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David Higham

@oldtrotter.bsky.social

6.7K followers 620 following 16K posts

Former economist and civil servant. Former (age related) national cycling champion. Still a music fan. Sewn up member of the Zipper Club.

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · Jan 21

A short summary of my thoughts on regional policy. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Beyond ‘Levelling up’: how to improve regional policy in England: 10 lessons from 20 years

‘Levelling-up’ as a political slogan in the UK may be finished, but a commitment to reducing regional inequalities remains, as highlighted in the 2024 Green Paper on Industrial Strategy. This paper...

www.tandfonline.com

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 25m

That’s because his most creative period had coincided with the arrival of punk. He’d rather passed me by at the time as well. Think the first album I bought was Glorious Fool in 1981.

David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 31m

Agreed and a point @chrisdillow.bsky.social made in his comment. It was hard work reading the “big thinkers” back in my youth.

David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 36m

See my comment above. Bloody hard work it was too. I was clearly too idle to be a true rebel 😂

David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 37m

Which I alluded to here bsky.app/profile/oldt...

David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 2h

Damn sight easier than wading through Camus, Sartre and Marcuse though 👍

David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 2h

Indeed, hence my second comment but the key - if not particularly original - point is that young people do like to rebel and the online world does seem dominated by the right.

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 2h

I suppose there have to be some advantages of being up there 😉

David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 2h

Damn sight easier than wading through Camus, Sartre and Marcuse though 👍

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 3h

But, grumpy old man that I am, I do think "intellectual energy" and "a fresh fizz of ideas" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, although I accept that many of the ideas of the '60s were throwbacks to earlier times (such as the Levellers and Diggers).

In the panic about young people flirting with fascism, this difference is important. Because one of the main reasons the young are drifting not just to the right, but to the radical or even far right, is its intellectual energy a fresh fizz of ideas about the ways in which we organise society. That appeals to young people looking for something to get excited about, and something that feels like a departure from a rebellion against - what their stodgy liberal parents believe.

And while there are plenty of prominent theorists on the right offering radical ideas Yarvin himself argues that democracy should be replaced with monarchy - there is a distinct deficit of such thinkers, or even of new ideas, on the left. The young men who might once have been excited about Noam Chomsky's arguments about the media manufacturing consent are now immersing themselves in the pseudonymous rightwing writer Bronze Age Pervert's Nietzschean critiques of modernity, and his enthusiasm for pre-civilisational masculinity.

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 3h

This is an interesting article which I think contains a lot of truth. Certainly the 1960s were very much an age of rebellion against traditional norms. The fashion for the young: turn to the radical right - on.ft.com/3WxySLk via @FT

The fashion for the young: turn to the radical right

The intellectual energy of new rightwing movements is drawing in young people

on.ft.com

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 3h

That's what I don't understand. I can see why they might like Cameron's Thatcherism with a patrician veneer and why they've fallen out of love with Johnson, but May was OK and Truss wasn't?

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 3h

His other two great albums from that period are Solid Air and Grace and Danger, although the latter was his break-up album and has something of an edge to it. It was also produced by Phil Collins (who plays drums on it) who was also going through a breakup and drinking heavily.

David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 3h

This is something that economists did get right (cf the recent FT interview with Lighthizer). ‘This is existential’: Donald Trump’s tariffs drive US car sector into turmoil - on.ft.com/47kKxDA via @FT

‘This is existential’: Donald Trump’s tariffs drive US car sector into turmoil

Michigan’s ‘Big Three’ carmakers forecast a combined $7bn tariff-related hit to earnings in 2025

on.ft.com

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 3h

I'm trying - and failing - to understand what he's implying about the Conservative Party there. I assume it's when the "socialists" hadn't taken over the Party but the dates just don't work.

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 4h

Jack’s a really good writer and his newsletter is always interesting and insightful.

Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 2d

My newsletter, Lines To Take, is changing.

Here’s what’s next — and why I hope you’ll join me.

✍️ www.linestotake.com/p/this-newsl...

Music was blaring, lights strobing, bodies gyrating. There was glitter everywhere. Welcome to Daybreaker, an early morning dance movement based in 33 cities around the world, where people come to “sweat, dance and connect with ourselves and each other”. It is also how I ended up in a nightclub at seven in the morning, sober and alone, approaching strangers to ask if they were having a good time.

I suppose I should consider myself lucky. My editor at the time had initially (and a little too cheerily, I felt) suggested I go walking with wolves somewhere in the Lake District. Back in 2019, Daybreaker was a noisy example of what seemed like a striking shift in our consumption habits. The so-called “experience economy” was booming then and — following the Covid-19 interruption — has come back with a vengeance

“The history of economic progress,” Joseph Pine II, who helped coin the term “experience economy” told me (and many others, I suspect, given the rhyme), “is paying a fee for what used to be free.”

Can you see where I’m going with this?

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Reposted by David Higham

Lewis Baston @lewisbaston.bsky.social · 10h

It’s infuriating that so mediocre and crude a power as Russia is running rings round European democracies and that they have so many willing collaborators.

Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 13h

New post just out:

The relationship between Russia and the European radical right goes well beyond Reform's Nathan Gill being bribed.

In this post I trace the history back to the 1990s and look at the threat it poses now.

(£/free trial)

open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/r...

Russia and the rise of the radical right

Marine Le Pen meets with Putin before the 2017 French Presidential election (Photo credit Mikhail Klimentyev/AFP via Getty Images)

open.substack.com

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 4h

It’s a great album. His live shows were always something special even when he was confined to a wheelchair (and as long as you recognised that his onstage patter was basically nonsense).

David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 4h

I’ve given in and lit the 🔥 What a miserable damp and foggy day.

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 5h

Yes, a much underrated Chancellor in a much underrated government that achieved more than it’s given credit for, although it was a pretty wild ride at times.

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 5h

People have written lots of books🤔

David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 5h

It’s like watching a slow motion car crash.

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 5h

Objective facts? He’s taking the piss.

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 5h

Ah, but that was before a massive majority secured on a small share of the vote 😉 British politics has put all that instability behind it.

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 5h

The whole strategy is a joke. They doomed themselves when they made those tax pledges and nothing is going to change until they admit their mistake and make the case for higher taxes as a way of delivering a fairer and more growth friendly system. They might even find people support it.

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 5h

There aren’t many albums that are flawless. This is one of them. Nearly 50 years old, but timeless. Don’t get more elegiac than Small Hours (even with the sound of a passing train)

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David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 6h

More from the briefing to the Times. An oasis of political stability? A government with a massive majority being unable to get changes to WFA and welfare through the Commons , a PM with historic low levels of popularity and Reform ahead in the polls? That government?

The message is simple: Farage is ultimately to blame, as the man who de-livered Brexit with "easy sloganeering" then walked away from the aftermath rather than putting in the hard yards.

Or to put it another way: Farage, not us, is responsible for putting up your taxes.

The theme will tie to the main thrust of Starmer's argument at conference, that the Reform leader is selling easy solutions that are just a fantasy.

The other approach deployed by Starmer and Reeves will be to present Britain as a bastion of political stability.

Reeves will head to the International Monetary Fund in Washington on Wednesday where she is expected to argue that Britain is a sanctuary of eco-nomic responsibility in an increasingly unstable world, and open to business. She will nod to the political turmoil engulfing France as a counterfactual.

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