Neal Hockley

Who's mourning the slave-ocracy of 1776? American democracy might be healthier if more people recognised it was born in 1965.

Never trust an academic in a suit.

Indeed. In fact, any incarnation of Plaid Cymru that succeeds in becoming the largest party will itself be an uneasy coalition of rural and urban, small-c conservative and liberal. And no party in the UK has worked out how to satisfy farmers and achieve nature recovery, on scant budgets.

Rachel Reeves' licence-gate seems like yet another episode where you'd be better than averagely informed if you simply paid no attention to any media whatsoever. Depressingly common.

Never has it better deserved the Grauniad epithet

Experience: I dressed up as a superhero for Halloween – and then saved a man’s life The man was unconscious but there was no time to wake him, the smoke and flames were closing in

that said, I'm willing to forgive this guy, but only once www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Can we all agree that kids should only dress up as bad guys for Halloween? It's not just a general fancy dress party and you can't go as a super hero. Also, and this shouldn't need stating, you can't trick or treat in daylight.

The voting system for Senedd 26 elections makes it harder for Plaid to argue that the Lib Dems & Greens should simply stand aside to 'stop Reform'. And reconciling biodiversity, farming and austerity budgets will require some radical thinking we haven't seen yet anywhere in the UK thus far

The Missing Agenda: Plaid Cymru’s Nature Blind Spot Eben Myrddin Muse This weekend Welsh politics is comprehending a new political reality, confirmed by Caerphilly’s electorate – Plaid Cymru are the rising force in Welsh politics, the presumptive gover...

Catching up on this piece by @ebenmyrddin.bsky.social challenging @plaidcymru.bsky.social on their environmental 'blind spot'. If Plaid want to retain their #caerphilly coalition for 2026, they will need to explain how they will restore Wales' wildlife nation.cymru/opinion/the-...

Agreed. I'm nostalgically fond of the West Wing having first watched it on DVD when my wife was stuck in hospital in Madagascar for 3 weeks. I like a lot of it, but the politics is mostly absolute bobbins.

Partly, tho they may increase or decrease overall costs depending on their impacts on behaviour (if they discourage wasteful appointments: decrease, if they discourage timely treatment: increase)

Isn't it very simply because statistically, men kill their ex partners more than women do?

Yup, the Scottish government has shown a willingness to give public money to aristos as well.

Generally these are areas on which large landowners have received huge amounts of public £ in farm payments for very little public benefit. These payments which have been capitalised into land prices. Now the aristos can see which way the wind is blowing & they want out at the top of the market

I'm queasy about these appeals for the public to donate their cash to aristocratic landowners. UK land prices are completely out of kilter with reality, due to various policy drivers (tax, subsidies etc) - to the detriment of both farmers and conservationists.

This policy never made any sense. I wonder if there will be any credibility consequences for those who espoused it.

Sounds plausible, but still don't understand why they'd favour a wealth tax over something more effective that does the same job, like a LVT with a high personal allowance or even property tax reform? Purely short term convenience?

Was thinking exactly this while listening to podcast about prison population. The economic wastefulness of it (aside everything else)

Please could you clarify - have they excluded trans people from rowing (which would be clearly illegal). Or have they excluded biological males from rowing in the female category, in order to comply with the Supreme Court ruling (i.e. it would probably be illegal for them not to)?

Surely that's not correct? The supreme court judgment means women would include all biological females, not just 'cis women'. That's the point of it - e.g. that trans men are eligible for maternity leave.

Coming from a background where any family friend your parents' age was aunty or uncle, this does seem an odd thing to get het up about.

a gif of a cat holding a vacuum cleaner with the caption look human i 'm helping ALT: a gif of a cat holding a vacuum cleaner with the caption look human i 'm helping

Experimenting with asking Co-pilot for recommendations of papers to read, based on a draft abstract I uploaded - which seems like a fairly simple task? It suggested 5 papers, all of which seem to be completely fictitious. Another data point for the "LLMs are just pretending to do stuff" view.

Agreed. The question is, in our politico-journalistic ecosystem, are there any consequences for saying completely wild stuff? In a sensible world, every interview with Lam for years to come would start with "So, do you still want to deport all the nurses?"

sure, my comment was no judgment on the merit of that particular article! Nevertheless, I wouldn't mind as long as every piece in the section started with the words "Bear in mind that these people have 92 guaranteed seats in parliament".

I dunno, as one of only 2 groups of people guaranteed representation in our parliament, it wouldn't be unreasonable to have a section devoted to keeping an eye on them.

What is it about using say, Microsoft Outlook, that makes people think arrant nonsense like enshittifying basic household objects is a good idea?

If he has a family, I suspect they are unimpressed.

The case for a land value tax LAND (encompassing natural resources) is one of the factors of production, along with labour and capital. Capital is produced by labour (workers) using land. In economics, it is everything except huma...

This week the Green Party came out against income tax and now the reds are (back to) endorsing Land Value Tax. You love to see it. morningstaronline.co.uk/article/case...

Croeso! Welcome! Looking forward to your talk as well :-)