Here in Cambridge we miss our street droid doggies. Cambourne got ours, possibly in lieu of a busway. Charging infrastructure issue I think.

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

'GDP reduced by 8%' - Nine-year study reveals how Brexit decimated UK economy Can't help but feel those responsible for Brexit should not, for example, be riding high in the polls with a new party...

Brexit had reduced UK GDP by 6% to 8%, with the impact accumulating gradually over time.

Investment was reduced by between 12% and 18%, employment by 3% to 4% and productivity by 3% to 4%.

Staggering economic self-harm.

https://bit.ly/44faQch

What you’re witnessing is a populist assault on the BBC.

This is not an institutional scandal in any meaningful sense of the word. It is an attack on public service broadcasting.

iandunt.substack.com/p/extra-edit...

UK newspaper editor calls Bill de Blasio fake interview blunder ‘humiliating’ A Times associate editor reportedly addressed situation in an email to staff, saying: ‘We should have been on our guard’

The BBC will fuck things up from time to time. Lots of major news organisations do; just look at The Times having to memoryhole several fake news stories in a matter of weeks.

No one is calling for the abolition of The Times, however.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

I have a very bad feeling about this...

And here - thanks to @richholman.com et al - it is!:

ilr.dowu.uk

@philtinline.bsky.social the copy needs work, but was such a good idea of yours around ILR and the real world consequences for our friends, neighbours and colleagues just had to have a crack at building it, using the GOV dot uk design system

ilr.dowu.uk

If I were running Labour comms I would commission an app called 'Will the Tories/Reform deport you?' then let the reactions on TikTok and Instagram do their work.

I just cannot take this shit seriously. If you're a senior Labour figure and think that the party's stance is cowardly but are too afraid to put your name on the record saying it YOU ARE A COWARD.

UK’s arm’s length public bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation Seven in ten Britons say it is important for top scientific institutions to be independent in exclusive new polling.

🧵🚨

The UK’s independent scientific bodies are highly vulnerable to politicisation - over the past 5 months I've been working with @martinmckee.bsky.social to map out their vulnerabilities and it's not good news.

Today our report is published!
www.ucl.ac.uk/policy-lab/n...

1/11

Shut this would-be-king in a room with an economist for an hour. Please, someone.

It is like we have a Tory government with its claws deep in the BBC, what we have instead is an incompetent Culture Minister who can’t be bothered to sort out governance at the BBC. And remove those Tory claws.

For heavens sake @theguardian.com it is not “highly contentious”, it is without any evidence at all and plenty of evidence to the contrary. Don’t suggest there is a debate to be had. Do better, or it’s @financialtimes.com all the way.

I imagine the Disney Board Report, estimating the cost of Trump capitulation in cancelled Disney Plus subscriptions vs the risk of FCC action. I hope they added making their audiences disbelief in their movie heroes a little harder to suspend. A spark of Disney magic has been lost forever this week.

The thing is I’ve got a half a century of memory of Disney movies. Laughter sure, but more than that. Our movie heroes were brave when all was lost, they thought they would lose and did the right thing anyway. These Disney execs have sullied those memories and the inspiration we took from them.

Musk is inciting violence on London's streets.Tommy Robinson is financed by US tech bros. These are all very direct attempts to destabilise the British state.

Starmer needs to stand up to this. A government that doesn't defend its country's values against these blatant attacks is not doing its job.

If a Labour government with 400 seats which has nailed its colours to the masts of planning reform and the green transition can't steam roller people like this and their ridiculous selfish BS objections, then what on earth is the point of it?

Hundreds of empty flats that developers say sum up UK's housing crisis Sir Keir Starmer has made house building one of his government's priorities, and regularly rails against NIMBY culture. But Sky News can reveal the government's own regulator has also been getting in ...

Build, build, build isn't much use as mantra if you then leave the new homes sitting empty for a year or more while the Building Safety Regulator gets round to approving them.

This process used to take a matter of days when local authorities were in charge of it. news.sky.com/story/bluesk...

The ever-eloquent @rafaelbehr.bsky.social pointedly refusing to mince his words on what Farage has done for us. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

📌

FT graph so implausibly stupid it makes you worry about the state of mind of the journalist and editor.

Rare example of a #GraphCrime in the @financialtimes.com . Allegedly, bomb shelter capacity as a % of population.

On Thursday night, we heard that government was making big concessions on its planning bill, putting lots more controls on its nature recovery plans.

I find this disappointing. And to explain why, I have to tell a story I’ve been holding off from sharing.

Oh you absolutely useless wankers

A Hori Hori gardening trowel and its sheath

If I were wearing one of these on my belt in an urban area - I would expect to be stopped by the Police. And frankly I’d expect them to be highly dubious of my intentions.

Grimly unsurprised the government has decided to prop up inflated house prices and reduce any hopes that its ambitious house building programme will actually lead to cheaper housing any time soon.

One reason we have sand in the wheels of cross border transactions is to inhibit terrorism finance, regular crime and money laundering. Instant peer to peer payments would be great if it were only good guys doing it.

i stan ur multivariable regression analysis of voting patterns

Very few broke ranks - @rolandmcs.bsky.social is a very honourable exception - and so, I'm sorry, but Hannan does not just deserve ridicule. What he, Owen Paterson, and many others of that ilk did to our country deserves condemnation and utter contempt. 8/8