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Jack Rowlett 🌐

@jackrowlett.bsky.social
132 followers 989 following 80 posts

Political Vibes Synthesiser™️

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Reposted by Jack Rowlett 🌐
Ash @queerash.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
just thinking about the person who is live-following the reshuffle but also needs this
who is ed miliband on bbc
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
I think the US government will almost certainly u-turn on this - at least for other western nations (TACO and all that). UK and Europe will still fail to learn the lesson that access to frontier models can be turned off at the will of our adversaries if we don’t have domestic alternatives.
anthropic.com
Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5
The US government has issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by any foreign national, whether inside or outside the United States.
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Reposted by Jack Rowlett 🌐
Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
oh FUCK OFF
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Emma Jacobs @emmavj.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
Is it?
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 15/02/2026
What?? She was a great writer and there are loads more women publishing science fiction than back then?
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Reposted by Jack Rowlett 🌐
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
I deeply sad to see millennials getting into nostalgia slop.
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
Farage’s baffling war on hybrid working makes a lot more sense when you consider his audience. Those hoping Reform UK are going to shrink the state are going to be sorely disappointed. open.substack.com/pub/ottersan...
open.substack.com
The War on Hybrid Working is Boomerslop
And this tells us a lot about Reform UK's priorities
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Reposted by Jack Rowlett 🌐
Duncan Weldon @duncanweldon.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Hearing it might be Ben Swain.
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 24/09/2025
Reform UK’s success has been driven by appearing more moderate than they actually are. This week’s immigration policy is out of step with public opinion. The fundamentals are soft and the party is celebrating victory too soon. My latest post 👇 buildvector.uk/p/farage-has...
buildvector.uk
Farage Has Overplayed His Hand
Or why I'm still bearish on Reform UK.
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
Britain’s electricity prices are among the highest in the developed world. This is a blight on living standards and the wider economy. But how can we banish our scarcity mindset and embrace abundant, cheap energy? Today’s post is about exactly that 👇 buildvector.uk/p/why-is-uk-...
buildvector.uk
Why Is UK Electricity So Expensive?
And what can we do about it?
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
The West is ageing fast. Chequebook Pro-Natalism has failed to reverse falling birth rates and migration isn't a silver bullet. This week's post is about what we should do instead: buildvector.uk/p/the-wests-...
buildvector.uk
The West’s Age of Adjustment
The longer we wait, the harder ageing will hit
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
I voted for Starmer's Labour believing they would finally tackle Britain's housing crisis. But their decision to water down planning reform betrays their electoral coalition of renters and the young. A grim omen for progress. buildvector.uk/p/a-governme...
buildvector.uk
A Government For Blockers?
Labour isn't building
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
The Lower Thames Crossing is a case study in Britain’s broken planning system. £450mn - a third of the total budget - has been spent on paperwork before digging a single metre of tunnel. on.ft.com/4jeSUUK
on.ft.com
One-third of Lower Thames Crossing budget spent on planning documents
More than £450mn used for obtaining permission for road tunnel scheme
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
Tarriffs could very well be Trump’s undoing. Economically illiterate, and will push prices up for domestic consumers. Let’s not forget he won the election because voters trusted him to lower prices more than Harris.
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Reposted by Jack Rowlett 🌐
Ian Dunt @iandunt.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Where is Starmer's statement of support for Zelenskyy. No excuses. No equivocation.
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Mark Chadbourn @chadbourn.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has refused to comment on the Trump attack on Zelenskyy, the FT reports. The only major European leader to do so.
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
America is no longer our strategic ally. There is no salvaging this. We need to treat this like the national and continental emergency that it is. Our top policy priority has to be strategic independence from the US.
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Reposted by Jack Rowlett 🌐
Jorge Félix Cardoso @jfelixcardoso.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
“Have you ever been to Ukraine? Come once” Huge balls. Huge respect. The right side of history
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
I’ve never seen anything as bad as that Trump-Zelensky meeting. JD Vance really is an odious third wheel.
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Alex Hall Hall @alexhh.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
Starmer been doing a good job so far; nauseating tho’ it is to see him larding on the praise on such a repulsive figure as Trump. But, his answer on Canada was shameful, implying he had no issue with Trump’s absurd, offensive claims on Canada. Starmer risks sounding overly sycophantic.
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
All very pragmatic and blunted Reform/Tory attack lines. But medium term I don’t think being seen to be associated with Trump is going to be good for any British politician.
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
Starmer just implied Britain has no qualms with the US annexing Canada. The media are “trying to find a divide that doesn’t exist” Cowardice from the PM.
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 23/02/2025
The old order is collapsing. Friedrich Merz— previously a staunch Atlanticist— is now calling for European strategic independence from the US. Keir Starmer’s attempt to build a “bridge” with the US on Thursday may be redundant if nobody wants to cross it.
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
The government has left Apple with no choice but to remove Advanced Data Protection from the UK. I wrote recently about why the government is wrong. This move erodes our privacy without making us any safer. If you use the internet you should worry. open.substack.com/pub/ottersan...
open.substack.com
The UK Government's War on Privacy
Everybody who uses the internet should be worried
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
It’s time for Western leaders to pick a side; they’re either with Ukraine and democracy or Trump and the demagogues.
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Andrew Donaldson @four4thefire.bsky.social · 19/02/2025
Chaberlain was a colossus of deterrence compared to this
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
The free world is on the brink. This week, Trump began trading away Ukraine’s sovereignty, abandoning NATO, and inviting Putin back onto the world stage. For the democratic right, this is a moral reckoning. ottersandinsights.substack.com/p/the-rights-moral-reckoning
ottersandinsights.substack.com
The Right’s Moral Reckoning
Reflections After Democracy’s Darkest Week
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 09/02/2025
My latest on the UK’s government’s fight with Apple over end-to-end encryption. We should all be worried about this anti-democratic erosion of our privacy. open.substack.com/pub/ottersan...
open.substack.com
The UK Government's War on Privacy
Everybody who uses the internet should be worried
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Reposted by Jack Rowlett 🌐
The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 07/02/2025
Exclusive: Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud.
wapo.st
U.K. orders Apple to let it spy on users’ encrypted accounts
Secret order requires blanket access to protected cloud backups around the world, which if implemented would undermine Apple’s privacy pledge to its users.
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 07/02/2025
Wrote about the BBC's funding mess. Ministers want Netflix users to pay the license fee, but that won't fix a model stuck in 1946. Time to separate public service from entertainment. commentcentral.co.uk/netflix-isnt...
commentcentral.co.uk
Netflix Isn’t Killing The BBC - The License Fee Is
The BBC is in a financial mess, and ministers are scrambling to find ways of plugging the broadcaster's nearly £500 million annual deficit.
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
These tools would be more useful if you could choose what sources you want the model to use. The web is a mess and full of clickbait SEO nonsense. The problem with these “deep research” models is they trust that content as much as broadsheet papers, journals etc. www.theverge.com/news/604902/...
theverge.com
ChatGPT’s agent can now do deep research for you
More accurate, and more resource intensive.
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
Wrote about Germany this week and how cartel politics is the thread that joins together desperate economic and political failings. open.substack.com/pub/ottersan...
open.substack.com
Cartel Politics Has Strangled Germany
Or how Germany fell out of love with consensus
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 29/01/2025
I’ve already got cliche bingo listening to Reeves’ speech.
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
Up bright and early this morning on Times Radio to discuss Council Tax, Donald Trump, and why young people are fed up with democracy. ottersandinsights.substack.com/p/insights-e...
ottersandinsights.substack.com
Insights Elsewhere - Council Tax, Donald Trump, and Young People Against Democracy
Reviewing the papers on Times Radio 27.1.2025
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
I do wonder the extent to which people are basing their judgement of LLMs on the free models anyone can access, like GPT-4o mini and Gemini Flash. The paid models are much smarter and less likely to hallucinate but are in front of far fewer people.
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James O'Malley @jamesomalley.co.uk · 24/01/2025
You can almost hear the internal discussion about whether it would be inappropriate to push-alert this to 14 million people.
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
There are many instances of the British justice system failing to put people away for long enough. We should focus on those failings instead of the semantics of the Southport sentencing. In practice, he’s never going to be released (rightly).
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
Latest post now up! I think Reform UK is fundamentally overhyped. They have a low ceiling, and they hit it in 2024. The return of Trump and Farage’s unpopular stance on the NHS will stymie their progress - if Labour and the Tories play their cards right. open.substack.com/pub/ottersan...
open.substack.com
Why I'm Bearish on Reform UK
Two big reasons the party is overhyped
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 22/01/2025
Latest post now up! I think Reform UK is fundamentally overhyped. They have a low ceiling, and they hit it in 2024. The return of Trump and Farage’s unpopular stance on the NHS will stymie their progress - if Labour and the Tories play their cards right. open.substack.com/pub/ottersan...
open.substack.com
Why I'm Bearish on Reform UK
Two big reasons the party is overhyped
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
A big problem during Trump term one was that his opponents responded to everything he did by accusing him of being a fascist. Then when he really did do things that were fascistic, the word lost all meaning. And so we end up with the “Roman salute”.
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
There is no difference between a Roman salute and a Nazi salute.
A screenshot of a tweet. The tweet is from the Telegraph with a photo of Elon Musk doing a Nazi Salute. The caption reads “Elon Musk makes “Roman salute” in gesture to Trump supporters”
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Luke Tryl @luketryl.bsky.social · 19/12/2024
Changing electoral donation rules to stop one donor a bad idea. To change system that has benefited established parties & stop donations that now benefit an insurgent party will confirm sense system is rigged & drive backlash. To avoid that do a change which comes into effect after next election
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 18/12/2024
Kemi Badenoch lambasts Starmer at PMQs for “playing politics” over the issue of WASPI women… and then agrees with the government that they shouldn’t be compensated. We talk a lot about Starmer being bad at politics, but Badenoch may be even worse.
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 17/12/2024
We shouldn’t spend billions of pounds compensating people who didn’t take responsibility for planning their retirement. Entitlements change all the time; it’s your job to stay informed and plan accordingly. The WASPIs have not been betrayed in any sense of the word.
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Luke Taylor MP @luketaylorld.bsky.social · 10/12/2024
More shocking news on London's housing crisis today. With the average student rent now greater than the max maintenance loan, London's Universities will struggle to attract and retain talented young people across the country. Time to build more houses!
buff.ly
Average student rents in London overtake the maximum maintenance loan: The 2024 Accommodation Costs Survey - HEPI
A new report from Unipol and the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) reveals alarming trends in the London student accommodation market: The report, titled Priced Out? The Accommodation Costs…
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 09/12/2024
Europe has slumbered under an American security blanket for too long. With Trump threatening NATO and the EU proving inadequate, we need to think radically about European defence. My latest for Europinion below. 1/2
europinion.uk
Europe Must Look Beyond NATO and the EU to Defend Itself
For too long, Europe has slumbered under an American security blanket. Leaders have dozed, while threats have accumulated first on and then within the continent's borders. Now, Donald Trump's return to the White House threatens the rudest of awakenings. His first term saw NATO's foundations shaken by repeated disparagements and casual threats of funding withdrawal. His second may shatter the bloc entirely. The European Union, hamstrung by bureaucratic sclerosis and the absence of the United King
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
“3 new homes” Starmer was ambitious on planning in his speech this week. But backing the “builders over the blockers” will require acknowledging that the blockers in question are hyperbolic voters who don’t want anything at all to be built.
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 02/12/2024
A damning indictment of Biden that he’s being mentioned in the same breath as Trump and Bill Clinton on matters of ethics.
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Jack Rowlett 🌐 @jackrowlett.bsky.social · 29/11/2024
Danny Kruger is a terrible spokesman for opposition to assisted dying. There are so many complex reasons why one might oppose the legislation (I feel deeply uncomfortable with it) but resorting to reactionary fundamentalism is not the right tone.
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Alan Allport @alanallport.bsky.social · 26/11/2024
Damn your eyes, I forgot that little Canuck creep!
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