It's my own fault for using ChatGPT as a search tool, but this really made me laugh. "...with an important nuance..." is sublime 🤌

FWIW I do have a flat but on shared ownership in a very cheap part of Greater London (because I couldn’t save a more expensive deposit elsewhere) and my honest advice is always that I would strongly discourage home ownership if a) you’re single and b) you don’t have an inheritance

I think one of the underestimated downsides of being a HENRY when you’re high income but low inherited (not just accumulated) wealth is having literally no financial resilience. It’s not merely being unable to afford property, you can be undone by a sudden replacement of broken fridge or ground rent

Deutsche Bank here with the good stuff.
Game on.

This intro to David Frost's Telegraph column sums up so much that is wrong with British politics.

Thanks @alexinternational.bsky.social 😀😀😀

IYKYK

what article is this from stephen??

3. the ability to inspire or lead others
4. meaningful experience beyond politics

It seems people see a strong or prominent media performer and assume that confers a complex political skill set. It doesn't, and it's a useless way to refer to people

From what I can tell, the only common traits of “rising stars” are being 30–35 and loud.

Rarely any of the traits actual political stars had -

1. original ideas, not just shouting generic or controversial ones for attention
2. real critical analysis skills

Question: what are the metrics used to define so-called 'rising stars' in politics?

To me the label is largely baseless - just feels like a self-fulfilling prestige loop when most of them are pretty mediocre.

Off the top of my head, there have been four egregious examples of weapons grade public racism in the last couple of weeks - Jenrick; the Express hack; Captain Concrete & the Reform woman. The way they are treated by employers, punters & wider media, will directly influence how much more we see.

Head to head: resident doctors on strike - Re:State

This is all to say: what is the true labour market value of a resident doctor and are we meeting it?

Read the full, detailed debate here - let me know what you think!

re-state.co.uk/rethink/head...

12/ This is the reality of redistribution. The richer take on more of the burden because they can tolerate it.

Someone earning below £24k with a pay freeze during high inflation would be in much worse shape than a doctor.

11/ Despite the BMA's framing, it's obviously not the only option - there are plausible, fair alternatives.

These can include a lower pay rise staggered over a number of years and a substantial intervention on their working conditions.

10/ And their poor working conditions are a serious problem but pay hikes won't touch the structural issues they describe.

Bottom line: FPR is patently bad value for money. It's not fair, cost-effective, deliverable, or frankly even politically sellable.

9/ There's then contagion risk – if doctors get full pay restoration, every other public sector group will demand the same.

They also, crucially, have high long-run earnings, & will be in the top two earning percentiles for most of their working life.

8/ So higher pay for doctors means money taken from something or someone else - in an economy where 3.2 million children are in relative poverty, prisons are almost full, the list goes on.

This reflects the fundamental values judgement: who is more worthy of the cash?

7/ And so ensues all of the classic questions about how you prioritise limited taxpayer money.

It would be funded by higher spending (and thus taxes), higher borrowing or taking money from something else.

The fiscal rules mean borrowing can’t be used. Taxes are unpalatable.

6/ The year choice is also arbitrary.

BUT even if you used later years, and used a more reliable measure of inflation, for second year doctors, their pay is still 10.8% less than 2010.

By whatever measure you choose, it's an insanely expensive demand costing billions.

5/ This calls for restoration to a figure based on salaries from 2008 using Retail Price Inflation (RPI).

FYI - RPI was officially discredited as a national statistic over a decade due to serious flaws in its methodology, leading to overstated inflation figures.

4/ I don't think anyone disputes the scale of the pay decline or working conditions - rather how to respond.

The most controversial (and unlikely) option - full pay restoration (FPR) - is consistently demanded by the BMA.

3/ Mean public sector pay dropped by 0.9% in real terms in 2010-2023, doctors dropped by 14.7%.

This is compounded by objectively poor working conditions - no hot food out of hours, obscene parking prices in hospitals, no control over rotas, few specialist training places.

2/ It's true doctors have had a huge pay rise... but they started from the biggest real terms decrease in the public sector.

The scale of their pay decline, is by all accounts, in a different league.

1/ As surely as the sun rises in the east, resident doctors strike again!

For months, I went back and forth as to the legitimacy of these strikes. In the summer I wrote this internal debate down word for word (link at end of thread).

So how legitimate ARE they?🧵

So - a lot of people are saying this, and it is to an extent true, but the only reason it is not true of Labour is that the public services think tanks are for the most part real think tanks which provide an intellectual life that isn’t coming from Labour itself.

Labour is also a lot more aware of their problem, which is why Re:State, a cross party think tank, can still have a big influence on aspects of government policy.

i'm sorry seb i simply see it as a public duty to fight people who use words like post modern or fiscal rules with no idea what the hell either of those things are

Is it stuck up to say that I had numerous conversations at party conference that reminded me lots of people are far more interested in sounding clever rather than actually being clever?

People talk about getting a "better" political class with little agreement on what that means. I suspect the best change would be getting more people who are seriously interested in policy and government. Surprisingly few MPs actually are.