to traditional SAMs.

Who wants to know what's happening with gas prices from here on in? My hypothesis: speculative long positions are on the march again in TTF. Prices forced ~10% up since the late April low. This is an almost beat-for-beat rerun of this exact point last year... www.ofgem.gov.uk/press-releas...

Don’t see how this is going anywhere but down: 1. Spot gas prices >20% lower than SVT with further room to fall 2. Oil >10% lower now vs Q1 prices impacting direct transport and cost of making (plastic) and transporting (fuel) goods 3. US tariffs leading to goods discounting in non-US markets

ICYMI: Starmer’s Disgraceful and Damaging Remarks mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2025/05/star... As with austerity in the 2010s, if none of the main parties can be honest about immigration then the public debate will be equally dishonest.

In short, Starmer has taken a massive hit among Labour voters, for no gain elsewhere, while boosting Farage's popularity, including doubling his ceiling among Labour voters. I.e., the political scientists were right, Morgan McSweeney was horrendously wrong.

NEW with @simonkuper.bsky.social: The prevailing narrative around increased injuries and player workload in elite football is wrong. Players don’t play any more football than in the past. What has changed is a sharp rise in intensity of play. Not more minutes, but each minute exerts more load.

Was a bit inspired by this so I logged Havertz's minutes and output against some targets. npGoals+Assists per 90 Havertz at striker: 0.73 Isak at NUFC: 0.68 Watkins at Villa: 0.62 Gyökeres at SCP: 1.01 Ekitike, Frankfurt: 0.74 Šeško, Leipzig: 0.73

Some possession value models thought Lamine Yamal had a *bad* game last night. What??? How does that make any sense? How that happens, and why he's so good that he defies the models. www.thetransferflow.com/p/lamine-yam...

Looking at incoming vessels to the Port of Los Angeles (America's largest container port): 1.) This week we're still in frontrunning mode (57%+ YoY). 2.) Next week we're basically at normal (-8% YoY). 3.) Two weeks from now we're in The Bad Place (-44% YoY)

For those unfamiliar with the trucking industry: 80 blank sailings means, give or take, about 1,000,000 cargo containers that had been scheduled and booked for delivery which just disappeared.