I’m saddened to learn about Camila’s death: 61 is no age, and she was gifted at dealing with tough young people - but should not have got £40mn+ in public funds. I think my final thoughts on Kids Company are well summarised here: bbc.com/news/uk-416446…
To answer some queries: 1/ on the events of 2015, I would note that Southwark Council, the safeguarding authority for Kids Company, very much did not think it was a safe place (and a young person’s charity that can’t survive a safeguarding inquiry has only itself to blame).
Oct 30, 2022 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
We just published a piece on how Russia rebadges grain looted from Ukraine. We tracked a single shipment carried by a ship called the Pawell, which shows how up the vast Russian smuggling machine around a small port called Port Kavkaz works. (1/7): on.ft.com/3zqc0CE
Part of this was an awkward question: a Russian businessman swore his shipment hadn’t come from Berdyansk. We doubted that. We could see a ship (by @planet) in Berdyansk. So how sure could we be that this is our ship - the Pawell? Thanks to @SpireGlobal, much surer (2/7)
Aug 7, 2022 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
From me: the UK government’s Future Fund - its covid-era venture capital investment portfolio - has been mostly invested in what a director overseeing it called “zombie businesses”, leaving it with holdings in “a significant tail of dormant companies”. on.ft.com/3vNU3vX
The Future Fund was launched with much ado by @rishisunak “to power the growth and innovation we will need as we recover from this crisis”, but its audit committee reckoned on a probability of default on FF loans of 54 per cent. ft.com/content/230fa1…
Aug 1, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I was called in by the School Teachers Review Body when it was considering this idea 10 years ago to ask what I thought it would do to schools. Same problems then as now. The core proposition here is that we could save money by cutting pay in lower-paid labour markets (1/5)
The core problem is that, yes, we pay more to teachers in real terms who work in Stamford than, say, London (which attracts a salary uplift). But we also struggle more to recruit in Stamford than London. (2/5)
Jan 19, 2022 • 15 tweets • 7 min read
How did your neighbourhood do during the pandemic? We've published a whizzy tool which will let you look up how your local high street has done during the pandemic. ft.com/content/9348c6…
We can literally show how each neighbourhood has done, month by month since March 2019. You will be surprised to learn that the neighbourhood with Downing Street's choice of supermarket did quite well in selling groceries during peak lockdown
Feb 25, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The govt's response to the @HuffPost's complaint about Kemi Badenoch is full-on bonkers. They have said it's fine because she didn't launch a pile-on about the reporter using a government twitter account (!?) (1/4) huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/kemi-bad…
There is a strong expectation of confidence in the process of reporters writing to the subjects of stories with questions: if we're going to write you eat babies, you want us to write and check, right? (2/4)
I've worried about people with learning disabilities as a group before. But all people in institutional settings need to be bumped up all the lists: the self-selection of being in a home plus communal living make them extra- vulnerable.
The Ofqual paper is quite wince-inducing. The data *doesn’t* allow that. ThIs puts idea that grade inflation, school level results and maintaining the distribution shape is more important than the fairness of individual results
Aug 11, 2020 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
You can’t infer the correct grades at an individual level from the prior year’s distribution of grades, no matter how hard you clonk away at the abacus.
Everyone in the system should behave as though we’re getting ungraded aegrotat-style qualifications for a single year, even if they come with a notional grade. If sixth forms have to stop rejecting people because they won’t know who might need teaching, we will cope.
Jun 11, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
A lot of British politics makes more sense when you remember how bad median education was until the 1980s/1990s. The post-Joseph/Baker changes are a big part of the age/education story.
Bluntly, the modal young person today - esp in London - are not just more diverse than the modal member of older generations. They’re also genuinely much better educated. We’re going to see this again and again.
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