Sometimes nothing beats a Twirl and a can of lemonade. There, I said it
Профиль
John Springford
Профиль VivelyEconomist and occasional politics dabbler. Working on a project to improve labour markets. Associate fellow, Centre for European Reform. Visiting fellow, Institute for Policy Research, Bath University.
Ah, so Immigration Week is Stupid Week, as expected
Daily MailNavy to tow boats back to France, says Reform: Party unveils 'Operation Fortress' to combat Channel migrants trib.al/tqIRBH9
Good piece. A thread on some comments I made yesterday on Times Radio. Two things can be true at the same time: 1. It’s very bad to have 60,000 people storm a border, and 70+ deaths. 2. European leaders' responses were opportunistic and disproportionate, and made incidents like this more likely.
Anne ApplebaumVance, Farage and Weidel posted fear-mongering messages about a Spanish migrant crisis that weren't true. They haven't retracted them. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
"Europe has never been serious about stopping migration", says Camilla Long in an entirely research-free piece. She claims that Spain/the EU are lying about the fact that most people in Ceuta have returned to Morocco. www.thetimes.com/comment/colu...
Ceuta is what happens when you’re not serious about migrationUrsula von der Leyen doesn’t seem to care about the tide of people rushing the Spanish border. Voters in Britain willwww.thetimes.com
Agree. This is the point of having enquiries, so we can make better political decisions in another airborne pandemic (earlier lockdowns for adults to crush transmission, much more investment in keeping schools safe eg)
The News Agents“I’m glad we live in a country that is deferential to expertise - but at times in the pandemic, that did go too far.” “I’m not sure school closures were a price worth paying.” Lewis on how ‘legitimate questions’ have emerged - and should be asked - about how we handled Covid.
Definitely medical. I'd go with the covid vaccination programme. ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccin...
Matthew DownhourI like this brainstorm: greatest achievements since 1969. Number one for me: eradicating smallpox What else?
Learned a lot from this. Also Sam's point about keeping options open reinforces the view that we specialise too early in *academic* subjects. Numeracy and literacy are very useful, but you can stop doing any maths/stats/humanities at 16.
Sam FreedmanNew post just out: "Burnham's first mistake" Splitting 14 year olds into academic and vocational paths seems intuitive. But it's a terrible idea that risks increasing inequality, and closing down options for the young people that need them most. (£/free trial) open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/b...
Not to tar all engineers with tech bro politics, but there has been a tendency towards authoritarianism for thee, libertarianism for me
David HighamQuite.
The Economist writing style is a set of instructions for performing a series of steps
The EconomistOur investigation of the stylistic quirks of the big bots reveals how, with every update, AI prose is getting closer to human writing. Register for free to discover where they fall short