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Paul Skidmore

@paulskidmore.bsky.social
1.1K followers 138 following 70 posts

Founder ‪@risingacademies.bsky.social‬; Trustee @gsf_talks; ex @institute.global @demos. Entrepreneurship; education; politics; global development. Dad of two. Enthusiastic but unskilled triathlete.

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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
No YOU'VE got something in your eye. Absolute legends. www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/...
bbc.co.uk
Runners help exhausted man finish Boston Marathon
The BBC spoke to Boston marathon runner, Ajay Haridasse, who was helped over the finish line by two strangers.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
As usual, Team Early To The *Wrong* Airport But Somehow Still Make Your Flight (twice, in the space of 6 weeks, at different pairs of airports) is excluded from the discourse. The comfort of knowing you're there in good time AND the adrenaline buzz that you aren't? Truly the best of both worlds.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 20/04/2026
The correct answer being "let my children have a crack at it"
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
I served on a jury for an Old Bailey murder trial. I also think we ended up with the right verdict (the defendants were acquitted on the grounds of self-defence) but the way we got there did not fill me with confidence in the system.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
You can burn my house, steal my car Drink my liquor from an old fruit jar Well, do anything that you want to do But, uh-uh, honey, don't wear an Elvis wig when you are a judge presiding over cases in Division 4 of the St Charles County Circuit Court.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
So much wisdom in this short blog from @daisychristo.bsky.social. Ostensibly it's about the potential of LLMs as tutors, but in the process it offers deeper insights about human learning and why edtech so often falls short of its promise to transform it substack.nomoremarking.com/p/llm-tutors...
substack.nomoremarking.com
Can LLMs be personal tutors?
Four big challenges
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
Well-known wet liberal <checks notes> Richard Nixon here on why micromanaging aid was counterproductive (from the report of his Africa tour in 1957 here history.state.gov/historicaldo...) h/t @jdevermont.bsky.social
The quoted text reads: 5. I believe that we often dissipate much of the political goodwill which our aid programs should engender by too much insistence on detail in our agreements with and programs in recipient countries, by slowness in implementing programs and by falsely raising expectations by engaging in too much planning for projects which have little, if any, hope of realization. These aspects of our aid programs should be carefully reviewed in an effort to assure the maximum political impact. In the new programs which we shall be implementing in Africa, we should make every effort to avoid the pitfalls we have encountered in other parts of the world.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 14/10/2025
Terrific paper from @lindseymacmillan.bsky.social and colleagues that should (but won't) put to bed the idea that standardized tests are worse for poor kids than teacher assessments. But lots of fresh insights beyond that, including about variation by subject repec-cepeo.ucl.ac.uk/cepeow/cepeo...
repec-cepeo.ucl.ac.uk
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
I found this the most revealing exchange in the (excellent) conversation between Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates. TNC makes this really important (and subtle) point: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/o...
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
As the great man said, "A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in and how many want out.”
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 19/08/2025
Yesterday was an eye-opening AI day for me. There was no single, mind-blowing "this changes everything" moment. On the contrary, it was precisely that there were a dozen completely unrelated things, spanning the personal and the professional.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
Should anyone 😬 be interested in a very readable single volume history of Liberia, I can recommend James Ciment’s “Another America” www.abebooks.co.uk/978080902695...
abebooks.co.uk
Another America: The Story of Liberia and the Former Slaves Who R - James Ciment: 9780809026951 - AbeBooks
James Ciment, in his enthralling history Another America, shows that the settlers struggled to balance their high ideals with their prejudices. On the steamy shores of West Africa, they re-created the...
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 18/06/2025
I don't disagree with the thrust of Sam's excellent piece but I'd argue that when considering ANY organisational change it's very seductive a) to focus on the diagnosis of all the things that are wrong and b) to think that a new structure will fix it (1/x)
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
Yes, total bullshit. WTLBH and TS&TW deserve their place in the top 5. Paper Dolls is brilliant on loss, joy and memory and should be way higher. None of the others would make my list. For sheer creative genius I don’t understand how you can overlook Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 16/06/2025
I ❤️ this paper, and not just because it touches on our work @risingacademies.bsky.social in Liberia. There is a fundamentally hopeful message here, namely: "Electoral rewards for the policy were commensurate with its effectiveness." Bravo @wsandholtz.bsky.social
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
This reminds me of the spectacular occasional @vizcomic.bsky.social series Half-Arsed Inventions, my favourite of which is the origin story of the sandwich toaster
8 panels from the satirical comic Viz describing (apocryphally) the moment that Mr Breville invented the toastie maker by leaving his trousers in a trouser press with a cheese sandwich in the pocket
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
Can’t help feel the “etc” made it a little too obvious they were phoning it in
A billboard with a public health message about the dangers of smoking. Image is a diseased lung and a list of the conditions smoking can cause, ending with “etc”
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 19/05/2025
Having my first experience of GPT 4o just being absolutely *terrible* at a task it was really good at a couple of months ago. As a Watford fan, this is a quite familiar experience, but not one I have had with AI before.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
This is a great bit of reporting and my main takeaway is that the options that made the final cut were, astonishingly, the best of a truly terrible bunch.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
I'm not sure it would ever have been possible to hold back the tide given persistent pressure on government spending. I basically stand by everything I wrote here about why that was predictable, and therefore the wrong focus. But I agree the sector didn’t help itself. medium.com/@pauljskidmo...
medium.com
A half-hearted hurrah for 0.7%
It’s official. As a matter of law, the UK must now spend 0.7% of its GDP on aid. As someone who works in development, believes in the…
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Startling numbers from Devex on the impact of the USAID funding freeze: $56bn in undisbursed commitments across ~12,000 recipient organisations. www.devex.com/news/how-the...
devex.com
How the aid freeze affects nearly $60 billion in USAID spending
The uncertainty around USAID’s future affects the tens of billions in unspent obligations that go beyond the current fiscal year.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
It is frustrating that every time there is an opportunity to test the more rigorous, more agile, more participatory methods the government championed in opposition, it seems to be ignored.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
Good (and brave) piece this www.devex.com/news/opinion...
devex.com
Opinion: As a CEO at an INGO, I know we need to adapt or die
Our response at Save the Children to a “post-ODA” world is to move to new funding models and invest in scalable solutions.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
I have successfully achieved a similar trick in persuading my two that there is such a thing as "grown-up" cereal (i.e. horrendously unhealthy sugary ones) which only I'm allowed to eat.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 17/01/2025
Big Organisation Syndrome: the tendency for large organisations (that don't have to worry about how to make payroll) to treat smaller organisations (that do) like sh*t. And yes, this is a subskeet.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
Great opening salvo from @raviguru.bsky.social. Love the idea about installers. Kevin @mulagostarr.bsky.social and his team like to ask their orgs "exactly who needs to do exactly what differently". This is a great example of how asking that question creatively gets you to interesting answers...
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 13/12/2024
Never look back, that’s my motto
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 08/12/2024
#Ghana showing how it’s done, with current VP and ruling party presidential candidate Mahamudu Bawumia graciously conceding before any results have officially been declared www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Ghana election result: John Mahama wins as Mahamudu Bawumia accepts defeat
Although the ruling party candidate has conceded, no official results have been declared.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 03/11/2024
Something I don’t understand about twin studies where the intervention is something like this. Are the twins supposed to stop talking to each other, or eating at each other’s house? Seems hard to avoid contamination.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 29/10/2024
This might be the single worst op-ed in the history of op-eds.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 28/10/2024
With Rachel Reeves’ first budget around the corner, idea for a retail crowd-pleaser courtesy of Ghana’s ruling NPP. Though I’d recommend changing “Premier League” to “Championship” and perhaps more specifically “Watford FC”
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 15/10/2024
I've seen pieces in the UK press praising the British Nobel winners, but I haven't seen anything highlighting the fact that there were British winners in multiple categories this time (physics, chemistry and economics). Maybe I'm misremembering but isn't that unusual - and worth celebrating?
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 15/10/2024
More mission-driven* doctors deliver better outcomes for patients at lower cost, according to a new US study. 41% fewer potentially preventable A&E visits and 9% lower spending cc @danhonig.bsky.social jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... * Strictly speaking, "more altruistic" but tapping the same idea
jamanetwork.com
Physician Altruism and Spending, Hospital Admissions, and Emergency Department Visits
This observational study examines the association between physician altruism, measures of quality, and spending, hypothesizing that altruistic physicians have better results.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 19/09/2024
A quote I love (from a book on writing) is that "brevity comes from selection not compression". I found that applied to cost savings in my business too. It's hard for govt to just stop doing things. But esp on the centre-left it feels like there needs to be a more public conversation about this.
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 19/09/2024
Counterpoint: making people in poor countries better off does not reduce migration (the opposite is true, as Michael Clemens' work shows), and using that as a rationale for defending the aid budget is tantamount to conceding that migration is intrinsically bad www.theguardian.com/business/202...
theguardian.com
One more item on Labour’s long to-do list: repair the UK aid budget | Larry Elliot
Action is needed to restore the damage done by the Tories to Britain’s international reputation
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 18/09/2024
Reminds me of this spectacular gag from Top Secret, featuring a very young Warren Clarke and an even younger Val Kilmer www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkWj...
youtube.com
Sgt. Krueger
YouTube video by Jeremy Joshua Rossi
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Paul Skidmore @paulskidmore.bsky.social · 11/09/2024
Achievement of the morning: managing to add a tiny Bluesky logo and link to my email signature, and deleting the Twitter one that used to be there. I guess that makes it official!
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