Martin Stanley

Lads

The number of cancer deaths worldwide has more than doubled since the 1980s. Does that mean we're losing the fight against cancer? Not necessarily, because it depends on how you measure it. On this chart, you can see three ways to look at the same data. 🧵

Great intro to Daniel Finkelstein's column www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...

Andrew O’Hagan · Stay Classy: Mummy’s Favourite The late queen can be held responsible for much, but nobody could accuse her of seeming to enjoy her role. For the...

just astonishing from start to finish
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
and alas I now have now heard of Victoria Hervey and what she 'thinks'

Thanks - Good point! And it shouldn't have taken 60 years.

Civil Service Reform: The Chapter 10 Problem David French recently drew attention to what authors and editors sometimes call the ‘Chapter 10 problem’.

Report after report recommends Civil Service Reform - but it never happens. Here's why:-
ukcivilservant.substack.com/p/civil-serv...
Includes references to writing by @andrewgreenway.bsky.social , @samfr.bsky.social & @iandunt.bsky.social

Every U.K. job ad is like “we seek a dynamic, world-leading expert to care for priceless, load-bearing activities. Salary: £28,000 p.a.”

I agree with Mr O'Brien's main thesis. Civil service performance management is generally poor and I suspect it has got worse in recent years following grade inflation etc. But I do not share his liking of 'enforced distribution' for instance.
I will respond at greater length via Substack asap.

Many a True Word ... The world is so miserable at the moment that I thought I might again try to lighten the mood by passing on these amusing and/or sage comments on the UK Civil Service:-

Here are some enjoyable quotations about the UK Civil Service:-
ukcivilservant.substack.com/p/many-a-tru...

Amazed, last night, to hear that BBC Persian has 24 million followers on Instagram. Soft power much under-appreciated by politicians?

"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason." - Mark Twain #Truth

Trump’s war on Iran is taking place What's it like to re-read Baudrillard as bombs fall on Tehran?

"None of that fits in a victory video, no matter how many totally badass clips from movies and video games you include. And none of it can be resolved by having your press secretary announce that you’ve decided you’ve won:" - terrific piece by @eliasisquith.blog:

Women, Books and Adam Smith As it’s International Women’s Day I thought I might draw attention to the Women in the Civil Service web pages.

Here's a special International Women's Day newsletter:-
ukcivilservant.substack.com/p/women-book...

Imagine if Government gave hospitals a fixed sum for every MRI scan.

No need for the scan to be necessary or if the patient benefited - just show you've done it and get the money.

We would get a huge increase in unneccesary scans.

Yet that's our university funding system.

The environmental impact of this war (and the war in Ukraine) is devastating. What's the point of separating waste at home and encouraging the use of green energy when the world is being burnt down with toxic substances blown into the atmosphere and the ground poisoned on an unprecedented scale?

The dumb-dumbs of war | Robert Hutton | The Critic Magazine It’s a little-known fact about Kemi Badenoch that years ago she must have suffered a traumatic brain injury that has left her completely unable to recall any event after 2002.

A widespread affliction (see @roberthutton.co.uk : thecritic.co.uk/the-dumb-dum...).

in the store just now and there was a couple looking at those prepped toddler meals and he was saying “everything’s better if you just cook from scratch” and she goes “they don’t look bad and they’d save me so much time” and he just kept repeating “it’s better if you cook”

I did not commit a crime

Shared services have more than one customer and so too often provide a poor service to everyone. As Accounting Officer, I refused to lose control of my HR& ICT teams. The Treasury, sensibly, also avoid joining shared services that they impose on everyone else. They even had their own Fast Stream.

Many a True Word ... The world is so miserable at the moment that I thought I might again try to lighten the mood by passing on these amusing and/or sage comments on the UK Civil Service:-

Here are some enjoyable quotations about the UK Civil Service:-
ukcivilservant.substack.com/p/many-a-tru...

FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?

Wealthy Dubai residents race back to UAE to avoid tax bills Some risk spending too few days in the emirate and too many in the UK

Tax exiles stuck in London desperately trying to get *back* to Dubai to avoid becoming tax resident in the UK? Just great stuff. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

it's sad the the 'before' picture is so commonplace (and so accepted as normal) in ireland

if they were displayed the other way around, you would think something cataclysmic had happened

A medical journal says the case reports it has published for 25 years are, in fact, fiction A Canadian journal has issued corrections on 138 case reports it published over the last 25 years to add a disclaimer: The cases described are fictional. Paediatrics & Child Health, the journal…

This story is nuts

The journal ‘Pediatrics and Child health’ has been published an article type, for case reports, that are made up and fictional without having any clear notice 😱

retractionwatch.com/2026/03/03/c...

If anyone is friends with any Georgian air traffic controllers, buy them a nice bottle of wine. As guardians of pretty much the only narrow gap still available between Europe and Asia that avoids both Iran, the Gulf, Ukraine and Russia, they are under some substantial pressure.

The Iranians dared to go to the negotiations with a position paper

gilt yields up 25bps in two days, the FTSE down a few percent, gas prices up 90%, oil up 20% since the weekend, not the ideal backdrop for the Spring Statement, but #ThisIsWhyYouNeedHeadroom is probably trending in the Treasury.

Fun ad from the 70s

When that letter was doing the rounds I remember thinking, very naively, "no shit Sherlock, ofc no one wants that". However, it's also worth comparing the shift in position between that letter in 2016 with Anthropic's response to the DoD. The ethical baseline has shifted a lot over the last 10 years

It is presumably no coincidence that Trump has chosen to attack Iran in the middle of Ramadan.

There is always a tweet.