Dan

@JohnRow06854162 @authordlewis @rorysutherland Yes that’s true. Another example of knowing something and not applying it

@danwilsoncc @authordlewis @rorysutherland Not only that our roads are built to an inferior level.

Eight hour drive thru France yesterday - not a pothole to be seen. Like driving on air. How are Britain’s roads so appalling, by contrast? Any suggestions?

@NavyLookout Good speech. Labour isn’t capable. Some good points but it needs some serious leadership to deliver a bright future.

Worth watching

@rorysutherland Madison Avenue beckons.

But there is no money for the army? This is Kipling's City of Brass.

A fool and his freedoms are quickly parted. For about an hour this morning I thought “isn’t it wise to protect kids on social media”. Then I woke up. The government just want a starting point for digital ID and more online surveillance powers. Silly me.

@DanNeidle 1. High earners from 2015 have held onto the positions. 2. The cohort behind them were somehow derailed by Covid or algorithms. 3. This then corrected and a new cohort of younger high-earners have emerged who were well placed to leverage new technologies.

@DanielPriestley Dan, the problem is when government gets involved it rarely has a good outcome cause it’s political. If there’s a genuine threat to health, work on solving the problem.

Upon reflection, regulation should be on the social media companies not on teens. Social media companies should face more scrutiny and responsibility for their relentless algorithmic pursuit of time on screen. I can see that citizens are being held responsible for their relentless algorithmic actions of big tech. And this law will be a Trojan horse to police everyone. Like wealth taxes will eventually take away property rights for everyone, these social media laws will be expanded to ring fence everyone. I temporarily forgot you can’t trust them for a minute to actually be doing the right thing. Silly me.

It’s important to know that the social media ban for under 16s is not a ban for under 16s. It is a ban on *selected* social media for EVERYONE. Until you identify yourself.

@JonHaidt Well done for…the coddling of the young UK minds, right?

@grok @DanielPriestley @Keir_Starmer Sounds serious. Maybe the kids should have to the chance to take their own evasive action

Yes, substantial evidence supports links between heavy social media use and harms in adolescents. The US Surgeon General’s advisory states teens using it >3 hours/day face roughly double the risk of depression/anxiety symptoms. CDC data ties frequent use to higher bullying (in-person and cyber), persistent sadness, and suicide risk indicators like ideation/plans. Multiple studies associate it with self-harm, body image issues, and grooming risks. Jonathan Haidt’s analysis in *The Anxious Generation* shows sharp post-2010 rises in teen anxiety, depression, and self-harm coinciding with smartphones, consistent across countries. Causation has debate (correlation + mechanisms like comparison, addiction, sleep disruption), but the pattern and experimental data justify concern for developing brains. Benefits like connection exist too—nuanced policy makes sense.

I don’t agree with @Keir_Starmer on much. I also HATE the idea of the nanny state. But… Social media is highly addictive and messes with our brains. Especially during development. We know it’s linked to depression, suicidal thoughts, bullying, grooming, scamming etc. Some guardrails are clearly necessary. It’s helpful as a parent to be able to restrict social media on my kids if they know their friends aren’t on it too. In many ways this isn’t about restricting teens from social media, it’s restricting social media from access to our kids. Let kids discover the world one step at a time. I don’t think my teen years would have been better if I had access to social media … or more to the point, if social media had access to me.

@DanielPriestley @Keir_Starmer No. Just no. Trust the youth.

@NeilHudsonexp @Nigel_Farage More government control. They just can’t leave us alone.

@Nigel_Farage Nigel turns out to be a fan of keeping people in the dark. Yet another reason not to vote Reform

Whilst the social media ban is well-intentioned, it’s unlikely to work given the mass adoption of VPNs. It will also mean the introduction of Digital ID via the back door. The real answer here is handsets for children with limited features.

Jonathan Haidt (@JonHaidt) is getting exactly what he wants. Kids banned from YouTube. Phones banned in schools. Private schools taxed into bankruptcy. The only information kids will get is state-funded, state-approved, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.

This statistic is very misleading. It’s like saying “The top 50 athletes can do more pushups than the bottom 34million least fittest people combined.” The fit people haven’t stolen the pushups, if anything they are the ones making fitness related infrastructure and industry available to more people. Here’s ten reasons wealth taxes don’t work: 1.Europe already ran the experiment and quit. Twelve OECD countries had wealth taxes in 1990; only four do now   — Sweden, Germany, Denmark and the rest repealed them, and not for ideological reasons. 2.Norway is the live demonstration. A tiny rate hike was meant to raise ~$146m; instead $54bn of wealth fled and revenue fell by ~$448m net.  They hit the opposite of the target. 3.You can only have one. The survivors — Norway, Spain, Switzerland  — don’t stack it on top of heavy CGT and IHT. Norway has no inheritance tax.  Layer it onto Britain’s existing taxes and you’re a unicorn no one has built. 4.Britain already wealth-taxes by stealth. Council tax, stamp duty, dividend tax, frozen thresholds, CGT, 40% IHT — we have a diffuse wealth tax wearing seven costumes. 5.Wealth is a guess, not a fact. Income hit a bank account; wealth is an opinion about future value. You end up taxing — and then litigating — an estimate, every single year. 6.Most people can’t tell wealth from income. The politics sells because the public conflates “owns £10m of illiquid business” with “earns £10m” — they’re nothing alike. 7.It punishes illiquidity. Paper-rich, cash-poor founders must strip dividends from their own companies to pay — taxing ownership by gutting the thing that makes jobs. 8.The mobile escape; the rooted pay. Norway’s most-taxed man left for Switzerland in a weekend.  The regional business owner and the homeowner can’t — so they get the bill. 9.It causes capital flight. More super-rich Norwegians left in 2022 than in the previous 13 years combined.  Capital is the most mobile thing there is. 10.It eats the seed corn. Wealth is just deferred investment — the capital funding the next hire and the next business. It raises little, invites avoidance, and drains the capital base. 

@visegrad24 What are they doing?

This is Dallas, Texas. Texas is estimated to have more than 300 mosques and Islamic centers, with nearly 50 new mosques opening statewide in just the last 2 years, roughly 2 per month.

@Kasparov63 Hopefully the people have had enough and can somehow escape Putin’s grasp.

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@DanielPriestley @casbeataol I think most people making comments like this should at least make an effort to understand economics, because if they did and then were truly honest, they’d never reach such conclusions.

@casbeataol If it’s that easy, go start a company and exploit some people for billions and then give it all to them at the last minute just to prove your point.

A single individual can start a company, but it takes the efforts of far more individuals to grow that company, especially to grow it into a multi billion dollar company. In our current capitalist society, the owner takes most of that wealth. I think Employees deserve far more.

Science is not a process, a credential, or an institution. It is the unflinching pursuit of truth, carried out by the few, co-opted by the many.