Eliminating noncompetes will probably mean that companies will have weirder benefits and rely more on internal software.

The roof of Old Street station technically qualifies as greenfield to stop anyone ever building on top of it.

Good piece here on fixing the UK's incredibly wasteful VAT regime, which gives away huge amounts of money to the highest spenders in the name of progressivity.

economist.com/britain/2024/0…

Great interview here with the founder of the California Forever project in Solano County. I'm excited by the ambition of this!

asteriskmag.com/issues/06/cali…

Good thread and some good ideas about how to improve things (except the VAT thing).

It’s a good point that child benefit for school-aged kids is much less useful than for pre-schoolers. Front-loading the same ££ - or giving people the option of that - could be very helpful.

Very good post on stock buybacks - why companies do them and why criticisms of them are largely mistaken.

open.substack.com/pub/philo/p/st…

If you’re a fan of ice cream, you’ve got to try my ice cream lifehack. I take it out of the freezer 20 minutes before I plan on eating it, so it’s softer by the time I do eat it. Might sound strange, but I’ll never go back to the normal method.

I would have hoped that in 2024 a central topic of the public conversation would be pandemic preparedness.

I would have expected that we would all be keen to make the investments that make it less likely to suffer through another pandemic, with more deaths and lockdowns.

Very good piece. One thing I would add is that historically people of all education levels would leave places like this, but when housing costs in destination cities are high, only better educated / more productive people can, so you get a more deprived “left behind” group.

Cheers! 🍻

Have disagreed with Open Democracy more often than not, but I don’t think it’s ever been bad faith, and I’m sad to see this. Hope everyone lands on their feet.

The Bill will NOT make pet theft a specific offence, and will not increase the maximum penalty for pet theft (& nor should it). It will however criminalise 'inducing a cat to accompany' you, for which the maximum sentence will be 5 years imprisonment.