As in, it is not simply a natural evolution of the terms of trade that Huddersfield ended up exporting "Dacca cotton" to Dhaka. A lot of work specific to how colonialism functions went into making that the case.

No but it is... something to use the administrative power of the state (that you borrowed without asking) to deliberately rejig whole economies from tertiary value-add to primary monocrop, to your benefit. Sven Beckert's Empire of Cotton is really good on these dynamics, if of interest

I think "colonial patterns of trade" slightly glosses over the brute force by which those patterns were established - industrialisation in the UK was facilitated by the deliberate de-industrialisation of places under colonial rule like Bengal, with pretty dire consequences for the latter.

but why would you go to Jamie's Deli when you could gorge yourself on kaya toast and kopi for a fraction of the price somewhere deep in the bowels of Changi?

Side-note, faintly surreal to see airports turning into archives of forgotten chains - want to revisit the 2000s? Go to Heathrow, where you can still shop at WHSmith and eat at Carluccio's or Giraffe

What they're essentially saying is, given that elements of the social safety net are (rightly!) baked into how normal people move through life in the UK in a way that's pretty hard to avoid, "you must never integrate"

Eagerly anticipating the first deployment of the "Nobody's Perfect" defence

Nah, been back with REACH in Kyiv since the start of last year. Hope all's well with you.

a) great paper, always liked this one; b) ANOTHER rebrand?

Is this still connected to the Freud's in Covent Garden and if so is he potentially just a minor scion of the Duchy of Bedfordshire?

Yeah the Assad apologism combined with the sneering superiority was super endearing

Yeah the "I'm smarter than everyone else and here's an entire book about why" guy medium.com/incerto/the-...

This is just reheated "skin in the game" era Talib shit, isn't it?

CLR James' Black Jacobins, in that I used to be interested in normal things like sports, and now I corner unsuspecting strangers at parties in order to explain how batshit insane a story the Haitian revolution is.