Stephen Bush

@stephenkb.bsky.social

79624 Followers 5251 Following

Associate editor and columnist @financialtimes.com. Post too often about culture, public policy, management, politics, nerd stuff, Arsenal the champions, wosoc. Wow! (center) Try my UK politics newsletter for free here: www.ft.com/tryinsidepolitics

Bus journeys in Great Britain: a peak in 1950, a long and steady decline until the mid-80s.
Tomas Hirst @tomashirstecon.bsky.social 100% probability @stephenkb.bsky.social chuckled at his hed this morning @mcdaragh.bsky.social Fair enough. In other news your newsletter has just arrived in my inbox, and I'm afraid after that pun I'm forced to conclude you're a bad person who will go to hell when you die.
In 2010, Stockwood became CEO and then vice-chairman of Simply Business.[8] Simply Business was voted as the number one ‘Best Place to Work’ in the UK by The Sunday Times in both 2015 and 2016, with Stockwood winning the overall Best Leader award in the latter year. The company's awards led to it being accredited as a certified B Corporation.[9] Simply Business raised capital through a number of private equity investors, most notably from New York-based Aquiline Private Equity. It was eventually sold to The Travelers Companies in 2017 for $500m.[10] He is an investor in early stage technology companies through 53 Degrees Capital. Notable investments include Olio, Chiaro, Be My Eyes and AI social services company, Beam.[11] Since 2019 he has been the chair of the board raising the money to build the Horizon Youth Zone in Grimsby.[12] In 2020 he was invited to become a Transformational Leadership Fellow at The Blavatnik School of Government, The University of Oxford. Since 2021 he has written a number of articles for The Guardian newspaper relating to football, politics and culture.[13][14] He is a 2023 Fellow of Practice at the Government Outcomes Lab, at the Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University.
I do believe that. I just don’t believe you do it in good faith.
In the circumstances, many considerations had to be borne in mind - the right, centre, and left of the party the extreme 'Suez' group; the extrem opposition to Suez; the loyal centre - and last, but not least, U and non-U (to use the jargon that Nancy Mitford has popularised) that is, Eton, Winchester, etc on the one hand; Board School and grammar school on the other.
Did I just argue with a joke? Part of a Bluesky educational series
Julien Hoez @julienhoez.eu Follow back Also to be clear, I wouldn't necessarily claim it's racist in my case because I don't think the racial component is really there, or if we can distinguish White-Europe/french as a racial distinction from White-British
A man sweats over an impossible choice.
Jude Bellingham.
Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://help.ft.com/faq/gifting-and-sharing-an-article/what-is-a-gift-article/. https://www.ft.com/content/fe73a410-5838-405f-9922-981d0084c857?syn-25a6b1a6=1 One board member at a large UK bank said: “No one knows anything about her economic, fiscal or financial positions other than in the generality that she is right-of-centre which would point to a [Rachel] Reeves continuity, which is the best we could hope for.”
It will also be an incredibly difficult SR, another reason it’s likely to be held back. Like all recent chancellors, Reeves met her fiscal rules by frontloading spending increases in the two years after the election while backloading the pain to the end of the Parliament. But unlike her immediate predecessors she fixed the date the rules had to met by (to 2030) rather than allowing them to roll forward each year, cutting off the usual escape route for her successor. Burnham has said he will keep to these rules. In order to meet them Reeves assumed that spending after 2026 would be broadly flat and then for most departments fall in 2029-2030 by 4.4% (if NHS and defence funding increase as expected). No details were given as to how these cuts would be achieved. It is all supposed to be fleshed out in the upcoming SR. And if 4.4% doesn’t sound like a lot, it’s similar to the annual reductions between 2010 and 2015 which we’ve collectively labelled austerity.
A terazzo worktop, a soft pink wall, black and chrome appliances.
To me, that’s cinema.
I refer, instead, to the race between the overall collapse of the country – perhaps via a fiscal emergency, a sovereign debt crisis, power outages or civil war – and the collapse of the legitimacy of any political process. A race during which we might find someone equal to the task of steering us away from these rocks.
Boris Johnson, flanked by Lord Buckethead and a man in an unsettling giant Elmo costume.
You're...you're too online, okay? You've lost context.
Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://help.ft.com/faq/gifting-and-sharing-an-article/what-is-a-gift-article/. https://www.ft.com/content/bf1892d7-f9ef-479c-a1fb-f8dcb9efa328?shareType=nongift&syn-25a6b1a6=1 Next, meet the democracy defenders. They don’t want much — just to gently crush the billionaires’ fortunes until no one can donate their way to political influence or buy a large social media platform on a whim. They talk in terms of fairness and societal fabric and have a strong sense of right and wrong. They are not very fun at parties.
Kate Forbes
Reform 49 per cent Conservatives 36 per cent
Given the weight and the complexity of the decisions that US Senators make, I consider it useful that they not have a record of flunking the obvious no-brainers, like “should I get laser surgery on my Nazi tattoo before running for elected office?” It reflects poorly on the judgment of Maine’s Democratic primary voters that they have decided that someone whose decision-making is at best unreliable is the person to defeat a formidable incumbent in Susan Collins. 
Did I just argue with a joke?
The author watches Arsenal spurn a chance to go three nil up against Spurs in the company of the prime minister.
That sign can't stop me because I can't read!
@sleepcore.zone has added you to the "Fake experts" custom feed list bsky.app/profile/did:... @sleepcore.zone has added you to the "Suspicious" custom feed list bsky.app/profile/did:... @sleepcore.zone has added you to the "Bad Faith List Scolds" custom feed list bsky.app/profile/did:... @sleepcore.zone has added you to the "People who REALLY like Jesse Singal for some weird reason" custom feed list bsky.app/profile/did:...
“Why don’t we ask my son in law what he thinks!” … “yes, why don’t you?”
Everyone in this exchange can read this post, some are just choosing not to.
Amrk talks about avoiding the centre of London (St Pancras). Guy responds by going 'don't play the victim'.
The Minions with Mobutu Sese Seko.
David Perdue: Totally exonerated No wrongdoing
A WhatsApp message reading: Walking over now, can I grab anything? A goal, perhaps
To me, that’s cinema.
David Lynch (PA): I just wanted to ask about a row you found yourself involved in with Bridget Phillipson last week. During the course of that row, you said that scrapping VAT exemption on private schools was akin to the Gestapo. Why do you think that is? Could you explain your thinking behind that? Kemi Badenoch: On your second point, I stand very much by all of the words I've said about Bridget Phillipson. I said them on the floor of the House of Commons. The point you are making, you asked specifically about a Gestapo Officer - that wasn't necessarily in the last few days. That was a while ago, and that was because I said she's putting ideology above the welfare of children. That was what that reference was about. This is a woman who has displaced 40,000 children. So many schools have closed. She said she was doing it to increase teacher numbers - there are now 2,000 fewer teachers than we had before. 0% of teachers think she's doing a good job. 0% of teachers think Bridget Phillipson is doing a good job. What we should be doing is holding her to account and not asking if I said hurty words about Bridget Phillipson. She is the one destroying their futures. I am the one defending those children and I will continue to do so.
any successor to starmer can imitate him and suffer the same fate, go populist wild or imitate him with less skill
List: hates people who use VR AI smart-glasses, NFTs, Bitcoin List description: No claims are being made about the members of this list
Mr Beast
User blocked by “So, you hate waffles?”
To me, that’s cinema.
35% of Britons think Andy Burnham would do a good job as Prime Minister, 24% a bad job. 29% think Kemi Badenoch would do a good job and 37% a bad job; 27% think Nigel Farage would do a good job and 53% a bad job. Angela Rayner: 16% good job, 48% bad job Ed Miliband: 14% good job, 47% bad job Wes Streeting: 14% good job, 37% bad job.
68 per cent free marketeer, 40 per cent libertarian, 0 per cent nativist, social conservative, or traditionalist
Peter Parker's much crummier apartment in Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2.
The final act of the most audacious campaign from Russia and the international far right the world has ever witnessed
People sending abuse under their own names
Matt Zoller Seitz ‪@mattzollerseitz.bsky.social‬ If the "takeaway" of a film is widely misunderstood, who is to blame, the filmmakers or the audience? For instance, if Marines watch Apocalypse Now and cheer the destruction and come away thinking Kilgore and Kurtz are awesome, are they media-illiterate, or did the movie fail in some basic way?
Did I just argue with a joke?
At the party the Friday before, I was introduced to a lawyer. I opened the conversation by saying that I was the problem I had with lawyers was that they can misrepresent the evidence and distort the legislation. The response I got from the lady was that was the end of the conversation, and she walked away. So much for negotiation being the solution to the world’s problems.
A chart showing that 20 per cent of British voters who could could correctly identify Angela Rayner believed her to be from an upper class family, 32 from a middle class one, and that 16 per cent and 38 per cent believing the same of Andy Burnham, while just 18 per cent can correctly identify that Wes Streeting was born in a working class family.
So, let me begin with a story about a great British entrepreneur. His name is Billy Boyle. Billy studied engineering and nanotechnology at Cambridge. He ended up working on cutting-edge miniature sensors that are able to accurately detect tiny quantities of chemicals. Together with two of his colleagues, he spun-out Owlstone Nanotech to commercialise the application of their technology. A few years later, Billy’s wife Kate was sadly diagnosed with late-stage colon cancer that earlier screenings had missed. If the cancer had been caught early, she would have had a 95% chance of surviving. Caught late, her chances were just 5% and Kate was not one of the fortunate ones. She died on Christmas Day 2014. Billy chose to turn his grief into a mission and set about exploring how his company’s technology could be used to detect cancer earlier.
Did I just argue with a joke?
Purpose built flat 3 beds 1 bath 1 reception Leasehold 74 sqm
The kitchen hatch in our flat.
Like many Neets, Thomas says Covid had a big impact on his situation. Before the pandemic, he had a part-time job while he was at school, working security at Bolton Wanderers’ stadium, although he had to keep quiet about his age, as he was under 18. When choosing his A-levels, he had gone for a reliable trio of history, geography and sociology and achieved good grades: ABB. But when the time to apply for university came around, the UK – along with much of the world – went into lockdown. He opted to stay at the college where he had done his A-levels to do a health and social care course. “I wasn’t going to spend nine grand to sit in a flat,” he says. During this time, most of his friends moved away to university. So did his girlfriend. “We broke up. We were both just like: we can’t do this distance, it’s a six-hour drive,” he says. He feels he missed out on formative experiences because of this. “I never got that chance to go out with my friends because we weren’t allowed to leave the gaff.” Even the seemingly little things from this period still hold him back today. He was learning to drive before the pandemic; when it hit, all his lessons were cancelled. “My driving instructor actually died of Covid,” he says. Now, he can’t afford to put down the £40 to £50 a lesson, but a lot of the jobs he goes for, even for bar work in Manchester, require a driving licence.
Unfortunately, today, if you are on social media, you will be served a constant stream of the absolute worst of the other gender’s “locker room talk.” The stuff that young people are able to see just by logging into TikTok or Twitter for two minutes is worse than everything I ever heard boys say in four years of high school, even through gossip. And we’re kidding ourselves if we don’t think that experiencing the opposite sex this way—through their most inflammatory members saying or doing the most inflammatory things—is doing real damage to today’s young people and how they view the opposite sex, fueling myths and stereotypes that aren’t remotely true.
They met ten years ago, he asked her out, she said no. Two years later, she asked him out, he said no. They reconnected after she was jilted at the altar. Now they’re engaged.
Zachery Ty Bryan is currently serving a prison sentence, while Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Taran Noah Smith aren't interested in acting anymore.
The back of a pair of trousers, where a v-neck style indentation has been made.
iainhepburn.me26 minutes ago I’d forgotten fun fact prick was on here. Downside of rebooting, you keep rediscovering who you haven’t blocked or muted yet.