Fred Cowell

This chart is insane. This shows Russia's casualties over time compared to Russia's territorial gains in Ukraine over the last five years. No sane or rational person would say continuing the war to try and take more of Ukraine's territory is worth the casualties.

If settler wine were sold at restaurants the sort of people who would performatively pick it from the wine list would be insufferable.

Today's "yikes" scenario for Iran courtesy of @gideonrachman.bsky.social www.ft.com/content/7b3c...

This is utter racist bullshit, obviously. I assume his defenders would note that the fact that a Palestinian Arab assassinated his father when he was 14 (he was one of the pallbearers for the coffin) has impacted his worldview. But he's a conspiracy nutjob in general, so 🤷‍♂️

PP has done an electoral deal with Vox in advance of the Spanish general election. It’s the first time in Europe a supposedly traditional party of the right has pacted with the far-right in this way. PP/Vox is essentially one party now - and Vox is in the driving seat.

Tory leader of the opposition being advised by an nationalist extremists with alleged links to Ulster loyalist paramilitaries? What year is this, 1912? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Living in my rainy corner of Northwest Europe the composition of US Senate and the Brazilian president directly effects non-trivial issues like climate change and Russian threats to the continent of Europe. These are things that would materially worsen my existence so yes it’s okay to care.

The Imperial units thing is a massive blaring alarm that the anti-EU right have nothing to work with. Even for people who actually remember them they are a symbolic victory, and for anyone under 50 they sound more like a hinderance than a help. If Reform are leading with this, they're worried.

The bit about this “discourse” that seems quite weird is that the focus is all on the Cheesecake Factory bit and not the Saddam Hussein bit. Is there no hand wringing “are you comparing Trump to a dictator” chat ?

If Lula wins, obviously the best thing about it is that the Amazon will be protected and the heat death of planet earth won’t be accelerated. But a close second is the knowledge that Neymar will be really sad about it

Lula Goes HARD

French leftists watching Serbia and Brazil:

A staggering result for the planet and one that has confounded the effort that MAGA and Meta put into trying to get a Bolsenaro win.

With 83% of the vote counted nationwide, Lula has stretched his lead to 2.8 million votes. That's a lead of 51.4% to 48.6%. That puts him on track for a victory that could be larger than his 1.8% win four years ago, which would be an immense comeback. He's even up in Minas Gervais now, by 0.6%.

This was a political fight worth having. Worth noting the Conservatives still want to reverse all of this progress.

Yes, but your two big ideas so far have been police and crime commissioners and Brexit. Shall we check on them first?

🚨BREAKING: On behalf of Mary Peltola's campaign and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Elias Law Group has filed to fight DOJ's lawsuit to rig the Alaska Senate election. We will win this case, Mary will win this election, she will be certified and seated.

This is my hobby horse of a policy that I would discuss for hours - pure PR Lords of about 400 - elections every 6 years for 1/3. It’s my inner Lib Dem coming out - but there’s a sound constitutional question about not having competing mandates

Most academics will read this story in a very different way to how it is being reported. "So, I get caught up in a political scandal and I have my admin load reduced? Where do I sign up?"

This headline has set me off more than expected. A couple of days of heavy rain doesn't reverse months of no rain, you plonker.

The Government has today released a new report on the impact of free breakfast clubs in the early adopter schools 👇

In the long term this is way more destructive than Jackdaw, because it actively slows down electrification and weaning households off residual LNG consumption.

one of the dumbest things that people do (you see it with the people mad AES for this totally fine comment) is make critiques of specific rogue or badly performing agencies about the fucking platonic ideal of the thing the agency is supposed to be doing.

Europe likes to beat itself up, but in Nokia and Ericsson the continent has two of the world's most important drivers of standardised connectivity technology, as well as infrastructure.

I sort of feel this formula could have happened on a couple of occasions over the last century. Summer of 1980 ‘have you seen what’s happened to unemployment?! If Mr Healey takes over…’ . McSmith’s 2011 book points out in 1979 you’d think “5 pm’s in the 70s no reason the 80s will be different”

"Net migration of 120,000 would leave the UK population size roughly flat" (Relatively few journalists or politicians know this: public would guess zero does that) The population falls when net migration falls below 100k and it rises when net migration is over 120,000. www.gov.uk/government/p...

Immigration and net migration over the last 10-15 years

so the “LLMs will cause a cybersecurity apocalypse” stuff wasn’t wrong, it turns out

Often I ask myself, "who is the audience for this?". And all too often I reply, "troubled loners".

Yes and also this sort of 'uniparty' nonsense feels so hollow deployed in the midst of a national stove-touching. It turns out the difference between a 'milquetoast corporate Democrat' and Trump was really big! President Harris would not be driving trans soldiers out of the military!

A bit more context from Fraser Nelson's Substack (ew) for that crime/immigrant figure. It appears that immigrants reduce crime. The fact that immigrants+crimes is fairly constant (at about 16m) would imply that 4m more immigrants would result in zero crime. I'm willing to try it.

Some good news (from the National Crime Survey, h/t frasernelson.substack.com/p/lawless-br...)

how all of these conversations would actually go

Fraser Nelson commendably points out to the Right that their narrative of 'lawless Britain on the verge of civil war' is the inverse of the truth. And the big rise in immigration has coincided with a big drop in crime. frasernelson.substack.com/p/lawless-br...

Latest blog is on how the row around Jackdaw and Rosebank is missing the bigger realities of why we're trying to decarbonise in the first place and how if we are to transition rapidly away from fossil fuels we need a detailed and ambitious plan for doing so. www.businessgreen.com/blog-post/45...

Tony Gallagher the nastiest person you’ve never heard of.

Bottom line on Jackdaw is that it's a rational decision but a terrible signal. Both of those things are important, and those who endorse the rational decision need to avoid dismissing the terrible signal. It has to be acknowledged and explicitly addressed. Not seeing enough of that from government.

“Wind and solar power have saved the UK £5.9bn since the start of the Iran crisis.” @georgeeaton.bsky.social writes on the myth that net zero is to blame for higher energy bills. www.arguably.uk/p/is-net-zer...

Is net zero the main reason electricity bills have risen? No, it's still rising gas costs. We ran the numbers on how energy bills have changed in real terms in the last 6 years for Carbon Brief... www.carbonbrief.org/revealed-exp...

It’s very important to internalise that manufacturing has not been in decline since 1950, manufacturing *employment* has been in decline since 1950 and much of the decline happened when output growth was strongest.