My Sunday Times piece: Mainstream political parties are under pressure but they are the ones who have had to deal in office with economic reality, rather than the fantasies peddled by the populists:

Don’t fall for political parties selling economic snake oil

www.thetimes.com/article/63d1...

A smart friend has drawn my attention to this.

Be honest: if you had been asked to guess how countries had seen the workers' share of GDP change since 1995, would you have guessed the outlier?

Roll up with your explanations.

The reason why protest is essential to political change is that only when people *see* the scale of discontent do they realise they are not alone, and that the tide can turn.

🧪

I tried to articulate something that I thought was missing from most assessments of Blue Origin's all-women stunt flight: that its message was profoundly sexist. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The crisis for UK steel is exposing another – perhaps even bigger – crisis for the UK

Our news media seems incapable of even the most basic factchecking

YES energy for UK steelmakers is costly
NO it's not due to net-zero
YES it is due to GAS

Here's what UK media isn't telling you🧵

The UK car industry contributes £22bn to the economy and employs c 35k people.

Universities contribute £265bn and employ nearly 400k, over 10x as much.

Yet he seems ok to let that sector implode.

This is an outstanding and important piece on a legal-political struggle at the heart of the uK polity. A must-read.

1. You feel powerless? Don’t know what you can do to resist the rise of fascism?
Here is an answer: Good Things.
Fascism inflicts pain and harm as a matter of doctrine.
Kindness, care and conviviality defend us from it.
The more we build community, the less it can take root.
🧵

Mike Pence just reposted an old article he wrote about the limitations on the powers of a president. For some reason. Here is a part of it.

Great update on the latest for nasal and inhaled vaccines in States from @erictopol.bsky.social . These are also known as mucosal vaccines and because they target the places where bugs get in/try to live there is hope (and evidence) they will give more durable immunity. 🧪 🧵

There is no evidence at all that parents working from home causes their kids to miss school, this whole article is based on one man's hunch. Odd.
www.thetimes.com/uk/education...

The curious thing about billionaires defying the rule of law and the orders of the court, is that their wealth depends entirely on enforceable legal rights: contract, property, and so on.

Those saying court orders have no value need to be careful what they wish for.

Notre Dame in Paris re-opens this wkd.
I'm a cathedral nerd. Here are some things that you might not notice about it – just from that one photo.
THREAD.

1. You can see straight down the nave to the apse. No medieval English cathedral has that.

One benefit of living where I do, is that my community - friends, kids friends, teachers, shop assistants, hairdresser - includes a lot of people who live in new-build houses. The huge majority of whom - despite whether I personally like their design - are really happy in them. 🧵

City Hall station, New York. This Art Nouveau metro station was closed on December 31, 1945

It gets regular maintenance to guard against things like water damage & vandalism but it's unused because the new subway trains are too long for the platform

Once or twice a year, railfan groups give tours.

Coverage of European relations and public spending outlook makes me think UK is still on the bad timeline despite the election. Let’s not be contemplating a single-term perceived failure and the election of a radicalised Tory party unfit for office in 2029, shall we?

Women got the right to vote 104 years ago this week.

Billionaire Peter Thiel says that's a bad thing, claiming the U.S. has been in decline ever since "the extension of the franchise to women."

Thiel spent $15M to elect JD Vance because he believes Vance shares his values.