Best Of

Listening to Today and they are talking about the problem with bots taking all tue driving test slots.

Chair of the Transport committee just said that they need a new website for booking to stop this but it will take 5 years.

Would any of our resident tech people explain to an analogue caveman like myself how it takes 5 years to build such a site and can they not buy existing ones off the shelf used by other countries and tweak it?

Seems absolutely bonkers that it takes 5 years.

Nope - I could use DVLAs preferred tool and give them a system within 6 months fully tested - and probably in a lot less time.

But the fix is simple - cancelled appointments go back into a pool and are available to everyone - don’t let instructors change the id on a test

US manufacturing accounts for about 8% of US jobs. If you eliminate the trade deficit entirely it would be about 10% of jobs. So you don't actually need many people at all to move into them, so the polling is fairly irrelevant.

The bigger point is that 100% will be paying more for goods for a max of 2-3% to get new manufacturing work. And of those 2-3% some won't enjoy their work, some will be illegal immigrants, and few will be well paid. The jobs may end up in the areas already with a decent economy rather than the hollowed out post industrial towns that need them.

All this is if you completely eliminated the trade deficit which is pretty unlikely. As public policy this is just bonkers.

Oh and another thing. With AI and other continued improvement in technology even if you bumped up manufacturing to 10% of US jobs instead of 8% now, further automation and productivity improvements would likely move it back to 8% and below within a decade anyway!

Richer countries just need to plan economies around a low number of manufacturing jobs.

Government also need to get their voters to understand the new world and mitigate the consequences of it for people who live in an area which was once wealthy because of something that no longer exists (the steel factory closed because of the lack of coal for want of a better example).

And it’s the failure of Governments across the world over the past 4 decades to do so which is why Trump is in power and why the AfD and Farage are doing so well politically

Another long night in A&E - this time with acute chest pain when breathing, probably pleural. But may be an embolism.

Unlike in genteel Hampstead, there has been an insane woman shouting and swearing for the last 2 hours about some domestic dispute to two extraordinarily patient policemen. She's breached a restraining order and also has some issues with Dunelm along with a number of people whose names she's been broadcasting to us all. Quite what she's doing in hospital God only knows.

At the rate I'm going I'll be writing a guide to A&E departments round the UK.

That sounds nasty.
All the best, Cyclefree.

Recent A&E experiences range from excellent (took someone in with a suspected stroke) to abysmal (sacroiliac tear).
Same A&E.

Well now I am being admitted. And they seem to have found some lumps and fluid.

Bugger!

Hope you can make a quick and full recovery, Miss Cyclefree.

Listening to Today and they are talking about the problem with bots taking all tue driving test slots.

Chair of the Transport committee just said that they need a new website for booking to stop this but it will take 5 years.

Would any of our resident tech people explain to an analogue caveman like myself how it takes 5 years to build such a site and can they not buy existing ones off the shelf used by other countries and tweak it?

Seems absolutely bonkers that it takes 5 years.

Spend a year on specifications, another year on tendering it out, another year being told by the consultants you hired that it's going to take much longer and be more expensive than you thought, the year after change all the specs to try and save cash, year after do nothing at all until you finally cancel it having spaffed away the original eye-watering budget.

Easy!

I think this polling is a rather depressing reflection of how people think about the economy. More manufacturing does not necessarily mean more jobs, given potential for automation and other forms of innovation.

The UK, for example, produces a very large proportion of our food, yet only 1% of the population work in agriculture. Only 150,000 people work in energy generation, and that will likely fall even as we increase out output via renewables. We could open dozens of new EAFs and produce much more steel than we do now, yet employ fewer people than in our blast furnaces. We might end up entirely replacing the RAF with AI-flown drones.

An economy structured around maximising employment in certain sectors is doomed to fail, IMO. It should really be the opposite, opening up labour for new areas of economic growth, or more time for fun, raising children, looking after elderly relatives and so on.

TLDR Being pro domestic manufacturing does not mean being pro domestic manufacturing jobs.

Another long night in A&E - this time with acute chest pain when breathing, probably pleural. But may be an embolism.

Unlike in genteel Hampstead, there has been an insane woman shouting and swearing for the last 2 hours about some domestic dispute to two extraordinarily patient policemen. She's breached a restraining order and also has some issues with Dunelm along with a number of people whose names she's been broadcasting to us all. Quite what she's doing in hospital God only knows.

At the rate I'm going I'll be writing a guide to A&E departments round the UK.

That sounds nasty.
All the best, Cyclefree.

Recent A&E experiences range from excellent (took someone in with a suspected stroke) to abysmal (sacroiliac tear).
Same A&E.

Well now I am being admitted. And they seem to have found some lumps and fluid.

Bugger!

Sorry to hear that @Cyclefree. Hope things go better for you.

My latest comment on a few points on my favourite Trumpist channel.

I'm always interested to see defences of the Trump line.

Perhaps most revealing is Trump's willingness entirely to ignore law when legal processes are available to achieve his objective. That is overreach, and imo will be his downfall. And then he covers his backside with a blizzard of obfuscation and rhetoric.

Who are these allies whom Mr Trump is going to force to choose the USA or China? Trump has tried to mug them all, and they are wary. It's transactional, and since the USA no longer places any weight on treaties or agreements or trust, cooperation is either a) where there is no option or b) where there is guaranteed leverage or c) where the USA gets a major benefit.

Trump's head is stuck in about 1950, and the USA is not predominant as he thinks. His USA vs China framing does not reflect reality, and will be rejected. I expect the developed democracies (which no longer include the USA) to move over time to a newer structure, and the world will have more poles than USA vs China. The USA will be cooperated with, but has proven that it cannot be trusted.
.

The irony there is that you can’t even trust Trump on a transactional basis - he will accept what you offer and then wriggle out of his side of the deal anyway he can.

It’s why I think most countries if pushed to choice between the USA and China in the forthcoming trade war are likely to land on China’s side of the battle