Adam Watson Brown

@EricSmi92780239 @rcolvile Sounds like 1967.

@rcolvile Robert, trading nations are sensitive to external shocks. UK has developed since the 80s an increased dependency on imports of all types. The worse balance of trade position in the G7. This needs addressing far more than public finances if UK is to build a more robust economy.

Iran is a global shock. But it's shocked Britain the most: - Biggest growth downgrade in G7 - Lowest per capita growth - Joint highest inflation - Highest borrowing costs - Higher increase in borrowing costs after crisis hits Why? Because we're not a grown-up country. (1/?)

@49thAwakening @Simon_Ingari No, the company changed its T&Cs.

@Simon_Ingari I would have fired you instantly. You clearly aren't responsible enough to have things in order to maintain a job plus you are laying your problems on the company as if it is their issue. This is a total Gen Z move, thinking the world revolves around them.

A few days ago, my boss called to say I must now work full-time from the office, despite being hired remotely. I said I had no car and the office is 2 hours from home. His reply: “Your personal commute is not my problem!” I didn’t argue. The next morning, I arrived at the office at exactly 8:00 a.m., just as ordered. My commute had taken three transfers and more than 2 hours, but I made sure to step through the door right on time—dragging a small rolling suitcase behind me. My boss froze the moment he saw it. He smirked and asked if I had mistaken the office for the airport. What he didn’t know was that inside the suitcase I had secretly put a blanket, a pillow, a kettle, and three days’ worth of snacks. I smiled sweetly and replied, “Since I don’t have a car and the commute eats up 4 hours a day, I thought it would be best if I just lived here during the week.” Then I set about unpacking. A pillow on my desk chair. A blanket draped neatly over the back. Oatmeal packets stacked in the break room. Before long, I was boiling water with my travel kettle and offering tea to my bewildered coworkers.↓

At last.

Destroying the @InternetArchive's @WayBackMachine would be the equivalent of the burning of the Library of Alexandria - one of the worst losses of knowledge in history. Media giants are now threatening to do this. We can't let this happen. Pass it on.

@ChelFulhamBen @RBKC English law is useless at resolving these issues without disproportionate expense. We’ve had a dilapidated house next to ours in W.14. The owner never answered our registered letters. He died after 40 years of doing nothing: we can only 🙏🏼 the place will be renovated

Neighbours of this Chelsea house have dealt with knotweed, rats & rotting corpse. The owner was convicted in 2017 & told to fix it. He hasn't. @RBKC claims it's powerless - it isn't. On Thursday I'm urging the Planning Committee to challenge the facts, listen to residents & act.

@AStuttaford In a world of blocs, pooled sovereignty is a no brainer. Of course there is friction.

@awb58 We (as so often in this area, I fear) must agree to disagree!

🙄

@EngelsbergIdeas @claremulley ‘The world is not ungenerous, but very busy and unimaginative’, she once said. ‘We have to find the means to touch the imagination of the world.’ Still true.

Eglantyne Jebb and the birth of Save the Children | @claremulley engelsbergideas.com/portraits/egla…

@APHClarkson @annettedittert WM is over-confident and has very strong priors. I find him super irritating. Apologies for slight, ad hom but this is therapy for me.

Wolfgang Munchau is the European political analysis equivalent of the guys who predicted the world would end in 2012 and are now stuck explaining why the apocalypse is always going to happen next week

@zvonimirtot I watched the pilot of Sherlock again and enjoyed it. Later seasons irritated me at the time. Don’t forget Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970). Robert Stephen’s performance provided some steer for Jeremy Brett’s IMO.

If you are a fan of Sherlock Holmes, do not - for the love of all that is holy - watch the Robert Downey Jr./Guy Ritchie trash. Back when they came out, I lasted about 30 minutes through the first of the two trainwrecks. When Hollywood tries to "improve" literature, nothing good ever comes of it. You won't fare much better with the four (mercifully short) seasons of Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch. He’s a very good actor and the series is generally well made, but it suffers from the fatal flaw of trying to "contemporize" a Victorian-era narrative. Instead, do this: 1. Read Arthur Conan Doyle's original stories. 2. THEN watch the beautifully produced Granada Television series Sherlock Holmes (1984–1994) starring the brilliant Jeremy Brett.

@ProfTonyPollard @NTS_archaeology Risk aversion.

Fortunately we managed to get a specialist company to make this safe. When we found an unexploded howitzer shell at Waterloo the UXO team from Belgian army blew it up, despite our pleas! @NTS_archaeology heraldscotland.com/news/26016052.…

@FXMC1957 Almost certainly healthier than the 1st class menu, if you weren’t greedy,

2nd Class dinner menu on RMS Titanic.

@FXMC1957 Interesting that the pâté de foie gras is served at the end of the dinner. PErhaps the accompanying sweet wine is the reason.

1st Class dinner menu on RMS Titanic.

@GHWTowler @PJacquerie Sebastian Flyte’s smarter younger brother surely.

@PJacquerie That’s my cousin.

My son has just found this pic from Avebury in 1990. Not much changes.

I deduce that a 12 year old theme park ride may need more frequent inspections than a new one. ©️Old cars I have owned.

LATEST ARTICLE Since 2022, Europe has been working to rapidly ramp up production of 155 mm ammunition. But beyond volume, another issue is becoming central: standardization, which is essential to ensure interoperability, industrial consistency, and operational effectiveness.

@bengglover You aren’t going back far enough. Per Sandbrook, UK industry lost its colonial markets in the fifties and sixties and didn’t ever recover. So U.K. joined the EU. Your solution is to relaunch industry: so Blue Labour remedy. Unconvincing.

Something that overturns fifty years of error - not just fourteen, as Labour has often described its mission. You can read the full piece here: newstatesman.com/politics/uk-po… 6/

I've got a new piece for the @NewStatesman on something that has been bugging me for a while... 1/

@mikegardner_wb @nathansldennis Free trade creates winners and losers. It isn’t enough for a community if nations to live together. Mike, read some books on the EU, please.

I suspect I understand regulatory frameworks and EU law perfectly well having dealt with them for 30 years. You can trade perfectly well with other countries without letting them make your laws for you. You can have tariff free trade without letting them dictate who you trade with.

EU membership infantilised our political class, reducing MPs and Ministers to little more than glorified rubber stamps for laws made in Brussels we neither wanted nor needed. It put bureaucrats, civil servants, quangos and regulators in charge. For the voters, the link between democratic accountability and electorates for those making our laws was lost. Brussels has been warned repeatedly that its obsession with regulating everything was terminally damaging Europe’s economic growth, stifling innovation and entrepreneurship - especially in the Tech sector. It refuses to listen and learn. The EU will never act in Britain’s best interests. It is only interested in its vision for the fantasy of a United States of Europe. It will go on cluttering us up with rules and regulations which suffocate us. Rejoining or tying ourselves back in, let alone paying for the privilege is a total economic and political dead end for the people of Britain. It will solve none of our problems. It will only make them worse. And it will make it harder than it already is to do anything radical to fix what is broken. It is particularly perplexing that those on the Left seem so wedded to the idea of becoming submissives to an unelected self-serving bureaucracy that is so obviously ill-suited to the emerging world of AI and global anarchy. The World has changed radically since we voted to join what was then the Common Market. We can have a perfectly constructive relationship with Europe once EU leaders drop their childish, petulant anti-Brexit spite and Remainers here take off their blinkers and see the World as it really is, not some historical fantasy past they wish it still was…. @DouglasCarswell @DavidGHFrost @danny__kruger @Iromg @Madz_Grant

@get_involved1 @KitJohn26458322 @kevinf567 @BrynHarris6 @Fox_Claire I still think that the EU concept of pooling sovereignty is a good strategy. It bulks up the sovereignty of small and medium sized countries. But then I would say that!

@awb58 @KitJohn26458322 @kevinf567 @BrynHarris6 @Fox_Claire As much as it chooses to have. Trade deals are negotiated, each side should set limits on what it is willing to offer. Defence arrangements can be more problematic as the Alliance System pre FWW demonstrated. “International law” is only as binding as a government chooses.

I narrowly voted remain, despite deep euroscepticism. I didn't want people to lose jobs, didn't think the governing class would be up to the opportunities of Brexit (there was also peer pressure). But Remain reaction to the result revolted me & I couldn't bear to be on their side

@get_involved1 @KitJohn26458322 @kevinf567 @BrynHarris6 @Fox_Claire How much sovereignty does a medium sized country really have in the current geo-political circumstances?

@KitJohn26458322 @kevinf567 @BrynHarris6 @Fox_Claire As usual superficial inconveniences which somehow the entire country should lose its sovereignty to resolve for you and your son.