Tom

@TerraOrBust Which study is this? Any link would be greatly appreciated

This is simply untrue. The LSE study found that the impact of leaving on UK trade was around 1% of GDP, and with the increases in cost of membership we are actually net better off. Funny that Mark doesn't know that isn't it.

@davidsenra @t_xu It’s so great what you’re doing. Love your enthusiasm and thank you for giving us a great conversation.

Great notes. These 3 are my favorite: 1. The data you can’t see kills you. A truck you spot, you dodge. One you don’t, you’re dead. The right question: what data do I have, and what data do I wish I had? Then go collect it. 2. Anecdotes sit at the tail of the distribution and clash with your averages. But the tail is where the next product ideas live. DoorDash started delivering food. Now they help restaurants acquire customers and manage stock. That came from listening to the edges. 3. There’s no better way to become an expert than to do the work. You might be surprised at how quickly you get there.

Stuck in Oslo airport for 4 hours waiting for a connection, which gave me a great opportunity to listen to @davidsenra and @t_xu Such an enjoyable listen with so many great insights for people interested in start ups, business and life! Jotted some ideas down: DoorDash’s first version took 43 minutes. A static page, 8 PDFs, a Google Voice number ringing a founder’s phone. The question was simple: does anyone actually want this and what’s the simplest way to test it? They found suburbs beat cities for delivery not by modelling it, but by trying both. The physical world resists spreadsheets. You go out and earn the insight. Get started, know your next two steps, and keep running experiments. The data you can’t see kills you. A truck you spot, you dodge. One you don’t, you’re dead. The right question: what data do I have, and what data do I wish I had? Then go collect it. Anecdotes sit at the tail of the distribution and clash with your averages. But the tail is where the next product ideas live. DoorDash started delivering food. Now they help restaurants acquire customers and manage stock. That came from listening to the edges. Final round interview: $20, 8 hours, acquire 100 customers. Not a test of analysis. A test of whether the candidate would move. “There’s no better way to become an expert than to do the work. You might be surprised at how quickly you get there.“​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/ton…

Thought this was brilliant, it's super clear and super simple. From following a lot of discussions online, I've found it remarkable how unclear people are. Some interesting bits: Network costs are 28% of your bill and rising. A significant driver is connecting renewables. A gas plant connects via one cable. An 800MW offshore wind farm has ~60 turbines, each connecting to a hub, then on to the grid over potentially long distances. Gas runs ~90% of the time, wind ~33%, so you need roughly 3x the turbines for the same output, and proportionally more infrastructure. On top of that, there is curtailment. When the grid cannot absorb wind output, turbines switch off, and you pay them what they would have earned anyway, then pay for the gas to fill the gap. Seagreen was curtailed by two-thirds in 2024 and three-quarters in 2025. Then there are balancing costs. Gas generation is predictable, and demand has traditionally been the variable. Renewables add variability on the supply side too. Managing that in real time has a cost, and it ends up on your bill. Policy costs add another 11%. A chunk of that is CfDs, the subsidy mechanism that guarantees renewable generators a fixed strike price. When wholesale prices fall, the top-up payment rises. So cheaper wholesale electricity does not reduce your bill, it shifts cost from one line to another. Every year except 2022, consumers have paid out via CfDs. In 2025 alone, that was £2.7bn.

@SteveBakerFRSA @mannieigwe @jamesd_graham Thank you!

@mannieigwe @Tom__Toad @jamesd_graham We will!

Refreshing to hear @mannieigwe putting the knife into the administrative state. Decades of uniparty rule and regulatory bloat have given us stagnation and decline. Dr Igwe argues it is time to get radical.

@HarryStebbings Sage coffee machines are great. Just put the beans in, it grinds, you push it down with a lever and then choose single or double. A lot lot better than nespresso taste wise and super simple

I LOVE coffee and espresso and need an upgrade on the at home nespresso. I don’t want faff and all the cleaning. Buttons only please. What is the best? Help me X.

@MerrynSW Is any of this going on YouTube or podcasts?

First session at the Weekend of Mistakes in Edinburgh. Am now a temporary expert on stablecoins.

@s8mb Totally agree. Since I moved to Richmond, I have quite liked seeing the planes and reminds me of my upcoming holidays!

Living in the flight path of a big airport like Heathrow is a great bit of alpha. Some people object to the noise; personally I love the sound of airplanes overhead and I love watching them fly in. I can't really imagine not finding that enjoyable and interesting.

Great pod, especially on governments lacking vision and happily delegating responsibility upwards. Always thought one of the better arguments for reaming in the EU was precisely this: if ministers didn't want to make the choices, they were never going to do much with the powers back. Reminds me of working at KPMG, the partners always knew they didn't really decide much, and could blame above when it suited them. They liked this and didn't want to be in control!

@s8mb Can you guys at Works in Progress do a podcast on this? Your recent ones on Nuclear and Inflation were great.

Curious to focus on wholesale electricity prices when those are only 1/3 of bills and don’t cover the costs of renewables at all.

@Frencheconomics Interesting but the piece this tends to miss is the dire growth in salaries

Halifax reporting the average UK house price is over £300,000 for the first time in February. But nominal prices are only part of the story. The average price is down, in inflation-adjusted terms, by more than 10% from its twin peaks of 2007, and 2022.

@Frencheconomics @CityAM Can you share the note at some point?

Stimulating write-up by @CityAM 👋👋

@julianHjessop Is the Ration Pack Britain report available?

A must read... 👇

@patrick_oshag Claude in Excel has got drastically better over the last few weeks. Seems to be a lot more efficient and not eat through as many tokens. Albeit, I am still hitting limits regularly. Use it a lot to review investment portfolio management information

For all the spreadsheet people out there …

@MerrynSW So many problems come down to low growth. It's bonkers how much self-harm previous governments have inflicted on themselves. What's more bonkers is how so few politicians realise that they have chosen to do this to us!

Student loans. A problem because interest rates are too high, repayment thresholds too low.. and 9 percentage points of extra tax too much. BUT the real problem is our low growth/low productivity economy. If incomes for graduates were higher... none of this would matter so much.

We don't make fertilizer, we can't make explosives, we import salt, glass inputs, and solar panels, which are manufactured in China using coal. This isn't net zero. It's offshoring emissions while destroying our industrial sovereignty and national security.

UK is reducing emissions but not global emissions UK as we're just outsourcing production to China where it's made with coal-fired power. Our emissions fall on paper, but we're actually stoking global demand for coal.

A brilliant interview with @MerrynSW and @EdConwaySky As Ed says, it's mad what's happened to our chemicals industry and it seems to have gone largely unnoticed. Everyone (especially politicians and commentators) should listen podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the…