Concrete Achievements

Blog

  • Links from the week of 4 October 2021

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Links from the week of 27 September 2021

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Links from the week of 20 September 2021

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Obviously this is a stupid take but it is revealingly stupid.

    Obviously this is a stupid take but it is revealingly stupid. Billionaires watch China financial markets etc because a large part of their personal assets and hence their wellbeing is tied up with it. The idea that that is all that is important is exactly twitter.com/Dominic2306/st…

    the financial sector/Silicon Valley fanboy mindset that assumes that all that matters is the big numbers and blitzscaling. But most people don’t need to read that *because it does not matter to them*. For them the “lobby stuff” – NHS, taxes, social services – really matters

    because it shapes their lives immediately rather than at five removes. You need to be rich enough or antisocial to think that only trivial minds care about a council is doing or how petrol prices are changing.

    Just the sort of mindset, in fact, who would champion something that crushes individual small businesses and kills off real human opportunities and relationships in order to fulfil some Valley fanboy vision of a data centres and AI technoBritain.

  • Links from the week of 13 September 2021

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • I’m glad to be part of that living bridge, but would quite like it if the maniac…

    I’m glad to be part of that living bridge, but would quite like it if the maniac populists at either end could stop blowing up the supporting structures. twitter.com/JnbraithwaiteU…

    Seriously, though, it’s exactly these ties of history, blood and family between Poland and the UK, and between both countries and the rest of Europe, that Brexit and the current Polish government undermining of the rule of law have betrayed.

    Brexit forced a choice between British and European, the dire consequences of which are playing out where that mattered most, in Northern Ireland. The Polish government appear to be pretending there’s a choice between Polish and socially liberal.

    Those pretended choices are false and are made with the explicit intention of dividing people and stoking conflict – for the benefit of populist political elites who despise their voters far more than the mainstream parties ever could.

  • Links from the week of 6 September 2021

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • This is exactly how the Apprentice would do being an activist

    This is exactly how the Apprentice would do being an activist. twitter.com/FilmUpdates/st…

    *flyover of the second-cheapest co-working space in Acton*
    “This week, on the Activist, the contestants meet their toughest challenge yet …
    *cut to weeping contestant*
    “A funder grant monitoring form!
    *cut to contestant storming off set*

    “Can they show they have what it takes …
    *cut to contestant shouting “why does the expenditure have to expressed in Thai Baht?”*
    “to become …
    *cut to physical fight over Excel spreadsheet*
    “THE ACTIVIST?”

  • Links from the week of 30 August 2021

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Talking with a friend in a bar last night about the need for pan-Belgian media.

    Talking with a friend in a bar last night about the need for pan-Belgian media. @lesoir and @destandaard are all very well but (particularly if the next state reform gives us a whole-country electoral constituency like NL) there’s still too little across the taalgrens.

    @LeVif and @Knack I think share some stories and things like @VRT_Flandreinfo & LENA are great but it would be good to have something that’s bilingual default like @el_Periodico in Catalunya (with identical editions in Catalan and Castilian) – perhaps even in FR/NL/EN.

    The floods and covid have shown, I think, that people in Flanders and Wallonia aren’t just thrown together by circumstance – shared history, families and culture also matter. And pooled resources could make for better reporting on international issues too.

    Finally, Europe’s capital could also use a better home town paper. Anyways, I appreciate the media economics (let alone politics) probably doesn’t open up a path to this, but it feels like a big gap.