Eliot Whittington

The value of public R&D

Government has published one of those quiet but important documents that might get overlooked as it is not 'newsy'. The headline finding is that £1 of public R&D investment generates £8 in net economic benefits for the UK over the long term
www.gov.uk/government/p...

I keep being told spending cuts are easy. Honest proposals such as those recently outlined by Policy Exchange show they are not

My column www.ft.com/content/f086...

Has anyone done any work - or had any thoughts - about how the changes in advertising might change the actual products we buy?
Do we buy the same stuff under a regime of google/meta/amazon ads than we would under traditional TV and print advertising?

📣THREAD: It’s surprising to me that so many people were surprised to learn that Signal runs partly on AWS (something we can do because we use encryption to make sure no one but you–not AWS, not Signal, not anyone–can access your comms).

It’s also concerning. 1/

43. Data centers are increasing power demand, but let's keep a sense of proportion. BNEF estimates total electricity demand from data centers of 373TWh in 2024 (1.2% of global generation) and expects this to increase to 1,596TWh (4.4% of global) in 2035. (www.bnef.com/themes/t0hlz... )

40. There are signs that solar is reducing fossil fuel burn in poorer countries, for example Pakistan — which has no significant government support for solar but has built over 25GW just in response to high prices for power and fuel for irrigation.

38. Ordinary people have no idea how much progress we’ve made. Tell people at parties that UK carbon emissions in 2023 were at their lowest level since 1879, for example. Most developed economies are now reducing carbon emissions without lowering quality of life.

36. We’re finally getting serious about net zero carbon. Getting that last 5-20% of carbon out of power will be hard, and require some expensive solutions. The first 80-95% is easy-ish but we're getting on with it.

30. Decarbonizing aviation is really hard. The CEO of Lufthansa said in 2023 that running its fleet on sustainable aviation fuel made from electricity would take half Germany’s current electricity demand. BNEF thinks this an underestimate.

25. To put it another way: when you tell an energy future model to optimise a power portfolio for clean power adequacy, it will give you more wind and less solar than when you tell it to optimise a least-cost electricity sector development.

24. We oughtta be building more wind. Seriously, solar will get built anyway, but wind needs some help, and wind blows in the dark and in the winter. It doesn’t help that solar pushes down power prices and generates renewable energy credits (where relevant), which hurts wind farm economics.

Trump's attacks on clean energy will have long-lasting impact on US economy
• New clean energy capacity added through 2030 will be 23% lower than planned
• Trump's attacks on clean energy sector could threaten US rise as superpower for AI and data centres

Starmer will attend Cop30 climate summit in Brazil, says Downing Street The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said the move was part of efforts to restore the UK as ‘a global leader for climate action and green growth’.

Excellent news: Keir Starmer will be at #COP30 next month.

Attending the conference shows that the PM wants to maintain strong UK leadership on climate change and reaffirms his view of ambitious climate action as "the economic opportunity of the 21st century".

1 Nurse: It’s become a real problem in this area 2 Nurse: We’ve seen the whole community lost to addiction 3 Show a building sign posted: Westminster ‘X’ Addiction Clinic With various Westminster people or looking at their phones outside it Nurse: Ministers, Spads, Researchers… 4 Nurse: Most mornings we’ll get a call about someone acting strangely [Nurse on phone taking a call] Ok - we’ll be right over 5 Nurse: We just have a gentle chat [Nurses approach a minister –Robert Jenrick? - standing in the Palace of Westminster Minister: I understand your concerns… 6 Nurse: Are you OK love? Minister: Yes I’m just hearing legitimate concerns from real voters 7 Nurse: That’s a robot, a Nazi and a poorly-disguised Russian [Show that the people he is talking to are precisely these characters] Nurse 2: Give us your phone, love 8 Nurse: At the clinic we put them in a Grass-Touching Pod, with a real voter to talk to [We see them back at the clinic, holding the minister's head and pushing him into a glass isolation booth with a grass floor. And it is a baffled looking woman, on a chair, ready to talk to him.] 9 Minister: YOU MUST BE WORRIED ABOUT THE COMING CIVIL WAR [woman looks baffled] 10 woman: I just want a bus service Minister: LOOK AT MY FLAG [produces a St George's flag] [ends]

The Myths of Antisemitism Is "Jew Hatred" really so eternal?

New, on HEAT DEATH! @saulelbein.bsky.social examines the uses and abuses of "eternal hatred" as a mythic theme in Jewish history, why it resonated at a particular historical moment, and what we lose when we start actually believing it

There is no need for a moral panic about the UK's welfare system.

Far from perfect but recent discourse is nuts

Spending is controlled, not spiralling

Worklessness is near record lows

My column www.ft.com/content/ee67...

British.

We know what the comedians got out of the Riyadh comedy festival. What about the Saudi regime? | Jonathan Liew The tawdry event was an ultimately doomed attempt by the Saudi government to buy the kind of authentic grassroots culture it is unwilling to countenance, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Liew

I'd love to know what every comedian who played the Riyadh Comedy Festival thinks of this piece by Jonathan Liew. It's an electrifying read. And really hard to think what any counter-justification from the participating comics would consist of. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Looking back at yesterday's motions of censure against the EU Commission, they really drove down how France's political crisis is spilling over into the EU:

-> Both the far-left and the far-right motions of censures came from French MEPs, uploading their fight against 'centrists'

They are but some of them trigger additional cloud formation which traps heat and adds to climate change

Eliminating contrails from flying could be incredibly cheap Could we halve aviation's climate impact at a fraction of the cost of sustainable aviation fuels?

I had no idea about contrails: @_HannahRitchie explains that they add to global warming & would be cheap to avoid www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/eliminatin...

Never thought I'd say this. It's
gonna be harsh and might
give you angry feelings when
you see it. I've come
up with one simple life rule:
Never ever (I know you're
gonna, but please don't)
let yourself feel stupid when
you look at the first words
down the left side of this post

Really good thread. A thing I completely got wrong is that I thought we had already reached the limits of how anti-business a government was willing to be when it came to immigration - turns out as big of a journey as the Tories went on from 2016, Labour could in fact go further.

This is brilliant

@crookedfootball.bsky.social I thought this was excellent

crookedtimber.org/2025/01/29/t...

more than a whiff of self-censorship in markets at the moment. No-one wants to call BS on, ya know, everything, for fear of angering the president

on.ft.com/4pRyTHp

Any UK newspapers want to do a version of connections that uses British rather than US cultural references???

"UK energy policy is a result of a succession of governments - both Labour and Conservative. The Conservative Party would be better placed if it faced up to the challenges it has to grapple with rather than wishing away real issues like climate. " 5/5

"- the impact of which is likely to be to make the environment for business and investment more uncertain and expensive. This would be bad for business, bad for UK energy policy, and bad for UK bill payers. 4/5

"The Climate Change Act also helps the UK prepare for the real and building impact of climate on Britain's businesses and communities.It is confusing and disappointing that the Conservative Party seems to want to throw out long-term thinking and evidence 3/5