Who does this description of Kaiser Wilhelm II remind you of? (Written by Christopher Clark in 2015).

The lifeline election (part two) Can Trump steal the midterms?

New post just out:

Can Trump steal the midterms?

He certainly wants to but it's no so easy. I look at all the things he could try and the challenges with each.

And why his attempts may hurt the Republicans rather than boost their chances.

(£/free trial)

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

Roaming Like An Escaped Bear Podcast Episode · The Tuesday Club · 24 February · 46m

podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...

Maybe also worth pointing out how much worse things really could get? Would be nice if media avtually questioned Farage too, but, feels unlikely. When I point out they have virtually no real policies, people are always surprised.

Went to Florida age 8/12/16 (2000/04/08) and the last two times we essentially brought an extra suitcase home with stuff we saw as cheap. iPads and tech, too.

"Welcome to Decline" -- still one of my favourite graphs from last year. In the late 1970s, Britain's economic fate very clearly split in two. How much you blame Thatcher will depend on your politics, but her leadership is useful to understand the timing. tomforth.co.uk/welcometodec...

*eternal screaming*

Apologies, hadn't realised the handle confusion! Climate Ben from twitter may not be on here yet.

I'm not pretending to be anybody, I just took a handle that was free when I signed up. Happy to change the handle though 🙏

That first time you put card details in without having to check the new card, feels sweet. Yes memory, you're working!

One thing which leaps out about this speech is how thoughtless and lazy it is. On the one hand talks of the importance of equality before the law, no matter "who you are or where you're from". Then criticises laws that means can't distinguish between citizens. You can't have both!

Madrid's metro system in 1994 - diagram of metro lines

Madrid's metro system after 2007 - diagram of metro lines.

Madrid tripled the length of its metro system in just 12 years, faster and cheaper than almost any other city in the world.

Left: in 1994
Right: after 2007

Cost per mile: £64–91 million

(around 7x cheaper than London's Jubilee & Northern line expansions & 14x cheaper than Toronto's Ontario line)

Bar chart of area accessible by public transport in 30 minutes. Madrid ranks highest out of cities shown, with 198 sq km in 30 minutes by public transport at peak hours on weekdays. London and Dublin rank lowest, at around 40 sq km. This is so sad.

Madrid's metro expansion means that people can reach around 198 sq km (!) of the central business district within 30 minutes in public transport on peak hours.

In contrast, Londoners can only reach 40 sq km 😭

Great to see this report from the Work Foundation. Interesting findings on how important access to flexible working is for enabling people with health conditions stay in work.

The image shows a bar chart titled "Number of lives saved by childhood vaccinations from 1974 to 2024," sourced from Shattock et al. (2024). A total of 93.71 million lives have been saved by measles vaccines since 1974. Other diseases include tetanus (27.95 million) and whooping cough (13.17 million). The data highlights the large impact of vaccination programs globally.

Measles vaccines have saved around 94 million lives in the last 50 years. Of those, 92 million were children.

Measles vaccines rank highest in total lives saved by different childhood vaccines.

🇰🇿🇺🇦👀 Ukrainian flag during Putin's visit to Kazakhstan: hackers broke the LED screen…

🇬🇧👀 22-years-old British man Jake Reeves admitted on Friday that he carried out an arson attack on a London commercial property linked to 🇺🇦Ukraine, and that he had accepted pay from a foreign intelligence agency, in a case prosecutors have linked to Russia, — Reuters

Hopefully Donald doesn't hand Russia a lifeline, and China the gift of confidence.

Struggling to find that one, not sure how to sea Ch so far back through tweets!?

Maps showing warming for each UK county for typical summer days (left) and hottest days (right), with darker reds and faster warming for the hottest days especially in south-east England.

Summer UK temperatures have warmed faster than global average temperature.

But the very hottest days have warmed 4x faster than the global average, especially in south-east England.

Global warming is not "just" 1°C or 2°C. The effects of climate change are non-linear, especially for extremes.

#endfossilfuels #endthegenocide

Saturday night: The Russian/Iranian Shahed attack drones are closing in, with the shape of the alerts on the map looking like a monster is about to bite Kyiv. Luckily, I have a bottle of Scottish ale bought from my local Silpo supermarket in Kyiv to protect me.

P.S. Please send more air defenses.

Andrew Bailey is right. Most people don't realise how shockingly *bad* is the UK's goods trade performance after Brexit and the pandemic. UK exports are 23% lower than the pre-2020 trend and imports are 16% below the trend.

Home Office 'cut corners' buying asbestos-contaminated £15m migrant camp The government watchdog finds the Home Office made

"Cut corners" == made bad decisions and wasted public money.

Another example of how performative cruelty in asylum policy both costs taxpayers *and* makes things worse for asylum seekers.

Robert Jenrick again responsible..

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

7.KEY TAKEAWAY(for me):
This decision reinforces corporate responsibility for climate action but with legal caution. It recognises the role of companies in climate mitigation but hesitates to enforce rigid,generalized targets without specific legal or scientific consensus, especially on scope 3.

Some positive NHS news!

It looks as though hospital productivity in England is (finally) starting to recover. There’s still some way to go to get productivity back to pre-pandemic levels, and the NHS is still behind on its backlog recovery plan – but it's now heading in the right direction.

a week left to apply to be my colleague at She Is Sustainable... happy to chat

god this is a fascinating (and worrying) piece

Never has an electoral pledge sounded more like a threat. Feels like it's missing "if you miss your next payment".

We all have two possible futures: we die young or we live long enough to become disabled.

A more accessible world benefits everyone, whether the issue is n95s in healthcare to reduce hospital-acquired illness or easier mobility in public spaces.

Disability justice is community care and self care.