Dev Howard

Oh look - I was right again

It's a good job the UK can lean on its strong real GDP growth and solid fiscal trajectory, because this sort of thing would look quite worrying otherwise

Grateful to Times columnist Giles Coren for putting to the sword a local council pipsqueak for trying to put out of business a restaurant in the middle of nowhere where owner Ruth Hanson does all the kitchen prep herself, the washing up, the bookings, the till, payroll and then cooks it. The restaurant is called Hansom in Bedale, North Yorkshire. To give you an idea of its remoteness it’s 7 miles from Northallerton and 31 miles from York. So, on occasions, her husband Mark, who had a job of his own, gives up his evenings to chauffeur some guests to and from their homes. Coren points out when he reviewed the place last year ( he gave it a glowing recommendation) he had to hitchhike from Northallerton station. No Bedale train, no metro, no Uber hanging around at the corner. Enter Chris Doyle, licensing enforcement officer for N Yorkshire council, who has written to Ruth saying in his view Mark was operating a taxi service and that would require a raft of expensive and time consuming licences. Ruth responded that Mark was her husband, he was unpaid and there was no separate charge for the journey. Doyle said he didn’t care as there was deemed to be a commercial benefit and warned without a licence the council may take legal action. Coren has a great last paragraph; “ Yeah, you sue her, you absolute local heroes. “ You teach Ruth and Mark a lesson for being great at their jobs, for treasuring their customers, for trying to create a little joy and make ends meet in a collapsing world.” PS Thought you’d like to see what a Ruth menus looks like. This is called the Sunday Sharing Feast. Starters. Smoked Leek and Pickled Croque Monsieur Whitby Crab Crumpet Pickled cucumber, Garden herbs. Heritage beetroot, whipped goat’s Curd, Wild Garlic emulsion. Main Course Wensleydale chicken, Apricot and sage Wellington. Honey and mustard mash, buttered spring , cider sauce. Dessert Yorkshire rhubarb and ginger trifle. Cost; £55. With publicity thanks to Coren’s column and this tweet I suspect the queue will be out the door and Mark can have his evenings off again.

The House of Lords: a story in two acts.

@UKFootyBible @mariacaulfield Probably my first sticker album - but can’t remember QPR being in the league 🤔

You had the best childhood if you remember these...

I predict a riot 🎶

This is priceless 😂

Galloway 😂😂 You just can’t pull someone’s hair - simple as that.

Lots of weird takes on the Hungarian election result from both left and right here. Peter Magyar is a socially conservative immigration restrictionist who wants to cut taxes and double the defence budget. He criticized Orban for admitting too many guest workers, and wants to increase Hungary's already generous pro-natal incentives. On virtually every issue, his platform is well to the right of centre, by European standards. His foreign policy is to end Orban's alliance with Putin, remove the Hungarian veto on EU loans to Ukraine, normalize relations with the European Union while opposing more Euro integration, and strengthen relations with Eastern Europe's anti-Russian governments, e.g. Poland. His election was not a sudden shift to the left, but a rejection of Orban's corruption, the failure of his interventionist / statist economic policies, and the humiliation of his relationship with Putin.

Surely this can’t be a surprise to anyone? I wouldn’t go and watch Jordan v Algeria if it was free entry and played at Turnbull in Whitby. Fans will splurge on hospitality tickets but only for a match they want to see. There is no decent group game for the neutral.

The origins of the Chagos debacle were long in the making. I was in New York in 2017, serving at the UK Mission to the UN, when we lost our seat on the ICJ. That was arguably the first Chagos domino to fall. But throughout, the problem was a deeper one: a Foreign Office establishment - who found their guardian angel in this lawyerly PM - who were obsessed with following the strictures of international law first, and paying heed to British interests second. Let this be the final death knell for the idea that we should put the demands of international lawyers over our own national interest

Thinking about this Bono quote again

It's just insane that a person with no children earning between £100-125k pays an effective marginal tax rate of 62% in the UK. If you do have kids you're actually worse off earning over 100k than you would be below it with childcare subsidies.

Pleased to share my favorite high-resolution capture of the Artemis II launch- the moment the SLS is clearing the tower, captured by a sound-triggered camera placed near the pad. I'll have prints linked in my bio for this one, and here's a short thread about how it was captured

london housing has two paths. social housing or your parents gifting you a £300k deposit for a 2 bed in clapham. there is no in between. the middle class doesn’t own property here it just pays someone else’s mortgage

@wine_018 He should have informed his guest of the dress code. However, a request of ‘all black cocktail attire’ is utterly ridiculous and everyone should have ignored it.

Men! Please pay attention. I attended a wedding recently. The Save the Date, official invitation, and reminder texts all stated guests are to wear ALL BLACK COCKTAIL ATTIRE. One woman was in green. She asked me in the ladies’ room if there was a dress code, I told her yes. She was a plus one and her date only told her to wear a nice dress. She was the only one in attendance who wasn’t in black. She was beautifully dressed, but still, HE should have told her. Details are important, fellas.

These two photographs are separated by only 66 years.

Have you watched The Manosphere with Louis Theroux on Netflix? As the Dad of a 17 year old son, I think @jimmycarr is spot on. What do you think?

Marcelo Bielsa back in England. El Loco, cult hero, dream-maker, player-whisperer, inspirational manager. Bielsa teams always worth watching. Flying visit, his Uruguay side playing England at Wembley on Friday. Wish Bielsa was back for good.