Will Roberts

CEO Rippl. founder @societyspeaksio. Ex Vorboss & Seatfrog. Ex Founder Loyalty Bay (Sold to Like creating :

[Dom Hallas @Dom_Hallas]

Jonny is great and would do a great job at DBT. But changes to DSIT (which I’ve been getting calls about) would be a mistake. A mega department would mean British tech competing with British steel for attention. And waste 6 months reorg-ing when time is of the essence. Not good.

[Patrick Collison @patrickc]

It's been interesting and puzzling to witness the problems with accuracy in UK economic statistics over the past few years. (See the links in the next tweet for more.) It seems that the Office for National Statistics, ONS, now struggles to effectively measure basic figures such as employment, trade, and inflation. This resulted in a quite scathing government report published last summer, where Robert Devereux, a former permanent secretary, concluded that "most of the well-publicised problems with core economic statistics are the consequence of ONS’s own performance."

There's a lot of discussion about the travails facing the UK these days (including this big piece in The Atlantic a few weeks ago[1]), and the problems with the ONS feel like an unsettling microcosm of diffuse decline in broader institutional competence.

Anyhow: at Stripe, we became curious about the UK's published entrepreneurship data. While we observe a boom in many parts of the world, official figures don't show a similar increase in the UK. In the latest Stripe Economics post, we dug into the data, and, as far as we can tell, the official figures are probably misleading. The good and the bad news (mostly good, I think!) is that the UK is almost certainly witnessing an unmeasured boom in entrepreneurship: https://t.co/R7oTZNmxc6

UK-specific issues aside, I suspect that this measurement question is illustrative of forthcoming econometric challenges. Keeping the world's macro indicators up-to-date in response to the faster-than-usual changes wrought by AI will be both increasingly difficult and increasingly important in the coming years.

[1] https://t.co/OAnwRmpyON

[Demis Hassabis @demishassabis]

https://t.co/PTeDiv1b6L

[Dan Neidle @DanNeidle]

I don't usually write personal stuff, but a few words about my experience of being interviewed by Gary Stevenson.

It started with a nice chat, comparing taste in hoodies... then the tone changed. He demanded to know why I'd deleted a tweet criticising him.

[Will Roberts @GoHandizo]

@RuxandraTeslo Exactly why I built https://t.co/tCqYlefrLi - making disagreement useful again

[Matt Clifford @matthewclifford]

.@adepledge is a national hero for her work in HM Treasury in support of economic growth - and is bang on the money here

[Count Binface @CountBinface]

I enjoyed every second of this interview. Which makes one of us…

[Looking for Growth @lfg_uk]

Britain is in an Energy Emergency.

But the Government is FAILING TO ACT. They have no plan, no idea what to do, and they’re leaving us exposed.

So today we’re launching The LFG Emergency Energy Bill to SAVE OUR INDUSTRIES and GET BILLS DOWN

Here’s how it would get bills down IMMEDIATELY:

1️⃣ SCRAP all levies on energy bills. These stealth taxes on the British people are unnecessarily hiking up their bills by hundreds of pounds.

2️⃣ REOPEN THE NORTH SEA, and directly deploy the tax revenue generated to GET BILLS DOWN.

3️⃣ Stop new CfD contracts and launch an investigation into the system that signed them off. Last year, billpayers paid £1.5 billion for big renewable corporations to THROW ENERGY AWAY. By 2030, it’ll be £8 billion. The existing settlement is a national scandal.

4️⃣ Scrap Clean Power 2030 targets. These needless constraints have pushed civil servants to procure wind at any cost – and at huge expense to the British people.

5️⃣ DITCH the duties of energy regulators, NESO and Ofgem, towards Net Zero goals, so their only focus is to MINIMISE ENERGY COSTS, subject to security of supply.

6️⃣ Hold auctions for connecting to the grid, and directly deploy the revenue generated to GET BILLS DOWN

Our Emergency Energy Bill has cross-party support. It is ready to PASS IMMEDIATELY. It does what governments for the past 20 years didn’t – it takes RADICAL ACTION to SAVE OUR INDUSTRIES and GET BILLS DOWN.

There’s no excuse. Last week, the US suspended access to some of the world’s leading frontier AI models. Britain is vulnerable - and our energy prices are strangling our national security. We cannot afford to be at the mercy of other countries or events beyond our control any longer.

The Government needs to GET BILLS DOWN NOW or explain why they’re still letting this emergency destroy our future.

Force Westminster to ACT. Send our Bill to your local MP and sign our letter to the Prime Minister and Ed Miliband. GET BILLS DOWN, NOW!

[Matt Clifford @matthewclifford]

This is superb work. Europe needs to stare into the abyss on this: AI is happening; what happens if Europe does nothing? This piece is the best thing I’ve seen that brings the consequences to life.

[Will Roberts @GoHandizo]

@FraserNelson @FraserNelson this is why I built https://t.co/tCqYlefrLi so that nuanced debate has a home (free and open source)

[James Wise @Jameswise]

There are a few candidates over the last decade in the UK - but I think DC pension regulation has to be the winner for lowest political salience to highest economic damage.

The second-order effects of this are just devastating.

From @emmacduncan’s great column in The Times today (£)

[Matt Clifford @matthewclifford]

It's deeply weird that the unsustainability of our long-term fiscal position isn't a bigger part of our national conversation. We're so bad at paying attention to slow moving catastophes (cf. economic stagnation).

[Will Roberts @GoHandizo]

@PeterMcCormack @UKGovscan @GreatBritishTT @UKDecline @HoTPOfficial @PeterMcCormack you may be interested in https://t.co/tCqYlefrLi

[Will Roberts @GoHandizo]

@stianwestlake @jackaspi @mattsclancy @Noahpinion I can help you on part of the data gathering and infrastructure, that’s why I built https://t.co/qxzPmMc1JK (free and open source)

[Will Roberts @GoHandizo]

@jackaspi Thank you! Yep we do it on the site. here is an example of what the analysis looks like: https://t.co/bu6ia5yLqT

We also allow anyone to embed discussions on their own properties: https://t.co/JvEOY517aV. End goal is to be like community notes for nuanced discussion

[Jack Aspinall @jackaspi]

https://t.co/tu5rruTwXw

[Will Roberts @GoHandizo]

@karpathy @Hrushworth This is exactly what we are doing with https://t.co/tCqYlefrLi - we want to bring back nuance to debate and conversation in an increasingly polarised world

[Will Roberts @GoHandizo]

@Scobleizer @tbpn @societyspeaksio has been doing this for a while with their daily briefs and bringing nuance in a polarised world: https://t.co/tCqYlefrLi

[George Sivulka @gsivulka]

https://t.co/fdKmCTuaUk