Economist. YIMBY. Trade Unionist. Giant bath enjoyer. Tweets mostly policy, F1, shitposts, cool data & Mushroom the cat
Greenwich, London
Joined April 2012
- Tweets65.3K
- Following2.1K
- Followers2.9K
- Likes236K
Cal retweeted
British food discourse is tired AF but it is VERY funny when Americans try to mock British Chinese food when it was created by generations of mainly Hong Kong immigrants adapting the cuisine to the British taste. It's arguably one of the biggest success stories in fusion food but it's not considered as such because it's British
Cal retweeted
Hang on @PJTheEconomist! The population has grown more than a fifth over that period, so per person emissions are down about 40%. Historically unprecedented and hugely impressive.
Cal retweeted
Western ''Realists'' - NATO expansion forced Putin to start this war
Putin when talking about the war -
the war is happening because bla bla bla happened in the 13th century, then this happened in the 16th century, then this leader did this in 1732 therefore 🇺🇦 belongs to 🇷🇺
NEW: Vladimir Putin spent most of his call with the leaders of Finland and Norway ranting about Slavic history, underscoring Europe's tough task backing Ukraine in peace talks.
The planned 20-minute call dragged on for 90. A ceasefire barely came up:
ft.com/content/a384acd1-c90c…
Cal retweeted
In my culture we love freely associating on the basis of individual interests instead of on the basis of kinship ties ☺️
Cal retweeted
Socialism is supporting the local petit bourgeoisie and the more you support the local property owners the more socialist it is
Cal retweeted
This is mostly due to social spending, which wasn't so high in the Soviet Union. People think of the Soviet Union as some kind of welfare state on steroids, but social spending was only about half of the current level in France as a share of GDP when defined narrowly and, even if you include food subsidies and enterprise benefits, it was still significantly lower. It was probably high relative to a typical, non-socialist country at a similar level of development, but not shockingly so.
What made set the Soviet Union and other socialist countries apart from market economies was not so much social spending but the reliance on central planning rather than prices and the market to coordinate production units. It's actually a testament to the efficiency of a market economy that France can get away with so much redistribution, even allowing for the fact that it's not sustainable at current levels, without destroying its ability to produce wealth in the first place.
Cal retweeted
Left-NIMBYISM is much funnier. Yeah, i'm a socialist, except in the case of housing, where I believe in zealously protecting the rights of property owners to form a cartel at the expense of the poor. Let's build some parking lots in city centers for suburbanites to park in!
Cal retweeted
I am sick and tired of these conservative low iq scums larping James Hunt.
He was an activist and he was extremely vocal about how he was Anti apartheid. Also stop acting like he didn’t rock some cloths you losers would call him “gay” for.
Cal retweeted
James Hunt was woke as fuck you would have hated him. Also he drank, smoked and did god knows what else until his heart gave out at 45 so unless you are subscribing to early death = great for the country you are rather ignorant.
Cal retweeted
UK Greens need a reminder that the whole reason their party and movement exists is to save places like this, not empty lawns on the edge of town in behind some road – at Strahan, Tasmania
Cal retweeted
WWI is simply the best historical event to study ever. 0/10 strategies like 86% of the time, 10000/10 characters 100% and just mind-boggling to comprehend the complete destruction of European civilizational highpoint bc every walrus-looking general in Europe was insane
Cal retweeted
What makes this depressing is that it theoretically met NIMBY criteria.
Aesthetic, built with local stone, provides cheap groceries during a cost-of-living crisis. All built *literally* on an empty grass field.
But, no dice. They don't actually want to build anything at all.
Cal retweeted
Applied in 2023 and withdrew after backlash in 2024, made adjustments and re-submitted in 2025.
They built it out of bath stone for you people, nicest Lidl I’ve ever seen😭
If it was an M&S, I’d half expect you lot to pick up a trowel and help them.
Cal retweeted
This is moment of maximum danger for Reform. You can broadly split current Reform voters into 2 groups - true believers & 'just want a right wing govt'. The second are much more transactional & if the Tories start to look like the vehicle to defeat Labour they'll go back to them
Conservatives overtake Reform for the first time since January 2025 in our poll tracker. Labour still rising economist.com/interactive/20…
Cal retweeted
At a certain point, you just have to overrule this kind of thing. The central government needs to take it out of their hands.
Celebrating blocking a low-cost grocery store that provides both jobs and essential goods, after a relentless 4-year campaign, is simply unnaceptable.
Cal retweeted
A larger proportion of British people eat curry at least once a month than eat roast dinners.
Total globalist victory.
While Brits are most likely to name fish and chips the UK's national dish, only 35% eat it at least once a month - compared to 52% for roast dinners
While only 21% eat a chicken tikka masala at least once a month, this rises to 52% for all forms of curry
yougov.com/en-gb/articles/55…
Cal retweeted
Here's an alternate read of today's consumer confidence survey to challenge the gloomy takes of this release
🧵
Very striking plunge in UK consumer confidence: biggest single-month drop since Covid April 2020. Usually a drop this steep is event-driven (saw a similar slump around Brexit) whereas it's harder to pin this on anything more specific than rising costs. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Cal retweeted
£100 fine if you call TEA dinner
Cal retweeted
May, Anglican: One year of tolerating SfL
Johnson, Sunni Muslim: 3 years of tolerating SfL
Truss, Anglican: 50 days of tolerating SfL
Sunak, Hindu: 2 years of tolerating SfL
Starmer, Atheist: 2 years of tolerating SfL
Burnham, Catholic: STOPPED SFL IN THREE MONTHS
See below
ALT This is just a quick & simple update to say that Stats for Lefties is shutting down. You may have noticed over the past year that Stats for Lefties has been slowing down, especially in the past several months. This a direct result of my physical disabilities and chronic illnesses worsening, making me unfit to work & unable to do things I love. One of the things I have had to give up for the sake of my health is this project. I’m deeply sad about it, but I think eight years of it is long enough.