Pete Miles
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petermiles.bsky.social
Pete Miles
@petermiles.bsky.social
3.1K followers 7K following 7.8K posts
Ex- consultant, manager, marketer, engineer. Interested in Complexity, Systems and Collective Intelligence. GSOH (Brit)
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petermiles.bsky.social
You’ve been kidnapped. The characters from the last TV show you watched are trying to rescue you. Who’s coming to save you?

(Well at least he will be faithful)
Photo of David Olusoga
November 25, 2025 at 5:56 PM
petermiles.bsky.social
The Real Crisis Would Be Resistance The thermodynamics are clear: we can replace fossil fuel energy with renewable energy using roughly one-third of the primary energy input. The Chinese example shows that supply-side deflation can coexist with economic growth and rising living standards. The real risk isn't that the transition will fail. The risk is that we'll resist it based on misleading economic metrics, implementing policies that slow beneficial changes because we mistake abundance for crisis. We need what the Chinese example suggests: a comprehensive rewrite of how we understand deflation, economic growth, and prosperity. Not to copy China's system, but to develop frameworks appropriate for supply-side abundance. Because the alternative is stumbling through a historic transition toward prosperity while our institutions insist, we're in crisis - and implementing the wrong responses as a result.
November 24, 2025 at 7:59 AM
petermiles.bsky.social
Rory Stewart (on the latest special TRIP podcast) and Joe Hill of Re:State (via email) both pushing this extremely important point - we need much better government systems to cope with the threats we face.

Groupthink is deadly, but we do know how to avoid it!

@jo3hill.bsky.social
I was a civil servant at the Treasury during the pandemic, and a lot of this rings true. But an area I don't feel gets enough attention, outside of some discussion regarding the role of SAGE, is groupthink. It's an area which we've identified as a problem throughout Whitehall, not just at the political levels of Westminster, and wrote about in our own report on pandemic preparedness. But I think it's best summarised by Professor Dame Angela McLean, then Chief Scientific Adviser to the Ministry of Defence, in her evidence to the inquiry from 2023: "The nicest thing that an academic can do for a colleague is point out why they're wrong before it goes out into the world and somebody unfriendly points out why they're wrong." "Whereas it is very frequent in a civil service meeting that as somebody stands up the very first thing they will say is 'I agree with everything that's been said', and you're sat there thinking, 'Well, you can't have been listening then'." The recommendations of Module 2 make no mention of well-tested ideas like 'red-teams' to separately scrutinise and challenge plans, and it doesn't spend enough time interrogating why (from their own evidence), when Patrick Vallance initially raised the idea of a lockdown, current and former Cabinet Secretaries were "incandescent" with him for raising it with them ... Until such practices become much more common, it seems likely that the next crisis will suffer many of the same errors of preparation and decision-making, that the pandemic did. And with the Defence Select Committee reporting this week that we are not prepared to defend our own territory in the face of direct aggression from a hostile power, that is more important than ever.
November 23, 2025 at 5:05 PM
petermiles.bsky.social
Since the long summer nights, lorries have been secretly dumping a 490ft long and 20ft high fissure of filth made of domestic waste, shredded plastics, polystyrene and paperwork from schools and councils in south-east England, in a field between the River Cherwell and the A34 near Kidlington. And since November 2000, a 5 foot 81½ inch Nigel Farage, made of beer, fags, Breaking Point posters and alleged teenaged racism, has appeared on Question Time 38 times. Both pose a toxic threat to their immediate environment, their polluting presences products of naked cynicism and the lack of due diligence. And now the waters are rising and it's too late to deal with either effectively.
November 23, 2025 at 8:43 AM
petermiles.bsky.social
The report adds that a failure to learn from mistakes during later waves of the pandemic was "inexcusable" A "toxic and chaotic culture" in the UK government affected decision-making, it adds, saying that then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson failed to tackle and sometimes "actively [encouraged] it"
November 20, 2025 at 4:19 PM
petermiles.bsky.social
"...the central paradox of the energy revolution: abundance will look like decline to anyone watching traditional economic indicators."

By @allanpatterson.bsky.social

open.substack.com/pub/allanpat...
The GDP Problem Gross Domestic Product measures the monetary value of all finished goods and services produced within a country. It's been our primary measure of economic progress since the 1940s. And it's about to become deeply misleading. Here's why: when things get dramatically cheaper, GDP falls - even if people's lives improve. If solar electricity costs £0.02 per kilowatt-hour instead of £0.15, that's an 87% reduction in the energy sector's contribution to GDP. If transport costs fall by 70% through electric vehicles and autonomous driving, that's a massive hit to the transport sector's GDP contribution. If lab-grown proteins cost 90% less than conventional meat, the food sector's GDP contribution collapses. Each of these changes makes people materially better off - they can afford more of what they need or redirect spending to other things. But GDP sees only the reduction in monetary transactions.
November 19, 2025 at 8:10 PM
petermiles.bsky.social
In common with most modern UK policy decisions, it appears to have been first suggested as a joke.
November 19, 2025 at 3:59 PM
petermiles.bsky.social
It works. Don't ask me how.
To the left a bottle of M&S Caramel Sauce & Marmite. To the right a bowl of overnight oats with a swirl of sauce, pumpkin seeds and a few prunes.
November 18, 2025 at 8:20 AM
petermiles.bsky.social
Stewart Lee for BBC DG?

www.thenerve.news/p/stewart-le...
"You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!" That was the Italian Job line the exculpatory memoirist Sarah Vine famously quoted to her poorly rendered husband, the gak Pogle Michael Gove, when they woke up on the morning after the Brexit referendum. Instead of just unsettling the political power balance as intended, the Pogle and his human killdozer, Boris Johnson, had accidentally won Brexit and condemned the country to an irreversible downward economic spiral of decreased prosperity, the loss of border control and international influence, and a series of self-justifying articles by Sarah Vine promoting her self-pitying memoirs about how all her clever Remain friends now hate her. Ooops! Dum-de-dum-de-dum.
November 17, 2025 at 8:19 AM
petermiles.bsky.social
David Miliband, excerpt from a speech to be given today, talking about the UK's place in the world.

In @theobserveruk.bsky.social
Eighty years ago, George Kennan ended his Long Telegram from Moscow by saying the greatest danger is that we allow ourselves to become like those with whom we are competing. Today, the task is not to seek to restore lost dominance, but to recover the moral clarity and political vision of who we are and what we stand for.
November 16, 2025 at 1:33 PM
petermiles.bsky.social
@chrisgiles.ft.com with some 'big picture' context for the budget, and what has changed since March.

(Published prior to the latest Treasury briefings which suggest the forecast gap is now substantially less than £30bn)
These changes are set to generate a public finance forecast a few billion different to that delivered in March in what is now a £3,000bn economy. This is trivial. There has been no disaster, no signs of collapse and little financial market pressure, so the obvious question is why is Reeves abou to raise taxes by around £30bn a year, or 1 per cent of GDP? The money will not buy better public services. It is needed because the OBR has taken the view that it will rectify its own long-standing over-optimism about medium-term UK economic growth rates. Lower growth forecasts worsen the outlook for public finances. The chancellor can blame Brexit, Covid-19, austerity and previous governments for the OBR's change in the productivity assumption. The opposition will say it is all the fault of this government. The ultimate cause is difficult to pin down, but the proximate cause is clear. The OBR is simply adjusting for a long-standing forecasting error. Taxes are going up because the OBR got its sums wrong for many years and the world is not as nice as it previously thought. This is not the dramatic story beloved by politicians with easy villains and easier answers. But it has one virtue. It is true.
November 14, 2025 at 2:02 PM
petermiles.bsky.social
The latest post from @sjwrenlewis.bsky.social links back to a prescient post he published nearly 3 years ago in which he argued that a Labour government should go a step beyond where they are now and aim to rejoin the EU customs union.

mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-...
To summarise, the existence and proximity of a tipping point on public opinion about Brexit means it is important for any Labour government from 2025 to be open and honest about Brexit's economic costs and what can and cannot be achieved in negotiations. It also means that it is quite possible to see Labour moving beyond 'making Brexit work' once they have power, although rejoining the Single Market remains the most difficult move in political terms.
November 12, 2025 at 5:58 PM
petermiles.bsky.social
The whole anti-BBC conspiracy (I think having read this article that word is fair, but judge for yourself) is mapped out in detail here.
Network diagram with Robbie Gibb in the centre, and showing links to a wider range of characters in the BBC and in the Conservative government
November 11, 2025 at 2:06 PM
petermiles.bsky.social
If I were a BBC journalist, under such intensive scrutiny and fire, I'm not sure I would be terribly comforted by these governance arrangements, beginning with a Director General with no substantive journalistic record and a Board with negligible experience of what it is to be a journalist in the 21st century. On top of that, I'd wonder why such close editorial scrutiny should have been entrusted to three key people who themselves rejected journalism in order to enjoy lucrative careers in corporate and political communications. Who, bluntly, would you trust more to be impartial on the Middle East-Robbie Gibb, Michael Prescott or Lyse Doucet? Why should the PR professionals who turned their own backs on journalism sit in judgment on the latter? By all means, let's have a debate about Prescott's "dossier", preferably unfiltered by the Daily Telegraph. But let's keep a sense of proportion about it all. And let's find a governance structure for the BBC that equips it to handle complex editorial decisions robustly and expertly. The BBC is in a mess-but not necessarily the mess you think.
November 10, 2025 at 7:48 AM
petermiles.bsky.social
@allanpatterson.bsky.social on the 'invisible transformation' already underway via 'precision fermentation', one of 4 technologies following an exponential cost reduction curve.

open.substack.com/pub/allanpat...
The same platform technology producing dairy proteins can produce structural proteins for textiles, enzymes for industrial processes, cosmetic ingredients, and countless other applications. This isn't a single-purpose innovation. It's a manufacturing paradigm shift. The implications are staggering. Animal agriculture currently uses 3.3 billion hectares of land globally-roughly 50% of all agricultural land and 20% of Earth's total land surface. Precision fermentation could free up 80% of that: an area the size of the United States, China, and Australia combined.
November 9, 2025 at 5:07 PM
petermiles.bsky.social
Robert Shrimsley Published 33 MINUTES AGO Sometimes you just have to lean in. Britain's Labour government has spent a lot of time trying to camouflage its essential character even from itself. Admirable talk of fiscal rules and the need to calm bond markets has been used to distract from a fundamental truth: this is a high-spending, high-taxing government. The subterfuge has been so successful that Rachel Reeves is widely seen as an austerity chancellor, best known for snatching pensioner fuel payments and cutting welfare, even though she committed the UK to an extra £70bn per year of public spending and has raised taxes by £40bn. From an already high base, Labour is spending more, taxing more and borrowing more.
November 6, 2025 at 1:09 PM
petermiles.bsky.social
I looked it up...

😐
Al Overview "Turn the volume up" means to increase the loudness of sound from a device, such as a television, radio, or speaker. It's a common phrasal verb that involves adjusting a control, like a knob or button, to make the sound louder. For example, if you can't hear the TV, you would say, "Can you turn the volume up?".
November 5, 2025 at 8:18 AM
petermiles.bsky.social
@privateeyenews.bsky.social
Taken from Private Eye magazine Advertisement Ex-prime minister to be new columnist for major national publication The news that Rishi Sunak is to join the Sunday Times as a business columnist has been overshadowed by Private Eye's dramatic appointment of Liz Truss as our new business columnist. From now on, the former PM will give her unique insights into the forces shaping our world, from technology and politics to economics and, of course, the bond markets and the sinister cabal who ousted her without giving her a chance to put her brilliant ideas into action. The Eye is delighted to welcome such a distinguished stateswoman into its pages, and is confident that she will prove a much more dynamic and interesting voice than Rishi Sunak, and will last as a columnist for at least 44 days. COMING SOON: Boris Johnson to be appointed new 'Fuck business' columnist THE TIMES THE SUNDAY TIMES
November 4, 2025 at 1:09 PM
petermiles.bsky.social
Arse de Triumph.

@privateeyenews.bsky.social
Cartoon, mostly black on white background. A bit like the Arc de Triomph in Paris, but with buttocks. Topped by a golden angel. Text above NEW BUILDING FOR WASHINGTON Caption below Arse de Trumph By DAVID ZIGGY GREENE
November 4, 2025 at 12:54 PM
petermiles.bsky.social
This is shocking though...
I could understand why Keir Starmer and his team concluded that their best chance of winning the last election was to offer only a minimal programme that would be hard to attack. But I couldn't understand why they decided not to work either on long-term vision or on the detailed planning for how they might govern (I was one of many who offered to help with this, the boring plumbing of getting the bureaucracy to work). I still can't understand why, once in government, they chose not to create any teams or units focused on the medium-term, let alone the long-term (despite being encouraged to do so by most of the friendly thinktanks, as well as parliament and the civil service). These choices have, predictably, led to a rapid loss of energy and confidence. The tank looks quite empty because it is. And the result is a visible depression in many of the people in government, who are often clever and well-intentioned but find themselves battered day to day in a politics of premature retreat.
November 2, 2025 at 8:21 PM
petermiles.bsky.social
The energy revolution (cheap solar plus batteries) is well underway.

@allanpatterson.bsky.social writing here.

open.substack.com/pub/allanpat...
We're at the inflection point of an S-curve. The technology has developed over 30-50 years. It hit economic viability around 2020. Now it's on the hockey-stick growth curve. And here's what almost nobody is discussing: when the marginal cost of energy approaches zero, everything that depends on energy-which is pretty much everything-starts to get cheaper too. Manufacturing. Transportation. Food production. Water desalination. Data processing. Chemical production. The energy revolution isn't just about cleaner electricity. It's about cheaper electricity. Abundant electricity. Electricity that costs almost nothing to produce once the infrastructure is built. That's not a climate story. That's an economic story. And it's already happening.
November 1, 2025 at 6:06 PM
petermiles.bsky.social
Me tackling the latest DIY challenge...
Black and white cartoon by Gary Larson. A dog on a unicycle on a high wire with crowds below, balancing a vase on it's head and juggling. Caption: High above the hushed crowd, Rex tried to remain focused. Still, he couldn't shake one nagging thought: He was an old dog and this was a new trick.
November 1, 2025 at 8:25 AM
petermiles.bsky.social
As some of you will know, Private Eye has a very good track record of persisting with long-term investigations into scandals such as Post Office Horizon. It's often hard to tell when the reporting will break into the mainstream. On Teesworks I'm still waiting.

(8 page report in edition 1660)
Photo of construction site with cranes. Article header: STRIPPED TEES How Britain's flagship 'levelling up' project turned into a scandalous giveaway by Richard Brooks IT WAS to be the UK's largest regeneration scheme in decades, a model for regional devolution and the flagship post-Brexit freeport. But the redevelopment of the former steelworks on the south bank of the River Tees became little more than an unlawful, taxpayer-funded scheme to promote the political career of a Tory golden boy and vastly enrich a couple of local businessmen and their families, all hidden in a web of deception. In the process, it is financially imperilling a major regional development body and squandering the chance to revive one of the country's most deprived but industrially promising areas. This is how it happened...
October 30, 2025 at 8:50 PM
petermiles.bsky.social
His conclusions...
I will, however, tell you what I think. As things stand, there are enough bubbles that are set to burst within a year. When they do burst, they will cause significant economic disruption. The fallout won't lead to a 1929-style crisis, and it won't resemble the 2001 Dot.com burst either. Rather, it will be more like the Housing Crisis in 2008. I don't think the equity market (overvalued as it is) will be the cause of the burst, but it will be the victim of it. The cause, as so often, lies elsewhere.
October 30, 2025 at 12:30 PM
petermiles.bsky.social
Visited Jodrell Bank today and have to report that their "This clock is automatically set to tell the correct time using a radio signal sent from Cumbria by the National Physical Laboratory" was 1 hour ahead of reality.
Wall clock showing the time 7 minutes to 5. Below, a plaque with text: This clock is automatically set to tell the correct time using a radio signal sent from Cumbria by the National Physical Laboratory.
October 28, 2025 at 8:46 PM