Dan Gay

‘Veggie burgers’ could be off EU menu as MEPs back renaming plant-based foods Proponents say move would strengthen position of farmers in supply chain but critics dismiss it as ‘hotdog populism’

Important stuff: MEPs voted to ban the term veggie burger. And we wonder why countries like China are overtaking the EU.

“A beef tomato doesn’t contain any beef… Ladies’ fingers are not made of ladies’ fingers. Let’s trust consumers and stop this hotdog populism” www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...

Yes in real terms £3.70 would be £7.96 now, so the minimum wage has increased by 44% - probably a contributor to price rises, alongside the 2-3X real hike in utility costs, approx 100% real increase in cost of retail premises, roughly doubling of milk and 400-600% increase in coffee bean prices.

This post is ironic.

Have we passed peak social media? - "Many of these apps are no longer really social apps in any meaningful sense of the word; they’re screen time maximising apps, using whatever means necessary to eke out extra seconds and minutes."

on.ft.com/4gTAqsr

Beyond Despair: Finding Our Power in the Climate Crisis - British Mountain Guides The news is stark, yet increasingly familiar: Swiss glaciers have lost a staggering 24% of their volume in the last decade. It’s another grim statistic in a constant deluge of reports about climate di...

www.bmg.org.uk/beyond-despa...

New on Substack: The world might not be falling apart.

open.substack.com/pub/dangay/p...

Vanuatu working toward UN vote aimed at fighting fossil-fuel industry influence Ralph Regenvanu, minister of climate change for the Pacific island nation, says step taken on ‘behalf of everybody’

"But look, every month there is another disaster in the US, people are already dying here. Eventually the day of reckoning will come for the US, and sooner or later something has to change.”

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

3. The only place that’s kind of safe from that is the UN general assembly, where it’s a majority vote,” said Regenvanu. “In certain forums it’s better the US isn’t there. We have less obstruction and less resistance in the room, so we can get more done …"

2. “We’re not getting anywhere with consensus-based decision-making because a few states can hold everyone else to ransom and stop new environmental safeguarding conventions like the plastic treaty, the universal levy on shipping and at Cop."

🧵1. Wise words at the UN from my friend Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu Minister for Climate Change. That it takes leadership from a tiny Pacific island nation on such an existential issue should make governments of the big emitters look at themselves in the mirror. I'd say he's brave, but it's just truth.

Thanks. Quite good but doesn't mention power as a motivator of economic behaviour.

Also makes a mockery of Milei's supposed 'libertarianism'.

US offers financial lifeline to Argentina’s Javier Milei Scott Bessent says ‘all options’ are on the table to support the country through period of market volatility

So Milei's ridiculous austerian nonsense policies are failing, badly. Quelle surprise.

But it's OK because the US is bailing him out.

Wonder if they'd do the same for a centrist or left-wing government?🤨

US offers financial lifeline to Argentina’s Javier Milei - on.ft.com/3Kgo3dV

Habitation à Loyer Modéré.

Can a Despised Autocrat Consolidate Power? Trump is losing the public. Will that matter?

"Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg was asked how much money he plans to invest in the U.S. and replied $600 billion. Shortly afterward, he was caught on a hot mic telling Trump “Sorry, I wasn’t ready … I wasn’t sure what number you wanted to go with.”
paulkrugman.substack.com/p/can-a-desp...

Croesus - Wikipedia

It's just dawned on me that today's richest two people, Ellison and Musk, are each richer than Croesus, who's estimated to have had a mere $372 billion.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croesus

Intriguing article on the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation by Farwa Sial developingeconomics.org/2025/09/05/n...

Quality insights from @stephenkb.bsky.social here. Labour should start attacking Reform. on.ft.com/4lOifFs

"if the government cannot make the point that it is a bad idea to give money to the Taliban, it is far from clear to me when a better opportunity to attack Farage is going to present itself".

Stories matter Social scientists are trained to banish anecdote. Yet storytelling is part of what makes us human. Squeezing out narrative can deaden understanding.

Stories matter.
open.substack.com/pub/dangay/p...

Europe is selling its soul to Trump What masquerades as pragmatism is self-harming opportunism

Much to agree with here. Trump knows he now owns European leaders. Presumably in private he's sniggering at their sycophancy. He (and Putin) only understand and respect power. Yet more proof of Europe's weakness, fragmentation and lack of direction. on.ft.com/4p6unVo

Also isn't the idea of a 'security guarantee' impossibly vague?Hasn't Trump proved himself completely untrustworthy? He changes his mind every 5 minutes. I wouldn't trust the guy as far as I could throw him.

I find it hard to believe that he'd kill off three big, iconic American brands, not to mention an entire industry which central to US identity and employment, just to reduce union membership.

By slashing the industry's profits? I don't understand.

Trump has actually put the US car industry at a disadvantage over foreign competitors.

www.theatlantic.com/economy/arch...

How Trump has turned tariffs into diplomatic shakedowns The US president is increasingly tying trade policy to geopolitics, using economic might to bend countries to his will

Brings new meaning to the term infant industry protection.

“We really just started. This is just in its infancy,” the US president said of his radically protectionist trade policy.

on.ft.com/4m4Qv0d

7. Now, it’s US policymakers who moot capital controls, try to dictate interest rates, control immigration, erect high tariff barriers, use economic coercion and broadly deploy any form of economic control that they can.

How times change.

6. Neoliberalism has failed its stated goal, which was to float all boats. It is no longer analytically defensible. Nothing is sacrosanct about free-market liberalism. The economics that promotes it isn’t scientific. Capitalism isn’t ineluctably allied with free markets.

5. Clearly not. There are a few lessons - chief of which is not to blindly accept the pronouncements of the seemingly centrist mainstream. Often it can be wildly wrong. Think for yourself.

4. Nobody saw this coming. Literally no commentators foresaw a return to statism and few predicted the end of neoliberalism. Most thought that the world was on a one-way march toward a global free market paradise.

3. Now, industrial policy is everywhere; the US is raising tariffs to historically high levels; trade blocs are on the rise, as is economic coercion; no-one in power supports the free movement of labour. Dirigiste states like China are on the rise.

2. For anyone reaching adulthood after about 2008, it might be difficult to understand just how totalitarian was the discourse. Anyone suggesting that governments might protect anything, or run industries themselves, or not privatise, was shot down.