Sam Freedman

it is not just that there are no "levers" language is a huge barrier to understanding

"I can actually picture it and that is a problem - any picture that shows something percolating is just not how an economy behaves. You cannot picture the economy like a thing." - terrific piece by @gilesyb.bsky.social:

This is my view. Luckily point 2 really matters.

If true, this would be one of the least surprising turns of events in the history of events turning.

Not unless you want the middle classes to riot.

We know that when you do that university entrance segregates more by class and income. That's not very compassionate either.

The problem is that at an individual level neither you nor the govt know if it's the right choice for the individual so you can only stop lending under the system we have by making crude judgments.

Should the state permit 18 years olds to have an overdraft, borrow money and get a mortgage?

Me neither

Agreed. I suspect they'd just have a vague sense he was a useful person to have in their network. Sort of self-fulfilling, if everyone thinks he's a good person to be networked to then he is because he has a good network...

I think "meaningfully need more power or money" is the key. My experience with rich/powerful people, men especially, is they always want more. It's their dopamine drip.

Mandelson.

One lesson of the last week is it's a bad idea to tell the FT politics team to fuck off.

If you're in Oxford this afternoon...

She was also a cabinet office minister. I do not know who John Pond is.

Don't think so. It's an incredibly hard seat to poll, due to high Muslim and student populations.

I wouldn't put much faith in odds. All I meant was that there's an growing belief that Greens will beat Labour. No data yet to say if that's justified.

I can think of a few who might, not many.

Yes I agree the locals are key but I think it would help the Greens a lot in the run-in.

For now maybe, but it would give the Greens a lot of momentum into the locals.

Think that might push my wife's patience given she's spent the last month with me moping about with a broken shoulder...

This is becoming a critical election for control of the left bloc

samf.substack.com/p/whats-the-...

Just needs Russell to go on one of his mad tears for 20 mins. We have a tendency to panic against them when they get in the mood.

Either that or we lose to Scotland at Murrayfield again.

I can see Ireland losing to France but then grinding out a result against us. And France losing a random game. So then it will come down to us vs France in the final game...

From my understanding it's more to do with the weaknesses in the Coalition post the election and dislike of their new leader, though Bondi was something of a trigger.

But centre-right parties keep failing in the same way everywhere which suggests a structural underlying cause.

"Putin is not getting an accurate picture" This is the second part of our interview with Richard Moore, who from 2020 until last September was Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) also known as “C”.

Richard Moore: "I’m no longer sitting reading the intelligence, but my sense talking to people is that there is still absolutely zero sign that Putin is serious about negotiating. He obviously will play us along. He will try and spin things out." samf.substack.com/p/putin-is-n...

I was pondering if the falls in Trump's popularity and the ICE wars etc might be causing some rich people to realise that they might want a more stable taxcutter in charge...

How MI6 works From 2020 until last September, Richard Moore was Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) also known as “C”.

Can't imagine which of the four PMs, Richard Moore, Head of MI6 had to deal with that he's talking (to @samfr.bsky.social and @ldfreedman.bsky.social) about here: "they were hugely different in their personalities and in their willingness to read the material, prepare for meetings, or whatever."😂😂😂

Bill Gates wins. He's a 4-2-1 (gets his Erdos number from a 1979 paper on computing; Bacon number from Citizen Steve - a mockumentary made for Steven Spielberg - and well obviously he knew Epstein...)

Yes that's why I said irregular migration. Legal migration is higher in Australia. But many seem to assume here that if you could "stop the boats" Reform would disappear.