Yeah but you'd expect a former special adviser to lie and obfuscate

Growth again Some less edited thoughts ...

.... And you can find my piece by following through here

open.substack.com/pub/gileswil...

The Mandelson fiasco reveals the true nature of Starmerism This is a prime minister who does not understand the difficult trade-offs involved in governing

"The job of prime minister isn’t to follow process: it is to navigate and advocate for trade-offs" giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... @stephenkb.bsky.social puts pithily what I laboured to get across in my growth piece... It's about trade offs, not just working hard...

Oh trust me, this isn't House or Gray's Anatomy

Exactly. It's the price of a decent oatmilk cappuccino

I know you lot have busy lives etc etc but at the risk of being tedious and repetitive, I must observe that having watched The Pitt season one episode 12, I honestly can't imagine anyone regretting watching this incredible show. Well, unless you really don't like blood. So much blood

Is Ukraine winning the drone race? Barely six months ago it appeared that Russia was ahead in the drone race.

open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/i...

Cheerful detailed piece from Professor Lawrence Freedman

I feel like the next 24 hours in parliament are going to be really trying for those of us who dislike the passive voice

the "key insight is that demand is nonhomothetic: as people get richer, they don’t just buy proportionally more of everything. They shift their spending toward sectors with higher income elasticity, goods whose demand grows faster than income... services have high income elasticity"

Economics has a name for what happens when a new technology makes one sector dramatically more productive: structural change. The canonical example is agriculture. In 1900, about 40% of the American workforce was employed in farming. Today it’s less than 2%. Did people stop eating? No, if anything they’re eating much more. Large scale automation made farmers—and eventually factory farms—much more productive. Agricultural production boomed and prices fell. But because people can only eat so much, the share of income spent on food went down as people got richer, and workers moved to manufacturing and then to services. The simultaneous fall of prices and reallocation of labor to another sector led to the perhaps non-obvious result that the more productive, automated sector became a smaller share of the economy despite serving and producing more. The less productive sector (services) where costs had not fallen—and in fact have risen—became a larger part of the economy.

Here is an actually *smart*, considered and theoretically grounded look at what fast technological change does to an economy
substack.com/inbox/post/1... from @aleximas.bsky.social

I've got a journalism book written more than 20 years ago that described "say stories" as the lowest-value news stories out there and apparently the industry has collectively unlearned that

And it's like macro doesn't exist! "CEO has a Reckon about how AI affects the demand for labour function!" Yeah and then the central banks do what exactly? Nothing?? While the unemployment rate soars??? Really....

Glorious. Thank you!

"CEO Said A Thing!" Journalism "CEO said a thing!" journalism involves parroting the claims of a business leader or executive with absolutely no context, correction, or challenge whatsoever, no matter how elaborate the delusion.

karlbode.com/ceo-said-a-t...

Somewhere Bismarck is looking down in confusion as Germany projects power by sending 4,000 pensioners, 12 buffet stations and a TUI loyalty program through the Strait of Hormuz

That Mitchell and Webb Look - Send us your reckons YouTube video by iotaman5

It's basically "send us your reckons" news reporting

youtu.be/OQnd5ilKx2Y?...

I do wish "prominent bloke says something daft which we'll report because he's important" wasn't such a regular news feature.

See also: bond guys comparing bonds to explosives.

Political experts/journalists only: can anyone bring me up to date on whether the atmosphere in Westminster is "febrile" ? It's really useful to know

100% of the times I have got married, I got there early, to be sure of not missing it.

This probably means I've wasted way too much of my life, just standing around nervously in a church.

If I'd traded on risk and probabilities then I could have optimised all that wasted time right down.

Your Dad is wise

When I was growing up and we first went abroad, my dad always said - if you are going to be waiting anyway, you may as well be doing so at the place you need to be! Which sensible approach I always follow:)

I get the logic but it's a take that only makes sense *if you fly way too often in life*.

If like most normal people you don't fly overseas more than a small number of times, risking one of those flights because "airports are a bit boring" is just insane. If you're bored just play on your phone!

Ukraine’s drone pilots hit Russian targets from 500km away New internet-based guidance system allows operation of unmanned aerial vehicles far from battlefield

Ukraine’s drone pilots hit Russian targets from 500km away - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

This is extremely cool

Kevin Warsh: Trump’s next fall guy at the Fed? - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

Don't want to be tinfoil hat about this but this excitement chart shows he's waaaaay more hawkish when it's a Democrat in power and then the softest of doves when it's a Republican

EV sales surged everywhere apart from the US, rising more than 20% globally in 2025

* EVs were half of Chinese sales and electric truck sales in China tripled
* EV sales outside CN/Eu/US grew 80% (!)

10/10

Fox News is calling this the most decisive and important war America has ever fought

They are complete morons

Alex Imas on Why Economists Might Be Getting AI Wrong YouTube video by Bloomberg Podcasts

He's not very active here but the @aleximas.bsky.social discussion on Odd Lots with @tracyalloway.bsky.social and @weisenthal.bsky.social is worth checking out. A key point: to understand the future of the economy, understand what will be scarce, not what will be abundant

youtu.be/uxMwmaGE64Y?...

Tucker Carlson to launch publishing imprint with books by Russell Brand and Milo Yiannopoulos Former Fox News host says publishing house Skyhorse ‘looking for books that nobody else will publish’

What an impressively curséd headline

www.theguardian.com/books/2026/a...

Our stunning home galaxy I’ve a frozen loch.

An oldie, but probably my favourite Milky Way shot that I’ve taken.

This is our beautiful home galaxy over a frozen loch.

I think you're guessing too much.

I had no idea how seriously ill he was and his badly he'd fxxxed his life