Andrew Sissons

Turn left up the street
Nothing but grey concrete and dead beats
Grab something to eat
Maccie D’s or KFC
Only one choice in this city

Scorecard showing West Indies batting for 163 overs, scoring 457/6, to draw the test. Justin Greaves scored 202 from388 balls alongside Kemar Roach’s 58 from 233 balls

Well there you go. West Indies bat 163 overs to save the game. What a remarkable test match

Especially if he’s wearing those sunglasses!

Yes! It’s been a really good test

Ian Bishop on comms. Lunch is at midnight to make sure you go to bed. Honestly test cricket in New Zealand is one of the best things sport has to offer to a UK audience

Also it’s sunny and idyllic at the Hagley Oval. A few people spread out on the grass banks. What else could you want to beam into your home on a dark winter’s night?

For any test cricket fans watching the Ashes, worth tuning in to the fifth day of New Zealand v West Indies now (on TNT).
West Indies need another 300-odd to win with 4 wickets down, or bat all day for the draw. New Zealand have lost 2 of their 4 seamers to injury…

Newark, where the employment rate is well below the national average...

I don’t think that reflects AI scepticism, more a view that: a) AI’s impact on the economy depends on what it does to lots of different industries, so helping those industries thrive in the UK is crucial; b) it is the basics, like trade, cities and energy that the UK struggles with most

We didn’t do it on purpose, but I realised today that our “The Hole” essay did not mention AI once (nor any other technologies really). And barely anyone has pulled us up on this afaik

AI start-ups in the UK need more than money In Silicon Valley, VCs offer both funding and advice from partners who built their own global businesses

This is exactly right. The problem in the UK tech sector with VC isn't just cash.

VC do two things. They provide cash and more importantly they are a governance structure for providing managerial support.

1.

AI start-ups in the UK need more than money share.google/W4CbRwpcYwPG...

Four design recommendations for the UK government’s new fuel poverty scheme Major changes to energy bills in the Budget will affect households across the country

The government abolished ECO, its flagship fuel poverty scheme last week, following a string of failures. It now needs to build a new fuel poverty scheme that really delivers for people.

But what can it learn from the failure of ECO? Nesta's Alasdair Hiscock has a very good new blog on this here:

Bath is just boring Hotwells

Four design recommendations for the UK government’s new fuel poverty scheme Major changes to energy bills in the Budget will affect households across the country

This is a mistake I see the UK government make again and again: spend all its time thinking about elaborate policy, and put too little effort into how it’s delivered.

ECO4 was a case in point for this failure: a scheme with many middlemen, overbearing restrictions but few actual controls on quality

Four design recommendations for the UK government’s new fuel poverty scheme Major changes to energy bills in the Budget will affect households across the country

The government abolished ECO, its flagship fuel poverty scheme last week, following a string of failures. It now needs to build a new fuel poverty scheme that really delivers for people.

But what can it learn from the failure of ECO? Nesta's Alasdair Hiscock has a very good new blog on this here:

The government is backing air-to-air heat pumps. Here are five ways to make them take off in UK homes Major changes to energy bills in the Budget will affect households across the country

The government is backing air to air heat pumps* - great! - but what else might get in the way of people getting them?

My colleague Shaan Jindal has a blog up on what else we need to get right to put air to air everywhere

* you might even have seen a video about it 😬
@nestauk.bsky.social

What can governments do about the cost of living? The cost of living has become a defining political issue. But there is little governments can do once cost of living crises have begun…

Re-posting my piece from last year on what governments can do about the cost of living.
Think it’s held up ok, tho I’d forgotten this bleak conclusion:

“In an age of increasing volatility, I fear preparing effectively for cost of living crises may be hard for democratic governments to pull off.”

Yes I’m sure that’s a factor too!

Wage increases are less frequent (to the individual) and possibly less visible. Plus there is the “I earned my wage increase” factor too

Sorry if this is really obvious, but I wonder how much of the annoyance of inflation comes from fiscal drag?

What I mean is: if prices go up 4% and so does your salary, the salary is taxed And fiscal drag means you’re more likely to enter higher tax bands for the “extra” income

Food is a more difficult issue, which does not have an obvious short- or long-term solution. Unlike energy security, food security does not equate to producing more food at home, despite what the farming lobby would have us believe. Climate impacts, diseases and crop failures can happen at home just as they can abroad, and trading food in international markets should provide a measure of protection against such shocks, along with much wider choice. But supply shortages and price spikes will happen at some point, and there is not much government can do to avoid them.

That said, governments should certainly invest in the resilience of their domestic food industries and global supply chains - managing soil and water better, protecting budgets for tackling animal and plant diseases, securing supplies of fertilisers and other critical inputs to agriculture. They might also want to consider more widespread stockpiling of staples, to release in times of shortage. More controversially, it would help if people could be encouraged to substitute foods more often - switching to other vegetable oils when olive oil crops fail, for instance — but this may be even more painful for politicians than just letting prices rise.

On food inflation btw: really not that much you can do (as a medium-sized open economy with a small landmass) imo

Indeed, difficult trade offs are likely to be a permanent feature of governing over the coming years. If the cost of living remains a decisive factor in whether governments get re-elected or not, they'll need a new approach. But the things that actually work to tackle cost of living crises may not fit neatly into electoral cycles. A government that spends its term revamping the energy system or making infrastructure more resilient may find that the electoral benefits come too late, and maybe even accrue to their successors. The best strategy for a country is to invest for the long term, to prepare for short term crises, to persuade the electorate that this approach is ultimately the right one. But what is best for a country and what is best for its government are not always the same thing. In an age of increasing volatility, I fear preparing effectively for cost of living crises may be hard for democratic governments to pull off.

This is the argument behind that concluding howl by the way. That action to tackle the cost of living is long term and has to be done in advance, and so does not fit neatly into electoral cycles

What can governments do about the cost of living? The cost of living has become a defining political issue. But there is little governments can do once cost of living crises have begun…

Re-posting my piece from last year on what governments can do about the cost of living.
Think it’s held up ok, tho I’d forgotten this bleak conclusion:

“In an age of increasing volatility, I fear preparing effectively for cost of living crises may be hard for democratic governments to pull off.”

The government is backing air-to-air heat pumps. Here are five ways to make them take off in UK homes Major changes to energy bills in the Budget will affect households across the country

The government is backing air to air heat pumps* - great! - but what else might get in the way of people getting them?

My colleague Shaan Jindal has a blog up on what else we need to get right to put air to air everywhere

* you might even have seen a video about it 😬
@nestauk.bsky.social

Think you’ve got to add tax to this as well (especially with so much fiscal drag)

it's not as simple as "hardware has gotten better, software has gotten worse" because a lot of companies making physical devices are lost in the wilderness from a design perspective, but a rule of thumb that anything that charges you monthly gets worse over time works pretty well

i think it's useful to look at areas where the *tech* has gotten much better while tech *interactions* have gotten way worse. streaming has gotten worse, google search has gotten worse, digital cameras are leaps better. apple's silicone is so good it's threatening their user upgrade cycle

Tech has also been the dominant growth sector of the economy over the last decade.
Is it really a surprise that growth has slowed down?

Line chart shows the Consumer Price Index for goods and services in the UK since 2008. Services prices rise consistently faster than goods prices, apart from a spike in goods prices in 2022 and 2023

Why is inflation still high in the UK? One reason is that, even though the sharp inflation in goods after 2022 has tailed off, inflation consumer services is still running high.

@johnspringford.bsky.social and I flagged this as a key issue in our recent essay, and I wanted to say a bit more here…

I honestly don’t think there are any easy options - such a difficult dilemma that doesn’t seem to get any discussion

Very interesting paper on this by Demos - it’s nearly a decade old, and very depressing that so little seems to have changed in that time.

Among the issues it highlights is that retirement developers can’t compete for land. It recommends a stamp duty exemption for retirement homes.