Monday 24 August, 2026

Big Skies A view of Brancaster beach that is almost painterly. Quote of the Day ”Successful investing is anticipating the anticipations of others.” John Maynard Keynes (I think he also likened betting on the stock market to judging a beauty contest, except you were assessing not the beauty of the contestants, but the opinions of other judges of it.) Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news Alison Krauss & Union Station | The Lucky One Link Long Read of the Day We already live in ‘clone towns’ – AI is making things worse My latest Observer column. In 2004 the New Economics Foundation (NEF) conducted a national survey of UK high streets, which were then still economically active. It found that real local shops had been replaced by swathes of identikit chain stores, making high streets up and down the country virtually indistinguishable from one another. It also came up with a new vocabulary for talking about urban areas. In this terminology, a “home town” is a place that retains…