Paul Evans

The minimum wage increase could help with this too perhaps?

V interesting to see Giles and @chrisdillow.bsky.social coalescing around the strategic need to reduce private consumption in order to stimulate investment. Maybe they have done before, but it's the first time I've seen it so explicit.

In politics, you don’t get many days like today - when a campaign you have worked on for eight years finally wins. The 2 child limit is going, 1.6m kids will benefit and 450k will move out of poverty. Take a moment, everyone: we did this

Sadly you’re not certain to be right about this.

Everyone needs to calm down a bit. It’s an embarrassing and stupid leak. But we knew all the detail anyway- the Treasury had leaked it. Markets have reacted well. This bit of process won’t be anything close to the most politically difficult thing about today.

The £ rises after the OBR cock-up! Is this a case of Downing Street being cruelly denied the opportunity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (which it would have managed otherwise).

Other factor:
The supply of TV went up
The *financial* demand from consumers stayed flat
Media companies had to produce more material for the same budgets to compete to retain eyeballs
Journalism became a *lot* more reliant on donations of info to fill the vacuum...
...which meant PRs & think tanks

... *almost* everything is...

Yep. My grandma’s was almost never used. The one at my friend’s house was quite literally *never* used. Having one was a mark of respectability. Actually using it was an extravagance.

This was a super interesting analysis of why the US feels so broken. It reminded me of a plumber I met while working as a janitor in Maine (hi, @colbycollege.bsky.social!) who refused to ever work overtime because it would bump him into another tax bracket: He knew working more meant earning less.

This whole judges vs juries thing is pointless and outdated; we can make justice administratively simple, socially accountable and indeed financially viable by selling TV rights to trials and doing the verdict by a public vote. I foresee no problems with this.

😂😂😂 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

The divisions on Trans Rights are a Very Online thing aren’t they? Most people I know offline are on either side of a disagreement that has a big “let’s not be a dick about it either” caveat.

Counterpoint: The value that grifters supply to cranks is that they prototype and workshop their messages for them.

(Tho this is a bit moot as 'sharing' is less potent than managing the algorithms on this anyway)

It’s a fair point, but if people in very low-income countries can earn $thousands every month by producing ragebait, why wouldn’t they?

Such a turd.

Toby Young to Address Orbán-Backed Group on UK ‘Censorship’ Conservative peer and right-wing commentator Toby Young is due to deliver a talk tomorrow (25 November) at the in-house think tank of Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán. Young is being interviewed by Mat...

Toby Young, self-appointed king of free speech, is speaking in Hungary tomorrow about UK “censorship”.

He’ll be addressing a group funded by Viktor Orbán’s autocratic regime, which has seized control of the country’s media, judiciary, and routinely harasses its critics

We’re going to have to differ on that I’m afraid. Kremlinology, at best.

A profession struggling to sustain itself - The Society of Authors ALCS report on author incomes shows 60% drop in median incomes since 2006

A reminder that the median book deal for a debut author in the UK is £7000, paid over 12-18 months. (from 2022 Society of Authors report). Some of your favourite writers are struggling. societyofauthors.org/2022/12/06/a....

It'd almost make you weep to realise that he's the successor to John Cole. It was Nick Robinson who tied an anvil to the ankle of that role tho.

The fact that an original edition of a comic book can be worth £7m tells me that there are quite a lot of complete wankers in the world.

And yet, I still hear about it on the doorsteps from people who’ve never seen the sky over a farm.

As we saw with the almost thermonuclear bullshit on farms IHT we saw that the government almost don't have permission to face it down.

On government impotence. Governments think there is no alternative. History tells us otherwise.

I’ve made this case in more detail here.

medium.com/@pauliewauli...

It’s can be no coincidence that billionaires are now able to openly purchase the world’s most powerful economy.

I would absolutely love to see the argument the squares the existence of the Citizens United precedent with the view that the information economy should be largely left to its own devices.

Over the past 20 years, a weird, and ahistorical ideology around ‘free speech’ has been allowed to go largely unchallenged. It has resulted in a *more* laissez-faire approach than previously at the moment that the opposite has been most needed.

Having both is no longer an option. It never was, and until recently most governments knew this.

We can have a laissez-faire approach to the Information economy, or we can have a liberal democracy.

A Twitter account called Ivanka News tweets an AI image of a young woman wearing Muslim garb. The woman is holding a sign that says "I came here illegally. Should I be deported?" Ivanka News writes: What is your response to this person ?? In the "About this account" tab, it appears the account is based in Nigeria

An account called MAGA scope writes: Who, in your view is the great enemy of the United States? Communism, Islam, Democratic Party, or Satan? The account is based in Nigeria.

An account called MAGA Nadine writes: You go to work and find this. What would you do? The attached pic is an AI image that shows a microwave. The microwave has a sign that says "For religious reasons, this microwave is now making halal food only." The account is based in Morocco.

An account called America First posts an AI image of Tulsi Gabbard. They wrote: How would you rate your trust in Tulsi Gabbard on a scale of 1-10?

Twitter pays people based on engagement (views, retweets, comments, etc). It appears that many MAGA accounts are based abroad and they use AI technology to generate low-effort rage bait.

My guess is that this will get worse as AI tech improves. For instance, fake videos of minorities doing crime.