As Ed Miliband seeks to 'double down' on the UK energy transition to clean power, this is a reminder of why that matters to consumers:
The highest proportion of fossil fuels in the energy mix leads to the highest prices according to Fidelity international
www.ft.com/content/6b4e...
Chinese book stores were interesting. Nothing is really banned anymore, as one person told me because not enough people read. I also think interestingly the decline of western soft power has made Chinas soft power more appealing.
I checked this too.
*20 seconds* of Reform logo display.
*No other* party logo displayed.
In local election purdah.
This is not normal. At all.
Someone really should study ManuscriptCentral -- what's the cocktail of features that makes it so terrible? It's perfectly optimised for a poor user experience.
By the 1980s, Germany had been so severely “neutered” that it could only field about twelve army divisions, comprising 36 brigades and over 700 tanks.
Its peacetime strength was 495,000 soldiers, and its wartime strength was 1.3 million.
Exclusive: Sweden has intelligence indicating Russia's systematically manipulating data to fool Ukraine’s western allies into believing its economy has withstood the strain of its war spending & western sanctions, Thomas Nilsson, head of Sweden Military Intelligence, told me & @maxseddon.bsky.social
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Why economists like models (with an homage to Jorge Luis Borges)
After I posted a paper on the catalytic effect of blended finance, I got some pushback on the idea that a unified analytical framework is useful at all. 🧵
Zelenskyy makes a big announcement: “We have already reached 10-year agreements with three key countries: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. We already have requests from 11 countries – the Middle East and the Gulf, plus we’re also gradually turning our attention to the Caucasus.
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This is a remarkable and important step.
Ukraine, a country under full scale invasion for 4+ years, is signing deals to co-develop/produce weapons with other countries.
Saudi, UAE and Qatar are not only confident of but also banking on Ukraine being a functional nation state over the next decade.
FT: "After Trump had claimed on Friday that Iran had made a series of concessions on its nuclear programme, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s top negotiator and wartime leader, said the US president had “raised seven claims in one hour and all seven were false”."
Iran's regime is evil and despicable. Yet Trump's long history of incessant, blatant lying makes their claims -- that Trump is confabulating in his statements about the ceasefire -- plausible. Credibility matters in geopolitics.
BBC News article headline warning about potential jet fuel shortages in next six weeks
A Ryanair digital advertisement for flights before 30th June 2026 starting from 15 GBP.
There is possibly good commercial reasons (eg, to fill empty flights that are anyway scheduled) but it still sounds surreal.
In recent media appearances to discuss UK economic prospects, I've made a point of starting by saying
"Economic forecasting is always, but it's a lot harder when the world's largest economy & military superpower is under the control of a deranged/senile megalomaniac"
substack.com/home/post/p-...
what’s funny about this is that tarantino wrote this “ezekiel 25:17“ for the film. it isn‘t actually in the bible. publicwitness.wordandway.org/p/hegseth-bo...
Vance bragging abt cutting support for Ukraine, which is bleeding while defending itself from a russian genocidal war, is deeply immoral.
"Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter." Isaiah 5:20.
Krastev called Orban the right-wing Castro, which I think is exactly right: the leader of a small relatively insignificant country, that nevertheless became the ideological lodestar for a global movement after being propped up by russia
It take weapons grade arrogance to invent popesplaining.
Europe v the US? There is much talk of a possible collapse of Nato but other big stuff in a gathering transatlantic civil war is invisible – or little noticed. France took a strategic step last week towards reducing its dependence on American tech giants. 1/
www.numerique.gouv.fr/sinformer/es...
Rebound!
It's really hard to work out what is going on with the UK strategically these days.
We appeased Hitler to buy time for a defence buildup. Now we are confronting Putin, but without devoting the necessary resources to restoring our military capability.
The Strategic Defence Review, which Robertson spearheaded, came out in September 2025, as I was writing the last chapter of my book, which is focused on foreign policy and strategy. I read that entire document and interviewed a number of experts about it. A few thoughts. 🧵
Unfortunately, the Strategic Defence Review failed to trigger the much-needed national debate not just on defence spending, but, more broadly, Britain’s strategy in this dangerous time. Easy to blame the media, but it would have been No 10‘s job to drive this conversation./4 But
Disappointed, though not surprised, I began to describe various life- saving components of USAID’s global health portfolio, highlighting how we prepare for and respond to emerging pandemic threats; support the diagnosis and treatment of tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV; and immunize millions of children from the deadliest childhood diseases. I spoke for about five minutes, focusing primarily on our infectious diseases work and hoping to keep the attention of people who seemed to have no experience—or interest—in global health. When I finished, the room was silent, the political appointees looking at one another in what appeared to be disbelief. The silence was broken by Ken Jackson, who chuckled softly and shook his head. “Wow, there really is so much that USAID does that we never knew,” he said. “This is the story that needs to get out there.” Joel, also smiling, chimed in next, echoing Jackson’s amazement. “I had no idea you did all this,” he said. “As a Republican, when I think of what USAID does in global health, I assumed it was just, you know, abortions.”
This is NUTS
www.thehandbasket.co/p/trump-usai...
(h/t @ryanevans.bsky.social for pointing this fact out in this excellent podcast episode on Ukraine)
I'd forgotten this: one year ago in Munich, J.D. Vance argued that "EU governments could have done more to oppose Washington over the Iraq War". Incredibly ironic, now that the Trump admin is lambasting Europeans for not joining in on Trump's disastrous war of choice in Iran!
Thank you Ted!
Thank you!
Lots of examples of European governments cutting fuel duties and VAT. This is the opposite of what to do, since it will raise consumption of a scarce resource, hurting industry and poorer countries. Give poorer households cash to tide them over. They can spend it on energy or on other items.
