iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Jack Kessler

Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 13h

Unlike Liz Truss, Andy Burnham clearly believes that time is on his side. ✍️ www.linestotake.com/p/hope-defer...

Pensions triple lock, social care, electoral reform, Brexit — if there was a third rail of British politics, Andy Burnham intended to step on it. At the same time, there was a curious asymmetry with regards to how fast he was prepared to go.

The triple lock won’t be scrapped reformed until 2030, social care is for the next parliament, the voting system to be determined by committee, the EU gets more talks about talks. Contrast this with Liz Truss, who had similar ambitions to rewire the country, in her case by cutting taxes and rolling back regulation. But she wanted to do it at break-neck speed, which was ultimately her downfall.

For Truss, haste was a product not simply of impatience but of her own insecurity. She needed to create facts on the ground before her limited political authority (little support from MPs, even less in the country) evaporated. She was there for a good time, not a long time. Burnham appears more confident that time is on his side.

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

There is no doubt most voters - across generations- start from a position of supporting triple lock. Far more so than SW1. Probably Burnham's approach (frame it as double lock, give something back, push change into future) is the best possible persuasion play. Still a gamble, i think winnable.

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James Austin @jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 12h

So, the big speech. My takeaway broadly that of others here: it wasnt a classic. It had too much cliche. Pulled a few punches *But* It was probably the most refreshing and significant speech for... over a decade? A proper political arguement, with faith in the power of politics for positive change

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Ben Ansell @benansell.bsky.social · 13h

A bit like net migration figures being lower, the fact that UK economic growth has been higher than expected cuts against the narrative but can’t be ignored forever. Maybe (probably) I was wrong and Labour did have a theory of growth after all.

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Andy Bruce (Reuters) @bruceandy.bsky.social · 13h

🥳 UK economy grew more than thought in the second quarter. • GDP +0.5% qq versus a previous estimate of +0.4% (same with GDP per head) • Strong business investment growth (see 👇) • Current account balance (exc. precious metals) smallest in 5 years at 1% of GDP thanks to services exports

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 13h

Unlike Liz Truss, Andy Burnham clearly believes that time is on his side. ✍️ www.linestotake.com/p/hope-defer...

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Nominally a piece about the six types of friend who won’t text you back, but at its heart a theory that *you* are the one who is, in fact, bad at texting.

linestotake.com

‘Hey, how’s things?’

The six types of friend who won’t text you back (and the one message making it worse)

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Jill Rutter @jillongovt.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The Treasury underestimated the impact of the triple lock was that they did not anticipate the seesaw between inflation and earnings. That is what has led to the big rise in spending and the pension growing well ahead of earnings. There are proposals around to ensure it grows with earnings.

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

He was *38 years old* when the first episode of Saved by the Bell aired.

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Nominally a piece about the six types of friend who won’t text you back, but at its heart a theory that *you* are the one who is, in fact, bad at texting.

linestotake.com

‘Hey, how’s things?’

The six types of friend who won’t text you back (and the one message making it worse)

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

No disrespect to just-in-time logistics but how are supermarket avocados still not being displayed according to ripeness?

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

On what Man City's 114 guilty verdicts can change, and what they can't. ✍️ www.linestotake.com/p/man-city-1...

The point of football may be to score more goals than the other team, but the point of football fandom is moments. Glorious victories, agonising defeats and bore draws all shared in the company of best mates and total strangers. Sorry to sound like a TV advert for a mass-market lager but it’s true.

As is the flip side. If the 2011-12 league title is stripped from City, what is Sky Sports supposed to do — call up Martin Tyler and ask him to re-record his seminal “Agüeroooooo!” commentary? Demand that old men in flat caps who went to their graves with that line scorched onto their brains be exhumed, resuscitated and re-educated?

The past is a foreign signing

When we think of time, we tend to imagine it absent-mindedly flowing forward like a river. But it doesn’t, really. Rather, best as we can tell, the universe started out in a remarkably low-entropy state. That is, extremely well ordered. But as time goes by, that entropy or disorder increases: milk swirls into coffee, glass shatters into pieces, tidy bedrooms become messy.

Should City run out of legal road, they could face substantial sporting sanction. But rewriting history is harder. The Agüero moment has already been swirled into our memories, shattered the dreams of Man Utd fans and made a mess of many a football accumulator.

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This part is just weird. 1. You can't live in an index fund 2. You certainly can't take out an unsecured loan to do so

“My husband got sold the dream of getting on the property ladder,” Dean said. “If he had put that money into the stock market, it would have been a much better result.”

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Neal Hudson @resi-analyst.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Good piece on prices but doesn’t really mention the other side: transactions. Turnover has collapsed in London, especially central areas. That means the price evidence is based on thin volumes and most people are sitting it out (thanks high rents!). That’s prevented further price falls.

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Oh god I had to write countless leaders for the Evening Standard in favour of this. But then in the afternoon got to write a newsletter saying it was nonsense.

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

On what Man City's 114 guilty verdicts can change, and what they can't. ✍️ www.linestotake.com/p/man-city-1...

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

On reflection, the failure of the Gerard Houllier-Roy Evans joint manager experiment set back the cause of job sharing in Britain by at least a decade.

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Deeply concerned Spurs are going to be awarded a title.

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

‘One bed good, two seats bad.’ Is it just me or does Qantas’ new first class suite on the London to Sydney route look... quite uncomfortable?

linestotake.com

‘One bed good, two seats bad’

Qantas’ new first class on the London to Sydney route looks... quite uncomfortable?

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Tbf my Viennese great-grandfather brought his umbrella handle business to London in the 1920s on the basis that "it rains a lot in England".

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

‘One bed good, two seats bad.’ Is it just me or does Qantas’ new first class suite on the London to Sydney route look... quite uncomfortable?

linestotake.com

‘One bed good, two seats bad’

Qantas’ new first class on the London to Sydney route looks... quite uncomfortable?

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Not optimistic enough to be a buyer at any price.

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

What I find fascinating about buy-to-let at 30 is how it's this whole story of financial innovation (the BTL mortgage), economic trends (a house price boom) and political incentives (omg renters vote too!) all in one.

linestotake.com

Buy-to-let hits the big 3-0

The rise and fall of the ‘accidental’ landlord

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Sarah O'Connor @sarahoconnorft.ft.com · 24/09/2026

Please excuse me while I scream into a cushion at the thought of ALL the articles I had to write on the "UK productivity puzzle" in the 2010s www.ft.com/content/c819...

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

linestotake.com

Buy-to-let hits the big 3-0

The rise and fall of the ‘accidental’ landlord

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Is deploying RAF jets with air-to-air refuelling capabilities to Saudi Arabia a cost-of-living policy? Andy Burnham thinks so. And once the snark subsides, he's basically right, isn't he?

linestotake.com

Is refuelling jets a cost-of-living policy?

Andy Burnham thinks so

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Dr Stylite @columnist.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I simply do not understand why London and Paris aren’t closer

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This is like the 2014-2019 era when people would post the same photo on Facebook and Instagram and real friends liked both, no questions asked.

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Is deploying RAF jets with air-to-air refuelling capabilities to Saudi Arabia a cost-of-living policy? Andy Burnham thinks so. And once the snark subsides, he's basically right, isn't he?

linestotake.com

Is refuelling jets a cost-of-living policy?

Andy Burnham thinks so

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Sam Lowe @samuelmarclowe.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Canada will struggle to deepen economic ties with the EU for the same reasons the UK failed to break them. New MFN: mostfavourednation.substack.com/p/gravity-al...

mostfavourednation.substack.com

Gravity Always Wins

Alas.

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

My go-to grounding exercise for when the mind won't damn well sit in neutral. ✍️ www.linestotake.com/p/holy-groun...

I sometimes think of it as a deus ex machina that, if it occurred in the third act of a film, you’d reflexively roll your eyes and halve your emotional investment. It has a name that could do with zhuzhing up a bit: the 5-4-3-2-1 technique. But it delivers exactly what it promises.

Simply name five things you can see, four you can feel, three you can hear, two you can smell and one you can taste.

This may not make you feel better. For me, it sometimes reveals a cosmic background radiation of anxiety I didn’t even know was there. But what if I’d told you instead to go for a run — your first in years — and you returned home an aching, sweating wreck? That would hardly come as a galloping shock.

Grounding is a muscle. A habit. A series of neural pathways for which you may only be at the planning permission stage and the local authority is stacked with councillors elected on an aggressively NIMBY platform.

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

My go-to grounding exercise for when the mind won't damn well sit in neutral. ✍️ www.linestotake.com/p/holy-groun...

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Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

18 years after the party conference that birthed the policy, allow me to repost my 2014 oped attacking the politically pointless policy of supposedly progressive parties raising the income tax threshold- giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

giftarticle.ft.com

Tax cuts are exactly what the UK doesn’t need

The financial crisis turned a smart idea into a regressive own goal, writes Giles Wilkes

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Spent a fun* five minutes in my head trying to make the case that Osborne was a more important chancellor than Brown but frankly BoE independence nukes any argument I could muster. *in a queue for a pastry

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found at https://help.ft.com/faq/gifting-and-sharing-an-article/what-is-a-gift-article/.
https://www.ft.com/content/77f042f0-80c2-40ad-a4d1-9da0367827ee?syn-25a6b1a6=1

The driving force was a shift in government policy from 2015, under then chancellor George Osborne. Reacting to longstanding criticism that landlord investors were squeezing out first-time buyers, he used his Budget to phase out tax relief on mortgage interest costs for individual buy-to-let owners. This left landlords who owned within a company still free to deduct these costs, and set the stage for the subsequent growth of the professional, incorporated landlord, often with larger portfolios.

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

There's a special day in every millennial male's life when he finally looks older than Rob Lowe and today is that day for me.

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

If a business class flight costs £8,000 but you would *never* actually pay that out of pocket, then I’m terribly sorry but the real saving from your points redemption is far closer to the £500 economy ticket you would otherwise have bought.

linestotake.com

You didn’t save £8,000. Sorry.

Also, don't remortgage your house for the points

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I have questions about the Instagram algorithm and what it thinks I get up to on weekends.

Australian government warning me to stay alert at intersecting runways

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

linestotake.com

You didn’t save £8,000. Sorry.

Also, don't remortgage your house for the points

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

On the one hand, you never forget your first Texas "y'all". On the other, Paris is closer.

linestotake.com

Why I’m quitting the points game

I don’t want to spend my 40th birthday in Houston

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Uber driver: “What the heck are y’all doing in Houston for a weekend?” Me, ashen faced: "It was the only destination with Avios availability." ✍️ www.linestotake.com/p/why-im-qui...

“What the heck are y’all doing in Houston for a weekend?” I remember this question, posed by the Uber driver as he skilfully navigated the maze of short-term parking around George Bush Intercontinental Airport, for a couple of reasons. First, because you don’t forget your first-ever Texas “y’all”. And second, because there was no good answer.

A city break in Paris or Prague, why not? Even New York is doable if you don’t mind the jet lag or $30 Big Macs. But the sprawling, business-oriented capital of the southern US? That is sure to invite a sceptical eyebrow, not least from the locals.

I wish I could have told the driver that I was a consultant for one of the oil majors or a glutton for Texas barbecue. But on the basis that I’d never see him again and the truth is the easiest thing to remember, I blurted it out: “This was the only destination for which British Airways still had Avios availability.”

And this is how I came to celebrate my 30th birthday surrounded not by friends or family, but in downtown Houston with 40,000 or so Astros fans, eating hot dogs and trying to establish the rules of baseball.

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Seems odd that Robbie Williams had a concert in Istanbul cancelled last year following 'accusations' he's a 'Zionist' (his wife is a Turkish-born Jew) and it barely made a ripple. Jews and Israelis are frequently cancelled or boycotted not for their views but for who they are.

turkiyetoday.com

Robbie Williams cancels Istanbul concert following 'Zionist' accusations - Türkiye Today

Robbie Williams' Istanbul concert scheduled for Oct. 7 cancelled after social media backlash over "Zionist" accusations

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Steve Akehurst @steveakehurst.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

NEW: How did the summer heatwaves and wildfires change attitudes to climate and Net Zero, if at all? A short thread on analysis of tracker polling now summer is winding down. 🧵 (for @persuasionuk.bsky.social with @yougov.co.uk)

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Uber driver: “What the heck are y’all doing in Houston for a weekend?” Me, ashen faced: "It was the only destination with Avios availability." ✍️ www.linestotake.com/p/why-im-qui...

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Jack Kessler @jackkessler.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Who needs reasons when you’ve got protein rice?

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