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The economy - thankfully left alone for now - has been getting along with doing deals and agreeing terms and sticking to contracts. The invisible hand continues to give and take. I value something you have and offer you in exchange part of the global resource - money. We shake hands. I get...

Probably best.

The wonders of free trade: One doesn’t expect to find the Guardian extolling the virtues of capitalism, but yesterday’s long-read on Aldi may be the exception that proves the rule. The story of the deep discounting supermarket and its near identical rival, Lidl, is a fine example of how when...

Indeed we shall.

....assuming I would have taken the job in the first place.

Sheesh. Isn't it so obviously a follow on from the previous 7 posts. Do I need to spell it out? Sheesh. Brain - engage.

So? That was not the point you were being drawn to address.

"Further, in my experience extremely smart technical people are often naive about politics. They greatly over-estimate the abilities of prime ministers and presidents. They greatly under-estimate the incentive problems and the degree of focus that is required to get ANYTHING done in politics...

"(My experience is it’s much easier to fool people about politics if they have a degree than if they don’t because those with a degree tend to spend so much more energy fooling themselves.) "

Oh. You know do you? You're an expert on exactly the match up between current programmers and the kind of AI technicians he's talking about. Right. Sure. No OK I get it.

You sound like a jilted lover.

"And now, when Brexit means the entire legal basis for procurement is changing, do these MPs, ministers and officials finally examine it and see how they could improve? No of course not! The top priority for Heywood et al viz Brexit and procurement has been to get hapless ministers to lock...

More and more..... "Being in charge of massive screwups is no barrier to promotion. Operational excellence is no requirement for promotion. You will often see the official in charge of some debacle walking to the tube at 4pm (‘compressed hours’ old boy) while the debacle is live on TV (I know...

"Because of mangled incentives and reinforcing culture, the senior civil service does not care about this and does not try to improve. Total failure is totally irrelevant to the senior civil service and is absolutely no reason to change behaviour even if it means thousands of people killed and...

OG will like this bit: "The Whitehall procurement system is embedded in the dominant framework of EU law (the EU law is bad but UK officials have made it worse). It is complex, slow and wasteful. It hugely favours large established companies with powerful political connections — true corporate...

Gotta love the way this man talks: "If you are one of the many MPs aspiring to be not just Prime Minister but a Prime Minister who gets important things done, there are very few books that would repay careful study as much as Groves’. If you do then you could avoid joining the list of Major...

Europe not the place to be: (Cummings just released his latest blog) "There is some talk in London of ‘what if there is an AI arms race’ but there is already an AI/automation arms race between companies and between countries — it’s just that Europe is barely relevant to the cutting edge of it...

Twaddle.

Ha. Sure. Stolen. Right. The fact that Jews have lived there since time began - we'll just ignore that shall we? Sure. Let's ignore that.

We just need to be clear who is right and who is wrong. Then we can take sides and justify our positions.