I'd never really thought explicitly about writing, how I do it, and why I do it, til this conversation with @catherinedevries.bsky.social Who makes it sound like I've thought it all through much better than I have... catherineeunicedevries.substack.com/p/etched-in-...
EVENT | The UK-EU ‘reset': Six months on
Join us! Professor @anandmenon.bsky.social and Sir Ivan Rogers will explore the UK's new 'deal' with the EU and how much progress has been made on it. @jillongovt.bsky.social and @calummillerld.bsky.social
www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/event/six-mo...
"It is striking that Calgie’s apology went down far worse with the population of X than his original offence. Perhaps the conservative soul has changed. But if the right’s problem is ideological hygiene, then perhaps it’s because it’s swimming in an open sewer."
"I DON'T NEED YOU TO FUCKING REWRITE WHAT I'VE JUST WRITTEN!"
It's worth adding that Hamit Coskun is an asylum seeker - what Jenrick would call 'an illegal immigrant' - and one who has self-evidently 'got into trouble with the law in our country'.
But to Jenrick, Coskun is clearly the right sort of 'illegal immigrant' in the right sort of trouble.
“MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV and MTV Live will all stop broadcasting after 31 December, the BBC understands.” www.bbc.com/news/article...
Lol US vs UK libel law.
Well played, @theguardian.com
You won’t believe what degrading practice the pope just condemned
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
It’s extraordinary that Biden’s main weaknesses were inflation and cognitive decline and now America has inflation and cognitive decline as well as tariffs, authoritarianism, blatant corruption, etc
Conservative tech lord Thiel said tighter financial regulations “were a sign that a singular world government has begun to emerge that could be taken over by an Antichrist figure who could then use it to exert control over people.” Via WashPost
I dialled in from Manchester to discuss the state of the right with @psurridge.bsky.social @timbale.bsky.social and Tim Montgomerie (also in Manchester - even though he is now in Reform) for @ukandeu.bsky.social Utterly fascinating (TM @anandmenon.bsky.social) - watch www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivRL...
This book is essential. It's like tearing off a set of blinders. You won't look at economics or politics the same way again.
I feel obscurely like this headline will get me lynched? But nonetheless, @amyhoggart.bsky.social was kind enough to interview me about what I think about Stuff
Now it's the professors using ChatGPT. Students aren't happy about it.
I talked to professors. I talked to students. I read the scathing reviews on Rate My Professors.
Here you go: www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/t...
So how does the London pedicab industry actually work.
www.londoncentric.media/p/londons-pe...
Image from the Financial Times, placing Keir Starmer next to Enoch Powell.
Starmer's language was deplorable.
It was grotesquely offensive, accusing people who have brought their gifts to this country of doing "incalculable" "damage"; & politically foolish, in endorsing Farage's claims of an establishment conspiracy.
But bad analogies with Powell miss the key problem. 🧵
Yvette Cooper repeatedly refused to give a straight answer just now on Today to straight Q “Will councils get more money to pay care workers more?” She repeatedly committed to higher carer pay but wouldn’t commit to money so councils can fund it. Think that speaks volumes about the mess we are in.
"Even if it does work as a strategy for winning the next election, there’s a question: why bother?"
A bit by me on the sheer, infuriating pointlessness of a Labour leadership that sees governing in a progressive way as a distracting from fighting the next election.
In the last 2 weeks, the EHRC said trans people stop using their preferred toilet & the PM's spokesperson suggested that trans women are not women by law. Several organisations have fallen in line behind them.
But each of these statements is wrong.
iandunt.substack.com/p/everything...
Just because Reform gain seats and Labour lose doesn't mean Labour needs to regain votes lost to Reform to hold onto seats. Movement to/from Labour in local vs general elections is pretty common on the 'progressive' side
Trump's descent into fascism is worse than we could have predicted inews.co.uk/opinion/trum...
I love this* by my old colleague @lexytopping.bsky.social on the journalist who had a curiously successful run of interviews with Tom Cruise, Barack Obama, and George Clooney for tiny regional UK publications.
*If you read it you can imagine the legals on it.
www.theguardian.com/media/ng-int...
It is this, not arguing, but also this Labour party has been strikingly reluctant to occupy the commanding heights of the discourse. The last government made a bunch of attempts to embed right wing bias in institutions and processes; this government is content to leave them all in place.
getting a bit tiring to think "ah yay, the worst people you know are having a great day" several times a week, every single week
Americans!
Yes, the tariffs make you look silly.
Yes, we are laughing at you.
Some tips on dealing with the humiliation, from Brexit Britain. We know your pain.
- on.ft.com/42tt3kH
By popular* demand, vomiting camel formation, S&P 500. Bearish.
(*3 people have asked me)
Sometimes you have to have a whole curry just to realise you simply wanted poppadoms and mango chutney x
SCOOP: DOGE is hosting a “hackathon” in DC next week with the goal of building one “mega API” for accessing all IRS data.
Palantir has been brought up as a potential partner.
www.wired.com/story/doge-h...
Hadn’t noticed that polling in the coming Australian election has also, like the Canadian polling, swung towards the centre left incumbent government since Trump started smashing everything. Something for Tory and Reform Trump huggers to ponder.
au.yougov.com/politics/art...
