Jack Serle
@jackserle.bsky.social
Procurement and life sciences correspondent at HSJ, formerly natsec/GWOT geek.
Orwell on "silly-clever Conservatives" in 1946: "people who specialise in cracking neat jokes at the expense of whatever is 'modern' and 'progressive', and whose opinions are often all the more extreme because they know that they cannot influence the actual drift of events." They have columns now.
Trump says he will impose tariffs on generic drugs starting in August 2028, giving manufacturers two years to build factories in the US. www.politico.com/news/2026/07...
Trump says he will impose tariffs on generic drugs starting in August 2028
If implemented, tariffs on generic drugs would be set at 100 percent and rise to 200 percent a year later.
politico.com
Feels a bit like the hysteria over Ed Miliband was a bit of an unintentional bait and switch that distracted journalists from the amount of power amassed by Louise Haigh
I'd go further than that and say the discourse on this is emblematic of the broader British problem of not treating management itself as a valuable (learnable) skill.
Stephen Bush@stephenkb.bsky.social · 2w agoI don’t think any departmental minister needs to have credentials in their own department. Most of the effective delivery minister, regardless of party, don’t. The problem is that there were only five SoSes you could say had strong credentials on that score under Starmer and WS was not one.
This is the core point: neither opposition nor support of these 3 appointments has much/anything to do with the personal characteristics which would have dominated debate about these jobs [certainly within the adult lifetime of the PM in the 1980s/1990s] bsky.app/profile/robe...
Robert Saunders@robertsaunders.bsky.social · 2w agoLots of interesting points in this thread and the replies. It's a genuinely remarkable change that you can have a Catholic prime minister, a Jewish foreign secretary, a gay defence secretary & a British-Asian home secretary, and those are among the least controversial facts about those appointments
Larry the Cat, Boaty McBoatface, Count Binface, these are all symptoms of a greater malaise. Purging them may alleviate the pain for a while but it won’t be a cure. For that, we must finally do what has hitherto been thought impossible. We must find a way to kill Mr Blobby.
Mollie Goodfellow@hansmollman.bsky.social · 2w agoHow old is Larry the cat now, he’s gotta be pushing on at this point
new car headlights are way too bright
Black Aziz Anansi@blackazizanansi.blacksky.app · 2w agoWhat's your old person trait?
Seen a few people saying rough sleeping policy isn’t aimed at median public concern. Quite apart from any policy/moral imperative it really is - rough sleeping comes up time again in focus groups as one of the most visible signs of Broken Britain and community decline!
Got lost in the noise yday but worth noting the rough sleeping pledge was slightly more qualified in the release that followed
As public health minister, she was responsible for implementing SureStart. Knows her way around the health inequalities agenda.
Don't worry! The England men's test team are playing Pakistan next month. Oh... oh God.
Alistair Green@mralistairgreen.bsky.social · 2w agoIt’s all over. World Cup over , Wimbledon over. Nothing to distract you but the terrifying reality of your own thoughts now. Never mind, it’ll be autumn soon where everything dies.
Just turned on football. Lasted ~35 seconds i think? Horrible.
Pete Hegseth: "We need our warriors to embrace the Spartan mindset" U.S. Military: *suffers crushing defeat to the Persians*
Two housemates go on holiday in the Lake District.
Kathryn Tewson@kathryntewson.bsky.social · 3w agoA burnt-out employee makes a rounding error.
The whole performative 6 music dad who's from the north and has a season ticket for the football thing is going to start to grate very quickly
Huge state subsidies expected for the production of cider, silage and dogs on string.
Tyron@tyron.bsky.social · 3w agoGenuinely a bit offensive as a summary
Hi! WIRED health reporter here. Looking to speak with people who got sick with cyclosporiasis and are willing to share the gruesome details. emily_mullin@wired.com
Fascinating. I think of this kind of thing whenever I hear someone say that more NHS money should be spent on doctors and nurses "on the frontline". That, and the scenes in The Battle of Britain inside Fighter Command with WAAF using snooker cues to push wooden blocks across the big plot.
Duncan Weldon@duncanweldon.bsky.social · 3w agoA thing I wrote last year. engelsbergideas.com/essays/logis...
Still baffled by this. It's not the biggest rivalry in football bu the biggest IN SPORT!? I mean, there's so many bigger. The Calcutta Cup, the Ashes, India v Pakistan at cricket! Come on, over 1.7bn people fiercely invested in that one. State of Origin series. Eng v Aus in RL. The Ryder Cup?
The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com · 3w agoThere are other epic rivalries, from Yankees-Red Sox to Ohio State-Michigan. But nothing comes close to the 64-year-old World Cup feud that is England vs. Argentina. on.wsj.com/4voNqfn
The right creating a stab-in-the-back myth, centred around Boris, because the “points-based immigration system” they’d been demanding for years caused immigration to rise is just so fucking exhausting
David Higham@oldtrotter.bsky.social · 3w agoThe Spectator going full on ethnonationalist
New: ‘Well-oiled’ fraudulent business machine behind fake judicial review claims uncovered — by Katherine Soroya
'Well-oiled’ fraudulent business machine behind fake judicial review claims uncovered - Free Movement
The Upper Tribunal has considered the use of deception, fraud and false evidence in 12 judicial review claims, purportedly brought by 27 different applicants.
freemovement.org.uk
Once you start mass removal of citizenship on political grounds you've stopped functioning as a viable democratic state. But that was always where this agenda was heading.
David Higham@oldtrotter.bsky.social · 3w agoThe Spectator going full on ethnonationalist
Obviously having three hard-to-far-right parties and a void on the centre-right is dreadful for democracy but it also seems politically foolish for the party that has always succeeded by not being that
Tim Bale@timbale.bsky.social · 3w agoMadness. Utter madness. Badenoch is quietly turning what used to be a broad church into an even narrower sect.
Most people will remember Sam Neill for Jurassic Park but I’ll always remember him from this masterpiece! He will always be my Merlin!
100 per cent. The grim indifference to 'you know we're talking about a person?' you get with a celebrity death coupled with horse race journalism and partisanship.
Documentary idea: Samuel L Jackson but as his Jules character from Pulp Fiction teams up with a Lancashire pig farmer to learn about raising pigs for slaughter and the pork meat industry.
Speaking as someone who played ini goal at school, those mistakes are fucking brutal. Jesus Nyland I feel for you mate.
