Sarah Davies

Feel a bit sorry for the OBR folk who spent months working on a set of forecasts only to see the Middle East go up in flames this week.

Hannah Spencer walking into Westminster, sucking her teeth, tutting, and muttering "tell you what, you've had some cowboys in here."

Dying

“Sian Berry, for the Greens, asked whether the Royal family had “an effective whistleblowing policy.” Traditionally, unhappy members decamped to the North of England and raised an army, but the procedure probably needs to be updated.”

We have invented all-knowing thinking machines but still no luck with a reliable wordcount generator for pdfs.

Decision to postpone local elections reversed “in the light of recent legal advice”.
What’s going on?
The government will certainly have had legal advice all along. We may never know the details since legal advice is generally confidential /1

The news about students seeking compensation from universities for COVID teaching has made me quite sad.

I can't say what happened at those universities, or what those student's experience was. My present university did not appear to be in the list.

But what I can say is...

Replies disabled so to keep the dafter followers legally safe.

On the disclosure of Mandelson's emails How to think about disclosed documentary evidence

Highly recommended legal perspective on the partial (in all senses) disclosure of documents relating to Epstein that involve Mandelson

emptycity.substack.com/p/on-the-dis...

Please do 👇

Sasha and Minou have had enough of January already. They don’t understand why politicians are stupid, the weather is terrible, their human has just had to give the government a huge chunk of their Dreamies fund, why Richmond Council hasn’t picked up the Christmas trees yet and why West Ham are crap.

I'm curious why the media sanewashes Trump. Theories: partisan bias (dull); Smith's point that we worship the powerful; a legacy of West Wing causing folk to presume the President is wise; belief there must be depth somewhere; reluctance to see that democracy produces worthless leaders. Or what?

Had an intriguing editorial discussion recently: how did people in the past talk about 'minutes' when they didn't have watches or standardised times? How does that affect your thinking?

Come down an Elizabethan/Jacobean rabbit hole with me.

1/

EXCLUSIVE Lawyers livid over Browne Jacobson's Xmas phishing trap Crappy Christmas!

Lawyers livid over Browne Jacobson's Xmas phishing trap www.rollonfriday.com/news-content...

A month ago someone in Jenrick's team got in touch to complain that I'd called him "the most shameless man in parliament." I mean.

City to fight disinformation that undermines London on world stage Government, police and cyber experts point to surge in social media posts spreading fake narratives about safety

Good that the City of London is doing this, and about time, too.

Celebratory Horlicks today at the Debt Management Office

For those joining Bluesky from the Bad Place: welcome.

Yes, you could/should have made the decision sooner, but it is never too late to make a good decision.

And there is a lot on this site which will remind you of the Bad Place before it was bad.

Many moons ago, a Brownie guide (aged range 7 to 10 years) always had to carry 2p for a public call box

It’s not not unreasonable, or a ‘modern’ problem, to think that there needs to some way a child can independently contact their parents / carers in an emergency

Nowadays that is a mobile ‘phone

I’m going to try to post more on here - because the other place is awful.

There's now data out about the resident doctor strikes last month

So how disruptive did they end up being? And what can we say about how the NHS is responding to ongoing strikes?

Short 🧵👇

Trump chasing imaginary oil supplies, Big Tech chasing an imaginary AI deity, and wannabe Fed chairs chasing an imaginary productivity boom. My new year's resolution of not getting angry about bullshit narratives is not going to last long

Oops should be 1989!

Interesting 👇

A bewildering development | Robert Hutton | The Critic Magazine “The first word I want to say,” Richard Tice began, “is ‘Sorry’.” We groaned inwardly (and in some cases outwardly). When a politician begins like that, it’s usually a bait-and-switch before they…

Great piece of writing by @roberthutton.co.uk

thecritic.co.uk/a-bewilderin...

🧵 Is it a super flu year? Who knows, but I think the current reporting is stupid.

A pissed off thread using data.

Firstly - here are today's headlines and some from the last 3 years... spot the difference. 1/10

Suspect also part driven by increasing ‘scan & review’ approaches

“Drunk raccoon passed out on liquor store floor” is my favourite Flaming Lips B Side

But one of the many fascinating things about Badenoch is that she seems unable to accept “incompetence” as the answer to the question “why did the government do that thing?” This refusal is all the more surprising when you remember that she was a minister in Boris Johnson’s government. She has seen incompetence up close. Perhaps that’s the problem: when you’ve lived through the technicolour widescreen shambles that was the last Conservative administration, Starmer’s dreary disasters simply can’t compare.

I do sometimes wonder if I'm losing my mind. thecritic.co.uk/full...

The version of the Gospels where the Samaritan crossed the road to kick the robbery victim in the head and go through his pockets for loose change was suppressed by the woke fathers of the early church.

Trump v the BBC cont'd: an odd and desperate letter from the US media regulator Or: why you should have your evidence in place before you threaten a law suit

Trump v the BBC cont'd: an odd and desperate letter from the US media regulator

Or: why you should have your evidence in place before you threaten a law suit

A new post by me:
emptycity.substack.com/p/trump-v-th...