Re. housing, I wonder if a bold step such as happened post-WW2 with the construction of New Towns. Think Stevenage, Harlow, Crawley, et al. If the will is there, could there be a move in that direction?
I think Starmer has made his first misstep by appointing Jacqui Smith to the cabinet. If youāre trying to make a break from the recent past and signal that your government will not be dishonest and corrupt like the last one, you probably shouldnāt appoint someone who diddled the taxpayer out of over 100k by lying about where her main residence was. He has over 400 MPs to choose from as well, surely the talent pool isnāt so shallow that he has to resort to making Smith a life peer in order to appoint her.
Side note, constitutionally itās totally fine to have a Lord in your cabinet, but personally I really donāt like the fact that this means that a cabinet member canāt be questioned in the Commons. But thatās a fairly minor personal preference.
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I do quite like the makeup of his cabinet so far though. The early steps from Starmer have been largely positive so far and Iām quietly optimistic about what can come of this Labour government.
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Iām looking forward to years of boring politics now the circus has left town.
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Iām far more optimistic then maybe I ought to be but some of the early actions have been really encouraging
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I am jizzing
https://x.com/hmtreasury/status/1810674259452190951?s=46
Get this fund to buy back some of Royal Mail, Network Rail, BT, British Airways, Airbus etc etc. and maybe we can have some money again bloody hell
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Ridiculous that itās taken like 50 years to do this
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Another one is Alan Milburn
https://x.com/cpeedell/status/1809895804431208489?s=46
He Jacked off to PFI hard when he was Health Sec under Blair.
So much overspend for no good reason, and these fuckers just harass staff for basic stuff like parking.
And many hospitals like the one here in Edinburgh will be paid off finally in 2027, when it was opened in 2003.
Worried because he may be in league with the junk tanks and stupid McKinsey consultants etc.
Mehā¦
What does a āNational Wealth Fundā do that the govt couldnāt do yesterday? Seems like window dressing more than anything
Iād be in favour of a radical high risk fund of some kind that invests in tech but this seems like a unnecessary way to say weāll be making āsafeā capital investments.
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That already exists, itās called NSSIF.
I wouldnāt describe NSSIF as radical or high risk. It may say it is but its lightyears behind its Russian, Chinese and American equivalents.
A major part issue with the previous government is that they never really unshackled investment into R&D from onerous regulations or invested in the infrastructure
I canāt speak for the other industries but Network Rail has been back in public ownership since the Hatfield disaster, the last few governments were keen to keep that one quiet. As for the Train Operators, that be a free hit too as many are already run by the DfT and the others are on short term contracts pending changes that were already planned in the Shapps review (one of the few things Boris got right).
So no public money is needed for the railways unless there are substantial infrastructure projects planned, which hopefully there are.
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Very cringe. Heās been in two minutes, whatās all this crowing?
https://x.com/theipaper/status/1810708641328116223?s=46&t=LlMNFvsPPy2ozwuX8FhQrA
Labour havenāt even been in government a week yet 
Now this looks good. Iāll happily give credit to them if they get this one sorted out promptly (and this is an indication that they may well do just that)
Strong disagree.
Investing heavily in industries and sectors like Quantum that are extremely expensive, very difficult and incredibly risky given the technology is still so nascent that we canāt even really use it is both radical and high risk.
Itās early days but it looks like a lot of the pre GE discourse re Starmer is proving to be nonsensical.
The blue Labour narrative was always misplaced. Unions were always going to be in good stead under a Labour government.
I wasnāt directly replying to you if you thought that
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