Super depressing to watch liberal democracies give up without a fight. Elites are like, “Well, there’s no alternative, so if people don’t like being poorer with shittier public services, they can just go fash”. Finance and business is like, “Fascism is low taxes. What’s the problem?”

The impending collapse of the criminal justice system in the UK is the signal indicator of the true reactionary nature of neoliberalism in Britain. The “nightwatchman state” is withdrawn only from the masses. The political elite are better guarded than ever, and the rich have private retainers as well as police protection.

The prison and court systems are on the verge of collapse. Why aren’t Labour or the Tories talking about it?

Is Rachel Reeves a poor communicator constrained by Labour’s Tory-lite, don’t frighten the horses messaging, or is there something more fundamentally problematic there?

Big fire in Canning Town this morning

Smoke billows over the rooftops, obscuring construction and high rise buildings

The election campaign really shows up the dire state of British political journalism.

Paula Vennells sure was paid an awful lot of money for not having a clue what was going on during her tenure as CEO of the Post Office.

Paula Vennells breaks down as she tells Post Office inquiry she was misled

In 10 years time who will deliver the lattes once AI has made human labour obsolete?

I love economists. Always so cute in their naïve, incelish smugness, and always so reliably wrong.

You’d think that if the UK government really wanted to “stop the boats”, they’d stop the City laundering the proceeds of the ticket sales.

It’s almost as if everything that politicians back is a bad idea. This is your cognitive elite in action.

Also, and incidentally, does anyone know why construction sites in China are always fenced in blue?

Small modular reactors don’t add up as a viable energy source

A glitch in the Matrix

A wall-sized LED displaying a digital artwork at Canary Wharf has developed a glitch with the scene split in the middle - the scene itself is a dreamlike London skyline with small figures whizzing around in invisible Tube trains

Have I got this straight? A lawyer who is defending Trump for the money is using an attack line of accusing a porn actress of doing it for the money.

Here’s where we’re at in Britain. The Tories are high on their own supply, but they don’t know how fucked-up they are because their friends in the propaganda wing (that is what is often called, without irony, “the media”) keep offering them another toke from the bong.

TIL that “May the 4th” for English speakers doesn’t generally refer to the 五四运动, but some sort of lame Star Wars joke. I feel stupid.

Great day for London. Nasty, divisive culture-wars politics comprehensively rejected. And the swifts are back.

Rentier Capitalism by Brett Christophers: an unputdownable read

Part of a book cover, reading "Rentier Capitalism - Who Owns the Economy and Who Pays for It?"(Book by Brett Christophers)

Bubble tea in Stratford

A line of people waiting at a bubble tea kiosk in front of a large glass window, seating pods in the background, with a 70s airport feel, Westfield logo visible on a building beyond the glass

My hometown: dancing under the overpass

Couples dance together under a concrete flyover, decorated with red swooshes, people sitting on benches look on. Terry Spinks Place, Canning Town, East London

Drift down to the beach

A paraglider descends towards the beach over the sea, with the sun setting behind the shoulder of a mountain in the background

A community event in Custom House (from some years ago)

A red poster advertising a community event fixed to a dilapidated metal fence, behind which is dessicated overgrown grass and weeds.