Jeez, whoever is doing Gov's comms, hasn't a clue. Each & very one of these slick films, end up being bad PR. Mind you, Starmer is right: their hobby horse Digital ID, will transform the public's day to day lives. For the worse. Bye bye privacy rights.

Excellent thread on yesterday's by-election: 🧵

Obviously I'm very opposed to mandatory Digital ID but, as he's raised it, I think it's worth pausing on this point around mandatory checks for anti money laundering purposes. We increasingly find the law abiding majority being made to jump through endless AML hoops and having

What does this even mean? Who exactly is this meant to resonate with? Such abject political comms.

I preferred the less modern age, when our economy grew, my post-tax income grew & the police didn't arrest people for praying silently or wearing a Star of David.

Boss, who are you to call me a scumbag? You know nothing about me, you've never met me. Is that how you converse with people in real life who hold different opinions to you? Aren't you meant to be the good person? Behave yourself, you're old enough.

"Stakeholders". I've worked in policy and advocacy roles for years and incrementally seen this cringe inducing managerialist, accountability-dodging cast of mind grow like a cancer across the public and third sector. We need a huge clear out and a bit cultural reset as regards

There is real evil on the earth and unfortunately some of it sits on the bench under a cloak of justice.

Income tax 2008 (inflation adjustment in brackets): Personal allowance 0%: £5,225 (£8,574) Starting rate 10%: £0 to £2,230 (to £3,656) Basic rate 22%: £2,231 to £34,600 (to £56,733) Higher rate 40%: Over £34,600 (over £56,733) Income tax 2025: Personal Allowance 0%: Up to

Ben Smoke No one believes that graph because things have got worse. We soaked the definitionally most economically productive workers and things got worse. Distributional analyses made for bad policy decisions since the crash. I wrote about this for The Critic. thecritic.co.uk/britain-has-to…

Stats from the ONS show train drivers earn an average £76,327 putting them in the top ten jobs in the UK - higher than most head teachers and many senior police officers. These unskilled ( and often idle) workers got in this position by using innocent members of travelling

Tesco and Sainsbury's have famously narrow profit margins as do most major supermarkets and consumer good retailers. They're massive direct and indirect employment providers. You over-tax them at our collective peril because they could easily go to the wall. Their investors and

Striking how Rupert only chimes in to push an anti-Farage angle. He didn't have a thing to say when Sarah was being widely monstered.

Crucial change. They would need to go much further than this, but it is a sound foundation for reasserting professionalism in Whitehall and the NDPB landscape and the primacy of responsible party government.

Measure thrice, cut once. Vital work. Really encouraging to see.

There remains something clearly very wrong with the sampling for the YouGov panel that even now as Labour join the Tories in a struggle to stay in the mid to high teens, Reform is still anchored on around 27%. Their weighting of the Reform vote is badly off. Been saying this for

This graph explains why service standards haven't improved and why services feel so substandard and stretched even with the tax burden at a 70 year high and public sector managerial remuneration often being higher than many private sector roles in many parts of the country.

No, the issue here is the YouGov panel is dysfunctionally framed and weighted. That's why it is so consistently out of kilter with the poll findings of the rest of the industry.