James Dickson
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jamesdkiwi.bsky.social
James Dickson
@jamesdkiwi.bsky.social
960 followers 6.1K following 180 posts
Oxford, UK
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Reposted by James Dickson
aphclarkson.bsky.social
Starmer and Reeves wave white flags on tough decisions yet still oversee the collapse of the Labour vote as frustrated voters on the Left go to Greens, Centre to Plaid, LibDems or SNP and the Right to Reform that will lead their own MPs to replace them sooner rather than later

Futile cowardice
November 14, 2025 at 8:42 AM
Reposted by James Dickson
oldenoughtosay.com
I’m sorry I just found out that in 1379, as in, 650 years ago, a baby girl was born in Yorkshire and named Diot Coke

history is a fucking joke lmao
November 13, 2025 at 10:50 PM
Reposted by James Dickson
thomasnhale.bsky.social
The dominant narrative is that the world is rolling back climate policy. But what does the data say?

The latest Oxford Climate Policy Monitor Annual Review from the Oxford Climate Policy Hub tells three key stories.
bsg.ox.ac.uk/news/climate...
November 10, 2025 at 11:17 AM
Reposted by James Dickson
janrosenow.bsky.social
Good news: more than 50% of the world’s economies have seen carbon emissions from fossil fuel power generation peaking. And with the speed of change in the electricity sector many more will join this growing list in coming years.
November 11, 2025 at 7:18 AM
Reposted by James Dickson
templeofhate.com
Insightful article. Here's a gift link so that people can actually read it. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

A subscription to @theatlantic.com is a good thing.
What Climate Change Will Do to America by Mid-Century
Many places may become uninhabitable. Many people may be on their own.
www.theatlantic.com
November 10, 2025 at 9:09 PM
Reposted by James Dickson
davidheniguk.bsky.social
Headline from a serious and long working paper on the economic impact of Brexit. Possible that this has been feeding into OBR and HMT discussions?
November 10, 2025 at 9:33 AM
Reposted by James Dickson
aphclarkson.bsky.social
For me this flat caricature of whole segments of the populatuon that in reality are socially and ideologically heterogenous is infuriating.

A reproduction of class prejudice cloaked in claims of fighting it.
November 8, 2025 at 10:45 AM
Reposted by James Dickson
eaterofsun.bsky.social
🧵In @economist.com this week there's a "special report" on China, energy and climate. It seeks to make clear the world changing nature of China's ability to manufacture renewable-energy capacity. As the associated leader says:
www.economist.com/leaders/2025...
Text of clipping from Economist leader: In the context of the cold war, the distinctive measure of a “superpower” was the combination of a continental span and a world-threatening nuclear arsenal. The coming-together of China’s enormous manufacturing capacity and its ravenous appetite for copious, cheap, domestically produced electricity deserves to be seen in a similar world-changing light. They have made China a new type of superpower: one which deploys clean electricity on a planetary scale.
November 7, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Reposted by James Dickson
sandertordoir.bsky.social
A fun chart. AI as a general purpose tech. Is this time different or not? And if so will it lead to walhalla or human extinction? Take your pick.
November 7, 2025 at 12:05 PM
Reposted by James Dickson
okwonga.bsky.social
Still one of the bleakest quotes I have ever read, from one of George W Bush’s senior advisers.
The aide said that guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [...] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'.
November 4, 2025 at 4:35 PM
Reposted by James Dickson
jreland.bsky.social
Yesterday Nigel Farage argued that the UK has failed to grasp Brexit opportunities to deregulate, which his 'pro-business' government would deliver.

I've got a piece in the Independent arguing why that is a misreading both of Brexit history and economics.

www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexi...
The political logic is clear: Farage is saying that the problem is not Brexit, but the politicians who have failed to properly implement it. If only the UK had pushed harder to rip up EU red tape, we would not be in the mess we’re in. But his economic and regulatory logic is fundamentally flawed. A close study of recent Brexit history (we happen to have produced one) shows that Conservative governments did, in fact, aspire to deregulate the UK economy. That they failed was due not to a lack of political will, but to reality – and the dawning realisation of the economic damage it would do. It is the very “business people” Farage claims to speak for who pushed hardest against the “Brexit opportunities” agenda. Farage promises to “reduce the size of the bloated state”, but the task of identifying legislation to reform, and then designing and implementing the new rules, would be a major administrative undertaking for Whitehall. The UK civil service has doubled in size since Brexit, and a key reason for this is that Whitehall has had to take on jobs that were previously left to EU regulators. The more the UK seeks to do things differently to the EU, the more British bureaucrats we will need to do the heavy lifting. If Mr Farage’s real priority is to cut the state to save cash, there is one obvious thing to do – join the EU single market.
November 4, 2025 at 9:38 AM
Reposted by James Dickson
nickkapur.bsky.social
Japan's "Mundane Halloween" costume contest is back!

Each year website DailyPortalZ holds a contest where people dress up as something super duper ordinary.

Here's a thread of some of my favorites from the 2025 contest!

#MundaneHalloween
November 2, 2025 at 9:15 AM
Reposted by James Dickson
annaclarke.bsky.social
And is something the current Government could do as a simple rebranding exercise, so that people understand what is being talked about.
September 22, 2025 at 3:12 PM
Reposted by James Dickson
chrisbrooke.bsky.social
Stephen Bush: "The Conservatives propose to deport about 5 per cent of the UK’s legal population..."
Tory deportation plan would upend Britain
Proposing such a radical bill with little public support is a gift to Nigel Farage
www.ft.com
October 23, 2025 at 10:01 AM
Reposted by James Dickson
davidheniguk.bsky.social
Yay. Priceless. The right column at the right time. And a gleefully English two fingers to the haters.
October 25, 2025 at 7:38 AM
Reposted by James Dickson
jsphctrl.ft.com
On the one hand this *is* a lot like Hungary or Turkey. On the other, it's also a lot like what it was like to cover South Africa in the throes of state capture around 2016, where many were very reluctant to call out Zuma on the record. Until suddenly they weren't. www.ft.com/content/1377...
What has changed is simple: people are scared of crossing Trump this time. In researching this piece, I interviewed dozens of figures, including lawmakers, private sector executives, retired senior military figures and intelligence chiefs, current and former Trump officials, Washington lawyers and foreign government officials. Such is the fear of jail, bankruptcy or professional reprisal, that most of these people insisted on anonymity. This was in spite of the fact that many of the same people also wanted to emphasise that Trump would only be restrained by powerful voices opposing him publicly. At times, it has felt like trying to report on politics in Turkey or Hungary.
October 24, 2025 at 12:20 PM
Reposted by James Dickson
sundersays.bsky.social
The draft legislation is crackers. It would fail immediately if we stayed in the ECHR but it disappears the human rights act. if passed after that it would involve mandatory loss of ILR for up to 400,000 people + refusal of 2-3 million others, though without no credible means to identify or remove
jdportes.bsky.social Jonathan Portes @jdportes.bsky.social · 25d
Here Lam explicitly sets out her proposal - which is official Conservative Party policy - to deport long-standing legal permanent residents who have *ever* claimed any benefit, including the state pension or child benefit (even if the child is British), or who earn less than £39K.
October 22, 2025 at 5:17 AM
Reposted by James Dickson
sundersays.bsky.social
Rupert Lowe thinks it would cost £36 - £54 billion to remove everybody without legal status, if 3/4 people leave voluntarily, to reduce cost from quadruple that. (The Cons hope to do that bit for £6 billion)

New policy of creating a new undocumented population of 3 million is x5 bigger than that
October 22, 2025 at 5:46 AM
Reposted by James Dickson
explaintrade.com
People who are generally upset with how their lives are going, and also feel there are too many people around who look different, can never actually be appeased.

Not by Brexit, not by eliminating FoM, not by new taxes or fees, not by ending ILR, not by denaturalizing not by anything.
October 22, 2025 at 11:01 AM
jamesdkiwi.bsky.social
Absolutely, it shouldn't need saying.
davidheniguk.bsky.social David Henig @davidheniguk.bsky.social · 24d
Let's not humour those advocating deportation of UK residents with reasons why their plans would not work.

Keep it simple, this is not the action of a civilised country.

If needed, this will mean complete chaos and destruction of international reputation.
October 22, 2025 at 10:15 AM
Reposted by James Dickson
hetanshah.bsky.social
The costs of the UK’s Global Talent Visa looks a trifle high in comparison to competitor countries - largely through the Immigration Health Surcharge (which critics say is a form of double taxation as they contribute to the NHS through normal tax on their earnings)
Researchers applying for the UK's Global Talent visa face high upfront costs Upfront cost of visa to applicant and employer in 2025 UK Denmark £692 India £602 Australia £405 Israel £362 US £305 Italy £235 Netherlands 1 £207 Germany | £170 Spain 1£144 Sweden | £117 South Korea | £98 France £84 Japan £21 £5,941 £O £2,000 £4 Source: Fragomen for the Royal Society • Excludes ongoing costs such as mandatory healthcare premiums or fees such as language tests
October 21, 2025 at 5:57 AM
Reposted by James Dickson
davidheniguk.bsky.social
So, another week when we'll continue to ignore the increasingly obvious issue of political radicalisation via social media? And indeed the tied issue of the large tech companies who promote this, and the tech bros who see this as some sort of move to a utopian paradise governed by them?
October 20, 2025 at 6:32 AM
Reposted by James Dickson
simonpegg.bsky.social
"Parking is such sweet sorrow"
October 19, 2025 at 10:45 AM
Reposted by James Dickson
donmoyn.bsky.social
The Trump/Musk/Rubio gutting of USAID is the defining moral atrocity of this regime (so far)
Dr. Binyam Gebru, Save the Children’s director in Somalia, and his colleagues had to make agonizing choices after the U.S.A.I.D. grant they had received for the past eight years, which averaged about $15 million a year, was not renewed. In Baidoa the organization ran a feeding program that delivered fortified food to all the children and pregnant and breastfeeding women in the vast camps of displaced people that surround the town. Either the community feeding program or the emergency centers would have to shut down.
October 17, 2025 at 5:08 PM
Reposted by James Dickson
explaintrade.com
-beats head on wall-

No government just lets experts run shit.

Experts provide recoommendations and analysis of the likely outcomes and consequences of contemplated policies.

RFK doesn't like what they're saying about the outcomes and consequences of his policies so he's stoking populist outcry.
barbarasobel.bsky.social Barbara Sobel @barbarasobel.bsky.social · Oct 15
RFK Jr: We need to stop trusting the experts... Trusting the experts is not a feature of science or democracy, it's a feature of religion and totalitarianism.
October 16, 2025 at 8:04 AM