"The deeply humane nature of the enterprise, pursued through extreme & often lonely conditions, is the quality that unites Nelson & Coleridge. The method is radical, the purpose deeply conservative, concerned for ‘all old & venerable Truths’ in a world threatened with change."

We'll look back at the idea we let children drink from the social media firehose with the same disbelief that we now apply to letting them smoke. A ban for under 16s isn't a silver bullet - but it's a good first start. Responses to 10 common objections: open.substack.com/pub/edrith…

Gird your loins: Dominic Cummings has joined us on the Anglofuturism podcast.

Anglofuturism. Coming soon. @Dominic2306

Indeed. Unless you work with children under 16 or have children under 16, you really have no idea.

Many of Britain’s most iconic founders are immigrants. Typically they came here for our education (most Oxford / Cambridge) and decided to stay. Often they are far more patriotic than average. And because of Britain amazing multiculturalism we are so happy to claim them as British so quickly. I love it. @NStoronsky (Revolut) @mati /@dabkowski_piotr (elevenlabs) @vriparbelli (synthesia), @nikola_mrksic (poly) @alexgkendall (Wayve)

ah this is is excellent from @dc_lawrence. imo any/all parties could organise around this 'anti slop, pro work' agenda: - we've made it easier to build slop than sovereignty - much of our state & economy is consumed by busywork: value-destructive, pre-emptive risk aversion & consultation - this creates a new class of incumbents coasting on stagnation & decline - everyone else, unable to build wealth from their labour, is left to economic lotteries (gambling, influencers, onlyfans), deepening the nation's spiritual crisis

This is spectacularly silly. Disadvantaged students do not need untested AI tutors. They need excellent behaviour, high expectations, explicit instruction, and systematic retrieval. Not this.

Green politics and love of your country, in action. I’ve known @paulpowlesland for 15 years. I’ve never met someone with so much energy, enthusiasm and pragmatic idealism.

Few have done as much as Charlie Peters to bring the full extent & horrors of the grooming gangs to light or to give brave survivors a voice. Palantir’s software would transform the Met Police’s ability to collate data and analyse grooming networks, and we stand by ready to help.

30,000 fewer children in private schools. 1,900 fewer teachers in state schools. A lose/lose proposition.

Again, an awful lot of gaslighting re: "neoliberalism", denying the existence of a ~50yr policy/governance agenda on the basis of "the state spends a lot of money". Public spending as %-of-GDP isn't high because we've had a period of Leftwing hegemony. (Outside of the arts, the academy & the social/cultural policy sphere, that's obvious nonsense). Rather, it's high because: 👉Demographic pressures have pushed up the 2 massive spending outlays, health & pensions – a problem common to the vast majority of Western democracies 👉UK growth/productivity has been stagnant for ~18yrs, since The City of London collapsed under the weight of its own poor investments, while spending pressures have continued to grow apace 👉We have a growing (& expensive) debt pile as a result of the taxpayer twice being forced to bail out the private sector to the tune of several hundred £BN – 1st during GFC, 2nd during Covid lockdown 👉We have huge revenue pressures from "sticking plaster" subsidies covering up the underlying issue of chronic low investment, e.g. housing benefits ballooning while municipal capex on housebuilding shrinks; or tax credits/UC top-ups disguising stagnant real wages; or increasing day-to-day NHS spending after years of squeezed capital budgets/social care sector collapse Neoliberalism is defined by privatisation, the embrace of globalisation/free trade, monetarist central banking, the emasculation of the labour movement, & the transformation of the state from a prime actor in national production/investment into a post-hoc fiscal distributor. It has been consciously driven by market-liberal true believers (some even self-identifying as "neoliberals") – on the Right by Hayekian/Friedmanite think tanks, business groups & various Conservative ideologues, and on the Left by Third Way modernisers (see Blair) and their intellectual forebears in Marxism Today's revisionism, the Democratic Left etc. etc. Pretending none of this happened (because 'muh the state still spends £££') is pure sophistry. They want us to believe they didn't sell off airlines, steelmakers, coal mines, energy generators, water companies, car manufacturers, banks, bus/train contracts & millions of council houses. That they didn't deregulate financial services to get their 'Big Bang'. That they didn't abolish rent controls, or capital/exchange controls, or wage boards, or price commissions. That they didn't outsource core services and state capacity to corporate providers. That they didn't impose some of the most draconian/restrictive trade union laws in the democratic West. That they didn't cede monetary policy to an independent central bank, or cede trade/migration policy to an unelected, supranational, continental bureaucracy. That they didn't squeeze public investment or prioritise tax cuts over infrastructure spending. That they didn't eschew industrial policy and take a lax approach to deindustrialisation because the future was services & the "knowledge economy". This isn't simpy an accumulation of random policy titbits, but is the outcome of a coherent intellectual project that has consistently rebalanced the labour/capital relationship in the latter's favour. These people are conning you.

BREAKING NEWS: It's time to start Britmaxxing 🇬🇧

Private schools have lost 30,000 pupils since introduction of VAT thetimes.com/article/49cf293…

I am just back from the Oval and I regret to inform you that London has in fact fallen. More Arsenal shirts than Surrey shirts. Forget about Palace or Charlton. Arsenal fans everywhere in South London. Yesterday I was in East London at my parents - their local pub had more Arsenal fans in it than West Ham fans for the Conference League 3 years ago. Lots more. Not even close. The "London FC" people are right. I don't like it, but they're right. And given the way that London tends to eat the world, don't get smug if you're outside of London. If we have half a decade of Arsenal dominance, by the end of it they'll have taken over Liverpool and Manchester too and the economy will be one giant Arsenal merch store with a few farms and data centres tacked on. Foreign leaders will grant profitable trade and visa deals in return for being allowed exclusive pre-access to the new Declan Rice hologram experience in the Emirates Museum.

Anyone who thinks the opponents of private schools will stop at VAT should get real. If private schools want the next round to go better than the last one did, they need to shore up their support - particularly with the middle classes. Here's how: edrith.co.uk/p/why-private-s…

Politically, Labour's pledge to put VAT on private schools was one of its most effective. Simple, value-laden and wildly popular - even with many who'd vote Tory. But why did private schools lose the middle classes - and how might they win them back? edrith.co.uk/p/why-private-s…

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Love!

the most ambitious thing you can work on today is rebuilding the country maybe that’s at a company, like building our TSMC but maybe it’s at @britishprogress, who are leading a new generation of high-leverage non-profits raising our national policy ambition strongly recommend applying: