Written an FT piece.
www.ft.com/content/8ed9...
Should things escalate further and today goes down in history as the end of American hegemony future UK historians may be surprised to find the papers focusing on the Beckhams falling out.
Indeed, and this culminated in the explicitly and deliberately racist Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1968, accurately described by wikipedia below.
This is not an example from history Labour (or any government) should be emulating
you may not believe this but the UK and China have extremely different export profiles
always hidden in the often bad faith 'we can't saddle the future generations with debt' line is the fact that that way, you're also never bequeathing them any assets
I find Heathrow’s public transport options so much better - you can take Heathrow Express and now also the Elizabeth line, but you can even take the Tube (Piccadilly). London is of course huge so it does depend a bit on the part of town you’re heading to
It has a name
The Atlantic, for the fifth time in its history, makes a presidential endorsement. Once for Lincoln. Once for LBJ (from concern about Goldwater) and three times for the opponents of Trump, because he represents a unique threat to America's government and values.
An antidote to Cameron revisionism www.economist.com/britain/2023...
The Brexit playbook, in Germany: run down public services and infrastructure to the point of collapse, blame immigrants for the fallout.
And the country is falling for it, too.
China observers are basically catchers working with knuckleball pitchers in economic research world. Weekends and Tuesday evening wine and dine with friends are always in the crosshairs of unexpected announcements. Quite a few developments today in Beijing. A quick summary:
Reproduction of excerpt from Timothy Snyder's book ON TYRANNY: "1. Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do."
As well-meaning publishers try to navigate the coming storm of state laws against diversity, I hope they'll consider Timothy Snyder's Rule #1 (from his slim book ON TYRANNY).
Branko Milanovic
Suspect Poland & Donald Tusk will now emerge as a very big player in EU - across the piece, but esp (even more so) on Ukraine, intra-EU reforms to prepare for Kyiv's accession, on rule of law issues, and on who should run institutions after EU elections next year. Also regarding reset with the UK
EU gas import tracker:
-LNG imports never this low since Feb22
-imports from NOR picked up again
-imports from ALG decreased
-reverse flows into UA went down
-EU27 storage already exceeds 2022 peak (that was 3 weeks later) bruegel.org/dataset/euro...
Purchasing Power Parity calculations are intrinsically impossible, but I feel like "being alive rather than dead" features in everyone's consumption bundle and so is more likely to be comparable across different societies
Great series of photos of newsstands and their operators from around the world. The stands and their proprietors are definitely of a kind but also differ so much in the details. [kottke.org]
I had expected this, but not, to be honest, so remarkably quickly.
Can people please post links to news organizations that set up here, so that people can follow and retweet interesting/important stories? The success of the move to Bluesky will come through the access to and ability to distribute solid content. If there is good content--please share!