Tom James

Good thread. And a chance to remind ourselves of this superb piece by John Kay: www.ft.com/content/bfb7...

Also important to note that the Home Office's *own figures* imply that care workers/dependents are a fiscal *benefit* in terms of the government's fiscal rules (and on every year for next 30 years).

It is Mahmood who has a fiscal "black hole" to fill.

This is interesting, because I do basically agree. But for residential property, a Housing Services Tax ((c) Mirrlees 2011) is actually preferable, because it achieves the goals of both an LVT and a VAT on the consumption of housing services (of which the "unimproved value" of the land is part).

Land Value Tax in England? No thanks. tomforth.co.uk/landvaluetax/

>indefinitely at war with Persia

Yeah that checks out

Gus Fring from Breaking Bad in the "we are not the same" meme.

*You* want to build on golf-courses to alleviate the housing shortage and boost productivity through agglomeration effects.

*I* want to build on golf-courses because I don't like golfers and want to spoil their fun.

We are not the same.

The Rutland Asterisk.

The great British electricity puzzle It turns out that making the transition to clean energy while keeping the price down is hard

The great British electricity puzzle www.ft.com/content/86fd... The great British electricity puzzle

AI is Making Junior Devs Useless - Be a Better Dev All things Software Engineering, Software Design/Architecture, and AWS.

AI is Making Junior Devs Useless beabetterdev.com/2026/03/01/a...

This week's post: Why Gorton and Denton is still a good result for Reform mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2026/03/why-...
The anti-right wing vote needs a strong rather than collapsing Labour vote, because it is highly unlikely that socially liberal parties can defeat the right without it.

Not a problem when they are required to compensate for variability.

The answer to problems in sociotechnical systems is not always "more software", "better software" or "open source software".
A lot of the time the best solution is _less software_ and sometimes even _no software_.

I'm mildly curious what the actual economic forecasts involve doing. Isn't it just a big spreadsheet? Bit of VBA and Robert's Your Mother's Brother.

Are the forecasts even that hard? Surely they'll have automated the process by now.

Sort of fascinating to wonder: what *would* it take for Keir Starmer to actually take a proper interest in what goes out under his name and in meaningfully engaging with Labour MPs?

“Epic Fury”?

Selecting for inadequates Our political system selects in favour of mediocrities.

Seeing the talk about Kemi Badenoch reminds me of an old piece of mine on why politicians are selected to be so unimpressive: chrisdillow.substack.com/p/selecting-...

One of my favourite sides of politics/media.

Asked if MPs should get a vote on UK military action, Badenoch says that given the number of left wing MPs with "silly views" she thinks it's best if not. 14:08 • 2 Mar 2026

Kemi here saying the quiet part out loud: the business of parliament is ensuring that the great looting and death machine rampages on, unimpeded by the views of silly people who don’t matter and must be ignored.

One suspects the "It's different, and actually good, when you do it to a very very bad guy" rationale may have ramifications that are not going to be universally enjoyable

Laura Keunneseseeseberg and Hypnoboobs

you say we shouldn't bomb Iran, but what's your alternative, not bombing Iran????

So building lots of houses, increasing the average amount of floorspace per capita, building lots of energy infrastructure, promoting higher rates of energy consumption, building more metros and rail lines, and roads.

I think one takeaway from this sort of thing ( #dryersdiscourse) is that policymakers should recalibrate towards physical reality, instead of statistical economic aggregates.

Disgusting erasure of his work defeating Sebulba on the podrace track.

Europe's productivity keeps outpacing the US A closer look at some famous statistics.

Europe's productivity keeps outpacing the US sethackerman.substack.com/p/europes-pr...

Reskeet for: STV with minimum 5 seats per constituency and the Droop Quota.

Heart for: Party List PR with 10 seats per constituency and Sainte-Laguë?

This is so telling about Labour factionalism and the mindset of (some of) the ‘serious’ people in and around the party establishment

Blair said that in resolving the crisis it was necessary for him to undergo a 'deep immersion in every detail' and in doing so he 'learned more about crisis management and the utter incapacity of the normal system to deal with abnormal challenges'. Michelle Clement The Art of Delivery: The Inside Story of How the Blair Government Transformed Britain's Public Services

Hello.

Interesting how few of the UK poli-sci community mention this.

But fundamentally, this shows why first past the post isn’t fit for purpose. If the government doesn’t introduce proportional voting, a far right party could win the next general election outright on a minority of the vote.