Patrick Cook

‼️The Carbon Price Support increases electricity costs by nearly four times more than it raises in revenue‼️

In tomorrow's Budget, the Chancellor will announce around £30 billion worth of cuts or taxes to meet her fiscal rules. This is the right thing to do: anything else would shake investor confidence further and create even more trouble. However, there are better and worse ways to raise taxes and cut spending. At @BritishProgress we believe the priority MUST be growth. In fact, if we had matched US growth since 2008, the Chancellor would have an extra £150 billion to spare. That’s 5x the fiscal black hole, larger than the entire budget for state pensions, and more than twice what we spend on schools and early years. So how do you design a Budget for growth? Here’s what we think the Chancellor should do. 🧵

This is an excellent proposal 👇 Scrapping our top-up carbon tax that is solely on electricity would lower wholesale electricity prices and drive electrification It'd also welcome to see climate policy levers removed from the statute books once they've served their purpose

Carbon pricing is an effective way of cutting emissions, but when rates aren't uniform they can have unintended consequences for climate. We need people to go electric, but the Carbon Price Support pushes up the cost of (mostly green) electricity (vs gas). Counter-productive.

This is an excellent piece of analysis.

Rare that you get a no brainer in energy policy - this is a good thread on why we should scrap the carbon price support

@watt_direction and I make the case for removing it in this briefing for @BritishProgress here -> britishprogress.org/briefings/cut-…

‼️The Carbon Price Support increases electricity costs by nearly four times more than it raises in revenue‼️

🚨 Guess who’s back? 🚨 Join us to celeb365 days of a Labour Government aboard the Emerald of London with drinks, DJs, and special guest speakers. 🥂🎶🛥 📅 Friday 4 July 📍 Thames River | 7–11pm 🎫 Book now at the link in our bio

How is this not the biggest news story in the world?

🆕 🧵@Moreincommon_ @WeAreNewBritain research for @NEUnion finds Gen Z Britons aged 16-24 think social media has become more addictive, more negative and less safe for young people in last 5 years and by 3-1 they think social media does more harm than good for under 16s.

How our understanding of the climate is changing ow.ly/GqGC1061vmJ

The way we understand the climate is changing, and it should change the way we approach climate action (but only a little) At @BusinessGreen here: businessgreen.com/opinion/441042… and Substack here: @patrickcook81/note/p-158834554?r=90yvk" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">substack.com/@patrickcook81…

Very exciting!!

It was an honour to chair our first Young Fabian Book Club with @HarrietHarman last night. Her book “A Woman’s Work” and the discussion last night made it clear how far the women’s movement has come but also how far it has to go. We’ve got quite the to-do list @youngfabians!

I've been going for a pint at each pub in my constituency Is it 'cos I love a pint? Well, yes But it's also about a serious political point. The decline of pubs is leading to more loneliness. And loneliness leads to political extremism. (link in next post)

@youngfabians Exciting!

📚 We are so delighted to be launching our Book Club! This isn’t your average book club — each month, the author of our chosen book will join us to take part in the discussion. We kick off on the 5 February with Baroness Harriet Harman. Sign up at the link in your email!

Beautiful, eerie, wintry England

@jujulemons Memoirs of Hadrian is my favourite book of the year, thanks for the other recommendations!

For a while now, I've been listing every book I read each year. Here is 2024: 1. Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts 2. The Hatred of Poetry by Ben Lerner 3. Augustus by Adrian Goldsworthy 4. The Triumph of Injustice by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman 5. Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin 6. The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch 7. The Goldfinch by Donna Tart 8. The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow 9. Dune, Book 1 by Frank Herbert 10. Artful by Ali Smith 11. The Nun by Denis Diderot 12. The Employees by Olga Ravn 13. The Entrepreneurial State by Mariana Mazzucato 14. How to Read Heidegger by Mark Wrathall 15. Politics On the Edge by Rory Stewart 16. Swann in Love by Marcel Proust 17. Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters 18. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov 19. Situational Awareness by Leopold Aschenbrenner 20. Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel 21. Inside the Head of Bruno Schulz by Maxim Biller 22. Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell 23. The Inseparables by Simone de Beauvoir 24. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick 25. Stubborn Attachments by Tyler Cowen 26. Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal 27. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence 28. Reinventing Discovery by Michael Nielsen 29. The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem 30. Suppose a Sentence by Brian Dillon 31. The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker 32. Return by Snježana Mulić 33. The Tyranny of Merit by Michael J. Sandel 34. Memoirs of Hadrian by Marguerite Yourcenar 35. Reunion by Fred Uhlman 36. Under the Net by Iris Murdoch 37. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Philip K. Dick 38. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell 39. A Culture of Growth by Joel Mokyr 40. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen 41. Notes on Climate Tech by Ben James 42. Yann Andréa Steiner by Marguerite Duras 43. The New Leviathans by John Gray 44. Intermezzo by Sally Rooney 45. Innovation in Real Places by Dan Breznitz 46. Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky 47. Little Zen Poems by Nina Mermey Klippel 48. Cigarettes by Harry Mathews 49. The Lessons of History by Will & Ariel Durant 50. No Rules Rules by Reed Hastings & Erin Meyer 51. Freud, A Very Short Introduction by Anthony Storr 52. Iris Murdoch, A Life by Peter J. Conradi 53. The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel 54. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig