Riding the rainbow train this morning.

It is an irony of our times that the professional and managerial caste who manage “teh economeh” on behalf of the oligarchy know nothing of economics. Indeed many undertake elite education precisely to entrench their ignorance.

Not sure if the pigeons are fans of minimalism or just like numbers. Anyhow, I play them “Einstein on the Beach” most evenings.

A successful Labour government needs a commitment to social justice. A technocratic government of slight ambition needs a good understanding of macroeconomics. If you have neither, here is what is left.

Rachel Reeves planning to raise taxes and cut spending in October budget

I’ve never understood why governments are so interested in the opinions of corporations and the oligarchy. These will be the first people to fly out and set up shop elsewhere once they’ve shat the bed. Why not talk to the folks who’ll be staying to clean up the mess?

Cold snap bonus: Rachel Reeves will only have to kill 250k pensioners over a cold winter to save as much again as her winter fuel payment cut.

www.theguardian.com/politics/…

Bought a black Echo Pop during some sort of Prime discount thing. It came with a white power supply. It shows up on my Amazon account as a white Echo Pop. For the handful of other Echo devices I have, they show up with the right colour.

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 The “nightwatchman state” is withdrawn only from the masses.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

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

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

Bubble tea in Stratford

My hometown: dancing under the overpass