You have got to wonder about the folks who take their dogs to shit outside the school gates.
2023
In sum, seems like a budget to keep self-interested Tories onside. I guess it presages a ratcheting up of culture war cobblers to gin up Tory supporters who vote against their own interests.
Hmm. Seems like the Tories have given back around 2/3 of the recent corporation tax hike in tax reliefs. Corporations already don’t know what to do productively with the money. Share buybacks FTW!
Imagine if the Tories had given wealthy savers the same pension tax breaks, but required the money be invested in net zero and social housing.
You need a lot of patience to drive down Morning Lane in the, uh, morning. I walk - and there isn’t much patience on show.
Fiscal rules
Wednesday, March 15, 2023
Your budget day reminder that outside of political discourse there’s no such thing as fiscal rules. The term was introduced into the UK by Gordon Brown to counter the (mistaken) premise that Labour is bad at economic management. As political tools, fiscal rules are designed to support political outcomes. If a politician tells you a fiscal rule leaves them no option but to shaft their citizens, rest assured that citizen-shafting is their political objective.The unimaginative build-it-by-numbers regeneration strategy is to throw up high-rises around public transport hubs, which leaves tracts of East London without a horizon, little sunlight, and very windy streets.
This is Canary Wharf Station on the Elizabeth Line. It has no direct connection with Canary Wharf Station on the DLR, and neither of those stations have a connection with Canary Wharf Station on the Jubilee Line. One location: three stations.
Against the grey afternoon sky the silver leaves sprouting from the tree growing out of the taxi aren’t so shiny.
Flying Tiger - this is the Crossrail Place branch - gimcrack ground zero.
I can be a bit slow on the uptake. The people who get het up about “declinism” are the same people as “classical liberals” who rail against the “woke” and decry “cancel culture”.
The Tapping of the Purple Reader is the essential ritual of East London travelling people.
Public address speakers paired together on the lampposts at Hackney Central station.
Passenger on the train has a “specially selected” mozzarella and sun dried cherry tomato wood fired sourdough pizza - cook at home - on her lap. The most prominent aspect of the packaging is the Union Jack.
Hackney is gridlocked this morning. The average British car is the size of a small bus these days. Nevertheless most have just the driver.
The immigration “debate” in the UK is always radioactive. With their small boats stunting the Tories have gone the full Chernobyl. How do they shut it down when it explodes?
Saw this on my walk to the Hackney office today through sleet and snow. It explains why so many exterior light-fittings in England are round.
Tory “libertarians” overcome cognitive dissonance by believing free enterprise only applies to people they went to school with or who pay them off. Small-boats people-trafficking needs to be profoundly financialised before it becomes a global British success story to be turbocharged via deregulation
Rishi Sunak ‘extinguishing the right to seek refugee protection in UK’
Shameful. All the more so because this “law” is merely a political stunt by the Tories.
The whole display has crashed at EY, Canary Wharf.
Crossrail (the Elizabeth Line) is an engineering marvel. But they never take account of passengers when designing rail infrastructure.
Tory Migration-go-round Explained
Sunday, March 5, 2023
The Tories won’t fix public services, healthcare, housing or infrastructure. If they did, you wouldn’t believe that “the country’s full”. And the Tories won’t fix small boats and asylum processing delays. If they did, you wouldn’t blame migrants for the state the country’s in.This art piece in Crossrail Place at Canary Wharf is made up of LED tiles. The art itself is maybe a little condescending, but the motion is interesting.
Almost 45 years in, and I thought that neoliberalism would have its “reflections on forced collectivisation” moment. But nope. It’s it’s not going to happen, is it?
The pilot hen is the moorhen who’s always leading the other water birds to the food. This time, she’s jumped out of Telehouse Pond as is zipping along on land towards me.
One of the interesting things about the Windsor Framework is that it is not, say, the Barnsley Framework.
The crows are running around on the roof. I can hear the distinctive hopping gait.
The crow on “crowverlook” duty on the Star Lane office today watches in solitude.
Gosh @help - am I doing the photoblogging challenge wrong?
It’s London “nope” weather in Hackney this morning.