We don’t do hypothecation and for damn good reason
This is one of those terrible ideas that needs to be stamped upon, hard. Rachel Reeves’s Treasury is looking to keep millions of pounds levied on polluting water companies in fines that were meant to be earmarked for sewage cleanup, the Guardian has learned.
As we can’t why not stop?
Terrors: In December the ONS pushed back the publication of the overhauled labour market statistics to 2027, the latest of several postponements from spring 2024.
But, but, why is it that people might have less than total trust in politics?
We thought this was interesting: The Conservative government spent more than £130m on IT and data systems for the scheme to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, which will never be used, the Observer can reveal.
How glorious that we have such regulators to guide us!
We are told that: The United States on Friday grounded SpaceX’s Starship and ordered Elon Musk’s company to investigate why the spaceship spectacularly disintegrated in a fiery cascade over the Caribbean during its latest test mission.
The fault is not in our suppliers but ourselves
This is untrue: And rarely have stories named the ultimate authors of this disaster: ExxonMobil, Chevron and other fossil fuel companies that have made gargantuan amounts of money even as they knowingly lied about their products dangerously overheating the planet.
A Manifesto for Lord Mandelson - a new blog series
Lord Mandelson is going to Washington as our Ambassador. What is he up to? We cannot know, but here are some ideas about how he might spend his time.
(Tax) Breaking the Subsidy Debate
‘Our government is in thrall to private sector greed.’ This is the narrative spun by some tax commentators and outlets like the Ethical Consumer and Paid to Pollute, and given by the mainstream media.
Over-egging that climate change pudding
This seems rather alarmist: Without urgent action to accelerate decarbonisation, remove carbon from the atmosphere and repair nature, the plausible worst-case hit to global economies would be 50% in the two decades before 2090, the IFoA report said.
Banning the export of houses is one of those…odd…ideas
Spain has a new entry in the idiot economic policy races: British buyers will be forced to pay 100pc tax on their holiday home in Spain under new measures to fix the country’s housing crisis.
Creating, producing, AI isn’t the point - using it is
Everyone’s terribly excited about the Prime Minister’s conversion to the joys of Artificial Intelligence. As long as everyone remembers how technology actually works then so are we. But that support does depend upon everyone remembering.
If the planning system’s not working then, well, the planning system’s not working, right?
From the Sec of State: Further measures to streamline the delivery of energy projects will be included in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, the Plan stipulates. These will include changes to environmental impact and outcome reporting.