Jonathan Simons

I mean….just…..

God love Test cricket

You’ve cursed us

John, I have some news

I don’t care what anyone says, however elegant and English he is, he ain’t a reliable Test opener

Well that already bodes well. Ffs

Alarm set for 2am - see all the 🏏 lovers in a few hours….

Funnily enough, “I will win! I will win! I will win!” serves both as the last line for Nessun Dorma and could be repurposed for that alternative opera, which I’d definitely watch

Great thread. But apart from this, there’s no issues

I ask this question approximately weekly

The BBC Scotland commentary for Kenny McLean’s halfway line goal is glorious. Stuff of dreams. 🔥

Congratulations #Scotland, see you at the World Cup.

Oh come on.

Tho I’m delighted that K+C has solved all serious problems in its borough, and therefore has spare resources for a stupid stunt

Trying hard to imagine a meeting more awful than Trump meeting Infantino, and failing news.sky.com/story/trump-...

Strong "recently divorced dad trying to hit on much younger women" energy here.

Yeah. And indeed, probably not tired their hands pre election. But given we are where we are, and given the capabilities of key personnel, you can see the logic of this move

I just think they wouldn’t have had the character or communication skills or politics, frankly, to have styled it out and made the case. And as such it would be pretty terminal for the Starmer - Reeves duopoly.

Right! And that’s the precise trade off. But much (not all) of the discourse has been of the “why on earth would you not raise income tax, it’s self evidently a good idea”

This is a self inflicted wound! Causing the U Turn also makes them look stupid! They’ll need to work harder to raise the money elsewhere! Income tax rises would have been horrendously bad for the government!

These things can (and probably are) all true at once!

Yes, political leadership is sometimes about taking on and winning an argument. But I’d barely seen anyone even make the case that a tax rise (especially in the context of manifesto brief) would have been horrendously unpopular - and those who did were castigated for Not Thinking Long Term

Quite a contrast to the BlueSky consensus the last 24 hours

Wait, you’re saying sometimes a carrot works better than a stick?

See also: our call centres are very busy at this time. Spoiler alert, no they’re not, you’re just building in permanent under capacity. Don’t treat people like idiots.

Dear @britishairwaysque.bsky.social, when you put on a flight w a certain number of seats, and when people then buy those seats, and bring with them the hand luggage you allow them, please do not hector us that “the flight is very busy and we have no bag space”. You literally designed it this way!

Departments Split On Size Of International Student Levy Exclusive: There is disagreement within the government over how big the new levy on international students should be.

I understand there's a split within govt over how big the controversial new levy on international students should be

The q at the moment is whether it should be 6% or a £1,000 fee

Different depts & unis would favour one over the other....read more below👇
www.politicshome.com/news/article...

The misspelling is a real connoisseur’s touch 👏

As late as the 1960s, the Prime Minister’s driver used to always have to make sure he had four one penny coins in his pocket because if there was an alert of imminent Soviet nuclear attack when the PM was travelling, that was how the PM would dial Whitehall and coordinate the UKs response.

(And they’d have done better to drop half the signatories, however grandly titled, who have irrelevant bugbears shoved in)

But for the elite scientists and mathematicians here, writing about more elite science and maths, it is wholly untrue to say a prescription of more woolly relevance and more breadth would give us more of that, or indeed more Fellows of the Royal Society in future.

We absolutely need more people with greater maths capacity at all stages (GGSE 4+ at a minimum, ideally higher), and we need everyone to be more mathematical for society and the economy. Not just cos AI, but because almost every field of life is becoming more mathematical.

Thirdly, they espouse the tired trope of real world relevance. For an august body that focusses on evidence, this is very disappointing. Work from David Thomas and Axiom maths, and our own work in Maths Horizons, shows a necessity for problem solving and challenge, not “maths through recipes”