Something a little different today, as part of an occasional series of things on the internet I have read recently that I think you might enjoy too.
1. A map of countries smaller than the two billion American parking spaces put together
2. That map doesn't include New Zealand! Here's a thread of maps that somehow managed not to include our cousins from Middle Earth
3. Ipsos's latest Veracity Index has been released. Nurses are the most trusted profession by the public, politicians generally the least. Journalists not pulling up many trees here
4. Between April and September this year, food banks in the Trussell community handed out more than 1.4 million emergency food parcels, including 500,000 for children facing hunger across the UK. The number of parcels provided is 69 per cent greater than the same period in 2019
5. Sam Freedman's description of John Prescott to anyone too young to remember him: "Imagine Angela Rayner except she's male/overweight plus Starmer and Reeves are really good at politics but hate each other + she has to stop them fighting all the time."
6. There have been renewed calls for opinion polls to be banned prior to election day. Further evidence for my theory that Britain wants to make everything free, illegal or mandatory
7. UK in a Changing Europe has released its latest UK-EU Divergence Tracker. Tl;dr – Labour is setting plans to actively align with EU rules. This represents a significant change in policy compared with the previous government
9. Bluesky, the upstart social media platform, has surpassed 21 million users.
10. More than almost anything else, this chart explains why Donald Trump won.
11. What if the energy transition is cheaper than we think?
12. Nigella Lawson doing Nigella Lawson things
13. Wes Streeting is always worth reading in full. Here he is on the government's ambition to reform the NHS.
14. You know Energy Performance Certificates (EPC), those largely unenlightening documents required to sell/rent out a property? What if we made them better?
15. The UK's bonkers tax system, part MCXVII, via Duncan Robinson: "From April the threshold for paying back a student loan (£25,000) and the minimum wage on a full-time job will cross over. The result is that any graduate with a full-time job, whether that be stacking shelves in Tesco or training as a lawyer, will face a de facto marginal tax rate of at least 37%."
16. The waiting list for an NHS autism assessment has surpassed 200,000 for the first time. Children face a median wait time of a year for a first contact
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