Best Of

I read in the Grauniad that Keith's speech is going to say that the answer to the rise of the far right is growth.

OK, fine. Poverty is the driver of all of these protests - people feeling well off and content in their lot do not feel the need to shout at buildings.

But *how* are we to get this growth? Because the investment we need to be making in jobs and skills and infrastructure we're not going to make because apparently we can't afford it.

To be honest I think the era of perpetual growth is over. What comes next? I don’t know. It probably won’t be great though.

We are on the verge of a tech inspired growth explosion that might be more impactful than the taming of fire. The real question is the extent to which that new wealth (and associated power) gets concentrated.

The other question is whether any of it at all gets concentrated in the UK.

They had the chap who confounded Games Workshop on R4 this morning talking about the Games industry in light of the Saudi buy and it’s the same story as with anything vaguely technological in the UK. People in the UK create great things, nobody wants to really throw funding into them and then a US company or similar swoop in, buy it and then pocket all the upside, the taxes, the growth.

This should be at the forefront of political thinking at the moment - I want to hear Kemi, or anyone, start putting together really strong proposals for keeping innovation in the UK so we reap the long term rewards.

Is it structural or is it cultural?

You can see the difference watching Dragons Den back to back with Shark Tank. The Americans throw vast sums at anything vaguely promising but the Brits will invest small amounts in basically a sure thing.

Are we just chronically risk adverse?

Private Equity says hello in a swashbuckling style. Pirates the lot of them.

Are their swashes really that buckled, or their buckles really that swashed?

An awful lot of PE seems to be buying up cash cows and loading them with borrowing.

Private Equity isn’t Venture Capital.

In fact it is something close to the reverse. Huge piles of cash looking for a certain return. Buying a going concern and finacialising it is a certain return in the short/medium term.

Whereas VC is about finding the 1% chance.

There is next to no VC in the U.K. - by the standards of the US.

I’ve been out. I presume various posters have apologised over their false assumptions about the Banbury gang rape case? https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/25501324.suspects-ethnicity-released-banbury-gang-rape/

Just a big reminder for all the tribally political men on this site...
'A woman aged in her 30s was attacked by a group of men at the churchyard of St Mary's Church in Banbury during the early hours of Sunday morning, September 28.'

Again, would you please give your heads a wobble on this site and remember that there is a yet another female victim here who suffered a horrendous sexual assault regardless of the make up of her attackers!! I just dispair of the way the actual female victims and their ordeals have been discarded and ignored on sites like this or on other social media sites while the focus becomes about a point scoring debate over the man/men who carried out the attack!!!

What’s most notable about our current economic and political malaise is how, frankly, “mid” it is. 6 and 7.

I was at a dinner last night, a continuation of what is becoming that worryingly unhealthy Autumn event season that by the end of it has you longing for a home dinner of tomato pasta and a cup of tea. Surrounded by international colleagues and clients in a ridiculous place called Bacchanalia in Mayfair. The dining room was decorated by the same interior designers behind Leon’s flat overhaul.



They all have the same economic doldrums, the same low-energy passive aggressive attitude towards their governments. None of their countries are doing particularly mad or stupid things (there were no Americans there). It is all just a bit mid.

Starmer it seems is one of those myriad politicians who’s respected and liked more abroad than at home. They were very complimentary about his support for Zelenskyy, especially after the Oval Office debacle. But also not surprised at his unpopularity here, because that’s the pattern everywhere.

I read in the Grauniad that Keith's speech is going to say that the answer to the rise of the far right is growth.

OK, fine. Poverty is the driver of all of these protests - people feeling well off and content in their lot do not feel the need to shout at buildings.

But *how* are we to get this growth? Because the investment we need to be making in jobs and skills and infrastructure we're not going to make because apparently we can't afford it.

To be honest I think the era of perpetual growth is over. What comes next? I don’t know. It probably won’t be great though.

We are on the verge of a tech inspired growth explosion that might be more impactful than the taming of fire. The real question is the extent to which that new wealth (and associated power) gets concentrated.

The other question is whether any of it at all gets concentrated in the UK.

They had the chap who confounded Games Workshop on R4 this morning talking about the Games industry in light of the Saudi buy and it’s the same story as with anything vaguely technological in the UK. People in the UK create great things, nobody wants to really throw funding into them and then a US company or similar swoop in, buy it and then pocket all the upside, the taxes, the growth.

This should be at the forefront of political thinking at the moment - I want to hear Kemi, or anyone, start putting together really strong proposals for keeping innovation in the UK so we reap the long term rewards.

https://thekenyatimes.com/war/trump-deploys-u-s-air-force-tankers/

Uh oh.

The RAFs contribution to Operation Eastern Sentry is a couple of Typhoons flying out of one of the English air bases, I forget which one, and they have to be refueled three times before they reach Polish air space. Presumably three times more on the way back, and extra times if they want to remain in Polish air space for any meaningful period.

I don't suppose Britain has the refuelling fleet to repeat Operation Black Buck these days, so I expect there will be plenty of use for USAF refuellers.

• USAF use the flying-boom refueling method
  
• UK uses the probe-and-drogue refuelling method
  

They are incompatible with each other. Although an adaptor can be fitted on a boom to turn it into a drogue

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_refueling

It goes like this:

• USAF refuelling aircraft have a boy part and USAF fighters have a girl part
  
• RAF refueling aircraft have a girl part and RAF fighters have a boy part
  
• But USAF refuelling aircraft can have their boy part adapted to be a girl part and can refuel the RAF's boy part
  

There you go. Totally different to trans and I'm sure we're all relieved by that

(note: this is genuinely how aerial refuelling works)