The UK gave out 1.1 million visas in the year to September. This insanity has been driven by short-termism, shifting costs into the future through pensions and welfare in exchange for a short term sugar rush - and to avoid fixing things the government broke.

🧵 We can start with the care worker visa. This was essentially invented to get out of a jam: local authorities paid for care, local authorities had no money, the Treasury was presumably too busy funding migrant hotels and train driver pay rises to bail them out.

On current growth rates, Poland is set to be richer than Britain in 12 years time. Between Westminster and Whitehall, Britain's failure to grow can be explained in four words: it’s not allowed to.
spectator.co.uk/article/britai… Growth isn't everything, but it's an awful lot. And it's a real source of frustration that the people who want to be PM aren't laying out their plans to make Britain a wealthier country. No matter what you care about, it's easier with more money

The Just Stop Oil art protests are deeply selfish. We can have galleries that trust people to behave and give them uninhibited access, or we can have attention-seeking protesters ruin it for everyone else.
spectator.co.uk/article/the-re… It's so easy to take this for granted. Of course art gallerirs let you stand next to priceless works of art. Of course museums use polite signs to ask us not to touch exhibits. You don't notice how much trust is placed in you until someone breaks it and things have to change.

The thing is that from the Russian point of view they're working very well; if Putin doesn't have them it's pretty good odds NATO countries would be looking to intervene in Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/Aiannucci/status/1502931770102235140

Nuclear deterrence gets you, roughly, 'countries with the capability of destroying one another in thirty minutes work carefully to avoid direct conflict'. This is just as true when it deters us as when it deters our opponents. spectator.co.uk/article/in-def…