Tom Clark

One would hope @ofcom.bsky.social would have a think about this 🧵— particularly the established power of these sort of narratives as rationalisation for violence

But not optimistic it will

😬

Polls have closed in the first of this year's five German state elections, in prosperous Baden-Württemberg. It's looking like a remarkable win-from-behind by the Greens under @oezdemir.de. Full results over the course of the evening.

Simon Tisdall, the independent-minded journalist who was pivotal in ensuring the Guardian opposed the Iraq war of 2003, is sounding a loud alarm today…

… en route to this arresting conclusion www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

UK must be prepared for a price shock from the Iran war | Heather Stewart Governments are having to wake up to the fact they will have to take a closer interest in supply chains for essentials

This week’s column - here we go again with another cost shock; as they become more common, given fractured geopolitics + climate crisis, we’re going to have to find new approaches besides whacking up interest rates:
www.theguardian.com/business/202...

Musk, Zuck & Bezos as the new Robber Barons

A story of money, power, and the bending of rules & truth in two ages

By @davidsonofaaron.bsky.social in @prospectmagazine.co.uk

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/united...

A sickening society is clear in these statistics

So why is it not in the news?

Powerful wake-up call from @chakrabortty.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Busting the trusts!

Terrific long view & contemporary reporting from @philtinline.bsky.social

Timely economics in the age of the Tech bros

And for progressive politics a way to reintroduce some, well, politics into the conversation

There’s a minor sub-plot to all the law stuff you discuss within 80s academic economics… did you ever come across “perfect contestability theory”? Idea is you can have all the benefits of perfect competition with no actual competition. Monopolies adequately kept on toes by purely potential rivals!

I really did!

Busting the trusts!

Terrific long view & contemporary reporting from @philtinline.bsky.social

Timely economics in the age of the Tech bros

And for progressive politics a way to reintroduce some, well, politics into the conversation

The literally chilling & scarcely appreciated flipside of climate change

Brilliant piece

2016 Vs 2026

BTW here’s the Case & Deaton ref I ran out of space to embed earlier in the 🧵

www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

Don’t get me wrong, there will be a v complex mix of causes

But the link with poverty is profound & becoming more so

Healthy eating & cooking etc harder when stressed & broke

Here’s the trends in middle-age mortality since 1990

UK is the dark green where deaths of both men & women stop getting rarer & start becoming more common during 2010s

Average of peer countries = purple

Source: academic.oup.com/ije/article/...

All these trends would, presumably, be even starker if we could compare life expectancy between more & less prosperous individuals rather than just across poorer & richer localities

Case & Deaton famously compared the death certificates of more & less educated individuals in US, revealing a chasm

Covid deaths by poverty of postcode from ONS, with dark blue bars the most deprived

Poverty was itself, in the parlance of that time, an “underlying condition”

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...

Look again at the recent decline & how concentrated it was in poorer postcodes — where people already died much earlier

Yes Covid was part of the picture, but official stats show that its toll was also far heavier among men in poorer postcodes

I’m adding posts to thread on Covid

ONS stats pointed specifically to women in poorer postcodes dying earlier than before by the later 2010s

Of course the pandemic colours early 2020s data

But what’s beyond doubt is something that always used to go up began to stall before Covid hit — as this long view chart shows

Is “healthy life expectancy” a bit subjective?

Could we just be self-diagnosing more, & deeming ourselves unhealthy?

Sadly, a glance at trends in actual life expectancy (roughly: the age people die) dispels that comforting thought

A sickening society is clear in these statistics

So why is it not in the news?

Powerful wake-up call from @chakrabortty.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

But is “healthy life expectancy” just subjective?

Are we just more inclined to self-diagnose & deem ourselves unhealthy?

Looking at actual life expectancy (roughly the age people die?) rather puts paid to that cheery thought

This is a reasonable Q to ask about the “healthy life expectancy” stats @chakrabortty.bsky.social quotes

But any idea that it’s all explained by subjective tendency to class ourselves sick more readily is a bit hard to square with this — the actual life expectancy stats

The poisoning of the wells Why discrediting election results without waiting for due process is unhealthy for a democracy

A timely warning from @davidallengreen.bsky.social

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...

Reminds one of the essay often attributed to Orwell: “Shooting a Wirehaired Pointer”

Yep, but I think he would prob have been spooked by this use?

Orwellian

📰 Prospect’s latest issue hits newsstands today! Here’s a peek at what’s inside... 1/7

For the cover essay, @davidsonofaaron.bsky.social considers the parallels between today’s tech bros and the robber barons of yesteryear:
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/united...