HeyJaredTom Watson's Newsletter
I'm a semi-retired politician, but this newsletter is about more than politics. It’s for friends and fellow travellers navigating the middle years, looking to live actively, stay curious, read widely, and fill life with music, conversation and movement.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 5
- Latest publication
- Aug 14, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 6, 2026
Latest issues
Why I've just joined the waitlist for a wee test (opens the original)
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D-J Collins has been a friend of mine for thirty years. I've watched him excel as an industrial press officer, government adviser, in the tech world, and in business ever since. He has always succeeded. Now he faces his biggest and most important challenge yet.Three years ago he decided to spend his energy on something that might actually save lives. He co-founded Early with the designer Thomas Heatherwick, and I’ve watched him pour everything into it since.A third of cancers are still diagnosed
Who Owns the Learning? (opens the original)
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Back in ancient times, when I was writing programs in Sinclair BASIC, the machine knew nothing. Everything it did, I had to teach it. When I wrote a scheduling program for the home helps at my dad’s work, the Spectrum could not improve what it did without me.<i
The FFS programme (opens the original)
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It has been several months since I gave you a proper update on my health.Next week, I receive test results that I hope will confirm I am free of prostate cancer. This is my second time through treatment. If the cancer returns again, the treatment pathways will be more aggressive.I cannot control what the results say. I can do something about the physical condition in which I receive them. I need to be fit and ready for whatever comes next.This has led me to what I call the FFS programme: Fatness
British music does not have a talent problem. It has a discovery problem. (opens the original)
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The talent is where it always was: in tiny bedrooms, garages and the back rooms of bars. What has collapsed is the machinery that carried it from there to the rest of us. And the BBC, which built the best of that machinery, can help build its replacement.When I was a boy, my week ran on two appointments: Top of the Pops on a Thursday, then the chart countdown on Radio 1 at Sunday teatime. Millions of us heard the same songs at the same moment, and on Monday morning the playground held the inques
Andy Burnham can learn from Harold Wilson on Europe (opens the original)
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The European question in Britain has never been only about Europe. It has always been about Britain: what sort of country it thinks it is, where its power lies and how long it can afford to deny its post-imperial status in the world.That is why Andy Burnham’s recent movement on the EU is important. At Labour conference last September, he said he wanted Britain to rejoin the European Union in his lifetime. More recently the line became more guarded. He acknowledged a long-term case, but said rejo
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