James Plunkett

27kwh! My mistake was getting a 5kwh battery (with no solar) on the grounds that I could charge it off peak, but now realised the economics of that don’t work out. Should have crunched the numbers more beforehand.

Screenshot from a heat pump app showing temperate and electricity use throughout the day

Yep 2-3C. Here’s a typical day in Jan. We did a bit of pre-heating but mainly tried to avoid peak times 4-7pm. (We have a battery too, so that runs a couple of cycles a day charged from cheap electricity.) Our set-back was 18c but it seemed to run a bit below that.

👏 Got ours just before last winter and loved the steady temperatures (plus lower bills!) We experimented with Octopus Agile but in the end went with Cosy because it’s so much simpler. Can pre-heat the house in the cheap periods.

Spot on

Yep!

Very close! Square and Compass:)

A fossil museum in a pub

This one would give it away. Not many pubs have fossil museums.

Nope

Nope

💯!

A photo of the inside of a pub with a fireplace and wooden furniture

Guess the pub. (Best pub in Britain.)

Coming soon: FixMyStreet for Parish & Town Councils FixMyStreet for Parish & Town Councils will enable even the smallest local councils to offer a user-friendly and responsive reporting service to local residents for issues under their responsibility.

Something new from SocietyWorks is coming soon... 👀

We will be launching a self-service version of FixMyStreet especially for parish and town councils.

Find out more www.societyworks.org/2025/07/22/c...

A picture of a trans pride flag fluttering in the sun on Regents Street in London.

London Trans Pride was joyous as always and more important than ever. ❤️(The picture’s from last year because I entirely failed to get a photo!) 🏳️‍⚧️

Very British

Just put a nice big teaspoon of salt in my coffee and had a slurp. How’s your Wednesday going?

A lot of the more immediate response therefore sits at the level of narrative and leadership - e.g. calling out the hatred and division and the toxic platforms. The harm being caused to children is an obvious way to start this conversation. /End

I also agree that Labour will need to be far more self-confident on Big Tech and the disaster that is our online mental/information environment.
The policy solutions for this are tricky (they do exist but they are not quick or easy). Demos is exploring them in a project on Epistemic Security. 3/n

How would we govern if we took community agency seriously? Recently I was asked to write an essay for the 10 year anniversary of Power to Change, an initiative funded by the National Lottery…

(b) Activating communities to be part of the change (as in Plymouth, Grimsby, etc). Not just building stuff, but also building civic capacity, confidence, positivity. I touched on the policy side of this below but it’s mainly about the local craft of it and leadership 2/n
medium.com/@jamestplunk...

Agree, the diagnosis is broadly right.
The trick is how to achieve a combination of (a) quick material improvements (e.g. to the public realm) that people notice and associate with politics listening and making a difference. But at the same time…. 1/n

html

I mean I’d love to read this on my phone but I guess I’ll wait until I’m home so I can log onto Windows 95

Independent Water Commission: review of the water sector The Independent Water Commission’s final report sets out recommendations for reform to improve the water sector regulatory system in England and Wales.

Can somebody also please commission a five year, 1,000 page review into why we’re still publishing public documents as PDF in 2025?

www.gov.uk/government/p...

Ok, so this has now gone a little bit viral. Quite revealing I think.
There's such appetite for practical ways to make bureaucratic systems less sclerotic. I thinik I'll write a follow-up with some reflections on the craft and the most tricky aspects of it.

The point being: there is huge appetite for some properly deep, practical, and radical work on the craft of reforming bureaucracy (including from lots of people who can't say this in public). And there is a lot more to be said on all of this, beyond the seven ideas in the post! (/End)

In a way, those two points - how we drive change at pace, and how we confront the holdouts - become one question of strategy/tactics. How much should this be a bun fight of reformers vs. holdouts (radical, insurgent, a sense of emergency) and how much can it be done via persuasion/incrementalism.

(A big part of the problem is that the people who feel responsible for reducing risk and waste are now actively creating risk/waste by using outmoded control mechanisms that are backfiring. (Treasury, procurement, risk-management, governance, etc.) This is a tricky sociological challenge!)

I think some of the thornier challenges are: (1) How do we do the work at the pace/radicalism that's needed, when so much of it is about patience/relationships (I think we can, but there's an art to it). (2) How do we talk about/address the stickiest parts of the system, e.g. the Treasury.

Ok, so this has now gone a little bit viral. Quite revealing I think.
There's such appetite for practical ways to make bureaucratic systems less sclerotic. I thinik I'll write a follow-up with some reflections on the craft and the most tricky aspects of it.

I’m naming it less ‘in defense of the Government’ and more because I think the frenetic vibe of The Discourse is a first order problem. It’s one of the main reasons/ways in which democracy has become dysfunctional.

I’m not saying there are not missteps (there are missteps!). I’m just saying there’s a bit of a vibecession thing going on. Which of course then gains momentum, and prompts silly reactions, and so becomes a real thing, etc.