Finn

Disagree. Share of freehold means there should be some sort of democratic process for setting maintenance charges. And if the freeholders vote to raise the charge to pay for something, everyone pays and everyone benefits. For a leaseholder, your loss is their gain. The incentives are very different

One thing everyone knows about British people is that we never ever talk about the World Wars or winning the World Cup

And as JFK didn’t quite get around to saying: we choose to change at Acton Town not because we have to but because we can.

I think an underrated problem in most countries is that lockdowns drove around a quarter of the country crazy, this quarter is pretty well-distributed across the population, and it makes going 'look, these guys are NUTS' much harder a political attack than it used to be.

This is a very fair criticism of the prime minister from @samfr.bsky.social and therefore really quite devastating open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/t...

This is the depths to which the US has sunk, globally. We are now defending a “Nazi-light” party-in Germany of all places. FFS. It will take a generation, if ever, before the world looks at the US again as the bright shining city on a hill. It is infuriating- and embarrassing.

❤️🔥💥🙏

John Denham: “Devolution will not work until we actually have a legally and constitutionally embedded layer of devolved government, which is not quite what we’re being offered at the moment.”

It's finally happened. An American political cartoonist has written something that isn't massively over-elaborated and unnecessarily annotated.

Sombre note from Citi on UK.

Gist is - we're locked in a bad dynamic and a painful rebalancing looks in order: breaking election vows and a period of slower growth.

Likelihood is that there will be a period of "muddling through" before we get there, which will make reckoning more painful.

Iron Age Hoard Discovery Alters Our Understanding of Life in Britain 2,000 Years Ago | Historic England The Melsonby Hoard, a vast deposit of more than 800 items, provides an archaeological time capsule from the Iron Age around 2,000 years ago.

Refering to Melsonby Hoard link here historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/ne...

The polarisation of media in the US is such a big reason why it's so susceptible to what's happening. The executive can simply avoid scrutiny, and most of their half of the country don't notice.

They equate Europe with woke, prissy, unmanly, defenceless and antithetical to (their) America.

This really made my day

Also - at least in gentrified urba areas - there's a new proliferation of good bakers, butchers, fishmongers, grocers... which makes buying really good fresh ingredients so much easier.

I’d like to announce my forthcoming US history book, covering a decisive but tumultuous era in that country’s history, titled “The trade policies of the United States: 10:30 am to 1:30 pm on Friday, March 7, 2025” It will be 400 pages.

AOC: I don’t care what Elon Musk is doing behind the presidential seal, but in this country we hate Nazis. Kind of like a foundational defining thing. Two of the foundational things about American history is that we beat the confederates and we beat the Nazis.

Ranking wealth without reference to age is meaningless though. Lots of Oxbridge educated doctors with heavily negative net worth.

Well, the only financially viable wealth tax that raises significant money is a property tax - preferably a land value tax

#EconSky Final exam for a graduate course on Smith and Ricardo taught in the Harvard economics department by Charles Jesse Bullock in 1907-08. www.irwincollier.com/harvard-fina...

Oh come on. Do some research. The Government Office Network in England (established by Major and abolished by Cameron) was all about joining up Whitehall departments on the ground. It was, and remains, one of the most innovative attempts to reform Whitehall culture 1/2

Reform has just snuck ahead of the Tories on the polling average (rather than a single poll) - 24% to 23%.

Linda Yaccarino be like:

UK had the highest excess mortality rate in Europe during the #Covid19 Global #Pandemic according to new research by the authoritative @pasteur.fr research institute. - Wonder why? Bozo put #BrexitB4Breathing - whilst he was not hosting lockdown parties at No10 Downing St.

I think the Musk-Cummings alliance could go quite badly wrong for them actually.

The British people hate Musk, hate Trump, and *really hate* foreign oligarchs telling them what to think

Me - what if we take two of the worst people in the world and put them in an apartment together

Netflix - go on

Hadn't seen this from 2022 - a very good analysis of what Musk derives from science fiction

Liz Truss is such an inspiration to stupid kids everywhere. In Britain, you can be weird as hell and thick as mince and yet still become prime minister.

‘Let’s talk about speed!' says Brake, as road deaths caused… | Brake Analysis of government road casualty data found casualties caused by driver speed rose last year

Brake's analysis suggests 303/1766 road deaths were due to exceeding the speed limit in 2022, so ~17%. This seems reasonable, but is very far from 100%. www.brake.org.uk/how-we-help/...