A shorter post today, with some links and comments to various articles I’ve found interesting.
British Railways lack of direction: https://open.substack.com/pub/catchingmice/p/were-getting-worried-about-great?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer
- Seemingly, along with everything else this government has touched, British Railways has been half-hearted and almost entirely based on the vibes “we’re a left government, so of course it’ll be nationalised”. Great – now what do you want to do with it? How will nationalising this solve the problems identified with service, strikes, and quality? Why would nationalising it lead to more funding and a better service when it’s up against the NHS?
- The post makes it very clear that there is nothing inherently wrong with nationalisation – Switzerland has done it very successfully. But the key with that is a huge amount of devolution to the cantons (close enough to regions for UK purposes), allowing them to decide how best to raise funds to provide railway services. Labour or whoever is next in government has to resist the siren songs of power and rethink accordingly.
Politics, and why the left is struggling: https://open.substack.com/pub/conspicuouscognition/p/lets-not-bring-back-the-gatekeepers?r=22u0c&utm_medium=ios
- A fantastic piece on how the left are struggling with the loss of control over information, and the incoherent responses towards the populists
- To me, it’s the example of Aggregation Theory in practice, see here:https://stratechery.com/2016/the-voters-decide/(although note Ben Thompson did not view Trump as an aggregator). It feels increasingly in the UK that we have the worst of all worlds – a left that cling to their ideas, yet refuse to debate them openly, and consider opponents (e.g. Farage) as beyond the pale.
- Ironically, this both emboldens Farage/Reform as ordinary voters consider him as closer to their views on the key issue (immigration), and the extremists, as there is a persuasion gap being left open. Voters are going directly to their solution and bypassing the filtering performed by the traditional gatekeepers. Given that the left is much closer to these traditional gatekeepers, or puts higher status on parts of them (experts, universities), shocks will continue to happen.
- There’s definitely a piece to be written on how Europe is struggling with this in particular, with its lack of domestic tech industry really coming back to bite it. The key players seem to think it’s still 1990 rather than 2025 and don’t seem to be able to formulate a response at all.
Parenthood: https://substack.com/home/post/p-175138681
- Not much to say beyond it’s a beautiful and heartbreaking piece on parenting with a child who has just been diagnosed with autism
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