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There is room for debate about those factors and how they played out at different times and in different places. But the suggestion that the difference in outcomes is explained by some difference in external intervention after 1989 doesn't hold up.

There are differences between the countries of central Europe and the Soviet Union, there are differences between nations wholly engulfed by the Russian Empire and those wholly or partly outside it (and yes the physical borders shifted more than once, but political and national history didn't).

Of course. But the world we are talking about did not spring into being at the point of Brexit or even the day the wall came down.

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But the fact that Western governments were providing bad advice does not change where the responsibility lies, still less explain the difference in outcomes.

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Once there was an efficient, transparent and well functioning stock market in place, then it would be possible to invest pension funds in it. It was very apparent that that was not the advice they wanted, and I never heard from them again.

Which is not to say that Western countries were wise and benevolent. At that time, I was working on occupational pensions policy, and was asked by the Foreign Office for advice on how pension funds could help kick start a Russian market. I said that they had it back to front:

Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 25/09/2026

No, that is not the difference at all. The difference is that Poland and Russia had and have radically different political and social cultures, which led to radically different behaviours and policies. They were both countries with agency, not puppets of external forces.

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And DCMS has been having an episode pretty much ever since

Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 25/09/2026

Have you never played Monopoly? ;-)

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Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 24/09/2026

It's easy to describe a better future. The hard question is how to get there from here.

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Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 24/09/2026

Naive panaceas for fixing the state are frustrating not just for the reason @hetanshah.bsky.social gives, but because there is never any serious attempt to describe why things are as they are and what it would take to change them.

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Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 23/09/2026

I replied saying that we found Oddbins provided a more than adequate service. And meanwhile his son Andrew went on to become rather better known. More or less at the same time, Anna Coote became an adviser to the new SoS. It's a small interconnected world.

Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 23/09/2026

Weird connection - El Vino was a family business, and the family concerned were the Mitchells, including a father and son, both MPs, a fact I learned when David Mitchell wrote to me offering their services to supply the ministerial drinks cabinet.

Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 23/09/2026

How can that be so? SDA 1975, s29 seems pretty clear, and indeed s29(1)(b) would presumably make it unlawful to refuse to serve pints to women (which of course has only a weak connection with what barmen would or wouldn't do) www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1975/6...

Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 22/09/2026

Don't overlook the need for an SI unit of measurement for them - the SI specifying the SI for SI will not be in any way confusing

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Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 22/09/2026

That really needs two likes, one for the thought and one for the attribution.

Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 21/09/2026

Reposted by Stefan Czerniawski

8. often, when people say LLMs "can do" something they mean LLMs can produce output that looks like the output of doing something 9. producing something that looks like the output of doing something is not the same thing as doing it

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Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 20/09/2026

This is Blue Sky. It's a lot more than one in ten round here. #metapedantry

Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 20/09/2026

More importantly, now that the Cabinet Office Rifle Brigade has moved out, who gets to control the sniper positions?

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Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 19/09/2026

Good for the British Museum to be bringing the logistics of the battlefield to life and not just the fighting

A cafe display fridge with shelves of cardboard boxes printed with Bayeux Tapestry images containing 'kids meals'

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Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 16/09/2026

Last year at the proms, a woman sitting behind me thought she would sing along, but sadly fell rather short of the standard of those on stage. My best hard stare had no effect.

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Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 15/09/2026

Benign is fragile over time, which is something of a problem

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Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 14/09/2026

The single yellow line is even better than the number plate as an example of somebody putting effort into being pointless

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Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 14/09/2026

Tempting as always - though amused to think of what would happen if anything were described as a 'cigarette' on a UK school dinner menu.

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Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 08/09/2026

Now I remember! And governments do indeed seem quite frazzled.

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Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 08/09/2026

And I can't decipher my own pitch. Or have any idea what I meant by it.

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Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 08/09/2026

The decades just rush by. There was a moment of optimism and possibility which #OneTeamGov embodied - still much needed, but feeling a bit more out of reach.

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Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 07/09/2026

You do at least live in the neighbourhood - I had to do that trip twice from London a few years ago, which at least made the passport itself seem cheap.

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So challenging a manager (a) to identify their poorest performer and (b) then to justify that they really do "meet expectations" is a good discipline. Forcing a distribution has too many bad side effects.

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That's not because identifying and dealing with the weakest performers is bad - quite the contrary - but because the arbitrariness obscures the real purpose.

This direct clarity is very welcome and the draft policy is an excellent starting point - with the one exception being the treatment of the bottom 10%, which risks recreating much of the pointless toxicity of past approaches (and perversely letting managers off the hook).

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Stefan Czerniawski @pubstr.at · 02/09/2026

TfL uncharacteristically responsive to feedback

Arrivals sign on a crowded tube platform with a message "trains are not stopping at Pimlico"

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It would. The very existence of part time bus lanes is a powerful indicator of the absence of logical thought. Even before getting to more specialist subjects such as motorbikes.

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True, but Heath had already spent 20 years in the politics business before becoming PM and then had a further 27 years as an MP afterwards. It's the post PM period which makes him an outlier.

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And failed to respect his sheer stamina for keeping it up for so many years - Heath spent considerably longer as an MP after having been PM than Starmer did in total

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The fact that they had had them to sell at full price goes a long way to explaining why they are closing