My defectors, you don’t know them, they go to another school

Can't help wondering if some of the millions spent on the Rwanda scheme might have been better deployed bolstering core Home Office capability

Casting around for a podcast player as good as Google podcasts, which is sadly being discontinued. Podcast Addict is a bit clunky. I prefer to keep Spotify for music. Views?

'It doesn't matter that you've done a fantastic cost-benefit analysis if at the end he says 'that doesn't sound like an issue I care about.''

Giles Wilkes on what happens when well-designed policies meet the 'pyramid of indifference.'

Listen to the podcast: linktr.ee/ifszoomsin

UK non-food shop prices fall in April, industry data shows - on.ft.com/3UF3VF9 via Financial Times

OMG The Defra UK minister Mark Spencer just said that “we’ve limited the amount of charges that can apply to five per lorry load”...it's NOT. It's five (mad £145) per CHED (ie product declaration). There can be *multiple* on a lorry. Here's EG from Cold Chain Federation /1

For all the noise and fuss, this doesn't move much (source: Betfair odds)

Peter Geoghegan @ democracyforsale.substack Yes, I was struck by the contrast between Yousaf 'I dropped the ball, this one's on me' and, eg, Johnson 'mindless herd has turned away from me for no good reason'

not saying it's chilly in the office today but I've been lingering by the Dyson hand dryer just to keep the circulation moving

In addition to giving a free advert for MMT moonshine, it also completely misunderstands Reeves' strategy: 'why would it work?' Because it's working in America, which seems to have escaped the Grauniad's notice. 👇🏽

Tony is right; this is one of the most embarrassing pieces I have read in a while. Straw men everywhere. The Tl;Dr version: 'economists all obsess about debt! But a book saying we can just print and spend as much as we like sold really well in the pandemic!'

Excruciating

I really regret going back to work repeatedly when I was too mentally ill to do so and then letting colleagues down, often in a very messy and last minute fashion. I was desperate to be well and back working effectively but funnily enough my recovery was not linear and I couldn’t…

The report recommends that we don't take foreigners' money if they want to come here and give it to us in exchange for some lectures? Xenophobia and grift drives you into some really strange places.

Do they know the untold damage this would do to one of the country's only world-class sectors? Or the way this would shred any hope of Levelling Up. I suppose they do. At this point they're just vandals and wreckers.
thetimes.co.uk/article/foreig…

Why haven't house prices remained around 8x earnings, in the face of higher interest rates?

A fascinating new study sheds some light on price drivers since 2000 🧵
1/8

2nd they highlight the current dilemma: the long term interest rate on gilts has shot up since 2022, but the implied long term yield on housing has stayed low.

That's created a yawning gulf between the two prices that doesn't look sustainable
5/8

'In the UK nominal demand jumped by 41% between 2020 Q2 and 2022 Q2. In the US and eurozone these jumps were 30/28% ...is it plausible that the fiscal and monetary policies that drove demand levels so strongly had nothing to do with the inflation?'- on.ft.com/3UgQ6LD

Defections to Reform have obviously been the main story of the past year, but arguably more crucial has been the consistent and unbudging 1.7m losses to Labour, who of course count double in swing terms.

Reform voters only affect scale of defeat, Lab losses cause the defeat.

Fascinating though also a reminder of what utter nonsense these movies are

This tweet has come just in time. Was about to do this