@pholmes8.bsky.social
Semi-retired trade economist, Emeritus @ UKTPO Sussex. Posts about Brexit, Freeports, WTO and anything else that catches my fancy. Migrating across from other place. Tweeted as @pholmes8. Blogs with others at https://blogs.sussex.ac.uk/uktpo/blog/
A flight taken by the FT over the estate (owned by Viktor Orban’s father) revealed what the roadside hides: carefully manicured gardens; pools cut into the sprawling grounds; a palm house and a chapel; and a grand main building with gleaming wings
www.ft.com/content/1e44...
Anyone surprised by this has no detailed understanding of the intellectual outlook and personal biographies of a large swathe of EU policymakers.
What you get from lack of curiosity in Whitehall about who their counterparts are in Brussels.
“Immigrants have created an enormous fiscal surplus for the US government … The $14.5 trillion in savings from immigrants is the equivalent of 33 percent of the total inflation-adjusted combined deficits from 1994 to 2023 without immigrants.” (gift article)
wapo.st/41bkSsZ
Funny how all the "free speech" warriors go so quiet when actual state censorship comes along.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...
An incoming Reform government would "focus on making change via executive orders rather than legislation, where possible"
www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
As predicted last August on The Empty City blog:
emptycity.substack.com/p/yes-an-inc...
The legal powers for wide "executive orders" are already there, waiting to be (mis)used.
And the current government is doing nothing to guard against the risk of such future (mis)use by an illiberal government.
Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, threatened on Saturday to revoke broadcasters’ licenses over their coverage of the war with Iran. His comments came after President Trump criticized the news media’s coverage in a post on social media. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/14/w...
They made them take down the videos because they would cause "reputational damage" to people like this young man, Nathan Cavanuagh, so definitely don't post this all over the internet with the name Nathan Cavanaugh attached, or this guy might suffer reputational damage. This guy, Nathan Cavanaugh.
Hard to believe this guy bankrupted a casino /s
1/ Experts issued some pretty dire warnings about Trumpian tariffs and Brexit, and the result was not nearly as bad as it could have been.
Now they're issuing dire warnings about Iran.
A much smarter friend asked me how I was thinking about the difference.
My short answer: control.
Viktor Orbán’s home village is swimming in cash. So we hired a plane to take a look.
On EU relations, the Government is engaged in a fundamental discussion with neither the EU nor the public but with itself and a straightjacket manifesto.
The vibes go back and forth but I really wouldn't be very convinced if I were in Brussels, Paris or Berlin
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/poli...
Trump broke it, he should fix it and no UK tax funding should be used to help in an illegal war.
Rachel Reeves says Brexit damaged growth and pushed up prices.
The reaction from Brexit supporters has been predictably furious.
But the real story isn’t the outrage – it’s why Labour is saying this now.
No worries, SG Rutte will come explain why this is actually a great thing and we definitely shouldn't get away from the US.
Inside the Department of War are two wolves:
"We've shut down the Colleges of War because book learnings are woke, gay, and irrelevant to war fighting."
"How come no one told us the Strait is important, there are different kinds of Kurds, Iran is big, and air power historically doesn't win wars?"
At any other time in history; this would be news-worthy.
I mean, ‘Believe in Brexit’ worked out so well that this actually makes perfect sense.
A 2nd source, who has a background in intelligence, said Palantir probably has “a complete profile on the whole UK population. They have visibility into wildly different focus areas, yet their data is all condensed into one foreign supplier’s control/visibility.“
Palantir has MASSIVE databases
It‘s expert at data scraping & aggregation
It is closely linked to 🇺🇸 CIA & Defence …and now a corrupt 🇺🇸 gov
“Palantir does not need to own the data or even have stewardship. They can extract, transform and exploit the metadata to build their own rich picture.”
Jared Kushner is cashing in on your government's influence. It’s the biggest conflict of interest in history, happening in broad daylight.
His whole life, Trump has always had someone else around to bail him out of the messes he creates: his father, Allen Weisselberg, the "adults in the room" in his first term. Now all those protectors are gone and he is openly begging for someone to save him from his own folly.
8 March: Trump tells UK not to send ships to the Gulf as "We don't need people that join Wars after we've already won".
14 March: Trump asks UK to "send ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat".
It's a tragedy that so many lives hang on the whims of this angry child.
FCC to journalists: cover the Iran war the way the president prefers or lose your broadcast license.
If Trump wants assistance from the EU and China make him pay. That’s what he would do to you. Don’t let him sell Ukraine to Putin.
In Germany Fraunhofer analysis shows that photovoltaic systems now produce electricity much more cheaply than either coal or gas-fired power plants, even in combination with battery storage. www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/press-med...
war seems to be going to plan!
A single ship load of solar PV – which can ultimately deliver 170 terawatt hours of PV once installed, is now worth 120 coal carries, or 57 LNG tankers. reneweconomy.com.au/one-ship-loa...
