Andrew Brightwell
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andbwell.bsky.social
Andrew Brightwell
@andbwell.bsky.social
200 followers 210 following 260 posts
Communications director for the Centre for Governance & Scrutiny some of the time and a sort-of journalist when not. Based on the UK's south coast. All views, however unoriginal, are solely mine and not those of my employer.
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andbwell.bsky.social
It took three paragraphs to have me blubbering
The boy had been loitering - for about 15 minutes, edging steadily closer to the waiting batters seated around the nonexistent boundary edge, when he eventually plucked up the courage to ask who was winning. It was the type of uninformed query that ordinarily prompts eye-rolls in cricket's complex spheres. But the match situation - 60 for one, chasing a victory target of only 86 - made the response quite simple on this occasion. Besides, he was just a kid; an American one, at that. How was he to know that cricket's ebbs and flows rarely render it condensable into such binary terms? Buoyed up by the engagement, the child began asking further questions, thrilled by every minor detail he was able to obtain: the ball, the bat, the scoring process. His name, he told us, was Jake. He lived in New York and he was 10 years old. Cricket had been his English father's favourite sport until dying in a car crash three years ago. Since then, Jake sometimes watches cricket clips on YouTube to try to understand what it is all about.
October 8, 2025 at 6:37 PM
andbwell.bsky.social
When people ask me why I haven’t made my first billion yet this is how I reply
What is the point of owning a mansion in Mayfair
August 12, 2025 at 4:59 PM
andbwell.bsky.social
This is where the humble ‘is’ would be helpful
Headline from guardian: Man charged over arson attacks on properties linked to Keir Starmer
May 15, 2025 at 7:30 PM
andbwell.bsky.social
Pretty sure that Island of Strangers were a short-lived new romantic band set up at Leeds uni in the early 80s
four arty looking students posing for a phot includ with a skull (photo includes Keir Starmer)
May 12, 2025 at 2:52 PM
andbwell.bsky.social
There just isn’t much point in internal combustion engines for cars with these levels of charging and range
The second generation of the Shenxing battery, which boasts a range of 800km on one charge, can achieve a peak charging speed of 2.5km per second, the company said at a media event ahead of this week’s Shanghai auto show.
April 21, 2025 at 5:44 PM
andbwell.bsky.social
But with such a gracious invitation, how could we resist?
But with Europe the question is more acute. From its declining population and self-sabotaging energy policies to its crisis of democratic legitimacy and lack of innovative technology, the continent's strategic value and leverage is at a low ebb. As is its will to make hard choices, accept sacrifices and resist the short-run allure of access to the Chinese market.
April 12, 2025 at 10:47 AM
andbwell.bsky.social
A picture speaks a thousand words (when it comes to how fraught infrastructure decisions can be)
Options for the improvement of the A27 in Worthing and Lancing inlcluding bypasses, tunnels and widening, presented in six maps of each proposal, showing the date each was proposed from 1992 to 2015
March 25, 2025 at 1:25 PM
andbwell.bsky.social
Great bit on the Ones and Tooze podcast about the McKinley Tariff Act that appears to be the inspiration for our… erm current moment
So it's hard to imagine Trump today reaching so high. But in any case, this extraordinary tariff was passed, 50 percent rate increase. And the consequence was, then as now a disaster for the US economy. We saw the Panic of 1893, which was the worst financial crisis until the Great Depression, arguably. Double digit unemployment numbers, we think, for much of the 1890s, setting the stage for very serious social stress in the United States, leading up to the Populist Rebellion of 1896, led from within the… Democratic Party, a disaster for the Republicans in the midterms in the early 1890s, and then the loss of the presidency as well to the Democrats. So on the face of it, a very strange example to be citing as inspiration for your tariff policy. Also, a tariff policy that was originally designed, according to McKinley's co-promoter of the Tariff Bill of 1890, James G. Blaine, who saw it explicitly as a mechanism for exercising pressure on Canada, with a view in fact then as well to forcing the Canadians to see reason and to join the American Union…
March 15, 2025 at 7:37 AM
andbwell.bsky.social
It’s my work email, not a city break
Screenshot from MS outlook saying ‘Enjoying outlook so far?’
March 7, 2025 at 8:51 PM
andbwell.bsky.social
The sort of moment every sub-editor lives for
FT headline about former James Bond actor’s pottery work: Pierce Brosnan has got a licence to kiln
March 2, 2025 at 11:48 AM
andbwell.bsky.social
This is the description of the Monroe doctrine in an article *about* Trump wanting to make Greenland into US territory
The Monroe Doctrine, which was announced by former President Monroe in 1823, prevents the US from engaging or intervening in the political affairs of Europe
December 29, 2024 at 10:19 AM
andbwell.bsky.social
😱
Spotify top tunes: Frozen, lots of Frozen
December 5, 2024 at 8:03 AM
andbwell.bsky.social
Looks like Twitter is gone with the wind
Quote from an article in the FT featuring a quote from Mongabay chief executive, Rhett Butler saying X is losing engagement
November 22, 2024 at 11:43 AM
andbwell.bsky.social
Says every parent, every time
WhatsApp message: Soft play is everything I feared it would be
November 18, 2024 at 4:32 PM
andbwell.bsky.social
Here's what Andrew Bailey told Lionel Barber on his views on Brexit in 2023 - interesting in light of the discussion today www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/podcasts/pro...
Bailey to Barber: So, I don’t take a position on Brexit per say. What I do say, however, and I’ve said a number of times and I’ll say it again, is that if you reduce the openness of an economy, in the short run it will have negative effects. It will have a negative effect on productivity, it will have a negative effect on growth. I’m afraid that you don’t need to take my word for it, you can go back to Adam Smith and David Ricardo. You know, that’s the point about openness. In the longer run, you know, those trading relationships adjust in the real economy, and we build new trading relationships. And in the longer run, you adjust for it. But in the short run there’s a misalignment, if you like, in that sense. And, you know, if people say, “well that means he’s obviously a Remainer,” I’ll say, “no, no, I take no position.” But I do feel I have a responsibility to point out the economics. Bailey: Oh, I’m an inherent optimist on this. Let me sort of start with the parts of the world that I deal with very closely, which is the financial services world. If you go back to the period after the referendum, there were pretty dire predictions about the consequences of Brexit for the financial services world, for the City of London. And I think so far, those effects have been smaller. Now, that’s not to say that I trivialise them, discount them, and ignore them. Actually, quite the opposite. I’ve said right from the— actually, I remember saying the week after the referendum, you know, “this means we will have to work even harder to make sure we don’t become isolationist.” But I think it has actually created opportunities. I think we have protected, and in a sense ensured, that much of the market and much of the industry remains here. And that’s been important. It’s been very important. Barber: So, it’s not a slow puncture? Bailey: I don’t think it is, no. I don’t think it is. But I think we have to keep working at it very hard. I mean, it’s been a very hard, very large amount of work, but it was necessary. And again, my point is I don’t take a position on Brexit. We had to respond. You know, we had to do what we had to do at that point, and that’s our job. Barber: But as governor, obviously you have responsibility for financial stability, too. Do you not occasionally wake up at five o’clock in the morning and say, “Oh God, if we have Edinburgh reforms plus, then, you know, we’re heading into 2006/7/8”? Bailey: Well, the good or bad news is I wake up at five o’clock every morning as a matter of course, so that one doesn’t have it. I mean, I think we have to be clear-sighted and careful about where we go in terms of where regulation and where the structure goes. We do have a responsibility, I think, internationally. I think the IMF put it very well a few years ago, in one of their reviews of UK financial stability, when they said the UK’s financial markets are a global public good. And they are, and therefore we have a responsibility, which we always have to take very seriously, to provide financial stability, to provide what’s needed to maintain financial stability. And we take that extremely seriously. Bailey: And I think the post-Brexit landscape does give us opportunities. You know, I’ve always said, not everything about EU regulation was best suited to any national circumstances. So, we do have opportunities and I support what the government is doing to think through how to make best use of those opportunities. That’s the right thing to do. But we also have a responsibility to maintain this global public good, to maintain financial stability, and particularly, therefore, to be part of international policy making and international standards setting. I spend a good part of my life involved in the work, for instance, at the global Financial Stability Board. I chair one of its major standing committees, because we have a big responsibility on that front. The Bank of England has to pull its weight in that world.
November 15, 2024 at 10:54 AM
andbwell.bsky.social
The second one of these really ought to include ‘yes, you heard that right’
Two phone notifications from the FT saying Donald Trump pick Robert Kennedy Jr to run US health department
November 14, 2024 at 9:37 PM
andbwell.bsky.social
This quote from Luke Coffey in the House mag piece is interesting, given there’s a bit of speculation Farage could be of some value to the UK’s relationship with Trump
"The Trump-Farage relationship is built up bigger than what it really is in the UK. Farage trades off this big time; he dines out on his perceived closeness to Donald Trump. Is he a friend of Donald Trump's? I think Donald Trump would probably view Nigel Farage as an acquaintance."
November 6, 2024 at 8:07 PM
andbwell.bsky.social
COP delegates in Cali, Colombia, forced to stay in hourly rate hotels

www.theguardian.com/environment/...
Now, Baluku finds himself among at least a dozen delegates and negotiators accommodated by the city's hourly rate motels, which come equipped with circular beds, "love machine" chairs, dance poles and sex swings. Showing the Guardian around his room, Baluku said it was "very unusual" to put a mirror above the circular bed. "I don't know the motive behind that," he said. He noted that it was "very funny" to watch yourself falling asleep.
October 29, 2024 at 7:18 AM
andbwell.bsky.social
This is a thing to live by, and not just for historians (David Olusoga, speaking in @stephenkb.bsky.social’s fantastic interview with him) on.ft.com/4dMGOyN
I think [the job of historians] is to try to stand there at this arsenal of dangerous ideas and to make it more difficult for people to raid that arsenal to use it for their political projects. It is to complicate…
October 18, 2024 at 7:21 PM
andbwell.bsky.social
“Hang it in the Louvre”
Wikipedia table of Tory leadership election showing results for each candidate in each round
October 9, 2024 at 7:11 PM
andbwell.bsky.social
Lord knows why I felt compelled to look this up but Mandy Patinkin features in a Buzfeed listicle of ‘characters people don’t believe are played by the same actor’… for Montoya and a *different* character so…
Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride and Jason Gideon from Criminal Minds
September 24, 2024 at 8:26 AM
andbwell.bsky.social
Amazing detail
An Israeli official in its clandestine services replied with a winking emoji when asked if Mossad was involved
September 18, 2024 at 6:10 PM
andbwell.bsky.social
Enjoyed this Jonathan Liew piece in the Observer on the north London derby. Dripping with sarcasm
www.theguardian.com/football/202...
Liew writes that to understand the derby he needs to take a trip to a “largely uncharted wilderness” of north London
September 15, 2024 at 6:50 AM