David Smith

[Daniel Golliher 🗽 @danielgolliher]

Things like this make me want to grab pessimists by the lapels and say “Hold on, we’re almost there!”

There’s a beautiful future coming into view, with more health, wealth, and human flourishing. There is so much work to do to ensure that this future arrives, but it is clearly coming!

I am so thankful that there are so many smart, driven people creating things like this, even against great obstacles and lack of popular understanding. To be a member of our civilization is to be constantly blessed by strangers as a collateral effect of living.

[Chris Heatherly @chrisheatherly]

I’m actually a child online safety expert and was one of the pioneers in this space with Club Penguin and so I feel uniquely positioned to critique this.

The groomer problem is real but it’s also vastly overstated. The far larger issue we saw at Penguin was suicidality or reports of sexual abuse in the home.

There is no solution for lazy/bad parenting. You can implement all the ID laws you want but if parents are going to just hand kids their phones unlocked, those kids will have access to all the same things the parents have unfettered.

What I found is that these draconian safety laws actually make it harder to be an honest operator of kids apps because on one hand it’s so much legal risk and so much user friction that it simply becomes uninvestible as a business.

Parents will just lie to let their kids use the unfettered internet. For example, I have a friend who works in mobile gaming who has two kids, one above and one below the age limit but separated by just 2 yrs, and the two wanted to play and chat together on Roblox - which is reasonable. To do this, he just verified that his younger kid is old enough for the chat feature when he’s not.

This happens all the time and will happen with these laws to. How far do we want to go with this? Scan the face of the user in real-time to make sure it’s not a kid using the device? We could do that but it feels like a massive unwanted intrusion of privacy.

That’s how you know this law isn’t about kids. COPPA and GDPR-K and so forth already make it illegal to allow chat and other grooming vectors to kids.

What’s really being done here is trying to eliminate online anonymity. And this is a far bigger issue that goes to core speech rights because if you cannot criticize the govt anonymously and if wrong speech is a crime then it becomes easy to identify all the detractors of the govt in power, and ban, fine or jail them for speech crimes.

Starmer has already been doing this and he wants to do it at a much bigger scale. Starmer won’t even acknowledge the problem of actual grooming gangs in Britain’s neighborhoods but he’s worried about online grooming?

No he’s not, and this hypocrisy gives away the game. What he wants is to kill online anonymity so he can enforce censorship of his unpopular policies. No politician should have this power.

[David Smith @DavidSmith_UK]

@tomhfh They’re everywhere 😂😭

[Institute of Economic Affairs @iealondon]

🧵 "Private ownership. State control. It's not socialism. Nobody's seizing anything. But it's not capitalism either. Because the price mechanism is being systematically overridden."

@cjsnowdon on Britain's capitalist command economy. 👇

[Iona Fyfe @ionafyfe]

This literally is an episode of the Thick of It

[Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith]

Thank you, capitalism!

[Andrew McCarthy @AJamesMcCarthy]

“We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

Godspeed, Artemis II.

[Simon French @Frencheconomics]

UK electricity generation has fallen 25% from its peak in 2004. Per capita electricity consumption is a third the level of the United States. The UK has the most costly electricity in the world. Half the gas we consume comes from the Norwegian side of the North Sea basin. The residual imported LNG has 4x the carbon footprint of supplying our own. And most depressingly of all the result is a deteriorating UK Balance of Payments, a weaker pound, and a bigger hit to the cost of living. And still the useful idiots want to further constrain UK energy production through high taxes, banning new licences, and gold-plating new energy infrastructure. Their luxury beliefs are behind the awful household disposable income growth of recent years. 🤡.

[David Smith @DavidSmith_UK]

@andrew_lilico @cjsnowdon 100% this 😂

[Tom Harwood @tomhfh]

If you’re cheering this you’re cheering decline.

[Sam Ashworth-Hayes @SAshworthHayes]

If you had to summarise everything wrong with Britain's regulatory state in a sentence, you could do worse than this:

The Industrial Revolution would probably be illegal today.

[David Hines @hradzka]

it’s taken me an embarrassingly long time to really appreciate, on a deep level, the degree to which GRRM’s Westeros is a post-apocalyptic story

everything that happens in the entire saga is just the petty squabbles in the wake of the Doom that came to Valyria

[Sam Dumitriu @Sam_Dumitriu]

This is eye-opening. I knew the planning system was broken, but it is worse than even I thought.

When I heard that planners had recommended Hackney councillors block the extremely popular Shoreditch Works development I asked @Michael_J_Hil to read the planners' report and look through hundreds of documents submitted by the developer.

It is really bad.

- Developers submitted NINE THOUSAND PAGES of paperwork, planners said it wasn't detailed enough.

- Planners said it should be rejected because some flats would lack enough natural light due to shadows cast by other parts of the development.

- Planners simultaneously argued there weren't enough homes, didn't provide enough office space, and it was too tall.

- Developers had to comply with 42 separate Hackney policies, 75 separate London Plan policies, the Hackney Borough Site Allocations Plan, five other separate sets of standards and policy frameworks, two sets of ‘emerging’ unfinalised policies, plus all relevant national legislation and guidance.

- The design review panel criticised the project because every building was of the same architectural style. Planners ignored the surveys showing huge public support for the designs.

- New homes must provide outdoor space so residents have access to a green roof, but planners said that might disturb nature. (This is on an exclusively brownfield site)

Councillors have an opportunity tonight to overrule the planners. I sincerely hope they do!

https://t.co/VGyg6v0E6S

[David Harsanyi @davidharsanyi]

No one is in charge. That's why they're cheap.

[David Smith @DavidSmith_UK]

@WarMonitor3 I really hope so, I fear not just yet though.

[David Smith @DavidSmith_UK]

@InfraDmitriy @memeticsisyphus If this was true (it isn’t), it would be an excellent example of a competitive market improving conditions across the board 😂.

[Rupert Myers @RupertMyers]

In three short paragraphs @JeremyClarkson pithily identifies just how this country is going to the dogs

[Steven Swinford @Steven_Swinford]

Rachel Reeves said repeatedly during the run-up to the Budget that she would have to raise taxes because of a productivity downgrade by the OBR

The Office for Budget Responsibility has today suggested that was not the case

Here is what Reeves said publicly - and what the OBR was telling her behind closed doors:

September 17

The Office for Budget Responsibility informs Reeves that its productivity downgrade has been offset by increased tax revenues from “increases in real wages and inflation���. It says there is a £2.5bn deficit.

September 26

Reeves says that the productivity downgrade has been “challenging”. “I’m not going to duck that challenge,” she says in a clear hint of tax rises to come

October 20

Behind the scenes things have got better for the Treasury, with stronger than expected wage growth leading to higher tax revenues. The productivity downgrade has now been entirely wiped out and there is a net positive of £ 2.1 billion.

October 27

The Financial Times is leaked details of the productivity downgrade, which it describes as a “£20million hit to public finances”. The fact it has been offset by rising tax revenues is not briefed out. 

October 31

The OBR hands the Treasury its final “pre-measures” forecast. It’s good news. The finances are now £4.2billion in the black.

November 4

Reeves uses a Downing Street press conference to signal she is preparing to break Labour’s manifesto and raise income tax because of the downgrade in the public finances.
“What I want people to understand ahead of the budget, is the circumstances we face,” she said. “I could … sweep those challenges under the carpet. I am being honest with people.”

November 10

Reeves signals again that she is preparing to raise income tax to fill a black hole in the finances: “It would, of course, be possible to stick with the manifesto commitments [not to raise the main taxes]. But that would require things like deep cuts in capital spending.”

November 13

The Financial Times reveals that Reeves has abandoned plans to raise the basic rate of income tax, prompting market turmoil amid concerns she has bowed to pressure from Labour MPs. The Treasury briefs that the decision is in fact because the forecasts improved and the fiscal deterioration is £20billion, not £30billion. In fact, as the OBR states, they have not changed since October 31.

November 26

Rachel Reeves announces £30billion in tax rises in her Budget

Economists point out that the spending is because of her policy decisions - increased public spending, particularly on welfare, and her decision to have more headroom - rather than because of a black hole in the public finances. They say the 'fiscal repair job' did not actually exist

[Saqib Bhatti MP @bhatti_saqib]

Biggest attack on our civil liberties happening right in front of our eyes.

For 800 years, trial by jury has ensured only your peers can decide if you are innocent or guilty, not the state. This isn't about money, its about reframing where power lies, away from the people.