The Prophet Cassandra

Quote from IFS Director Helen Miller: "What will make this Budget important is the choice not only over how much tax to raise, but over how to raise it. There is an opportunity to be bold and take steps towards a system that does less to impede growth and works better for us all. Muddling through by simply raising rates of current taxes might appear the easier option – Rachel Reeves’s predecessors in the Treasury have all too often shied away from taking bold steps to improve the tax system. But relying on badly designed taxes to bring in additional revenue will bring unnecessary economic damage."

“Muddling through by simply raising rates of current taxes might appear the easier option… but relying on badly designed taxes to bring in additional revenue will bring unnecessary economic damage.”

📗 Read the full chapter, funded by @nuffieldfoundation.org, here: ifs.org.uk/publications...

Bashar who’s your favourite Russian unifier in The New Order mine is Ordosocialist Komi.

I GM over Discord so we use a dice bot and when I started a new campaign I chose a different dice bot for UI/system reasons

Every bad roll the players blamed the new bot and demanded I add back the old bot

I finally did and the old bot immediately gave them a long streak of awful rolls.

It's incredible the extent to which Congress just utterly refuses to defend itself. You'd think for entirely self-interested reasons you would stridently oppose having the power of the purse arbitrarily ripped from you, ya know?

Why would you allow yourself to become the Roman Senate circa 27 BC.

I was very brave and had to GM two people who were hungover from last night and one person who was waking up at 5am on the otherside of the world, please shower me in adulation.

Is this A People's Tragedy?

It's never the comms. Labour's comms is grey because in the absence of a clear strategy for what the government wants to achieve, no-one can defend or articulate what the government says in an interesting or exciting way.

Gonna start suggesting this to all my gay friends and see how long it takes before one punches me in the face

(Stares directly at camera)

A young girl died because of the British government’s assault on trans people. They murdered her. Streeting, Starmer, Cass and the rest, they murdered this girl. Her blood is on their hands.

Please join my campaign for the British government to set up a department that would deal with issues around culture, media (and sport - why not?). And also to set up a specific regulator for broadcast media.

No, it's not. It's all a lie. The blunt truth is across the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them.

Britain's Big Tech problem The essence of a banana republic is that the state has the legal form of a republic but substantive power resides elsewhere, in the hands of American corporations backed by a US state that considers t...

"It is hard now to think of a touch point for Big Tech with the UK state that does not fall under the auspices of the Blairites"

@williamcb.bsky.social analyses the government's relationship with Big Tech in light of the recent Cabinet reshuffle

Discord users suffer the first high-profile age-verification hack – and it's unlikely to be the last Critics of age verification laws warned this was inevitable

Discord confirms that government IDs used for age-verification were compromised in a hack with a vendor.

Who could have predicted?

Oh, right.

This is one of the issues London Labour insiders raised with me in this piece on Labour & London – Labour is taking the votes of the capital for granted, and is about to impose major local government austerity on councils who were hard hit first time round.

www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-l...

London Councils Face Losing Half Their Share Of Children's Services Funding Some of London’s poorest areas could see their share of funding for children’s services halved under Labour’s plans to reform local government gran...

"I find it incomprehensible that anyone could look at the cost pressures and complex needs facing London boroughs and decide that their children’s services are overprovided or overgenerous," said former Labour shadow minister @queensparkkaren.bsky.social

www.politicshome.com/news/article...

London Councils Face Losing Half Their Share Of Children's Services Funding Some of London’s poorest areas could see their share of funding for children’s services halved under Labour’s plans to reform local government gran...

Some of London’s poorest areas could see their share of the children’s services funding formula halved under Labour’s plans to reform local government grants.

By me, for Politics Home: www.politicshome.com/news/article...

one prescient moment i remember from a national governors association meeting years ago was a governor talking about how he’d come into office and been warned by one of the state’s senior transportation officials that Uber was going to a catastrophe for congestion, that it’d hurt drivers, etc

Met Crime Assessment Process Flowchart

Stephen Bush @stephenkb Dec 7, 2021 People are accusing the Met of favouritism, but “is there CCTV footage? If not, don’t bother” is essentially what their official guidance is for all crimes in London these days. Quote Paul Brand @PaulBrandITV Dec 7, 2021 BREAKING: The Metropolitan Police say they are reviewing our footage of Downing Street staff laughing and joking about a Christmas party as they consider whether or not to investigate. https://pic.x.com/rqIsGhh5wr Stephen Bush @stephenkb Dec 7, 2021 (Thanks to the many disgruntled Met officers who have sent me that chart over the years.) Stephen Bush @stephenkb Dec 7, 2021 The written version is even grimmer because it includes a line that is basically “is it a big chain? In which case, eh, probably not worth investigating the burglary regardless”.

That Met "Crime Assessment Process" chart that @stephenkb.bsky.social posted years ago has been burnt into my brain ever since.

Clearly you have a comms problem, you should spend a lot of time and energy convincing people that planning to run a marathon is an achievement and spend zero time actually training to run a marathon.

This isn’t a picture of Mel Stride and the shadow chancellor being misidentified on ConHome feels quite indicative of where the Tories are at.

No idea what this is supposed to mean. The 50% target doesn't exist and nothing in the Gove reforms said more people had to go to university. It's a demand led system.

Tbh it does kind annoy me that the two flavours I get to pick from are "Low Brow, Flag Waving, Immigrant Hating, Regressive Patriotism" and "Low Brow, Flag Waving, Meal Deals & Mr Blobby Patriotism"

Can I not have "Cosmopolitan, Intellectual, Derek Jarman & Peter Greenaway Patriotism"?

So obsessed with the next election that you can't do something painful in 2025 that will pay off in 2029, while merrily blundering towards 'why yes. The trains aren't better. And yes, we do run them'.

This Israeli government decision to host Tommy Robinson will widen the growing gulf between the Netanyahu government and the British public, including the broad majority of Jews in Britain (3/4 of whom dsapproved of Netanyahu, before this new link to this anti-Muslim racist UK far right convict).

Asteroid City is so good.
The relationship between Jones Hall and Conrad Earp being barely in the film but also what the film is about is masterful.

why are West Midlands police allowing flag hangers to block a public highway, exactly

This includes a group whose members have endorsed mixing in chili powder with trans girls' makeup: the idea being that the intense physical pain in their eyes will want to make them stop being trans and gender-nonconforming. They have the ear, and the admiration, of health secretary Wes Streeting.

Put Autofocus (and Patty Hearst) in the criterion collection. Paul deserves to get his hidden games appreciated.

recent activity: People's joker, 2 stars autofocus, 4.5 stars The comfort of strangers, 3.5 stars caravaggio, 5 stars

@prophetcassandra.bsky.social has made my letterboxd look fucking unhinged