One very immediate result has been the squeeze on NHS staff pay. Here’s what happened to nurses’ pay under Labour and Tory governments since 1997. Nurses’ real-terms pay is now 12% below what it was on the eve of the 2010 election.

Let’s start with the most striking: the astonishingly clear association between the governing party, health spending and the functioning of the NHS. Waiting lists swelled under Major, shrunk under Labour as health funding soared, before climbing again under Tory austerity.

In conclusion, Cameron and Osborne are lucky to have escaped the fate of Truss and Kwarteng. Like Trussonomics, austerity was ideology-over-evidence. Unlike Trussonomics, it was not quickly reversed, and so has gone on to cause enormous, lasting damage. enterprise-sharing.ft.com/redeem/c540270…

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Net zero is the single biggest industrial & economic challenge modern society has set itself. It’s ENORMOUS. Every previous energy transition - from wood to coal, coal to oil, oil to gas/nuclear etc - involved moving UP a thermodynamic ladder. Our fuels got more energy dense!

Tough luck for the North. HS2 never stood a chance.

Euston to Birmingham Birmingham to Manchester

I am a geriatric millenial, so grew up late 80s/90s. Forever reading on here how much the country has changed, which nearly always reverts to a discussion on immigration. What gets left out is the subtle and important ways other things in society have changed too. Some examples:

This has been obvious ever since the HS2 announcement; there is no plan for capacity n of Birmingham. Nothing. The govt line has largely been - and I’m only being slightly facetious here - that there’s no problem bc after Covid people stopped using trains theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/d…

From the "Sunday Morning" archives: The photographer's eye II youtu.be/a6Juy-nvqA8?si… via YouTube Hannah Cassidy Hi Hannah you may be interested in this. Came across this the other day. Shows Bruce Davidson working the New York subway.

Like a Lowry painting come to life. 🤯 AI can be scary but it's also pretty sick. 👏 📷: theoloniouspunk (TikTok)

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JamesSmithRF Office for Budget Responsibility The living standards outlook is bleak. Real average wages are only set to regain their 2008 levels in 2026 - nearly two lost decades of pay growth. Had pay instead continued along its pre-financial crisis path over this period, the average worker would be £14,000 better off.

Interesting 20mph stuff! LTT roughly estimate the casualties avoided in🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿by 20mph saved £20M for the first 3 months. If the casualty figures in Q1 2024 are similar, the 20mph associated savings will exceed the £34m implementation cost within just the 1st 6 months!

VIDEO: Straddle a wooden stick decorated with a pretend, but laboriously decorated, horse's head and off you go as if you were riding a real horse. Hobby horsing is an unofficial sport but one that is taken very seriously by thousands of enthusiasts around the world.

Brutal summation of the last fourteen years of Tory government. No wonder many feel Britain is broken.

Under-appreciated stat from last week’s election: Labour won its lowest ever share of the vote in deprived areas (<50% for the first time), and its highest ever share in affluent areas. The result is a dramatic flattening of the class gradient in Labour support.

And here is the same deprivation vs vote share chart for the Conservatives, as requested by Chaminda Jayanetti. A collapse right across the board, and only won 32% of the vote even in the most affluent parts of the country.

South Yorkshire Police are pursuing a court order that will compel me to provide them with all my photographs, taken during a day of far-right violence in Rotherham. I cannot comply with this request. Here's why. 🧵/1

The photographer Larry Fink “was patient enough to blend into the wallpaper as needed,” writes Lucy Sante, “but he resisted the presumption of invisibility and omniscience.” nybooks.com/online/2025/01…