Jeremy Driver

8) The Corsair- Abdulaziz Al-Mahmoud (Qatar 🇶🇦)

A totally competent story of seafaring 19th century gulf geopolitics and piracy. I have a feeling the translation could have been better?

"Yes, I suppose the news should just be a dispassionate list of all the events that have occurred the world over during the day. That would be good. Except of course, it would take forever!"

7) Lanark- Alasdair Gray (Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿)

Wonderful, chaotic. Need to sit with this one a while and organise my thoughts about it

Logo for the Scotland For Nuclear Energy campaign.

Today we're part of the launch of Scotland For Nuclear Energy - a coalition of communities, businesses and campaigners calling on the Scottish Government to lift the ban on new nuclear power in Scotland.

More information and coverage of the launch below.

Would you say a 9,054-page planning application for an office block and some flats is:
A) Too long
B) About right
C) Not long enough
If you answered C, congratulations! You could work at Hackney Council.

Anatomy of a Planning Refusal When 7,500 pages isn’t enough detail

This is a must-read.

A forensic analysis of a planning application (and a report from planners recommending its refused).

Kafkaesque is over-used, but it is the perfect description of the process so far for the extremely popular Shoreditch Works scheme.

Exactly!

It's nice to have people talking about you

'maybe another stepping stone on the way to a different settlement, eventually, one day with the EU' Vs 'the v recent ambassador to the US and former cabinet minister may have done a misconduct in public office' AND more NHS strikes coming AND 2 other big political stories

Not true though, is it?

ha very true

Is centralisation to blame for Britain's high construction costs? A response to Alon Levy of Transit Costs Project

Britain is a very centralised country. Britain is also a very expensive place to build new infrastructure.

Are these two facts linked? @alonlevy.bsky.social, one of the world’s top experts on infrastructure costs doesn’t think so. Here’s why I disagree.

open.substack.com/pub/samdumit...

Hell of a set of top BBC politics stories for the government

An incredibly correct letter, signed by no less than ten former guests on YIMBY Pod/The Abundance Agenda!

Image shows the full text of the letter signed by 45 figures. The letter is too long for alt text, but can be summarised as defending the Fingleton review over a recent Wildlife Trusts report on these grounds: Some nature NGOs have now begun to campaign against recommendations 11, 12, and 19 of the review. These reforms would: · Remove the costly requirement for like-for-like on-site environmental mitigation (11) · Create a streamlined alternative pathway for compliance with the habitats regulation that would unlock significant funding for nature recovery (12) · Remove the vague National Park Duty introduced by the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 (19)

NEW: 45 leading figures from academia, business and politics tell Ed Miliband "Don't U-turn" on the commitment to implement every recommendation of the Fingleton Nuclear Regulatory Review.

Full letter below.

"Their windows were always open, if you know what I mean...'

CS Lewis's bodying of Eustice's parents in the very first paragraph of Voyage of the Dawntreader is incredibly enjoyable.

6) Prince Caspian - CS Lewis

Interestingly, the fact that a quarter of the book is told as a flashback made this much harder for my son to grasp than it's predecessor

Yeah my first thought when I saw those Traitors race stats floating round was "right, now do it for older people"

The Ceide fields, County Mayo, Ireland. Found underneath peat by a schoolteacher in the 1930s, they date back to 3500 BC and are the oldest known field systems in the world

I don't really know what to do instead (just not my area), and obviously it just wouldn't be the problem it is if we'd returned to pre financial crisis growth,
but it feels really bad juju that people in 5 yrs younger in my exact financial and educational situation will be ~8-9% worse off than I am

Very funny that Kemi's video had the vibe and video quality of a despotic leader at risk of being deposed:

To be fair, I 100% dont think people's voting patterns or views are monocausal. I just think this is underrated in the wider "cost of living discussion" and discussion of young people

I think this misses the point of my tweet

I meant see the conversation happen

This is exactly what I mean by radicalising

I reckon we'll see it happen in the next decade

😭

Ha!