Very good on why the uk is in its current mess. (Like Wren-Lewis I think George Osborne is causally responsible for brexit - also Nick Clegg, therefore.)

Except they didn't realise it was a bet; they thought they were the only ones with cards. The definition of people playing with fire because they don't know it's hot.

Ok I've designed an LLM prompt to make Google AI just give you a list of links. It's longer than you might think because it kept ignoring the instructions. This is efficient. This is The Future™

One of most destructive acts of the Cameron-Osborne era was the decision to target austerity on local government.

It was deliberate vandalism, & the politics of it was dark genius - Osborne knew that nobody would understand or care that the devastation of our towns & cities isn't the current government's doing.

I feel like maybe some people are skipping over the bit where Helen of Troy was HATCHED FROM AN EGG. I'll just leave this depiction from Metaponto here in case anyone needs it. (Photo by @diffendale.bsky.social)

I'm a 53 year old jobseeker & I approve this message. (Also: it's easy to be prim about amateur private landlords, but if I don't get reasonably well paying work soon, that's my only income stream. It may be ultimately unprofitable, but it's cashflow.)

It's a good message, but it wouldn't be allowed to cut though - the clipper accounts & headline optimisers will grab either a) or c), & these two things will become the whole story for two disparate audiences that will never see the alternative version & won't believe it was also part of the speech.

It was kind of Robert Jenrick to set me up for an obvious joke at his expense.

Netanyahu's policy of territorial expansion are unambiguous. Israeli forces have established positions in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, seizing over 1,000 sq km, the equivalent to roughly 5% of Israel’s 1949 borders, according to FT calculations. www.ft.com/content/1c15...

On 19th May 1845, HMS Erebus & HMS Terror sailed from Greenhithe in Kent. They would stop at Orkney before heading towards Greenland on their way to the unknown. They were last sighted by Europeans in Baffin Bay in July 1845… and then they were gone. This poem very nearly brings them back.

Ooh, that’s good stuff

it is not coincidental that the main excuse for antisemitism before the creation of Israel was that Jews were stateless, and the main excuse after it has been that Jews have the effrontery to want a state.

Properly NO SHIT.

I regret to inform you that the latest flotilla to try & run the Gaza blockade (with negligible amounts of aid to an area now by all accounts full of aid - they filmed themselves throwing chocolate bars in the sea) has had its comms jammed by the Israeli navy playing Britney's "Oops I did it again".

I see we are doing Americans Talking About British Food Discourse again, so I would like to put on record that I, an immigrant from an extremely diverse culinary tradition, think that white-British food is just brilliant. Yorkshire puddings, cream teas, pasties, STP, bangers & mash, shepherd's pie,

#OnThisDay, 18 May 1991, cosmonaut Helen Sharman becomes the first British person in space. #WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #BritishHistory 🗃️

Because it violates competition laws & doesn't make any money. "To this day Amazon has never paid shareholders a dividend."

Modern Britain

Oh wow that's a new one on me

I'm not sure anyone could have predicted this.

Bracing start to the morning as two guys behind me on the train segue seamlessly from discussing the building job they are doing in Golders Green to antisemitic conspiracy theories. Apparently, Edward I has the right idea, it’s a shame Cromwell let them back in, but it’s mainly Keir Starmer’s fault.

“If your husband abandons you, you can’t divorce him. If your husband disappears, you can’t divorce him. If your husband beats you, you can’t divorce him.” 8am.media/eng/heather-...

I hadn't heard of the attack on the Jewish woman, possibly because my Bluesky bubble has deemed such things of inferior importance to pop music contests, or possibly because such incidents are so normal now as to elicit no remark

Vindictive creep will Vindictive, I guess

Reminds me of the man running for school governor at a local school who cited his wife’s massive contribution to the PTA as evidence in favour of voting for him … years of hard graft for her = power for him …

I remember the days when dreaming a minimum wage of 50% of median earnings was considered radical. We've got close to it being 65% of median earnings and people don't notice. Because the vibes are off.

"Dark ages" indeed...

Can I just reiterate that I didn't come here to make Britain brilliant, sort out your own country ffs What's wrong with people eh

This is a Jewish-Palestinian group of activists putting their physical safety on the line today to protect Palestinian families from far-right ultranationalist Jews. Truly one of the most inspiring groups out there at this moment.

This is very cathartic as a diagnosis, though if I could summarise the advice it gives Labour, it's "if I were you, I would simply have a better economy & reclaim patriotism."

Pinched from a friend on FB and reposted here with a weary sense of foreboding...

Gosh

No darkness lasts forever. And even there, there are stars.

If he loses it to Reform & we lose the Manchester Mayoralty to Reform too, it won't be schadenfreude, it'll be FURY.

Middlemarch is the perfect novel.

I think the best way to enjoy this list, which contains lots of predictable choices (made as it was by committee), is to find a book you like, click to see who voted for it, and then look at the voters' other top 10 choices. You might find something else you like that you haven't read.

So thanks to @ciaojames.sdg4.net for the gift link, and I now know the answer to my question is "nope". There's a lot of "coulds" & "plausibles" tying the decline in coupling to smartphones & social media (crudely conflated into a single phenomenon) but nothing about quality of partners available.

Really, there is more that unites us than divides us 🥹🤲

And yet none of it has shaken the conviction among the pundit class that Reform are nailed on to form the next government.

Look, this is getting ridiculous now. Is there *nowhere* Zionists can occupy in peace anymore?!

I've read & loved every one of Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver novels. Which is an embarrassment *even among golden age detective fiction fans*.

There's that, but also the two things move at incommensurate paces. The economy is already going to get it because people didn't have children 20 years ago, & if there's a baby boom now, economic benefits won't accrue for another 20 - & in the meantime they will be an enormous revenue burden.

I think we can gain broad agreement that this statement is fully implementable if we put a full stop after "explain". Everything else is downstream of that.

What’s also quite staggering is that almost all of this new generation came from solar and wind. China generated 340 TWh more electricity from solar than the year before. That’s more than our two home countries, the UK and Spain, generate from all sources each year.

Signs of integration: when the cashier at the Polish supermarket clocks that I'm not Eastern European, she plasters a smile on her face.

Smartly done, witty & forensic takedown by @helenlewis.bsky.social for @theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

My gentle simmer of resentment against Streeting and Burnham is going in the direction of rapid boil. Starmer is flawed but so are the pretenders. The economy is showing +ve signs and Starmer deserves kudos for Ukraine and Iran. Meanwhile, Farage is laughing into his pint at The Dog and Hammer.

"I need the most on the nose statement of populism you have"