Bob Fitzconner, at the Fitzconner place - always

Old times remembered...

My trip to Lidl afterwards was great though 😉

I saw 'The Plough and the Stars' at Dublin's @AbbeyTheatre today. It's a tragedy and it didn't really speak to me. Not that the production can be blamed - any play about Dubliners is bound to be miserable, psychically immured, and soliloquitous.

@alexwickham ... to any fiscal OR monetary rules, I should say.

@alexwickham Like most feckless Keynesian devil-may-cares whose ideological dilettancy can't really admit to any fiscal rules at all.

EXCLUSIVE: Andy Burnham says Labour must take a “different course” after the local elections. He declines to back Keir Starmer staying on, signals he’ll make another run for Parliament and argues defence spending should be taken out of the fiscal rules to fund a rise through borrowing. “It’s got to be a moment of reflection,” Burnham says in a Bloomberg interview today, warning the results will be “challenging.” He says in the aftermath it means “starting to now pull through on a different course.” “I understand the real frustration people have got with politics and politicians. I honestly, I really understand that. And they’re right to say politics just hasn’t been working,” the Greater Manchester Mayor tells @flacqua. Burnham makes clear he intends to run again for Parliament. “The politics we’ve pioneered as mayors: place first, not party first — that needs to go national, and so we do need to reform Westminster. I can’t remove the kind of feeling that someday I will try and go back. I’m not ruling it out.” Asked if Starmer should stay after May 7, Burnham declines to answer. Instead he says the PM deserves more “credit” for the job he’s done. And he suggests defence spending should be taken out of the fiscal rules in what would be a major change to UK policy to fund an increase in defence spending through borrowing. While he suggests the fiscal rules “will stay in any context,” he says “there’s certainly a case, when we look at the pressure on defence spending, to consider that exceptionally outside of the rules.” bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

@ojblanchard1 The mediaeval development of landholding from feudal custodianship to personal ownership seems to be the fundamental problem.

not to get into a philosophical/semantic argument. I could have used self interest, or self love, or profit making, to make my point about the comparison between capitalism and AI. I left out the really big question. What about the combination of capitalism and AI?

@danobrien20 Dismally, this hasn't seemed to dent continuing price rises - even as commercial real estate seems stuck on the floor.

Also out today are first estimates of GDP for Q1 2026, with another dig contraction, bringing it to four consecutive quarters of negative or no growth. For most economies that would mean a deep recession, but as Ireland's GDP numbers are so meaningless...it's a nothingburger.

@theAliceRoberts And you're a Professor of what exactly?

I’m not sure why we still have a monarch. It seems like a medieval anachronism to me; a demonstration of inherited status and the the pinnacle of an entrenched aristocracy. And I’m really not sure why our monarch has gone to the US to stand next to another man with too much power, land and money.

@PaulEmbery But my, hasn't it kept May 7th election issues and challengers out of the news.

I agree. Mandelson's behaviour was scandalous, but the amount of time that those in the SW1 bubble are devoting to the tedious business of how he was appointed shows just how skewed their priorities are. Most voters don't give a damn about this bureaucratic 'process' stuff.

@EuroBriefing Hmm. The instituting of a 'multilateral global governance system' since World War Two has always sat uncomfortably alongside professed values of democracy, ownership, markets, prudence.

The news of the UAE’s exit from Opec reflects the ongoing decline of our multilateral global governance system. OPEC is not just a price-fixing cartel, but a recognised international institution. Its goal, like that of every international institution, is to address collective action problems amongst its members. Yesterday, the OECD had its Brexit moment. The reason why this keeps happening is that globalisation left too many losers in too many places. Distribution matters. eurointelligence.com

Hillel the Elder summed the Torah up in twelve words. Unlike many, I see the entire Judeo-Christian system encapsulated in just one word - Chillax!

@magi_jay If you believe that believing in 'LGBTQ people' advances human flourishing... 🤔

It did feel awesome. With cause. We got healthcare. LGBTQ people could get married. Racial justice advanced. Climate change was being addressed. We almost had a 6-3 liberal Supreme Court. And then people decided to burn it all down because it wasn't exciting enough.

@miriam_cates Perhaps the really more fundamental error of judgement was not the decision to appoint Lord Mandelson to Washington but the preceding decision - to replace the Ambassador in post at the time.

Agree. The Mandelson saga is intriguing but ultimately a massive distraction. I want our political leaders to take risks - it’s the only way Britain is going to get fixed. Yet if we persist in trying to destroy them every time a risk backfires, we will continue to be led by unimaginative, uninspiring, fearful and indecisive politicians.

Tomatoes to tomatoes. Wisdom is knowing you're not a dog 🍅🌽🍅

@SamCoatesSky Perhaps the really more fundamental error of judgement was not the decision to appoint Lord Mandelson to Washington but the preceding decision - to replace the Ambassador in post at the time.

The full leaked quotes by the new UK ambassador to Washington Christian Turner to school kids are NUTS - and reckless? ❌It includes saying the PM's future looked "quite touch and go" in February ❌Keir Starmer is a "stubborn guy" ❌Speculating that Labour - if it does badly next week " will be able to go over that threshold (of 80 MPs) and remove him" ❌And on Mandelson affair speculated: "The vetting thing’s a bit of a red herring”. “The problem was he had a bunch of associations that were embarrassing to him and the government that had not been revealed. And, arguably, once they were uncovered, the prime minister moved to sack him.”

@SkyNews @BethRigby Regarding the 'national interest', is McSweeney a UK national?

"I don't regard Mandelson as a hero" Morgan McSweeney denies that he recommended Peter Mandelson as US ambassador in order to give a "great job" to one of his "heroes". He adds: "My motive was always in the national interest" Follow live: trib.al/HM1ecSH 📺 Sky 501

@JDVance @SBA_Kelly Taking care of the pennies is taking care of democracy.

@MaryERegan Kicking and screaming echo.

Airbnb register unlikely before summer amid Cabinet tensions independent.ie/irish-news/pol…

@karldeeter On first reading I thought that what Karl meant by 'what brought in the IMF' was the Second World War. Indeed, the post-WWII anti-democratic and feckless Keynesian economic and monetary regime still ripples.

If you were to add up the number of times we bailed out the public sector it would dwarf what brought in the IMF. Of course, nobody will *actually* do anything to cut the costs that lead to this.

I've long found it takes my body-mind a month to get used to the clock after going forward in Spring. This year I managed it by starting to get up earlier from the beginning of March. But the body has another adjustment to make - Seasonal Acclimatization. May be hackable too!

This is a huge win by @SBA_Kelly and the SBA to recoup potentially fraudulent dollars that went largely ignored under the Biden Admin. Cutting through the bureaucracy is part of the great work our task force continues to produce.