William Wright

Oh wow, after over a decade of tilting at windmills the European Commission is finally giving up on the EU FTT #RIP

It’s not about the food — the secret of a great restaurant [FREE TO READ] Is entrepreneurship plus celebrity the recipe for success? Jay Rayner on restaurateurs’ memoirs, from The Ivy’s Jeremy King to Drew Nieporent’s venture with Robert De Niro

This is the most fun thing you can read today: @jayrayner1.bsky.social on the memoirs of three very different restaurateurs. Gift link free for 300 clicks on.ft.com/4qx0yhn

Buxton: Why one small town with very little immigration turned to Reform UK How national concerns affected a local election in the heart of the Peak District.

This is an interesting piece but I just read it going “the missing bit is the section on how the internet has fried everyone’s brains”.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

I'm old enough to remember that when I first started out as a journalist in the mid-nineties he was a serious financial columnist

Check out this 2 bedroom apartment for sale on Rightmove 2 bedroom apartment for sale in St. Albans, Hertfordshire, AL1 for £44,650,000. Marketed by TK Property Group Ltd, Covering Manchester

"hi I'm calling about the 2 bed flat in St. Albans......is there any movement on the price?" www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/1...

The future of European equity market structure October 2025

What’s that you say? You’re looking for a few thousand words on European equity market structure? Well, do I have a treat for you! www.newfinancial.org/reports/the-...

Watching Taskmaster and my wife said Maisie Adam looks like Ryan Gosling and now I can’t unsee it

NatWest shares hit 15-year high on profit surge Investors buoyed by guidance upgrade and thirty per cent rise in profits

It's almost as if a retail share offering last year of the government's remaining stake in NatWest would have been a good idea
www.ft.com/content/0a55...

Image of the mechanical ladder outside the Louvre Text below says WENN'S MAL WIEDER SCHNELL GEHEN MUSS (When you need to move fast) Underneath is more German text which translates as "The Böcker Agilo transports your treasures weighing up to 400kg at 42m/min - quiet as a whisper."

The German company that makes the mechanical ladder used in the Louvre heist has used the image to advertise, with the text 'When you need to move fast'

10/10 response, no notes

Updating my LEGO White House

The London Business School might want to rethink the name of this course.

www.london.edu/executive-ed...

European equity markets are working better than you might think The real challenges are not fragmentation along national lines or competition between different types of trading

European equity markets are working better than you might think, argues @williamw1.bsky.social here. The real challenges are not fragmentation along national lines or competition between different types of trading www.ft.com/content/1182...

The AWS outage today is a good reminder that there is no "cloud", there's just somebody else's computer.

Mad idea, will never catch on…

Films: We need to hack a keycard, obtained by seducing one of the guards. We then need to drop in from the skylight after jumping from a plane, and dodge all of the lasers and traps, carefully switching the jewels for fakes that weigh the same to avoid tripping the alarm.

Real life:

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD ***************** Investigation of: LOSS OF THE SUBMARINE TITAN IN THE NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN ON JUNE 18, 2023 * * * * * * Accident No.: *********** * * * * * * Interview of: Co-designer/Pilot Deepsea Challenger DCA23FM036 via Microsoft Teams Friday, July 26, 2024

INTERVIEW OF 10 BY LCDR 11 Q. So how did you get yourself started into submersible 12 operations? 13 A. Well, I'm sure you're familiar with my film Titanic. When I 14 set down the path to make that film, the first thing that I did 15 was arrange to be introduced to the head of the submersible 16 program at the P.P. Shirshov Institute in Moscow, a guy named 17| Professor I. I did that through a mutual friend 18 of ours, a guy named , who is one of the preeminent underwater cinematographers in the world. And had been on a 20 submersible expedition out to Titanic the previous year with the 21 Russians. And that was organized by a Canadian company that was 22 doing an IMAX film which was released under the title Titanica.

Learned that an anonymous outside expert on submersibles did an interview with the OceanGate Titan investigation, and they released a transcript, with all the names redacted. The first line of his first answer? "I'm sure you're familiar with my film Titanic."

Superb

Given that the majority of EU stock exchanges are owned and operated by for profit companies that are listed on the stock exchanges they run, I can see a few problems with this proposal…

Paxos Accidentally Minted $300 Trillion of PayPal’s Stablecoin — Then Burned It Stablecoin issuer Paxos revealed that it erroneously minted $300 trillion worth of PayPal’s PYUSD stablecoin on Wednesday, only to reverse the mistake minutes later by burning the excess tokens.Blockc...

The great thing about cryptocurrencies is that they strip banks of their power to create money thereby making the financial system more stable and.....oh
finance.yahoo.com/news/paxos-a...

Let's hope so.

Exactly. It’s nuts and uniquely generous compared with other countries.
First, cap the annual cash ISA allowance. Then simplify the ISA framework. And then focus on boosting investment in equities.

Rachel Reeves revives plans to overhaul cash Isas Chancellor weighs up halving annual tax-free savings allowance to encourage wider investment in UK stock market

I care less about the boosting equity market investment side and more about the “£20k annually of tax free savings is just ridiculously high” aspect.

on.ft.com/476MemD Rachel Reeves revives plans to overhaul cash Isas

Rachel Reeves revives plans to overhaul cash Isas Chancellor weighs up halving annual tax-free savings allowance to encourage wider investment in UK stock market

If only there were a think tank that had run the numbers on the distortions in cash ISAs and come up with a blueprint for the different options for simplifying the ISA framework and capping cash ISAs...
www.ft.com/content/9387...

Milei looks like all the cast of Are You Being Served in one

Rachel Reeves revives plans to overhaul cash Isas Chancellor weighs up halving annual tax-free savings allowance to encourage wider investment in UK stock market

Good. We can't have nice things in this country if we continue to incentivise people to *save* £20k a year.
www.ft.com/content/9387...

Fantastic Kingdom by Helene von Bismarck | Waterstones Buy Fantastic Kingdom by Helene von Bismarck from Waterstones today! Click and Collect from your local Waterstones or get FREE UK delivery on orders over £25.

Deep breath. My publisher @johnmurrays.bsky.social informs me that my book about 🇬🇧,
"Fantastic Kingdom“
which will come out in June 2026,
is now available to pre-order, and that @waterstones.bsky.social is offering a 25% preorder discount this week.
www.waterstones.com/book/fantast...

Many congratulations- ordered!

ACIS?

I would have thought a better line of attack would be that he seems to hate pretty much everything about this country, works with and has been paid by enemies of this country, and he really doesn’t give a toss about the lives of the people who support him.

Members of the force's sports squad, responsible - among other tasks - for policing the 170 miles of tunnels, caves, galleries and catacombs that underlie large parts of Paris, stumbled on the complex while on a training exercise beneath the Palais de Chaillot, across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access. Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said. Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs".

There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said. A smaller cave next door had been turned into an informal restaurant and bar. "There were bottles of whisky and other spirits behind a bar, tables and chairs, a pressure-cooker for making couscous," the spokesman said. "The whole thing ran off a professionally installed electricity system and there were at least three phone lines down there." Three days later, when the police returned accompanied by experts from the French electricity board to see where the power was coming from, the phone and electricity lines had been cut and a note was lying in the middle of the floor: "Do not," it said, "try to find us."

In 2004, Parisian police were conducting a training exercise in the french catacombs and found, after moving past a desk and a tape playing audio of snarling dogs, a fully functional movie theater and bar. When they returned 3 days later, the equipment was gone, with a note: “Do not try to find us.”