Ben
@ben_curves
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growth/cities/energy/climate policy and projects
🇬🇧/🇨🇦
Joined October 2025
Amsterdam really is everything a city should be > safe > cheap and efficient public transport > charmingly dense > good active travel infra > pretty green lots to learn from the Dutch
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more devolution! no, not like that!!
NEW: Sec of State Steve Reed has written to @SouthCambs and @camcitco raising concerns about the four-day working week. Also summoning tnem to meet officials in his department to get assurances about impacts on services.
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Land acquisition £8bn Labour £12bn Unnecessary above ground tunnels £35bn Materials £10bn someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my high speed line is dying
We're driving productivity this year 👇 At 1.5 miles long, the Chipping Warden Green Tunnel is the most advanced of its kind on this section of the HS2 route. ✅ Over one mile of concrete foundations and blinding is now in place. ️✅ More than 1,500 metres of precast
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China is eating our lunch on nuclear energy: 1. The 2 US Vogtle reactors were 7 years late & $17 billion over budget 2. China built 13 similar reactors over the same period (with 33 more reactors underway) 3. By 2030, China's nuclear capacity is set to surpass the US 4. China
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this has surprised me. it’s laughable how bad labour’s messaging/comms is
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interesting paper… for all the talk of a graduate jobs crisis/AI replacing entry level roles, do we need to make it cheaper to hire young people?
Really nice @inaganguli paper w/ Raviv, relevant to AI world: early career training underprovided by the market. You don't want to make it harder for young people to gain skills: here, higher min wage = less undergrad hiring as RAs = nontrivial drop in science employment later.
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Featuring a perfect graph disproving the “it’s all gas, actually” argument for our high electricity bills. 46% of bill increase between 2015 and 2025 because of “policy costs”.
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Good report from @resfoundation on electricity bills & policy costs. This is the kicker: “these schemes [have] led to the evolution of what is, in effect, a shadow tax and benefit system hidden within energy bills.” https://t.co/ZSZ41sovwZ
resolutionfoundation.org
This note looks at the factors behind stubbornly high energy bills and how ministers could act to ease pressure on households. It considers how change can be enacted to work for vulnerable families...
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Their engineering/construction content is generally brilliant. HS2 episode is depressing.
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Strongly recommend The B1M’s Chinese embassy video; they pointed out a month ago it sits atop potentially sensitive cables, so not exactly breaking news. https://t.co/sht7ZWctu1
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A friend working for a homelessness charity recently told me about some student accommodation they’d converted into a shelter — only to be told by planning that they couldn’t open because it only had one staircase. Great job, everyone.
New second staircase rules are especially damaging. For buildings 18-50m, second staircase rules will not even save a single life over 70-years, while imposing £1.8bn in costs. Other countries like France, Germany, and Ireland, all chose 50+m as their single-stair height limit.
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office goals
What it's all about. 💜🥹 Prof. Joel Mokyr, winner of the @NobelPrize in Economic Sciences, shares a lovely message from a former student.
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instagram friends innocently sending me sora videos thinking they’re real, I’m about to have so much fun
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fascinating and alarming in equal measure, they’ll be saying my creatine is tainted next
my latest investigation for @ConsumerReports is based on months of reporting and 60+ lab tests of leading protein supplements we found that most protein powders and shakes have more lead in one serving than our experts say is safe to have in a day — some by more than 10 times !
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We are actually succeeding in de-linking gas prices from electricity prices, just the wrong way. Gas prices are going down while electricity is remaining stubbornly high. It will stay high due to: - A clapped out market - Unnecessarily massive network spend - Rising levies
Great to see the UK electricity cost debate move on from just blaming marginal costs: CEO of EDF UK points to the role of declining consumption driving up electricity costs in the UK 🇬🇧 Spreading more fixed costs over declining volumes is not the way forward....
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Great to see the UK electricity cost debate move on from just blaming marginal costs: CEO of EDF UK points to the role of declining consumption driving up electricity costs in the UK 🇬🇧 Spreading more fixed costs over declining volumes is not the way forward....
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Many environmentalists point towards the UK’s falling electricity demand and tell you it’s a good thing, but the opposite is true. Escaping this feedback loop, thereby lowering fixed costs, is essential if we’re to replace fossil fuels:
The UK is starting to care about moving towards cheap, abundant electricity But we have been in a tough feedback loop of high prices and falling volumes for a long time
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This will be the thing that triggers wider AI recognition and a ‘wake up’ moment in Westminster btw. Check back in on this tweet in 12 months.
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excellent primer who wants to join my campaign to axe the One Show and instead give Ed free reign on prime time BBC?
🎥 What on earth are rare earths? Why do they matter so much? Why do they nearly all come from China? And how worried should we be about the latest chapter in the trade war? These and more questions answered in my latest primer👇
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