On the subject of Melvyn Bragg, I think of this Private Eye cartoon more frequently than I care to admit, when I’m struggling to raise the energy for a lecture or graduate supervision
Writer of Streetwise column in the Wall Street Journal www.wsj.com/streetwise Here for FinTwit c. 2012. Ex FT
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On the subject of Melvyn Bragg, I think of this Private Eye cartoon more frequently than I care to admit, when I’m struggling to raise the energy for a lecture or graduate supervision
Lovely chart - where are the data from?
Reform will have to reselect in Croydon, as their initial candidate for Mayor had been dead for 6 months when they selected her, Inside Croydon report Being dead is one way to pass the social media vetting but was likely to get noticed eventually insidecroydon.com/2025/08/27/f...
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
Want to be a founder? No need to actually set up a company any more. The Trumps are following Elon Musk's example, and being appointed as co-founders - with the president seeming to jump straight to co-founder emeritus. www.wsj.com/livecoverage...
*Never* march on Moscow
Yes! But also stories about "price goes up"
Rising productivity of land vs rising demand for country homes is the core tension of The Archers
It isn't the whole definition - a remortgage doesn't, for example, deliver profit to the one cashing out. If the only way to pay the interest on the mortgage was with ever bigger remortgages, that would look like a ponzi
Sure. But that means not a Ponzi, use a different word.
Same with, eg, Reits
They say they have plans for the token, like everyone else. If they work out, it could rise in value. Or if other people want the token, it could in theory one day be sold to them (tho good luck with what happens to the price if they sell)
No: Ponzi's scheme involves paying one round of people using money raised from the next round. Crypto Treasury companies just hope to raise ever more money, and don't pay out money to anyone (except the founders/operators)
I haven't grown pecan - wrong climate - so haven't tried it
I prefer BBQ with oak but honestly I've tried lots of wood (not charcoal) and the only one I noticed a different taste was eucalyptus. Don't use it, it's horrid.
So weird that all major news outlets now call political lobbying "advocacy"
Pet Detective 2 would like a word
Your neck won't thank you
If you like this mad project, look at the hollow mountain to keep yacht visitors cool
Alt-tab fixes this
"Pop Idol winner Will Young and runner up Gareth Gates both had four top tens in 2002." Also S Club Juniors had 4
Is it a chart of the inverse of being good music?
Nah, Stroud is a weird mix of active worshipping pagans, crystal healing, the Greens, Just Stop Oil and anti-vaxxers, surrounded by Cotswold villages full of Range Rovers and green-wellied trust fundies who only go into town for the farmers market
Stroud rofl
Good
Im surprised Experian eg would do a yes/no - is that for id check, rather than credit?
Presumably a perfect record of rent payment will become an immediate new landlord requirement for renting a flat
First few pages had me giggling
I cant believe no one told me there was a sixth HHGTTG by Eoin Colfer. Finally Amazon gets round to alerting me, 15 years late
So can a US lawyer explain why someone claiming to make an arrest but refusing to show ID or even identify their agency would be protected against a passer by making a citizen's arrest for false imprisonment?
No. He contrasted two groups of first-generation Pakistani immigrants. It was crude and doesn't fit the facts, but was about dividing a group - which could be done with any nationality (or ethnic group), since they all have paedophiles and all have entrepreneurs.
No you couldn't. That is about skin colour
I carry no torch for Noah Smith. Just sae that tweet (in isolation) as his argument for selective immigration (based on his ignorance AFAICT), not as the transparent racism it was being portrayed as. Anyway, I've spent enough time on this and don't care enough.
I didn't see that
Definitely ignorant
When we first moved out of London to Suffolk, I stopped at a home-painted sign RABBITS FOR SALE, saying to the kids, “Oooh maybe we should have our first pet!”. Readers, I missed the small print: “fresh or frozen”.
I realize positive also racist - but note he doesn't do this. He says good and bad in every country, which I agree with - and is the opposite of racist claims of uniformity. He also makes the dumb claim that the US managed to pick the good, and UK ended up with the bad, echoing UK racists
Sad fact is every country does. In this tweet at least he doesn't claim this is a Pakistan thing, tho obvs he's influenced to say anything here by UK right wing's false claims that it is
He explicitly in that very tweet made it about countries, not skin colour. He's wrong, for me this tweet is evidence of ignorance. No time to engage any more now
No, he said every country has good and bad, and claimed (wrongly I'm sure) that the US got the good and the UK the bad. Ignorance, not anti-Pakistani sentiment
While accusing American Pakistanis of being entrepreneurs
I didn't say it was better. I said it wasn't "racism", at least as usually understood
With the focus on the British, since he isn't stereotyping Pakistanis that way
No he hasn't. He made TWO crude (and wrong) directly conflicting stereotypes, both of the same national origin.
My point: they are two opposite and conflicting crude ethnic stereotypes, so at worst it is UK vs US stereotyping
Anyone have data on ethnicity at UK postgrad level? (Harder as need for only UK-origin students, not those who come just to study for the degree)
Surely they get pelted with the fruit they nicked?
Would need an expert but Pew suggests Pakistani Americans outperform in education both at first and second generation (www.pewresearch.org/chart/educat...). In UK do worse at primary but ~caught up with non-disadvantaged white British by sixth form.
Need to distinguish ignorance from racism - are you suggesting US vs UK "racism"? (I'd call that nationalism, but hey.) His point (not agreeing btw, I have no evidence) seems to be not racist (ie anti-Pakistani) but classist or education-linked.
It's an irregular verb I am a founder You are a podcaster He is unemployed
The Martians presumably are demanding it be returned? BBC News - Martian meteorite: Niger's anger that a piece of Mars ended up for auction - BBC News www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Also they were all mushroom risotto
They all are! Have you climbed on Creag Dhubh? That's the one the race is up
Son did the hill race at local Highland games. Starts by jumping barbed wire fence covered in sa ks, then through a river before going straight up nearest big hill
A priori I'd expect immigration crackdown to boost low income wage relatively, but probably not by much
Happy with any semantics, just talking about ability to trade with each other rather than via bank - eg UK 19th C bills of credit, even notes of hand
Sure - but they don't issue notes any more. UK country banks an alternative, or perhaps you'll accept "shinplasters era" (great reading list btw)
There's an important difference: deposits are transferable only with permission/help of the bank. Stablecoins more like a banknote, tho do have pseudonymous id. Electronic wildcat-era banknotes is not a bad parallel+elements of MMF+ elements of banking. Dumb to bring into mainstream tho
There's Noggin the Nog
I went with super double glazing old Victorian windows and slashed heating cost (and noise), but still on gas
Sounds expensive!
Did you replace rads too or kept old infrastructure? How long is payback, both with and without subsidies?
Didn't several people go to prison for tweeting exactly that last year? Musk was furious
Isn't that already illegal?
www.wsj.com/finance/stoc...
True Left, People's Left and the People's Front of the Left obviously splinter groups
Niwaki knife is brilliant for gardening and also incredibly dangerous (to me when using it)
Apologies, I interpreted you differently
That isn't what you said before. Also the populist right are anti free trade
Austerity is not the same as "neoliberalism". Also irrelevant to your argument, which to remind you was that the left were the losers from "neoliberalism". Note in the US one common claim is that Trump voters are the losers from free trade.
Many on the left are professionals, just as many on the right are professionals. Starmer is a lawyer for example. Corbyn went to private school and grew up in a manor house. To classify them as losers from freer markets (what I assume you mean by "neoliberalism" is odd.
What evidence do you have for that?
The April 1 moment - and lack of understanding/explanation for why it happened - is a good reason not to hope for much from agentic AI for a good while yet
Agree - but the declinism/doomerism is as much from the left as the far right, albeit with the extreme directing their violence against property, not people
Surely 1963? Will also accept 1964 (The Who formed)
I always want to understand!
*couple, not title. So yes, I underestimated, but not by much!
BTW that was the doc I got the title of dozen from. Since 2008, average of 56-75 a year, using their figures (160 groups of 6-8 each). Interesting, but I wouldn't regard it as reliable or representative.
Asking people what they need has an issue of course - there is stuff one only gives up when forced. It is all subjective by definition
But even if they did a perfect job, there simply isn't a single figure that applies nationally, comparing cost of living in central London, Blackpool and the Highlands
I understood it was a couple of dozen in each update
The MIS seems a v odd basis for anything. "What a couple of dozen people agree in a focus group is needed" would be a better description
Just opened Google Drive and instead of my files I get top third or so of the screen, plus an unwanted sidebar, full of Gemini and how it can "help" me
www.wsj.com/politics/jus...
Who is my civil society representative? Feels quite random to lump together self-interested groups (unions), religion, and charities with numerous different aims
But ultimately if someone outside the US wants to hedge dollars, chances are someone else outside the US will end up with USTs, however long the chain of transactions?
If a European fund asks a European bank to hedge its dollar exposure, doesn't this lead the bank to in turn hedge by buying USTs (chain can be more complex ofc)?
Also the UK doesn't have conscription, or a conscription age
In the interview she said: “I just think that it’s silly to try and claim that racism which is about skin colour is the same as other types of racism. I don’t know why people would say that.”
Yes. Voting is about a lot more than eligibility for conscription. This is obvious.
Still weird. We graduate the shift from childhood to adulthood, but 16 and 17 havr v little responsibility: have to be in education or training (contra Raynor, if they join the army they have to be in army college), and can't do lots of things without parental pemission. Power without responsibility
Could reintroduce the 10p rate and stop taking so many people out of tax altogether to spread idea of spending being funded by our tax, rather than by taxing only other people
I love the idea they could write into law the badly-written exec order against CBDCs, which appears to also ban Fed reserves
They are wrong though! Can't read their own law, which gives power to seek "possession" not repossession: see s87 (1) of the 1925 act: www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/1...
No, a possession order, at least in the legal remedies
As an aside in the legislation it is called possession, not repossession, presumably since the old approach you are describing was ditched (1925 Act?)
It is not like repo at all. The bank has to go through a long process in court governed by v detailed law during which the judge will do everything they can to help the homeowner stay in the house (if they are nice to the judge)
Small prize for Bank of America strategists today: "Global Fund Manager Survey: Sticky Toppy Pudding"
www.wsj.com/finance/bank...