I am pleased to see the government response to Task Force on Nuclear Regulation. First, it has been published on time which sends a positive signal about priorities. Second, the detailed and considered response shows that the Government is serious about reform. Third, almost every recommendation is to be taken forward fully. All of this should help bring about a substantial reduction in cost and delivery schedules for new nuclear. This should spur greater confidence for investors in nuclear in the UK. A few recommendations will be taken forward in a different way that in our report, as we envisaged. The role of the Implementation structure will be critical in continuing to ensure that this is prioritised.

A call to all entrepreneurs, founders, small business owners in Europe and anyone else who aspires to star a company at some point. This is the moment to act and let your voice be heard on EU Inc. EU Inc is the proposed legislation to make it easier to start and grow a company across Europe. It is now in front of the European Parliament and also being negotiated by governments. The objective should be very clear: you should be able to start and grow your company in Europe as your home market. What this should mean is, I think, at a minimum this: 1, You should be able to start a company online and cheaply. 2. You should be able to have a simple registration that you can fill out by yourself, with secure identity checks built in. You should not be forced to hire and pay a notary for this process. 3. The basic rules should be the same across Europe and should be common. There should be one registry with common rules and you shouldn't have to go to the lawyers of each country to set up different subsidiaries. 4. There should be a simple way to give employees a share in what they are helping you build, through stock options. They should only pay the tax when they sell those shares and when they receive the money. 5. The paperwork should be much simplified. There should be one channel for doing the VAT across borders and use the time saved to do your job and not to do paperwork. 6. The rules should support the entire life of the business; raising money, growing, going public, and also liquidating a failed business should all be done under the European common rules. Opening a bank account in another country, hiring across borders should be seemless. The European Commission made an initial proposal that was not sufficiently ambitious in my view but that was a useful start: it had online registration in 48 hours for less than €100 and measures to facilitate the taxation of employee stock options. It had some rules on common liquidation of the companies. In my view it was not ambitious enough because it allowed national authorities to impose further requirements, such as notaries. It was already falling short on tax and employment, but the reforms that the other institutions are introducing are making it even less ambitious. The draft that is being discussed by the governments eliminates the European company register and replaces it with a website that is just a portal to underlying national systems. This does not improve the creation of companies in any way. They're also eliminating the common procedures to liquidate failed companies, which was very useful because it facilitates the financing of these companies. The danger in the legislation is that it will require so many national exceptions that the founders will, in fact, end up facing still all the different regimes and it will make absolutely no difference. What I suggest here is that you write to your member of the European Parliament this week. Tell them about the obstacles your business is facing: the paperwork, the difficulty of giving shares, of raising money across borders. Explain what it costs and why it makes it difficult to create employment. Ask them what they will do to help you to make this legislation useful. Your MEPs work for you. Here are their contact details: competecentre.eu/the-launch-… The MEP leading Parliament’s work is René Repasi. The other political-group negotiators are Axel Voss, Pascale Piera, Mario Mantovani, Pascal Canfin, Sergey Lagodinsky, Kira Marie Peter-Hansen, Arash Saeidi and Marcin Sypniewski. Share this with other entrepreneurs. Help make sure that the people writing the law hear from the people that the law is meant to help.

4/4 Our tracker relies on publicly available information. It is possible there are things going on behind the scenes. But from what we can see publicly, the Fingleton Review is being slow walked by officials, and it is not clear that ministers have got a grip of it. Get the full picture here: nuclear.britishprogress.org/

3/4 Just 10 of the recommendations have shown real progress since April. On 23 of them, essentially nothing has happened at all. Just 10 of the recommendations have shown real progress since April. On 23 of them, essentially nothing has happened at all.

2/4 Looking closer shows the same picture, but at higher resolution. The government is slipping behind schedule.

It has been about six months since the Fingleton Review, and on most of the recommendations, nothing has been done. The review is clearly being slow-walked by departments, and it isn't obvious anyone has a grip on it. We built the tracker because we suspected this would happen. I thought public accountability might speed things up. Apparently not? Let's change that.

Even if one disagrees partly with the choices of economist, this is a brilliant introduction to price theory. it shows how AI can be used in education

How are prices determined? While I slept, Claude made me "History of economic thought since Aristotle." I asked it to use my favourite textbook (Blaug, Economic Theory in retrospect). The result will astonish of you. Even top economists here will learn something, I promise.

Don’t get ‘locked in’ by EU rules, top nuclear adviser warns Burnham politico.eu/article/eu-rules…

“There’s a huge opportunity for countries with a renaissance in nuclear.” John Fingleton CBE, Executive Chair, Fingleton, shares advice for existing nuclear countries looking to kick-start growth. #NuclearEnergy #NuclearSympo #Symposium2026

We have just finished the inaugural meeting of the Rhine Group. We discussed the central elements of Europe's competitiveness agenda, including basic science, AI/compute and cybersecurity, defense, energy, entrepreneurship/start-ups. I will be updating you on any progress we may have. Some of the projects we will pursue include: - We'll help Europe catch up on compute (Mario Draghi diagnosed the problem and some solutions in a recent FT piece) - We’ll help European universities and scientific institutions and explore a Rhine Chair program with European universities. - We’ll work on some key EU policy challenges, including facilitating the flow of capital to entrepreneurs. - We will set up a grants program that I will explain and announce here.

This video about the "genius design" of the Madrid Metro needs to be seen by every Dubliner who wants a cheap, fast and affordable Metro in our city. Just bring in the Spaniards and let them do it. piped.video/watch?v=utt-KnIM…

Yes yes, of course the hospitality lobby says the tourist tax will hammer tourism. Of course they've come up with huge, scary numbers (which we can't verify). But the thing is, they're right. The tax *will* reduce tourism. The question is: how much? So we tried to find out:

If you've never read this oral history of Air Force One, POTUS, and the people with him on 9/11, it's incredible: politico.com/magazine/story/…

Microsoft Teams is one of the purest examples in tech of distribution beating product quality. Teams is a piece-of-shit product that's better distributed than Zoom -- bundled into the enterprise stack and already sitting in front of millions of users. What's another product this mediocre with distribution this good?

And here's a table assessing all the recent tax cut proposals by their "bang for the buck": the £ of additional GDP we'll get for each £ deployed as a tax cut. Pretty depressing that the tax cuts that get the most airtime are also the worst at driving growth.

Last night we hosted Abundance: Building the UK Energy System at our new office - an evening of conversations with the people who shape policy, on the challenges that will define UK energy over the next decade. We were honest about the problems. Energy costs are too high. Demand is about to surge as AI and electrification take off. And growth is slow because Britain can't build fast enough: grid connections take years, planning decisions drift past their deadlines, and plug-in batteries that could cut household bills sit behind a safety study, with rules not expected before 2028. But the message of the evening was optimism. Every one of these barriers is fixable - and we're ready to work with government to get it done. We especially want to thank @KanishkaNarayan, Minister for AI; @ClaireCoutinho, former Shadow Energy Secretary; @JohnFingleton1 CBE; @Jameswise (Balderton Capital); and @HarryStebbings (20VC) for joining our founders @alanchanguk (CEO) and @charlesorr (COO) on stage. Thank you to everyone who joined us. The problems are known. The fixes are on the table. Now we build.

Dynastic bias for academic economists is higher than for lawyers and doctors but much much smaller than for US politicians. academic.oup.com/restud/arti…

Tariff confusion | CEPR By Kalina Manova, Dennis Novy, Thomas Sampson, Aaron Tang cepr.org/voxeu/columns/tarif…

We should tackle the greatest harm first and be practical about results First, it is food delivery and other bikes that have had the speed limiter removed that are the greatest danger. These don't just run red lights, but go up one way streets, and pavements. As long as the law is not enforced against them, how can we expect other users to take it seriously. Second, we could introduce an compliance and etiquette test for all ebike users, testing them on use of the road. A lot of users of ebikes seem never to have driven or used a regular bike. That's great for mobility and carbon use, but we need to improve standards Third, ebike providers should have to stop the charging clock at red lights to reduce bad incentives. Fourth, if we are going to police red lights with enforcement, I suggest we focus on the most serious infringements first. We should prioritise those few people who speed through busy junctions without care or attention to pedestrians or cars, often causing cars etc to brake. Unfortunately, it is easier to enforce against riders who run a red pedestrian light than to catch somebody going dangerously at speed in a busy area. Can e-bike companies control their rogue riders? ft.com/content/239df019-16a0… via @ft

Europe's natural population change in 2022, births minus deaths with migration excluded. Almost the whole continent saw more deaths than births, with only a few countries such as France, Ireland and Turkey still growing.