stephenkb.bsky.social
Associate editor and columnist @financialtimes.com. Post too often about culture, public policy, management, politics, nerd stuff, Arsenal, wosoc. Try my UK politics newsletter for free here: www.ft.com/tryinsidepolitics
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Very true.
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Yup
See also
www.bmj.com/content/386/...
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I can’t parse this, sorry.
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My dream move isn’t Gyökeres or Sesko, it’s secret third option of “Time Machine to stop Gabby Jesus going to the World Cup and prevent him from hurting his knee.” What’s the release clause on that?
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My strong feeling as well, but trying (almost certainly not successfully) to be open minded about what Casey’s own report says.
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Indeed. And I have not been sparing in my criticisms of police over the Spycops scandal and I will continue not to be, but Mark Kennedy is now at retirement age, so my concern is that will also be yet another 'The British state declares: well, wasn't that sad?'
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It's not insignificant and I will go into reading it with an open mind, but this is also the person who was happy to do the inquiry into social care (the most redundant of redundant inquiries) so I don't....*automatically* go 'ok, I am intensely relaxed about this one'.
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I am torn. On the one hand, well, yeah, I agree with this, I am just innately 'O RLY?' about someone going 'my crime was, if anything, caring too much'. On the other, I know from my own inquiry how the word 'racism' does sometimes paralyse some organisations in a really unhelpful way.
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Read the back story behind the score: www.focusfeatures.com/article/the-...
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Thanks for posting this!
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Agree completely!
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A thing the music does really well is thread a) being really good b) sounding like its genre c) being believable as something someone would pay £800k for d) being believable as something the creators of would leap at the £800k *for*.
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Congratulations - welcome to the boss class!
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Completely agree.
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Yeah. (And frankly I suspect given Johnson's own interests I would probably like those names better, net). But it has a clear, sensible rationale and it was right to do it.
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Yeah, seem like good shouts to me. Would want to hold James in reserve for Crossrail 2 as it will provide onward connections from people coming from Scotland to London by train.
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Indeed. One of that crowd worked at the ASI, where, at the upper end, this job is going for about the same as a head of year in a London secondary school at at the bottom it is £1k off minimum wage. They don’t think either group should be able to expect to live in central London, and yet…
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Don’t think it gets harder at all. There are always more monarchs! The basic rule of thumb ought to be “can you give easy and legible verbal instructions”. By the argument of the anti-rename people, should just have called the Lizzie Line “the Underground”.
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Also, sure, I would prefer it if they had gone with Harlequin and Goblin, the historic names of two of the lines, but…it’s good that they have separate names? They’re different lines!
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They were opposing it.
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Turned into dust reading this.
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Indeed. The guy going from “someone should clean this” to “Nick (30 ans) intensifies” as the first hint of actually increasing state capacity in any way, oy.
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Completely agree. “Get out of the third sector and get a job in sales or a hedge fund” ought to be easier advice for these guys to follow.
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Indeed. Do you want more rolling stock? Do you want more cleaning staff who are boarding in-service trains to clean them while they ride? No, you opposed anything resembling the necessary measures!
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This weird “hate the Conservative party, but have absolutely no serious criticism of the actual policies pursued 2010 to 2024” is very very wearying.
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Yeah - as you’ve said elsewhere, the key to understanding these guys is they’ve chosen low-paid careers but they lack self-awareness about it. They think being a pro-private sector thinktank is the same as being a successful private sector employee.
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Sure, but that’s why Daniel didn’t say “this can’t succeed”, he said, “my metric for success is when I see it in Swindon”.
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Relatedly, fascinating trend in politics of various movements that hate *their own parents*. Ah, the libs are wine moms who like Gen X, I see, I see. “John and Linda” who have absolutely nothing to do with where “Nick” came from, aye, right.
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Indeed. It’s particularly wearing because these people then go on to share a meme that demonises precisely the people who are being paid to clean the Tube!
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The “who is to blame for bus provision in England? Could it be the people who voted with their feet and the ballot box to weaken it, or nefarious forces” does not have political battalions but you can draw a direct line from it to “we’ve made welcome changes to regulation, but there is no money”.
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At a movement level, agree. Think the biggest potential impact is “who ends up being part of the Spad talent pipeline in future, and what do they think”.
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On Substack and WhatsApp too!
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Enjoyable polling, good explanation of the meme (in a sanitised but still illustrative example) here and in the replies:
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The “Nick (30 ans)” stuff is a combination of the intensely pathetic and the troubling. A bunch of people who have decided the reason they don’t have the life they “deserve” is not because of the policy choices they supported or the career choices they’ve made but because of immigrants and the old.
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I didn’t say you had. I was just making a general comment about the industry l.
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Indeed. “Do your fans want to hear about the actors?” - if your answer is “who can say?”, no wonder people don’t respect you as much as they do movies.
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They are TOO a real league, okay??
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And somehow - just gets worse and worse with every paragraph.