We have friends who write to my wife using that format. Born in the 1980s not the 1880s. Mindblowing.

Feels like we have two things going on.

For a lot of people cash *is* the point. As other virtues fall away, the only thing you're left with is: who is richest? And cash is a good point score.

Some people have so much cash that they indulge their more basic tendencies, purely because they can

Presumably physical copies of papers?

Interesting that proportionate drops have been almost identical across most papers, with only the Sun really coming in better than the others

Andrew bird tho 👌🏻

This is one of the most famous examples - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subak_(...

The traditional methods for managing rice production in Bali proved to be more successful than the agri-engineered approach of the Green Revolution

What’s your take on the thesis?

And Diana’s funeral and Osama Bin Laden’s assassination

I fear the civil service/official state has been on the fat end of this for at least 20 years.

The ability to ‘deliver’ with ‘grip’ is seen as the most desirable quality in senior leaders, and providing challenge has come to be seen as being difficult.

I studied the Rebecca Riots *twice* at school - both GCSE and A Level.

Even speaking as a Welshman, and I mean this with the greatest of respect to my ancestors, it was pretty much footnote material

Has anyone done any decent work on why we had that and it declined?

A very interesting question which is definitely not settled. You might enjoy Ian Morris’s social development index approach - not perfect but a good starting point

There’s a reason for that…

I wonder if it’s as thought through as that

Vs

A munged-together incoherence of American-style lines focused on attacking ‘socialism’ and defending ‘Christian-values’ from wokery….making JD Vance look like a modern Aristotle

It’s so ingrained now I’d imagine the answer is yes, sadly

This is what it must have been like in the Sunday Times editorial meetings under Harold Evans

(I love how social media opens up worlds that were previously inaccessible to the layperson)