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👋 Good morning! It’s Saturday 23 May 2026. I’m Neil McIntosh, editor of The Early Line, and it’s great to have you here.
📣 Happy Saturday!
A huge thankyou to the big influx of people who have chosen to upgrade to paid membership in the last few weeks: your subscriptions make The Early Line possible, and are the best possible boost to morale each morning at 5am 🙂
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And if that’s not for you, no problem: see you on Monday when the free Early Line is back at 7am, or just after when I finish typing.
Have a wonderful weekend, all!
☀️ The weekend’s weather: Forgive the modest burst of patriotic relief, but it really is a terrific weekend to be in Scotland: Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Inverness will all be pleasantly warm with sunny spells: terrific weather to be out and about. By contrast, London is going to be roasting, with heat health alerts covering the midlands and south east of England. (Here’s the UK forecast).
SIX THINGS TO TALK ABOUT
How social media has created a British ‘economic catastrophe’ | Scottish football’s coke problem | Andreessen on Rogan on AI | Why are energy bills so high? | A global tourism backlash | Buy your own bay
🍸 It’s an “economic catastrophe” being caused by social media. One million young British people are “neets” - not in education, employment or training.
And a landmark report, out next week, will lay the blame for all that economic inactivity at the door of a “rising tide of mental ill-health, anxiety, depression, neurodiversity” caused by social media and mobile phones.
Author Alan Milburn, the former Labour minister, is calling them “a bedroom generation” who are “sort of living in their bedrooms. They are on all the time, they’re never off.
“[Social media] is leading to some evidence of functional impairment, changing their sleep patterns, concentration levels. That is having an impact on their ability to work.
“They are not snowflakes. People say it’s a soft generation. My view unequivocally is that it isn’t. It is an anxious generation.”
His report says it’s also a necessity that these people are helped back to work, with welfare reform and changed approaches from employers both keys to that shift. He tells the Times: “We’re at risk of just writing a whole generation off”. (Independent)
Upgrade to read the full Party Line, including…
Scottish football’s cocaine problem
Andreessen on Rogan on AI (goes on forever, but contains insight)
Why are UK energy bills so high?
A global tourism backlash gathers pace
An antidote to civilization: buy your own secluded bay
PLUS: find top TV, film and sporting picks for the weekend.
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