Josh retweeted
I love any defense of a political leader that includes 'steel output.' What a wonderful metric. What a closer. Who could possibly be a "dictator" who also increased steel output? Inconceivable.
Josh retweeted
Regardless of whether this is good news or not, I don’t think giving budget details to a money saving activist to announc is going to please the Speaker or helps
We might as well have the Budget published at 9am so we can all read it before the chancellor speaks
CONFIRMED. Gas Standing Charges to be scrapped. I've just come out of a meeting with the Chancellor. The gas standing charge will be scrapped in 2027 (my guess, either for 1 Oct price cap or the 1 Jan 28 price cap). Having campaigned against the moral hazard of standing charges for years, I'm pleased.
It's currently £108 a year. That cost will be shifted onto unit rates. We don't know how much yet, but I suspect just under 1p per kwH.
The Chancellor also said he will be talking to Ofgem about how they get rid of the charge on electricity as well, but that is 'trickier' apparently and will take longer.
This is primarily about the price cap standing charges. There will still be an open market, so other firms can offer other forms of prices with or without the standing charge. My suspicion is that once it goes on the price cap, it will tend to be reduced on other tariffs as well.
As for those on fixes: if you get a fix now, the rate of your fix is fixed, so this should not affect it. You will pay what you pay and if it has standing charges they will continue (some asking if they should delay fixing because of this, no if a fix is right for you and will save you money, don't let this change that - this is about the structure of bills, as opposed to the actual costs on bills).
About 60% of people will pay less due to this, 40% more. My guesstimate is the dividing line will be somewhere around 12,500 kilowatt hours of gas (can't know until there is actual pricing). According to a study by Nesta, this switch would leave the majority of people in all income groups under £100,000 better off.
Of course, when this does come in, if we're still in the nightmare that we are right now, there will need to be support put in for vulnerable higher users, who will have to pay more. Though hopefully by then the mid-east will have calmed and energy prices lower.
---------------
That's all long term. The biggest issue in energy right now is that we're expecting a 27% rise in the price cap in January. I asked the Chancellor whether he will be intervening on that. He told me I'd have to wait for the budget, but reading between the lines, yes, there will be an announcement today.
Whether it's an increase in the Warm Home Discount, or whether it's council tax banned, or whether it's done via a payout for people in say council tax bands A-D as a proxy for household income as Rishi Sunak did who knows.
Josh retweeted
Associate professor at Cambridge.
You know, maybe Jason Arday stuck around because his work was no worse than average.
I’m not. A lot of people died. A lot of people were killed. Brutal. But yet the Chinese largely respect Mao. Ask yourself why. Because there are many countries where they absolutely despise their strongmen or even put up museums to display the brutality of previous dictators. China is not one of those countries.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
It is not permitted to publicly criticise Mao in China.
nytimes.com/2021/11/02/wor…
Josh retweeted
This is bonkers. The gas grid costs an amount to upkeep approximately proportional to the size of each person’s hookup, the most logical way to pay for which is through some sort of charge reflecting that.
The price system is collapsing around our ears!
CONFIRMED. Gas Standing Charges to be scrapped. I've just come out of a meeting with the Chancellor. The gas standing charge will be scrapped in 2027 (my guess, either for 1 Oct price cap or the 1 Jan 28 price cap). Having campaigned against the moral hazard of standing charges for years, I'm pleased.
It's currently £108 a year. That cost will be shifted onto unit rates. We don't know how much yet, but I suspect just under 1p per kwH.
The Chancellor also said he will be talking to Ofgem about how they get rid of the charge on electricity as well, but that is 'trickier' apparently and will take longer.
This is primarily about the price cap standing charges. There will still be an open market, so other firms can offer other forms of prices with or without the standing charge. My suspicion is that once it goes on the price cap, it will tend to be reduced on other tariffs as well.
As for those on fixes: if you get a fix now, the rate of your fix is fixed, so this should not affect it. You will pay what you pay and if it has standing charges they will continue (some asking if they should delay fixing because of this, no if a fix is right for you and will save you money, don't let this change that - this is about the structure of bills, as opposed to the actual costs on bills).
About 60% of people will pay less due to this, 40% more. My guesstimate is the dividing line will be somewhere around 12,500 kilowatt hours of gas (can't know until there is actual pricing). According to a study by Nesta, this switch would leave the majority of people in all income groups under £100,000 better off.
Of course, when this does come in, if we're still in the nightmare that we are right now, there will need to be support put in for vulnerable higher users, who will have to pay more. Though hopefully by then the mid-east will have calmed and energy prices lower.
---------------
That's all long term. The biggest issue in energy right now is that we're expecting a 27% rise in the price cap in January. I asked the Chancellor whether he will be intervening on that. He told me I'd have to wait for the budget, but reading between the lines, yes, there will be an announcement today.
Whether it's an increase in the Warm Home Discount, or whether it's council tax banned, or whether it's done via a payout for people in say council tax bands A-D as a proxy for household income as Rishi Sunak did who knows.
Josh retweeted
A Cambridge professor is asking why the Chinese regime does not have a museum chronicling the brutality of the founder of that regime.
Remarkable.
I’m not. A lot of people died. A lot of people were killed. Brutal. But yet the Chinese largely respect Mao. Ask yourself why. Because there are many countries where they absolutely despise their strongmen or even put up museums to display the brutality of previous dictators. China is not one of those countries.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
It is not permitted to publicly criticise Mao in China.
nytimes.com/2021/11/02/wor…
Josh retweeted
Bad idea. The problem is that energy infrastructure will always have fixed costs (wires and pipes don't vanish when energy isn't flowing through them).
if fixed costs are recovered with usage-based charges, you create a lottery.
If usage is higher, profits are higher than they would've been if the charges were fixed.
if usage is lower, there's a risk variable payments don't cover fixed costs.
Energy companies will price this risk in as a premium... and bills will go up 😐
BREAKING: Standing charge on gas bills to be abolished
news.sky.com/story/politics-…
Josh retweeted
Today marks one year since the Sudanese city of El Fasher fell to the RSF. That day, October 26, tens of thousands of civilians were slaughtered, videos emerged of people being gunned down, hospital floors filled with bodies.
Surviving children became props in propaganda videos.
Josh retweeted
A wild story: the CEO of a US energy company whose plans were discussed during the Witkoff-Kushner-Putin negotiations resigns. Why? He learned that his company's main investor is a sanctioned Russian company, not the UAE
nytimes.com/2026/10/23/us/po…
Josh retweeted
I fear that any free API or hosted content will become untenably expensive to serve in the age of AI agents
if you're using claude to edit videos, give it 17M+ films and 14M audio recordings for $0
the internet archive has a free api. no key.
10,000+ prelinger films (public domain stock footage)
187,000 78rpm records
300,000+ live concert recordings
give it archive.org/developers/ and ask:
“whenever you need archival b-roll or period music, search the prelinger and 78rpm collections on archive.org and use them in the edit”
some great clips that are amazing for slightly more artsy ads for tech
Josh retweeted
The unstoppable force (mass migration) reaches the immovable object (environmental legislation)
Piddington village is suing the Home Office, alleging it acted unlawfully by failing to consider the threat a new asylum camp could pose to wildlife.
🔗:telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10…
Josh retweeted
A straightforward imperialist land-grab, in other words. Utterly bewildering that there are, even now, gullible Westerners talking about NATO expansion, poking the bear, US-sponsored coups and the like.
Putin on Ukraine:
The lands lost by Kyiv are not "their territory"; they are historically Russian lands.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
Kyiv predates Moscow by centuries, and southern/eastern Ukraine was ruled by the Cossack Hetmanate and Crimean Khanate long before 18th-century Russian Imperial annexation. In 1991, every Ukrainian region voted overwhelmingly for independence, recognized by Russia 1994.
britannica.com/place/Ukraine/…
treaties.un.org/Pages/showDeta…
Huh, not because of 'NATO expansion' and other nonsense justifications.
President #Putin: Novorossiya is not Ukraine's territory, but the territory of historical Russia.
☝️ People living there voted first for state independence and then for REUNIFICATION with the Russian Federation.
Therefore, speaking of “territorial losses” is inappropriate.
Josh retweeted
Not only did Salman Rushdie have to live in hiding, everyone tangentially involved with The Satanic Verses was in danger. They killed the Japanese translator.
If you ever sought out the novels of Sally Rooney in bookshops – when that was still possible – you’d know they sit in the fiction stacks adjacent to the novels of another SR whose books have been withdrawn in dastardly political circumstances. Until last week, “Rooney” and “Rushdie” had little in common beyond being shelfmates; now they have more than just a physical proximity.
@tanjil_rashid_: This is censorship by other means newstatesman.com/comment/202…
Josh retweeted
It’s weird how this exists in some legal limbo state where’s he’s an absolute professional persona-non-grata for ~no reason~
A number of independent bookshops have told The Bookseller they stopped stocking David Walliams’ titles “years ago”, while large chain bookshops, including The Works and TG Jones, say they are selling their final stock “with no plans to replenish”, following HarperCollins’ decision to stop publishing the author altogether. 👇 ebx.sh/G44PPA
Josh retweeted
We have nationwide rent controls now.
This tribunal didn’t just stop a rent rise within a tenancy, it cut the rent to below what had been agreed between the landlord and the tenant at the start of the tenancy based on a judgement of what the property is worth.
Josh retweeted
We are now back to a spring 2025 moment with Trump turning forcefully against Ukraine and towards Russia. Intelligence still flowing but this aggressive language suggests we could see more & more US coercion of Ukraine in weeks ahead. Meanwhile Congress has allowed itself to be utterly neutered as Trump shreds Graham bill & others.
My decision on Russia is a very simple one. I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table. Great progress is being made, and that includes current hostage negotiations! Signing that document at this time will do that, and I can sign it later, or any time that I want! Perhaps more importantly, Russia is doing very little, if anything, to help the Islamic Republic of Iran, compared to what they could be doing, and I want to keep it that way, and will, unless stupid people get in the way. Lastly, Zelenskyy is using Diesel Refineries in Russia as a target, knowing that these attacks are seriously hurting the world diesel markets, including those in the United States. Farmers, ranchers, and businesses of all kinds are suffering greatly from this, but Russia is, nevertheless, sending, at a low price, millions of barrels of diesel to the World. Zelenskyy doesn’t care, and frankly, with all of the money that Europe is famously giving him, and that Crooked Joe Biden gave him in the past, he doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did. He could have made a better deal two years ago than he can now. His country is in shambles, a large portion of his land is lost, his oceans and seas are gone, and his male population is low, wounded, and/or dead. I WANT THIS WAR END! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP
( TS: Oct 18 2026, 4:36 PM ET )
Josh retweeted
I'm glad they're taking steps but "watch videos quietly" is an unbelievably terrible form of messaging.
I can already see how this goes:
- "Can you use headphones please?"
- "No, I'm watching videos quietly like the sign says"
- "But I can hear it, it's annoying"
- "I don't care, it's quiet"
Genuinely can't believe they've fumbled this so badly. It's an official acceptance that antisocial behaviour is ok, and therefore could actually be worse than the current situation.
It should say 'don't play videos out loud', that's much clearer and better.
