Good grief, that's prescient.

As are many of the BTL comments, including overstretched prisons and the Conservatives having nothing for young middle class voters.

Take away valuing domain expertise, and all that is left to value is vibes.

Even if Gove didn't mean his line about experts, plenty of people nodded along to the misunderstanding.

There's always been a Gifted Amateur fascination, I'm sure it's getting worse.

The Beeblebrox Paradox- anyone who really really wants to be PM probably shouldn't be given the chance because they will blow things up (BoJo), anyone doing it out of disinterested public duty will fail to catch light at all (Starmer, May, Sunak).

As were the US media cases.

But none dare call it extortion, for the usual reason.

It's a useful reminder that sometimes tech can make a task more efficient for one side (applying for jobs), and more efficient for the other side (writing job adverts), and yet make the system as a whole completely inefficient.

Yes to more children, but not those children.

(Alternatively, it's another version of 'subsidise me, not them'.)

Starmer is who he is, for better or worse.

Which is why he needs someone with the right instincts next to him- and right now, he's chosen not to.

Get Alan Carr's agent on the line, now.

Furthermore, people in the clever/awful quadrant cause a lot more trouble than people in the stupid/awful quadrant.

A greengrocer's apostrophe in the Telegraph?

Bill Deedes would be turning in his grave.

That also highlights the limits of the "shoulda done it in autumn 2024, now it's too late" critique.
We're still pretty early in this Parliament.

You know the story of Thomas Midgley? After inventing leaded petrol and CFC refrigeration, he was killed by a getting-out-of-bed machine he invented.

Much the same seems to be happening to Musk.

See also techbroes and Toklein, or whoever thought a Great Gatsby party was a swell idea for the White House.

All it takes is someone convincingly better to emerge.

So not yet.

Given that the sweetie jar contains an IOU, doing stuff that might help by 2028 is the only plan available.
I often say to new A Level students "you will hate the step up for a while and my main job is to keep you amused while you mature."
Starmer is bad at amusing, but the strategy is similar.

To put the size of London into even more perspective:

If all the cats in London moved to the countryside and founded a city...

...it would INSTANTLY be the second or third largest in the UK.

(Allowing for general fuzziness on "metropolitan areas")

It's always someone else's fault.

That's part of the appeal.

It's not a poll of support- it's how people think the government currently spends money.
It's utterly bonkers, but tracks newspaper hype pretty well.

Remember this poll from last year? Look at number four and weep for the state of the national conversation.