Tom Hart

Great minds, etc!

"The idea of boosting UK government borrowing outside Reeves’ fiscal rules is backed by senior defence figures." - if "senior defence figures" won't argue for raising taxes for defence, who will?

Why Rwanda is bringing a legal challenge against the United Kingdom The claim is that the United Kingdom failed to terminate the agreement in time

NEW

Why Rwanda is bringing a legal challenge against the United Kingdom

The claim is that the United Kingdom failed to terminate the agreement in time

By me - paywall removed:
emptycity.substack.com/p/why-rwanda...

Includes a possible defence for the government to the claim

New standard unit of measurement just dropped.

The abandonment of Labour’s moral crusade The UK is taking a cynical but fruitless turn to the reactionary and insular on aid, immigration and trade

This is very good by @alanbeattie.bsky.social on Labour's abandonment of progressive internationalism on aid, trade and immigration, and the lack of reaction by MPs.

I hope many of them read it.
www.ft.com/content/1683...

Treasury must not favour politics over evidence in spending decisions | Institute for Fiscal Studies Changes proposed in the fabled Green Book review could end up being highly consequential and tell us how the government is thinking — which worries me

"There is no right answer here. Selecting the appropriate discount rate is one of the knottiest, most intellectually demanding and impossibly fascinating problems in all of economics."
ifs.org.uk/articles/tre...

Look forward to it David.

Screen shot with text from the article: Tamsyn Barton, Icai’s chief commissioner until July 2024, said that arguing Icai should be cut because there are cuts in aid “does not stand up”. “When there is less money to go round, it is all the more important that independent scrutiny ensures that it is well spent, and that if not, it is called out,” she said.

Precisely.

www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Update: www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/news/st-paul...

Great lines in this:
"The first priority will be to undertake significant work to prevent any further deterioration in the fabric of the building

Since the early 1800s, St Paul’s Church has served as a place of worship and since 1988 as Freud's café-bar."

🏥 Navigating Resource Allocation: Why Population Net Health Benefit (NHB) is Critical for Evidence-Based Decisions.
🔓 Link to open access article: doi.org/10.1007/s402...

🧵👇
#GlobalHealth #ResourceAllocation #HealthSystems

For a lighter read Francis Wheen's biography is also fantastic.

The Carney doctrine Open comment thread on the PM's Davos speech

“The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.”

As a piece of prose and geopolitical analysis Carney’s Davos speech feels history-making. paulwells.substack.com/p/the-carney...

I am going to try and say a few words about Jon, who was one of the most influential people in my life, and an extraordinary person (very short thread below)

Sorry to hear this Paddy. May he rest in peace.

What age is your eldest?

What's the report? I don't have access to NYT and a quick google of the IMF and WB websites didn't reveal anything...

I can't remember where I saw it but I always liked the description of the brexit coalition as 'the golf club and the working men's club'.

What do the IMF and the World Bank owe Senegal ? There are exceptions to the rule that “Un mauvais arrangement vaut mieux qu’un bon procès »

This from John MacIntyre on the track record of the WB and IMF in Senegal, and Mackey Sal's administration, is blistering.

open.substack.com/pub/johnmcin...

Peter Doyle Tribute to a good salty man

Very sad to hear that Peter Doyle has died. May he rest in peace. He was an all-too-rare iconoclastic voice in international macro. Do read @gabrielsterne.bsky.social and @generaltheorist.bsky.social's tribute to him: open.substack.com/pub/moneyins...

🗞️ Francis Ruiz recently spoke to @bmj.com as more details are unearthed about changes to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)

📈 Changes to NICE's cost-effectiveness threshold & guidance are raising concerns about political interference

Read about it 🔽

Thanks. Someone on here recommended the book a while ago. I hadn't realised it was a TV series as well.

Even more so as preceded by "my argument exclusively concerns words, concepts, ideas, theories, practices, or
institutions. It does not in the least purport to impugn individual motivations, private character, or particular qualities."!

Gets his excuses in early, I guess.

Paging @phkrause.bsky.social

South Africa having our freedom fries moment

I think it has been suggested before, but the Slow Horses series (if he has avoided the TV show) would definitely be a good choice.

I fear the Pelican Guide to Pelicans has not yet been commissioned.

Meet Penguinologist Dr. Tom Hart - Quark Expeditions The research involved in investigating, exploring and documenting the history, wildlife and natural resources of the Polar Regions takes a massive amount of work for experts in all fields. These...

When I was an undergrad I used to occasionally get letters meant for a post-doc in the Zoology department, who now has perhaps the world's best job title: www.quarkexpeditions.com/blog/meet-pe...

Bizarrely I did French C19th European history at A-level (as well as German and Italian unifications and a bit of Russia), starting in 1815 so did the whole restoration, revolution, empire, war & revolution bit. But we didn't do the 1789 revolution! So I left knowing basically nothing about that...

There are those in the development sector that try to romanticize rural life, but most people really are happier living around lots of other people

voxdev.org/topic/migrat...

Isn't there evidence that large state/authoritarian is in fact the largest bracket of British voters? Although I may be misremembering this...