linky links

London is funding the rest of the UK, and other things we just learned about the nation's taxes | CityMetric
Interesting, if depressing, summary of some of the numbers in a Centre for Cities report on economy taxes with some nice infographics.
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PHD Comics: Doing vs Writing
This isn't entirely accurate for Computer Science, but I do sometimes get frustrated that the "doing" of programming up case studies and examples yields comparatively little in terms of publishable results.
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Britain is changed utterly. Unless this summer is just a bad dream | Ian McEwan | Opinion | The Guardian
An extraordinarily cynical piece but one which sums up a lot of what I've been feeling the past couple of weeks, right up to the final paragraph which sounds a note of, I would say, unwarranted Remainer optimism.
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The Corbyn Dilemma — Dan Rebellato
I agree with about 75% of this. I got myself a £3 special for the last Labour leadership election but didn't use it to vote for Corbyn. I find it hard to get a good grip on his policies or leadership, in part because most commentators treat him as either a saintly martyr or the devil incarnate and he clearly is neither. He comes across to me as a political scrapper with steely determination and some distinctly dubious allies but nevertheless an idealistic one. Where he seems to have failed is raising his game from backbench "in the trenches" activism into a frontbench grand vision. I'm not, personally, very taken with him, but just at the moment the PLP and Labour NEC seem to me to be worse.
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Forget Brexit — Italy is poised to tear Europe apart | Europe | News | The Independent
There's another referendum coming up which may topple a government...
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Can Theresa May make it to the top? | Gaby Hinsliff | Politics | The Guardian
Recommended by my sister, an insightful profile of Theresa May from 18 months ago.
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How the BBC's obsession with balance took Labour off air ahead of Brexit
I have huge sympathy with the BBC's nigh on impossible task of being "balanced" so what particularly interested me here was not the general thrust of the argument but the stats comparing the number of media appearances by Corbyn in contrast to Johnson which rather undermines the suggestion he didn't campaign hard enough for Remain.
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Theresa May reshuffle: what is behind the PM's top appointments?
Interesting analysis of Teresa May's appointment of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary which avoids the tempting (but probably incorrect) idea that she's merely giving him the rope with which to hang himself when Brexit fails (for some meaning of the word "fail").
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Doctor Who | Punishment - YouTube
I'm not much of a one for fanvids, but his Doctor Who one is excellent - very angsty mind.
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