Steve Wotton

Completely agree. But I suspect Trump will simply declare victory and walk away from it in a few weeks. It will then get kinda forgotten about.

I was struck by the NYT using “appear to” in this headline “videos appear to contradict federal account of killing”. They need to delete “appear to”.

We kinda need to find the money tho

“Rigorous”

One my favourites so far this year.

Great write up as ever.

Also the Lib Dem / Reform voter is absolutely a thing. I have spoken to many of them. In short, they do not like the main parties and wont vote for them, so that leaves LD, Reform or Green. Many people cant get their head around it, but anyone who canvasses has met many people like this.

I don't understand what is written on the screen in this photo, but it gives me life. Is it Dostoevsky?

Random poll where brits express their desire for some foreigners to pay for their stuff.

Incompetent clowns.

Interesting in my home town! Altho I suspect that I actually grew up in what I assume is probably the Bearsden North Ward. Parents are definitely in the South Ward. Would this end up being in May with other elections?

And adding even more complexity to a tax code that is already impenetrable. Moronic.

Another example of where I think of France. If you live in France you are French.

For sure, just months and months of faffing about and dysfunction. I am increasingly of the view that they will largely fail, another casualty of the inbuilt structural incompetence of the UK state (have just finished reading @samfreedman.bsky.social Failed State and this seems like another example)

Yes, but we don’t have the generating capacity, we have an approach to generation that is frankly economically self destructive and the current government are faffing about. But yes the tech is, I am sure, there now.

Agree, but we need to get a heck of a lot better at generating the stuff.

But fundamentally, all the parties need to confront certain big ticket issues, the most significant is probably the triple lock. Many YLs agree on this.

There are members of my party that fully understand the contradictions in many of our policy proposals. Hence, I am pushing to form an internal Lib Dem Growth Group, to advocate for a much more radical approach to Growth policies.

Looking forward to it. I have your book on pre-order with Amazon!

This applies as much to the private sector as the public, btw.

Agree that all political parties lacked credible manifestos but worst were easily Reform and Green.

Why do polls close so early? In UK they close at 10pm, there is always a rush after dinner between 7 and 9….

Just finished @samfr.bsky.social excellent “failed state”, it is a kind of modern Austrian critique, reminiscent of the “calculation” and “knowledge” problems. That a centralised stated (or central planning) cannot cope, indeed it is almost impossible to be successful.

You get growth when we become more productive. We lack it because it is very difficult to build anything at all in this country.

It is still a democracy. The US does not lack for voting. It is the other stuff, the liberal and constitutional bits that are fraying. Those are difficult to understand, unlike “voting” which continues broadly unchanged.

I’ve met many of them. Some voters don’t like the two main parties so go for anyone who isn’t them.

We doubled our membership in the Brexit years, fat lot of good it did us.

I’m half way through your book, and here is an example of the dysfunction you describe. No doubt a lack of bandwidth means they don’t know what to replace it with, or have failed to meet a deadline and are running around with hair on fire.

This is wild

It is shaping up to be a great season on socialism. Also interesting to hear @iandunt.bsky.social hinting at the Austrian critique of socialism (the Economic Calculation debate) through the lense of the role of middlemen. It’s all about information.