To make electricity cheaper, charge customers the average cost of production instead of the marginal cost. Have a single buyer agree cost plus contracts with suppliers. This will eliminate the suppliers rents to the benefit of customers.

Who will champion reforming defence procurement? Wes Streeting? The Treasury? We need a value for money audit of the system before spending any more money.

🤔

This FT editorial is lazy. The cliches and second hand wisdom do not make for a coherent argument. People who write in cliches probably think in cliches. By the way, the City of London is not a sector.

Quick statement from me on John Healey being appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer

Inspired by this headline, I remember when I used to grind my own beans in a hand cranked mill. I suppose I thought it cool at the time. So I’m asking what did you do that seemed cool at the time but now you wonder why? www.ft.com/content/99bc... Coffee drinkers turning to whole beans as prices soar

🚨Andy Burnham is expected to take Thames Water into Special Administration today Bad news for those who have taken £12 billion out of the company in dividends. Wonderful news for ordinary households! Anything less than permanent public ownership as a next step would be a grave betrayal

“The only way to save the global rules-based trading regime is to restructure it along the lines proposed by JM Keynes at Bretton Woods”

Whoever becomes chancellor it its important that they stand up to the City version of economics. The City advocates for one small part of the economy to the cost of the economy as a whole. (substack.com/@josgallache...) www.ft.com/content/3a20... Ed Miliband trails Shabana Mahmood …

An excellent account of the reasons for Scotland’s moratorium on data centres. Scotland needs to put its rampant data centre building on ice – here’s why www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/2626...

“When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.” www.ft.com/content/b713...

A case of Nile fever confirmed near Seville in Andalusia.

Apparently there is a Reclaim candidate standing in Clacton. What is it with right wing party names? Reform Restore Reclaim Reduce Reuse Recycle

I spent today at New Lanark. That Robert Owen was really woke.

Apparently there is a Reclaim candidate standing in Clacton. What is it with right wing party names? Reform Restore Reclaim Reduce Reuse Recycle

Two key ideas here that in my small way have been trying to promote. 1. Identify the most binding constraint on growth (per Rodrik, Haussmann, Velasques) 2. The allocation of capital is the UK’s binding constraint. And, as Mazzucato has argued elsewhere finance industry is the problem.

UK herding people on to the bandwagon just as it loses its wheels.

The SNP haven’t yet said they won’t stand.

Of itself all the work that has gone into the Brexit debate has added 0.002% to GDP.

In logic, we have a name for the fallacy that an idea is wrong because of the person who espouses it: “ad hominem”. Perhaps we should have a name for the fallacy that an idea is false because it is old.

"The AI build-out... is increasingly financed not by selling overpriced equity but by contracting future cash flows and borrowing against hardware.... That is not the architecture of 2000. That is the architecture of 2008." www.groundbrkr.com/p/the-second...

Tonight’s entertainment is David Sedaris at the Usher Hall.

Drop the price. tl;dr

Portes "Theres a lot of nonsense talked, including on Sky, about the spiralling welfare bill.. as a proportion of our national income.. its lower than it was 15yrs ago & its pretty much back to what it was under Thatcher.. this idea its out of control is just wrong" Spot on!

Village politics. www.heraldscotland.com/news/2624768...

god that made me laugh out loud you're going to struggle more than everyone you know to keep a full-time job and a clean flat and normal adult relationships, among many other things, but fellas, on the bright side: ..........berries?

Serious people are telling us we need to spend more on defence. substack.com/@josgallache...

My plan to boost growth: ban companies from borrowing to pay dividends. #EconSky

The bond market is worried that Elon Musk won't be able to keep SpaceX out of bankruptcy deanbaker22.substack.com/p/the-bond-m...

England student debt is £295bn, to hit £500bn by 2040s. Interest added until debt repaid or written-off. Millions can't start family/business, buy a home. No tuition fees in Scotland, average debt is £13,000 to £18,000; England £47,500. Follow Scotland. Abolish tuition fees.

Have a read/listen to Ed Miliband’s book “Go Big”, published a few years back. A clear political economy with aims for the short, medium & long term. I had it on audio for a five hour drive from Newport to Yorkshire yesterday (Happy Valley, looking lovely). Nothing to fear, plenty to grab on to.

Spending on social security as a share of GDP has been flat for 15+ years*. While defence spending has risen 20% in real terms over the same period. *and is not forecast to rise over rather next 5 years. Yet social security is framed as pit of control and defence in crisis!

Ex-Treasury official Sharon White says on BBC One that Britain has "the highest debt, the highest overdraft if you like, across any of the developed countries". Erm, no we don't?

Both points are correct and deserve attention.

In all the chatter about who might be #chancellor of the exchequer, why has no one mentioned Annelise Dodds? She was shadow chancellor for a time and could certainly do the job. I met her in the NPF when she was shadow chancellor and was very impressed.

Meanwhile, in Spain.

A fair summary, but I question the references to “the markets”. There are many different financial markets. The gilt markets are actually fairly simple. It is the other markets that need serious reform as Mr Miliband knows. www.ft.com/content/b846... Andy Burnham’s Ed Miliband test

While she is absolutely correct about the lack of action on the climate, there is a problem with the “we” and “our” framing. The “our” is not the whole of humanity, it is the groups whose personal enrichment stands in the way of action who have made the crisis www.ft.com/content/f059...

On this day ten years ago, along with comrades from the Brussels Labour Party, I went door to door getting out the vote in Islington. The next day I held a wake with my book group in my Brussels garden.

Le canicule en Écosse.

One of the things you learn as a financial reporter is that people in the markets sometimes just make stuff up for journalists.

It should be obvious that Britain’s economic problems cannot be accounted for just by Brexit. A focus on the real causes of low investment, low productivity, inequalities and imbalances is needed. Joining the EU is not primarily an economic question and is necessarily for the longer term.

SpaceX's business model is currently less "data centers in space" and more "space in data centers" www.cnbc.com/2026/06/22/s....

Local value chains are gaining traction, especially given all that is going on in the world at the moment. Thanks to the hard work of one of our speakers, @neilmcinroy.bsky.social, the Community Wealth Building movement is moving forwards in Scotland. Find out how it can be rolled out further here.

Happy🎂to Siméon Poisson b #OTD 1781 (d 25 Apr 1840) His name is most associated with the Poisson distribution, developed to model jury decision-making. It gained traction in 1898 with Bortkiewicz’s analysis of Prussian horse kick data. But it is another example of Stigler’s Law of Eponomy 1/3

The attacks in Edinburgh, in which an armed bare-chested white man terrorised Muslims, leaving five people injured, don't feature on a single newspaper front page this morning. Two tier journalism

It should be obvious that Britain’s economic problems cannot be accounted for just by Brexit. A focus on the real causes of low investment, low productivity, inequalities and imbalances is needed. Joining the EU is not primarily an economic question and is necessarily for the longer term.

The Herald has this strange piece on MMT coming to save Scotland. It misses quite how marginal MMT is even to heterodox economics, but good to see that neoclassical is not the only game in town. #EconSky Can revolutionary new economic theory save Scotland? www.heraldscotland.com/news/2621348...