Thanks. Someone on here recommended the book a while ago. I hadn't realised it was a TV series as well.

Even more so as preceded by "my argument exclusively concerns words, concepts, ideas, theories, practices, or
institutions. It does not in the least purport to impugn individual motivations, private character, or particular qualities."!

Gets his excuses in early, I guess.

I think it has been suggested before, but the Slow Horses series (if he has avoided the TV show) would definitely be a good choice.

I fear the Pelican Guide to Pelicans has not yet been commissioned.

When I was an undergrad I used to occasionally get letters meant for a post-doc in the Zoology department, who now has perhaps the world's best job title: www.quarkexpeditions.com/blog/meet-pe...

Bizarrely I did French C19th European history at A-level (as well as German and Italian unifications and a bit of Russia), starting in 1815 so did the whole restoration, revolution, empire, war & revolution bit. But we didn't do the 1789 revolution! So I left knowing basically nothing about that...

Isn't there evidence that large state/authoritarian is in fact the largest bracket of British voters? Although I may be misremembering this...

Both the Newsagents' and Newsnight's interviews with Treasury ministers last night were terrible because they chose to focus on this. The worst tradition of Today programme-style 'gotcha' interviewing. I expected better from all the journalists involved, who are usually better than this.

To be fair to the Chancellor she just set out her arguments on this very robustly.

I expect many people have no idea how much it contributes to child poverty. The child poverty taskforce gave the opportunity to be much more proactive on messaging around this. And I do credit the government for doing the right thing! My worry is that future governments may reintroduce it.

Just a shame the government has done such a bad job of changing public opinion around it.

All of the eastern coast of Africa, from Mombasa to Durban. Or Mauritius.

Two questions:
1) what proportion of voters think the employers NIC rise already broke it?
2) if they do lower thresholds won't many people think they have broken the pledge, even if rates have gone up? Voters can see their pay packets!