Sounds like a pretty vapid article…
15.02.2026 10:35
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Sounds like a pretty vapid article…
Yes - this is clear, and occurs even in some of the very fastest growing areas of the planet eg San Francisco… but this was a piece mainly about economic growth more generally.
Yes data is turning up in Liverpool too .. Leeds has always been higher productivity, it looks the part - I wil check the data
Growth up, population up, per capita GVA up too, productivity of any other city in recent years.
tram system setting records, now a net inflow of workers from London to GM, reversing the flow so familiar from history… spoke to CEOs, historians, the Mayor showing me about …
…where leading CEOs were lauding the “fantastic” investment climate, and a business model built on keeping thousands of smart young workers in the city from a campus including uni with the most applications, and experiment of what some call “living in the sky” in thousands of new build flats & homes
MOST READ:
Look up at the skyscrapers and look down at the buzz of a city full of young workers, and you see something occasionally elusive in Britain, a city full of growth and optimism.
In the week of more sluggish UK growth figures, for Radio 4’s In Other News…
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
From @faisalislam.bsky.social
Surreal, but heard at Davos:
Official Danish archives show Woodrow Wilson’s 1916 signature & Secretary of State Robert Lansing, committing US by treaty that Denmark has right to “whole of Greenland”, after Trump written denial of right.
What explains the divergence between consumer confidence of the over- and under-50s? @faisalislam.bsky.social for BBC
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
has been of critical importance to the UK…I asked a number of related questions when I visited Google HQ including inside DeepMind’s US HQ last month including a visit to its academic library below… very much worth watching the film… perhaps even more than Elf!
Merry Christmas… and a happy NY!
film is great introduction for any young people in your life to this frontier.
Both an ex PM & current Cabinet minister told me, separately, that Demis’ insistence on staying in the UK as condition of Deepmind sale amid attempts from Musk, Google & others to move him and it over to Silicon Valley..
The @demishassabis film The Thinking Game is brilliant, already watched 160m times - probably the best advert for the UK’s centrality to the future of high level globally important research and therefore for the world economy… from AI itself to its applications in every corner of frontier science…
Friday night #Newsnight …
💥 warnings of war in Europe, what does it mean?
🌲 Gurinder Chadha on new Christmas film which gives a British Asian take on Christmas Carol
⛪️ Church of Englands new campaign against “populist right”
With @PennyMordaunt @gilliantett @JOwusuNepaul 2230 BBC Two & IPlayer
NEW
It’s China vs the world” says US Treasury Secretary but is it in fact the trade war vs the Nasdaq?
Mad week in America… trying to work out how the rest of the world, and markets work out what’s going on with US economic policy and markets…
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
NEW
At the key international economic committee of finance ministers and central bankers, the IMFC, Chancellor Rachel Reeves chose to stress how the 2020 Brexit deal has “compounded” the UKs long term productivity, “acknowledging” OBR 4% long term hit
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Coming up on @BBCNewsnight
Powerful interview with the family of Virginia Giuffre on latest attempts in Congress to release all Epstein files, their call for Sarah Ferguson to lose Royal title, and how they and she reacted to the Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew
PLUS
Digital ID
Burnham
2230
on #Newsnight
1. Trump suggesting a Ukraine-Russia peace deal involving “some swapping of territories”
2. JD Vance @ UK - a charm offensive after his sharp criticism ? - a confidant explains
3. Wikipedia boss Jimmy Wales tells us of his concerns about Online Safety Act & AI hit to graduate jobs…
#BBCNewsnight at 2230 on BBC2 / IPlayer & across the world on BBC News:
Astonishing footage of a drone dropping off contraband at a major prison: “we have ceded airspace” over our prisons says chief inspector
- Chancellor big Mansion House speech as tax rise speculation rife
Do believe the hype… 🎤
Standing Strong: the John & Amy Hunt interview
@BBCOne 9pm
LONG READ
From David Ricardo to Alexander Hamilton to David Autor to the “sum of all cheating” to the equation that tariffs penguins, to loaded guns & game theory.
Another BBC InDepth trying to explain what’s on earth is going on and where it’s going….
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Tonight @BBCNewsnight at 2230
Does Russia want actual peace? key Putin ally suggests Moscow not about to compromise…
Panel @PeterRicketts @montie @cocobyname
What’s going on with Reform?
AND end of week excl with banned Eurovision singer from Malta
on @bbcnewsnight.bsky.social latest in geopolitical geoeconomic chaos
⚡️ EU agreeing to fund rearmament
🚨 Trump row back on trade war after stock falls
🇨🇦 excl with Canada’s Security minister
💥 is tariff chaos is in fact about a bigger plan for a weaker dollar @gilliantett.bsky.social
…
👀
So in January 2025
166,065 Battery Electric Vehicles sold across Europe (EU+Efta+UK)
UP 45,099 increase on last Jan, (+37%)
Within that, Tesla sold 9,945
DOWN 8,216 on last Jan (-45.2%)
So 1 in 7 EVs sold across Europe was a Tesla last January,
Now it’s 1 in 16.
Thumping fall in Tesla sales in Jan across Europe (EU +Efta + UK)… down 45%, to 9,945 from 18k last Jan. In EU alone halved to 7,500… at the same time EV sales in general up 37%.
Shares down 10%.
Overtaken by JLR and Mazda. And BYD in UK.
New model Y factor, but Musk hit too?
“Whoever controls powerful AI… could be a dictator”
@faisalislam.bsky.social speaks to Nobel Prize winning Turkish-American economist Daron Acemoglu, who warns about the dangers of AI dictators and the impact powerful AI could have on global democracy.
#Newsnight
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bmzs...
Carney on five years of Brexit: "…unfortunately, the United Kingdom is living with the economic impact of that decision. This is a case where I wish I were wrong or had been wrong about the likely economic impact."
WATCH: m.youtube.com/watch?v=yV10...
#Newsnight | @faisalislam.bsky.social
quite something…
An attempt to reshape global econ & trade by projecting US tech supremacy & economic optimism AND threatening trillions in tariffs…
Ultimate carrot and stick. Charm & Offence.
Davos elite nod along as Trump delivers ultimatum
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
👀
PEM convention doesn't cross red lines?
No it doesn’t… it’s not a customs union
q. and a full fat Veterinary agreement. Dynamic alignment with the EU, that doesn't cross the red lines?
No thats part of our manifesto, an SPS agreement, a veterinary agreement, yes.
Trade Sec Reynolds met with EU trade Commissioner Sefcovic at Davos thanked him for “incredibly positive & helpful contribution” in my interview with him
… “proves we can improve the terms of trade with EU and can do that whilst pursuing closer trade links around the world”
NEW
🚨 Trade Sec Jonathan Reynolds tells @BBCNews after Trump speech US does not need to apply tariffs to UK because there is no goods trade deficit.
🚨 Reynolds also clarified that both UK joining PEM and a Brexit vet deal with dynamic alignment would not cross red lines.
