mjrobbins.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

A couple of things that come out of this steel story to me. One, the way in which governments increasingly have to negotiate with the companies that run critical supply chains. Two, the need for government to decide what actually is critical.

submitted 1 day ago • 11 comments

✍️I visited British Steel last week - just as workers were discovering that the plant's Chinese owners were effectively planning to starve the blast furnaces to death. It was a strange, unsettling experience. With deep ramifications. Some thoughts: edconway.substack.com/p/the-strang...

submitted 1 day ago • 18 comments

This from @dsquareddigest.bsky.social is a really fascinating model of how planning goes wrong, focusing on the system and how it uses information and risk rather than the rules or the antagonists www.niskanencenter.org/the-problem-...

submitted 1 day ago • 1 comment

This is really excellent 👇

submitted 2 days ago • 2 comments

It's the end of the week. Skive off of work and read that thing you've been meaning to read instead.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Two years ago today, a road at the heart of the Ebbsfleet development area collapsed. Since then it hasn't been fixed. Instead, nothing has happened. takes.jamesomalley.co.uk/p/the-landsl...

submitted 3 days ago • 7 comments

Include the stunning, maddening fact that one of the council’s objections to the Luton expansion was that it would, er, create jobs.

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

Let me tell you the story of the most visible example of economic and political failure in modern Britain. Leeds is the largest city in western Europe without a mass transit system, and we are all poorer because of it. How did we get here? Why does it matter? And what can be done?

submitted 5 days ago • 6 comments

Water like glass at Loch Garten today @rspbscotland.bsky.social . Just unbelievable weather in Scotland this week.

submitted 5 days ago • 1 comment

Great YIMBY rage-bait here, give it a go

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

Fascinating - @tortoisemedia.bsky.social on 'Botsperts'

submitted 5 days ago • 5 comments

New post just out A timely guest post from John Kingman - chair of Legal + General and Barclays UK - on what Labour need to do if they're serious about getting the economy moving. More important than ever given the impact of the Trump tariffs. (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/t...

submitted 5 days ago • 7 comments

Good podcast & episode! All for Luton airport expansion (I use it a lot). What is also needed is more direct routes from other parts of the country to it (other than London)

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

I know it’s got nothing to do with tariffs but the stuff from Starmer today on medical research and data sharing is very good and very important - hopefully building on fine work of @bengoldacre.bsky.social, James O’Shaughnessy and others

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

Plugging this again because I think we did a really good show this week.

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

This is a great piece - really good to see people writing about energy and defence in an integrated way.

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Here's @mjrobbins.bsky.social describing his local council's rationale for opposing the expansion of Luton Airport. (Warning: Enraging.) Full episode here: www.abundancepod.com/p/why-we-lov... (or wherever you get your podcasts.)

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Very happy with this week’s show - I think our best yet, so do check it out if you haven’t yet!

submitted 6 days ago • 0 comments

Lots of very understandable focus on the negative economic consequences for the UK of what the US is doing (direct impact of tariffs on exporters, indirect hit to largest trading partner, tighter financial conditions as equities fall, increased uncertainty). We shouldn’t miss the (genuine) upsides:

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

Loads of really useful infographics available at the McKinsey Global Trade Explorer. A helpful reminder that the self-declared ‘US declaration of economic independence’ is a very big deal but it is not ‘the end of globalisation’. www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-rese...

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

Visiting the former seat of the, er, Badenoch lordship.

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

This is really good, and I think sums up a sort of privileged ‘but just make X happen!’ foot-stamping attitude you see around parts of the tech industry.

submitted 8 days ago • 2 comments

An excuse to re-up this, prompted by having to pay to park a written-off car in a lake.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

All these people should be sectioned.

submitted 8 days ago • 9 comments

Drove 160 miles up the A1 this evening and almost every single delay was due to an HGV doing 57mph overtaking an HGV doing 56mph, causing massive congestion in its wake.

submitted 10 days ago • 4 comments

Succinctly covers some of the problems and the need for more radical solutions. My concern is that while Labour see that raising taxes is a risk, they also see being radical is a risk, so will fall into the abyss of doing neither. And open the door for others to be radical in a damaging way

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

Last plug for the evening crowd - and do please subscribe as I’m close to hitting a mathematically pleasing number,which would be a nice way to start my holiday in the Cairngorms tomorrow.

submitted 11 days ago • 1 comment

🧵 I've been reviewing many of the past year's US & European military & intelligence assessments of how long it would take Russia to rebuild its military capability and the timeline on which any threat to NATO could unfold. A brief thread below which summarises these assessments.

submitted 11 days ago • 28 comments

“School transport costs increased over 100% in 4 years. They now amount to roughly the same as the transport, roads, parking, libraries, leisure, housing benefit, public protection and safety budgets combined.”

submitted 11 days ago • 3 comments

“School transport costs increased over 100% in 4 years. They now amount to roughly the same as the transport, roads, parking, libraries, leisure, housing benefit, public protection and safety budgets combined.”

submitted 11 days ago • 3 comments