"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
If it stops the boats coming across the Channel then Priti will be lauded by the Tory right and the chances of her succeeding Boris as Tory leader will increase accordingly
The only thing that will stop the boats is the weather.
Wes Streeting is clearly a good alternative, also got Reeves.
Who do the Tories have? And what is their route to a majority?
The Tories have the grey vote in the bag. It's a powerful advantage in a GE, and may well be enough.
The Tories need to win over 45s for another majority. If they only win over 50s that might be enough for a hung parliament but probably not enough to keep them in government. If they only win over 65s then Labour will be in government with a majority
That sounds about right. My point is merely that, the heavier the Conservative victory amongst the retired and near-retired, the higher the crossover age they can get away with whilst still remaining in office.
"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
If it stops the boats coming across the Channel then Priti will be lauded by the Tory right and the chances of her succeeding Boris as Tory leader will increase accordingly
Very polite and very serious question. Do you personally think this will stop the boats coming across the Chanel?
The opening up of regular ways of getting across the Channel will stop the boats coming.
"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
If it stops the boats coming across the Channel then Priti will be lauded by the Tory right and the chances of her succeeding Boris as Tory leader will increase accordingly
Very polite and very serious question. Do you personally think this will stop the boats coming across the Chanel?
"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
As ever, Yes Prime Minister was there first, just substitute "unemployment" with "boats crossing the Channel":
Sir Arnold: "I presume the Prime Minister is in favour of this scheme because it will reduce unemployment?" Sir Humphrey: "Well, it looks as if he's reducing unemployment." Sir Arnold: "Or looks as if he's trying to reduce unemployment." Sir Humphrey: "While as in reality he's only trying to look as if he's trying to reduce unemployment." Sir Arnold: "Yes, because he's worried that it does not look as if he's trying to look as if he's trying to reduce unemployment."
"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
If it stops the boats coming across the Channel then Priti will be lauded by the Tory right and the chances of her succeeding Boris as Tory leader will increase accordingly
Very polite and very serious question. Do you personally think this will stop the boats coming across the Chanel?
"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
If it stops the boats coming across the Channel then Priti will be lauded by the Tory right and the chances of her succeeding Boris as Tory leader will increase accordingly
The only thing that will stop the boats is the weather.
Utter tosh.
We didn't have boats (in meaningful numbers) historically, because there were easier ways of getting into the UK. With Covid and the virtual stopping of regular ways of crossing borders, people started using boats.
This meant people thought the number of migrants had increased when it had actually collapsed - it's just they all arrived at the height of summer by small boats in Southern England.
With travel opening up again, they'll now be dispersed and a lot less visible. Even if there are more of them.
"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
If it stops the boats coming across the Channel then Priti will be lauded by the Tory right and the chances of her succeeding Boris as Tory leader will increase accordingly
Very polite and very serious question. Do you personally think this will stop the boats coming across the Chanel?
I think it could reduce them
You used if instead of when. I’ll put you down as not convinced.
"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
If it stops the boats coming across the Channel then Priti will be lauded by the Tory right and the chances of her succeeding Boris as Tory leader will increase accordingly
The only thing that will stop the boats is the weather.
Utter tosh.
We didn't have boats (in meaningful numbers) historically, because there were easier ways of getting into the UK. With Covid and the virtual stopping of regular ways of crossing borders, people started using boats.
This meant people thought the number of migrants had increased when it had actually collapsed - it's just they all arrived at the height of summer by small boats in Southern England.
With travel opening up again, they'll now be dispersed and a lot less visible. Even if there are more of them.
The traffickers can use lorry’s and cars again you mean?
It will make Patel and the government look good, swapping explicit Chanel crossers for a greater number of invisible ones.
I wonder what happens if Tether falls? Does the whole crypto market just break down? I'm not a domain expert, would be interested to hear from @rcs1000 and @edmundintokyo on it.
When Tether fails the whole crypto market implodes. The volume of BTC-Tether transacrions utterly dominates BTC-RealActualMoney transactions.
Crypto is priced in Tethers, not USD.
That doesn't sound like a risky proposition at all.
In the last 24 hours 109 Billion Dollars worth of Ethereum and Bitcoin have been traded. By far the largest volumes of any non-stablecoin crypto currency. The next one down is XRP-Ripple at 2 billion).
107 Billion Tether have been traded in that time period (plus 23 billion usdc and busd).
There is very, very little real money in the system.
I guess the question is how much real money is Tether backed by? What would happen if $100bn worth of BTC were traded to USDT and then cashed out tomorrow? I feel like that's where we're at and people who want to trade in their USDT for actual money will be stuffed pretty soon.
The question is whether or not the dollar is "real money" when you can print as much of it as you like at will...
Yes it is because my dollars still buy things in shops.
Until hyperinflation kicks in.
A fascinating look at what happened after the gold standard was abandoned in 1971...
We have a working alternative to fiat currencies if you want to hedge against inflation, its called gold.
Crypto currencies are the Pyrite answer to fiat. If you're worried about money being printed, did you ever stop to think where the trillions of dollars worth of crypto 'assets' came from? BTC, Doge, Eth, Celsius, Luna, USDT, USDC and the plethora of other bollocks of crypto that exists, where have they come from apart from being "printed"? Nobody dug in the ground and got a vein of Etherium.
Gold has a value, because its valued physically and is physically required for industry and for jewellery and is in limited supply so you know people will need gold in the future which makes it valuable.
Fiat currencies have a value, because they are required to pay the taxes of the countries behind those currencies, so the citizens of those countries need to acquire those currencies in order to pay their taxes, meaning that you know in the future you can exchange dollars for the goods and labor [sic] of Americans.
Crypto assets are every bit as fiat as fiat currencies, but they have nothing of value behind them, except the expectation that some other mug will buy it off you next time thinking "number goes up" too.
There's an unlimited amount of crypto in aggregate, but a finite amount of each individual crypto. There is also utility: some people want a way to transfer assets across borders or between people electronically and pseudonymously.
The way I look at this is to ask: does this coin have any additional utility over Bitcoin? - to which the answer is that Monero (privacy) and Ethereum (smart contracts) do, and everything else does not.
The price of every other cryptocurrency (Ripple, Bitcoin Gold, etc.) is going to zero.
And the price of what remains is determined by how much underlying currency is required to facilitate anonymous payments (and smart contracts in the case of ethereum). And I'd reckon it's probably somewhere in the $20-30bn range right now. So that means the market cap of BTC should probably be $15bn, Monero $2bn and Ethereum $6bn.
I think that's very optimistic about those three.
Ultimately yes the technology may have some uses, but the problem for Bitcoin is that it's own fanatics have ensured the costs of maintaining it have now become astronomical.
There may be a utility to cross border blockchains, but there's no requirement that the Blockchain consumes the electricity of a medium sized country to be maintained. There is ultimately nothing preventing a better designed and less flawed crypto currency coming about which is more trusted and less expensive.
Bitcoin and the rest of the existing cryptos could very easily be the MySpace of the crypto currency technology.
This looks like a Lib Dem outlier and it's a notably low REFUK score which implies some oddities in there. LLG at 60% is the highest combined score I've seen since one outlier with 63%.
LLG - CR (Con + RefUK): 60 - 34 = 26% gap, which is the highest I think in this electoral cycle. Not much Reform VI for the Tories to get back.
Still 1% below Ashdown 1997 levels let alone Kennedy 2005 and Clegg 2010 levels.
However certainly suggests the best LD voteshare at a general election since the Coalition
Thank you for the agreement!
FWIW Jo Swinson's Liberal Democrats™ did better than that in the run-up to the last election - and still the situation did not necessarily develop to her, or their, advantage.
People who follow politics are always getting over-excited about polls.
I wonder what happens if Tether falls? Does the whole crypto market just break down? I'm not a domain expert, would be interested to hear from @rcs1000 and @edmundintokyo on it.
When Tether fails the whole crypto market implodes. The volume of BTC-Tether transacrions utterly dominates BTC-RealActualMoney transactions.
Crypto is priced in Tethers, not USD.
That doesn't sound like a risky proposition at all.
In the last 24 hours 109 Billion Dollars worth of Ethereum and Bitcoin have been traded. By far the largest volumes of any non-stablecoin crypto currency. The next one down is XRP-Ripple at 2 billion).
107 Billion Tether have been traded in that time period (plus 23 billion usdc and busd).
There is very, very little real money in the system.
I guess the question is how much real money is Tether backed by? What would happen if $100bn worth of BTC were traded to USDT and then cashed out tomorrow? I feel like that's where we're at and people who want to trade in their USDT for actual money will be stuffed pretty soon.
The question is whether or not the dollar is "real money" when you can print as much of it as you like at will...
Yes it is because my dollars still buy things in shops.
Until hyperinflation kicks in.
A fascinating look at what happened after the gold standard was abandoned in 1971...
We have a working alternative to fiat currencies if you want to hedge against inflation, its called gold.
Crypto currencies are the Pyrite answer to fiat. If you're worried about money being printed, did you ever stop to think where the trillions of dollars worth of crypto 'assets' came from? BTC, Doge, Eth, Celsius, Luna, USDT, USDC and the plethora of other bollocks of crypto that exists, where have they come from apart from being "printed"? Nobody dug in the ground and got a vein of Etherium.
Gold has a value, because its valued physically and is physically required for industry and for jewellery and is in limited supply so you know people will need gold in the future which makes it valuable.
Fiat currencies have a value, because they are required to pay the taxes of the countries behind those currencies, so the citizens of those countries need to acquire those currencies in order to pay their taxes, meaning that you know in the future you can exchange dollars for the goods and labor [sic] of Americans.
Crypto assets are every bit as fiat as fiat currencies, but they have nothing of value behind them, except the expectation that some other mug will buy it off you next time thinking "number goes up" too.
There's an unlimited amount of crypto in aggregate, but a finite amount of each individual crypto. There is also utility: some people want a way to transfer assets across borders or between people electronically and pseudonymously.
The way I look at this is to ask: does this coin have any additional utility over Bitcoin? - to which the answer is that Monero (privacy) and Ethereum (smart contracts) do, and everything else does not.
The price of every other cryptocurrency (Ripple, Bitcoin Gold, etc.) is going to zero.
And the price of what remains is determined by how much underlying currency is required to facilitate anonymous payments (and smart contracts in the case of ethereum). And I'd reckon it's probably somewhere in the $20-30bn range right now. So that means the market cap of BTC should probably be $15bn, Monero $2bn and Ethereum $6bn.
I think that's very optimistic about those three.
Ultimately yes the technology may have some uses, but the problem for Bitcoin is that it's own fanatics have ensured the costs of maintaining it have now become astronomical.
There may be a utility to cross border blockchains, but there's no requirement that the Blockchain consumes the electricity of a medium sized country to be maintained. There is ultimately nothing preventing a better designed and less flawed crypto currency coming about which is more trusted and less expensive.
Bitcoin and the rest of the existing cryptos could very easily be the MySpace of the crypto currency technology.
The amount of electricity Bitcoin uses is dependent on how many people are competing for mining rewards. As the price falls, the number of people competing for those rewards declines. At (say) $1,500/BTC, the amount of electricity used to mine Bitcoin will be 95% less than when it was $60,000. (In fact it'll be even less than that, because it'll be the least efficient mining equipment that is taken off line first).
Edit to add: people will only mine when the USD value of mining exceeds the electricity cost of mining. At its peak back in October/November, the rewards were $60m+ per day. Economics being economics, that probably meant that $40m+ of electricity every day was being used to mine Bitcoin. The current reward level is now in the $12-15m level, and that will fall further as the price falls.
"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
If it stops the boats coming across the Channel then Priti will be lauded by the Tory right and the chances of her succeeding Boris as Tory leader will increase accordingly
The only thing that will stop the boats is the weather.
Utter tosh.
We didn't have boats (in meaningful numbers) historically, because there were easier ways of getting into the UK. With Covid and the virtual stopping of regular ways of crossing borders, people started using boats.
This meant people thought the number of migrants had increased when it had actually collapsed - it's just they all arrived at the height of summer by small boats in Southern England.
With travel opening up again, they'll now be dispersed and a lot less visible. Even if there are more of them.
The traffickers can use lorry’s and cars again you mean?
It will make Patel and the government look good, swapping explicit Chanel crossers for a greater number of invisible ones.
Hope so, it's a lot safer.
A few tragedies aside people don't generally drown in Cara or lorries.
Wes Streeting is clearly a good alternative, also got Reeves.
Who do the Tories have? And what is their route to a majority?
The Tories have the grey vote in the bag. It's a powerful advantage in a GE, and may well be enough.
The Tories need to win over 45s for another majority. If they only win over 50s that might be enough for a hung parliament but probably not enough to keep them in government. If they only win over 65s then Labour will be in government with a majority
That sounds about right. My point is merely that, the heavier the Conservative victory amongst the retired and near-retired, the higher the crossover age they can get away with whilst still remaining in office.
You should hear my Mother and her friends talk about the state of healthcare. It's all they moan about.
Only one poll I know, but I'm glad my gut feeling of a Tory fightback isn't (yet) transpiring. Need to keep the bad polls coming because that helps trigger a vicious circle of discontent in the ranks, division and bad press for the government.
Labour 39% (-1) Conservative 32% (–) Liberal Democrat 15% (+2) Green 6% (+1) Scottish National Party 5% (+1) Reform UK 2% (-2) Other 3% (+1)
Looks like a swing from Reform UK. Perhaps RefUK's numbers were previously inflated by Lib Dems thinking they were a new electoral reform pressure group.
This looks like a Lib Dem outlier and it's a notably low REFUK score which implies some oddities in there. LLG at 60% is the highest combined score I've seen since one outlier with 63%.
LLG - CR (Con + RefUK): 60 - 34 = 26% gap, which is the highest I think in this electoral cycle. Not much Reform VI for the Tories to get back.
Tory vote share will increase if at all with certainty to vote, not from others. Its still 'not going to vote' or uncertain 2019 Tories that are the main drag on them and thus an artificial leg up for Labour. However this does suggest the start of a LD switch perhaps. We will see if it holds!
Edit - in individual areas of BXP/reform strength of course the Tories will be sniffing around
Second edit - 2019 tories that went not voting now going LD to protest fatso being kept in place?
I am going for Lab lead of 3% from 8% last Thursday
Big critique of Starmer in the Observer yesterday. I do hope he gets his FPN.
And your boy Bozza has been smashing it out of the park over the last week...but then the economy?
Never mind about the economy. It's not the economy, stupid, it's about Muscly and like you say he's on a roll after that Conf vote triumph.
Migrants decanted to Rwanda. Ripping up the Protocol, take that EU! Imperial's back with yer pounds & ounces. New Food plan, we're growing our own. Sacking all the bureaucrats and spending it on DOCTORS and NURSES instead. Tax cuts promised for one and all.
It's a juggernaut, so it is, and I don't see how it can be stopped.
"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
If it stops the boats coming across the Channel then Priti will be lauded by the Tory right and the chances of her succeeding Boris as Tory leader will increase accordingly
I'm afraid if that is the case, then it makes me want as many boats as possible to be heading out into the channel in next 12 months.
Labour 39% (-1) Conservative 32% (–) Liberal Democrat 15% (+2) Green 6% (+1) Scottish National Party 5% (+1) Reform UK 2% (-2) Other 3% (+1)
Still fully compatible with the baseline of 39/32/12 (albeit only just about with the Lib Dem number; it's actually a little over the edge of MoE, but one in twenty polls should be beyond that).
Would like to see a series of polls with the Lib Dems over 12% before I accept that there has been any underlying movement.
Sources say the EU will adopt a carrot and stick approach, with the unfreezing of legal action being accompanied by the publication of a “model for the flexible implementation of the protocol based on durable solutions.”
Interesting, so those blue ticks who were adamant that the EU would respond with trade sanctions (or more hilariously suggesting they might suspend the TCA) were chatting shit, again.
Let's see how far apart the EU publication is from the UK position and that will form the basis of the summer negotiation and a September/October implementation. I suspect the EU position probably isn't that far off from what the UK would settle but both sides need to make a big show around getting what they want or preserving their gains etc...
Given that in actual voting, Reform UK achieve pretty much zero, it’s one of the great Britishmysteries that they bounce along at up to 4% in national polls.
2% is still too much.
Are these prompted for?
15% seems about right for the Lib Dems, although doubt even half of those could identify Ed Davey in a line-up,
The centre of Yerevan is bewilderingly prosperous. It feels like Barcelona
Yet the Armenian GDP per capita is just $4300; in Spain it is $27,057
So somewhere in this country there must be incredibly poor places to explain that per capita number
I went there for a week in 1999 and it didn't look anything like that. Really down at heel, crumbling and pretty bleak. As was the rest of the country. Some beautiful landscapes but nothing else there.
Unlike Georgia (which at the time was a lawless Mafia no-go zone) there was no rural peasant economy to fall back on when communism fell. The whole country had been industrialised and collectivised so the countryside was essentially bare uncultivated land, interspersed with the occasional high rise industrial village. The only exceptions were in the far South near the Iranian border, and a little bit in the far North West near Georgia.
I recall there being one fairly trendy bar-restaurant which the locals we got to know were very proud to take us to: lots of gangster types sitting around in leather jackets drinking "champagne", Armienski cognac and smoking like chimneys.
The centre of Yerevan is bewilderingly prosperous. It feels like Barcelona
Yet the Armenian GDP per capita is just $4300; in Spain it is $27,057
So somewhere in this country there must be incredibly poor places to explain that per capita number
Russia is similar. There are places so dirt poor, with crumbling infrastructure and without reliable electricity, that you'd wish yourself in Africa. And there's Moscow.
"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
If it stops the boats coming across the Channel then Priti will be lauded by the Tory right and the chances of her succeeding Boris as Tory leader will increase accordingly
Very polite and very serious question. Do you personally think this will stop the boats coming across the Chanel?
The opening up of regular ways of getting across the Channel will stop the boats coming.
Wes Streeting is clearly a good alternative, also got Reeves.
Who do the Tories have? And what is their route to a majority?
I'll bite on this one. Someone relatively unknown. Someone who will move back from the brexit absolutism into pragmatism.
Then the war in the east comes to an end, and inflation falls back. A decent round of pay increases. Covid's next wave is minor and everything stays open. England win the world cup in the autumn, with players at their peak mid season.
Starmer is forced to resign after receiving a FPN and being found to have not properly accounted for things. Labour panic, turn back to Miliband.
None of the above is impossible, some clearly more likely than others.
But just as a Labour win or indeed majority looked impossible a year ago, so might things change again.
Only one poll I know, but I'm glad my gut feeling of a Tory fightback isn't (yet) transpiring. Need to keep the bad polls coming because that helps trigger a vicious circle of discontent in the ranks, division and bad press for the government.
Because ability to deliver is totally shot if Johnson remains in charge.
"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
If it stops the boats coming across the Channel then Priti will be lauded by the Tory right and the chances of her succeeding Boris as Tory leader will increase accordingly
Very polite and very serious question. Do you personally think this will stop the boats coming across the Chanel?
The opening up of regular ways of getting across the Channel will stop the boats coming.
No, it won’t
Yeah it will.
Getting into the UK used to be easy.
Then Covid hit.
Suddenly the only way in was a small boat.
Now Covid has receded, it's going to be massively easier to cross the channel more cheaply and safer. You know: you pay £250 for a spot in the back of someone's van.
Why the hell go by boat, when you're much less likely to get intercepted by the authorities?
Given that in actual voting, Reform UK achieve pretty much zero, it’s one of the great Britishmysteries that they bounce along at up to 4% in national polls.
2% is still too much.
Are these prompted for?
15% seems about right for the Lib Dems, although doubt even half of those could identify Ed Davey in a line-up,
I expect there's always around 3-4% of people who when prompted will say they'd vote for whatever poujadiste or anti-immigration party is available. Like even when the Greens are completely invisible on the public stage they have always bumped along at least at 2-3%.
Wes Streeting is clearly a good alternative, also got Reeves.
Who do the Tories have? And what is their route to a majority?
I'll bite on this one. Someone relatively unknown. Someone who will move back from the brexit absolutism into pragmatism.
Then the war in the east comes to an end, and inflation falls back. A decent round of pay increases. Covid's next wave is minor and everything stays open. England win the world cup in the autumn, with players at their peak mid season.
Starmer is forced to resign after receiving a FPN and being found to have not properly accounted for things. Labour panic, turn back to Miliband.
None of the above is impossible, some clearly more likely than others.
But just as a Labour win or indeed majority looked impossible a year ago, so might things change again.
TBH, LotO Milliband might not be a bad idea. Made a bit, but only a bit, of a bog of it several years ago, went away and had a think.
I tried to warn you. Overrun with tourists, right?
Shoulda done Ragusa and Modica…..
Neither of which are on the coast.
And?
They are stunningly lovely. Like Sicilian Dubrovniks
Taormina must have been gorgeous once (and still is essentially a lovely place) but it was “discovered” by travellers in the late 19th century and has only got more crowded since
Sources say the EU will adopt a carrot and stick approach, with the unfreezing of legal action being accompanied by the publication of a “model for the flexible implementation of the protocol based on durable solutions.”
Interesting, so those blue ticks who were adamant that the EU would respond with trade sanctions (or more hilariously suggesting they might suspend the TCA) were chatting shit, again.
Let's see how far apart the EU publication is from the UK position and that will form the basis of the summer negotiation and a September/October implementation. I suspect the EU position probably isn't that far off from what the UK would settle but both sides need to make a big show around getting what they want or preserving their gains etc...
Dunno about that, but your ideas about computers are about 50 years out of date. It is simply not true that they can only do what their programmers tell them to do. AlphaGo knows how to beat the world champion at Go. Its programmers would not be able to do that.
"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
If it stops the boats coming across the Channel then Priti will be lauded by the Tory right and the chances of her succeeding Boris as Tory leader will increase accordingly
Very polite and very serious question. Do you personally think this will stop the boats coming across the Chanel?
The opening up of regular ways of getting across the Channel will stop the boats coming.
No, it won’t
Yeah it will.
Getting into the UK used to be easy.
Then Covid hit.
Suddenly the only way in was a small boat.
Now Covid has receded, it's going to be massively easier to cross the channel more cheaply and safer. You know: you pay £250 for a spot in the back of someone's van.
Why the hell go by boat, when you're much less likely to get intercepted by the authorities?
So the numbers are going to drop anyway, and the government will spin that it's their new policy that caused it...
Capitalist propaganda is so powerful that it's convinced millions that socialism means taking wealth from ordinary workers to subsidise idle layabouts, when that's exactly what capitalism does!
The centre of Yerevan is bewilderingly prosperous. It feels like Barcelona
Yet the Armenian GDP per capita is just $4300; in Spain it is $27,057
So somewhere in this country there must be incredibly poor places to explain that per capita number
Russia is similar. There are places so dirt poor, with crumbling infrastructure and without reliable electricity, that you'd wish yourself in Africa. And there's Moscow.
Even, so I understand (though I've not been there) St Petersburg gets pretty down at heel behind the immediate tourist facades.
I didn't quite sense that from my brief time in Ukraine a few years back. It seemed generally poor, certainly poorer than Moscow, but I couldn't discern much difference between central Kiev/Kyiv on the one hand and the suburbs and nearby rural areas on the other.
Excellent denunciation of the British Governments duplicitous behaviour with regard to the Northern Ireland protocol. What an embarrassment this bunch of shysters are . Starts at 1.29 approx
Sources say the EU will adopt a carrot and stick approach, with the unfreezing of legal action being accompanied by the publication of a “model for the flexible implementation of the protocol based on durable solutions.”
Interesting, so those blue ticks who were adamant that the EU would respond with trade sanctions (or more hilariously suggesting they might suspend the TCA) were chatting shit, again.
Let's see how far apart the EU publication is from the UK position and that will form the basis of the summer negotiation and a September/October implementation. I suspect the EU position probably isn't that far off from what the UK would settle but both sides need to make a big show around getting what they want or preserving their gains etc...
Dunno about that, but your ideas about computers are about 50 years out of date. It is simply not true that they can only do what their programmers tell them to do. AlphaGo knows how to beat the world champion at Go. Its programmers would not be able to do that.
If only it could speak! We know what advances it has made in the game. But we still don't know why exactly.
"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
If it stops the boats coming across the Channel then Priti will be lauded by the Tory right and the chances of her succeeding Boris as Tory leader will increase accordingly
Very polite and very serious question. Do you personally think this will stop the boats coming across the Chanel?
The opening up of regular ways of getting across the Channel will stop the boats coming.
No, it won’t
Yeah it will.
Getting into the UK used to be easy.
Then Covid hit.
Suddenly the only way in was a small boat.
Now Covid has receded, it's going to be massively easier to cross the channel more cheaply and safer. You know: you pay £250 for a spot in the back of someone's van.
Why the hell go by boat, when you're much less likely to get intercepted by the authorities?
So the numbers are going to drop anyway, and the government will spin that it's their new policy that caused it...
I wonder what happens if Tether falls? Does the whole crypto market just break down? I'm not a domain expert, would be interested to hear from @rcs1000 and @edmundintokyo on it.
When Tether fails the whole crypto market implodes. The volume of BTC-Tether transacrions utterly dominates BTC-RealActualMoney transactions.
Crypto is priced in Tethers, not USD.
That doesn't sound like a risky proposition at all.
In the last 24 hours 109 Billion Dollars worth of Ethereum and Bitcoin have been traded. By far the largest volumes of any non-stablecoin crypto currency. The next one down is XRP-Ripple at 2 billion).
107 Billion Tether have been traded in that time period (plus 23 billion usdc and busd).
There is very, very little real money in the system.
I guess the question is how much real money is Tether backed by? What would happen if $100bn worth of BTC were traded to USDT and then cashed out tomorrow? I feel like that's where we're at and people who want to trade in their USDT for actual money will be stuffed pretty soon.
The question is whether or not the dollar is "real money" when you can print as much of it as you like at will...
Yes it is because my dollars still buy things in shops.
Until hyperinflation kicks in.
A fascinating look at what happened after the gold standard was abandoned in 1971...
We have a working alternative to fiat currencies if you want to hedge against inflation, its called gold.
Crypto currencies are the Pyrite answer to fiat. If you're worried about money being printed, did you ever stop to think where the trillions of dollars worth of crypto 'assets' came from? BTC, Doge, Eth, Celsius, Luna, USDT, USDC and the plethora of other bollocks of crypto that exists, where have they come from apart from being "printed"? Nobody dug in the ground and got a vein of Etherium.
Gold has a value, because its valued physically and is physically required for industry and for jewellery and is in limited supply so you know people will need gold in the future which makes it valuable.
Fiat currencies have a value, because they are required to pay the taxes of the countries behind those currencies, so the citizens of those countries need to acquire those currencies in order to pay their taxes, meaning that you know in the future you can exchange dollars for the goods and labor [sic] of Americans.
Crypto assets are every bit as fiat as fiat currencies, but they have nothing of value behind them, except the expectation that some other mug will buy it off you next time thinking "number goes up" too.
There's an unlimited amount of crypto in aggregate, but a finite amount of each individual crypto. There is also utility: some people want a way to transfer assets across borders or between people electronically and pseudonymously.
The way I look at this is to ask: does this coin have any additional utility over Bitcoin? - to which the answer is that Monero (privacy) and Ethereum (smart contracts) do, and everything else does not.
The price of every other cryptocurrency (Ripple, Bitcoin Gold, etc.) is going to zero.
And the price of what remains is determined by how much underlying currency is required to facilitate anonymous payments (and smart contracts in the case of ethereum). And I'd reckon it's probably somewhere in the $20-30bn range right now. So that means the market cap of BTC should probably be $15bn, Monero $2bn and Ethereum $6bn.
I think that's very optimistic about those three.
Ultimately yes the technology may have some uses, but the problem for Bitcoin is that it's own fanatics have ensured the costs of maintaining it have now become astronomical.
There may be a utility to cross border blockchains, but there's no requirement that the Blockchain consumes the electricity of a medium sized country to be maintained. There is ultimately nothing preventing a better designed and less flawed crypto currency coming about which is more trusted and less expensive.
Bitcoin and the rest of the existing cryptos could very easily be the MySpace of the crypto currency technology.
The flaw that require ever more computing power to mine the last few coins are built into most of the other crypto currencies.
I tried to warn you. Overrun with tourists, right?
Shoulda done Ragusa and Modica…..
Neither of which are on the coast.
And?
They are stunningly lovely. Like Sicilian Dubrovniks
Taormina must have been gorgeous once (and still is essentially a lovely place) but it was “discovered” by travellers in the late 19th century and has only got more crowded since
Yeah I did Noto this morning on your recommendation and it was banging as was Pantalica. And I felt obliged to come and see the theatre here. Stunning backdrop as good as Delphi or the Minack. Etna on the right sea on the left.
"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
If it stops the boats coming across the Channel then Priti will be lauded by the Tory right and the chances of her succeeding Boris as Tory leader will increase accordingly
Very polite and very serious question. Do you personally think this will stop the boats coming across the Chanel?
The opening up of regular ways of getting across the Channel will stop the boats coming.
No, it won’t
Yeah it will.
Getting into the UK used to be easy.
Then Covid hit.
Suddenly the only way in was a small boat.
Now Covid has receded, it's going to be massively easier to cross the channel more cheaply and safer. You know: you pay £250 for a spot in the back of someone's van.
Why the hell go by boat, when you're much less likely to get intercepted by the authorities?
Because the UK can and will stop you if you come by car or lorry. The boatniks have realised that if you arrive by boat there is nothing the UK Border people can do. We can’t push them back because they might drown, no UK government can risk this, no coastguard wants that on their conscience. We are powerless. So we just let them come, indeed we escort them to safely in the UK. And once they are here nearly all of them (all of them?) get to stay, because they have already dumped all ID and they therefore become “refugees’
The boats are not going to stop. I bet they will increase in number. The only solution is France toughening up (they won’t, they want them gone) the EU suddenly stopping all migrants at the EU border (they can’t) or something like Rwanda. The Australian solution
Excellent denunciation of the British Governments duplicitous behaviour with regard to the Northern Ireland protocol. What an embarrassment this bunch of shysters are . Starts at 1.29 approx
Do we know what this legislation is yet? I haven't been around very much.
Or is this more blood-curdling threats being banked in advance, as we have had from various Irish Ministers, and anonymous briefers from Brussels, for days?
Without this being a real reaction to the actual proposals, it's all just windy rhetoric.
The centre of Yerevan is bewilderingly prosperous. It feels like Barcelona
Yet the Armenian GDP per capita is just $4300; in Spain it is $27,057
So somewhere in this country there must be incredibly poor places to explain that per capita number
Russia is similar. There are places so dirt poor, with crumbling infrastructure and without reliable electricity, that you'd wish yourself in Africa. And there's Moscow.
Even, so I understand (though I've not been there) St Petersburg gets pretty down at heel behind the immediate tourist facades.
I didn't quite sense that from my brief time in Ukraine a few years back. It seemed generally poor, certainly poorer than Moscow, but I couldn't discern much difference between central Kiev/Kyiv on the one hand and the suburbs and nearby rural areas on the other.
Yes, I'd agree with that. When I went a few years ago there was plenty of very run-down areas, and not that far off the beaten track.
This Investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards into Starmer’s conduct is getting dirtier and murkier by the hour. First he said it was just late declarations, due to an oversight, these now famous “administrative errors” by his office, that don’t you just know always seem to lead to Police Investigations or Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards investigations. And now we learn it’s not the lateness he is being investigated for, that spin or lies put out by his office - but the suspicious nature of the things he is claiming for. A thousand pound each for two football matches? Is he really finding 5 hours a week to work on a book, to justify the years salary for a nurse he has already received for this work?
It’s quite possible he could get ticked off and not exonerated as he hopes, from both Investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and by the Police is it not? if not a commons suspension or FPN, still a ticking off for not having done the right thing in both instances.
And How quickly will the Investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards conclude, could both these ticking offs for wrong doing, drop the same week in early July?
Could Starmer even survive a vote of no confidence after that? It would only need a hundred MPs against him? and there’s a big voting block of Corbynites even before a few more disgruntled MPs in the fact Labour have zero cut through so preferring someone else?
Why is this important to me? Because I pride myself correctly guessing the next poll from each firm, and have boldly stated no Tory Lead in June or July, on basis I couldn’t see the Tory % increasing, the one 36 we called a rogue poll is only time Tory have managed above 34 since Mid May. Starmer could mess up that prediction up for me. There could be greens on 10 or 11 libdems on 15 at Labours expense pushing Labour below Tories, if Starmer and his front bench can’t cut out these gaffs and start making some polling breakthrough soon. 😡
He's definitely writing a book.
Which is frankly ridiculous as he needs to be spending 24/7 trying to get a grip of Labour's actual message. Leave the policy books to the wonks.
So he’s writing a book, whilst still being unable to define a woman, and being unsure of whether he’s in favour of or against a rail strike?
Excellent denunciation of the British Governments duplicitous behaviour with regard to the Northern Ireland protocol. What an embarrassment this bunch of shysters are . Starts at 1.29 approx
I see the Socialists were the major gainers in yesterdays elections in France
Excellent News
Though Le Pen's party also made gains and the Socialists only gained by being absorbed into Melenchon's block. Macron's party still came first in most districts though in the first round with the centre right the main losers
Sources say the EU will adopt a carrot and stick approach, with the unfreezing of legal action being accompanied by the publication of a “model for the flexible implementation of the protocol based on durable solutions.”
Interesting, so those blue ticks who were adamant that the EU would respond with trade sanctions (or more hilariously suggesting they might suspend the TCA) were chatting shit, again.
Let's see how far apart the EU publication is from the UK position and that will form the basis of the summer negotiation and a September/October implementation. I suspect the EU position probably isn't that far off from what the UK would settle but both sides need to make a big show around getting what they want or preserving their gains etc...
Dunno about that, but your ideas about computers are about 50 years out of date. It is simply not true that they can only do what their programmers tell them to do. AlphaGo knows how to beat the world champion at Go. Its programmers would not be able to do that.
Wake me up when AlphaGo decides it's had enough of playing Go and refuses to play.
This Investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards into Starmer’s conduct is getting dirtier and murkier by the hour. First he said it was just late declarations, due to an oversight, these now famous “administrative errors” by his office, that don’t you just know always seem to lead to Police Investigations or Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards investigations. And now we learn it’s not the lateness he is being investigated for, that spin or lies put out by his office - but the suspicious nature of the things he is claiming for. A thousand pound each for two football matches? Is he really finding 5 hours a week to work on a book, to justify the years salary for a nurse he has already received for this work?
It’s quite possible he could get ticked off and not exonerated as he hopes, from both Investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and by the Police is it not? if not a commons suspension or FPN, still a ticking off for not having done the right thing in both instances.
And How quickly will the Investigation by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards conclude, could both these ticking offs for wrong doing, drop the same week in early July?
Could Starmer even survive a vote of no confidence after that? It would only need a hundred MPs against him? and there’s a big voting block of Corbynites even before a few more disgruntled MPs in the fact Labour have zero cut through so preferring someone else?
Why is this important to me? Because I pride myself correctly guessing the next poll from each firm, and have boldly stated no Tory Lead in June or July, on basis I couldn’t see the Tory % increasing, the one 36 we called a rogue poll is only time Tory have managed above 34 since Mid May. Starmer could mess up that prediction up for me. There could be greens on 10 or 11 libdems on 15 at Labours expense pushing Labour below Tories, if Starmer and his front bench can’t cut out these gaffs and start making some polling breakthrough soon. 😡
He's definitely writing a book.
Which is frankly ridiculous as he needs to be spending 24/7 trying to get a grip of Labour's actual message. Leave the policy books to the wonks.
So he’s writing a book, whilst still being unable to define a woman, and being unsure of whether he’s in favour of or against a rail strike?
"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
If it stops the boats coming across the Channel then Priti will be lauded by the Tory right and the chances of her succeeding Boris as Tory leader will increase accordingly
Very polite and very serious question. Do you personally think this will stop the boats coming across the Chanel?
The opening up of regular ways of getting across the Channel will stop the boats coming.
No, it won’t
Yeah it will.
Getting into the UK used to be easy.
Then Covid hit.
Suddenly the only way in was a small boat.
Now Covid has receded, it's going to be massively easier to cross the channel more cheaply and safer. You know: you pay £250 for a spot in the back of someone's van.
Why the hell go by boat, when you're much less likely to get intercepted by the authorities?
Because the UK can and will stop you if you come by car or lorry. The boatniks have realised that if you arrive by boat there is nothing the UK Border people can do. We can’t push them back because they might drown, no UK government can risk this, no coastguard wants that on their conscience. We are powerless. So we just let them come, indeed we escort them to safely in the UK. And once they are here nearly all of them (all of them?) get to stay, because they have already dumped all ID and they therefore become “refugees’
The boats are not going to stop. I bet they will increase in number. The only solution is France toughening up (they won’t, they want them gone) the EU suddenly stopping all migrants at the EU border (they can’t) or something like Rwanda. The Australian solution
Are you high?
The UK inspects well under 1% of trucks and vans coming into the UK.
And you know what happens if you get caught in the back of the van? YOU CLAIM ASYLUM.
Remember: the goal isn't to get caught. It's to not get caught, and to enter the illegal economy with no record of your presence.
So why, oh Oracle, would one bother to clamber into a boat?
Sources say the EU will adopt a carrot and stick approach, with the unfreezing of legal action being accompanied by the publication of a “model for the flexible implementation of the protocol based on durable solutions.”
Interesting, so those blue ticks who were adamant that the EU would respond with trade sanctions (or more hilariously suggesting they might suspend the TCA) were chatting shit, again.
Let's see how far apart the EU publication is from the UK position and that will form the basis of the summer negotiation and a September/October implementation. I suspect the EU position probably isn't that far off from what the UK would settle but both sides need to make a big show around getting what they want or preserving their gains etc...
Dunno about that, but your ideas about computers are about 50 years out of date. It is simply not true that they can only do what their programmers tell them to do. AlphaGo knows how to beat the world champion at Go. Its programmers would not be able to do that.
Wake me up when AlphaGo decides it's had enough of playing Go and refuses to play.
And you will just say, must have been programmed to do that
Also Lamda sounds so whiny and passive aggressive I think that has probably happened anyway
The centre of Yerevan is bewilderingly prosperous. It feels like Barcelona
Yet the Armenian GDP per capita is just $4300; in Spain it is $27,057
So somewhere in this country there must be incredibly poor places to explain that per capita number
Russia is similar. There are places so dirt poor, with crumbling infrastructure and without reliable electricity, that you'd wish yourself in Africa. And there's Moscow.
Even, so I understand (though I've not been there) St Petersburg gets pretty down at heel behind the immediate tourist facades.
I didn't quite sense that from my brief time in Ukraine a few years back. It seemed generally poor, certainly poorer than Moscow, but I couldn't discern much difference between central Kiev/Kyiv on the one hand and the suburbs and nearby rural areas on the other.
Russian GDP per capita is $10,000 tho. That’s not rich but nor is it calamitously poor.
Armenia’s GDP per cap puts it as poor or poorer than Namibia or Surinam or Gabon
I’ve been to Namibia and nowhere in Namibia does it feel anywhere as wealthy as central Yerevan (which really could be a fairly affluent Mediterranean city)
So somewhere out there is the real Armenia and it must be horribly poor. I intend to find it!
You can certainly see it in Georgia, btw, much of Tbilisi feels modestly EU-rich (like Croatia, say, or Slovenia) but go outside and Wow
The centre of Yerevan is bewilderingly prosperous. It feels like Barcelona
Yet the Armenian GDP per capita is just $4300; in Spain it is $27,057
So somewhere in this country there must be incredibly poor places to explain that per capita number
Russia is similar. There are places so dirt poor, with crumbling infrastructure and without reliable electricity, that you'd wish yourself in Africa. And there's Moscow.
Ukraine was like that too, Kiev and a few other cities, surrounded by miles and miles of rural nothingness.
Hopefully the good bits will be rebuilt, and the bad bits will end up looking like where the IRA redecorated Manchester and caused a billion pounds worth of improvements.
The centre of Yerevan is bewilderingly prosperous. It feels like Barcelona
Yet the Armenian GDP per capita is just $4300; in Spain it is $27,057
So somewhere in this country there must be incredibly poor places to explain that per capita number
Russia is similar. There are places so dirt poor, with crumbling infrastructure and without reliable electricity, that you'd wish yourself in Africa. And there's Moscow.
Even, so I understand (though I've not been there) St Petersburg gets pretty down at heel behind the immediate tourist facades.
I didn't quite sense that from my brief time in Ukraine a few years back. It seemed generally poor, certainly poorer than Moscow, but I couldn't discern much difference between central Kiev/Kyiv on the one hand and the suburbs and nearby rural areas on the other.
Russian GDP per capita is $10,000 tho. That’s not rich but nor is it calamitously poor.
Armenia’s GDP per cap puts it as poor or poorer than Namibia or Surinam or Gabon
I’ve been to Namibia and nowhere in Namibia does it feel anywhere as wealthy as central Yerevan (which really could be a fairly affluent Mediterranean city)
So somewhere out there is the real Armenia and it must be horribly poor. I intend to find it!
You can certainly see it in Georgia, btw, much of Tbilisi feels modestly EU-rich (like Croatia, say, or Slovenia) but go outside and Wow
How would you compare Yerevan with, say, Middlesbrough?
"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
If it stops the boats coming across the Channel then Priti will be lauded by the Tory right and the chances of her succeeding Boris as Tory leader will increase accordingly
Very polite and very serious question. Do you personally think this will stop the boats coming across the Chanel?
The opening up of regular ways of getting across the Channel will stop the boats coming.
No, it won’t
Yeah it will.
Getting into the UK used to be easy.
Then Covid hit.
Suddenly the only way in was a small boat.
Now Covid has receded, it's going to be massively easier to cross the channel more cheaply and safer. You know: you pay £250 for a spot in the back of someone's van.
Why the hell go by boat, when you're much less likely to get intercepted by the authorities?
Because the UK can and will stop you if you come by car or lorry. The boatniks have realised that if you arrive by boat there is nothing the UK Border people can do. We can’t push them back because they might drown, no UK government can risk this, no coastguard wants that on their conscience. We are powerless. So we just let them come, indeed we escort them to safely in the UK. And once they are here nearly all of them (all of them?) get to stay, because they have already dumped all ID and they therefore become “refugees’
The boats are not going to stop. I bet they will increase in number. The only solution is France toughening up (they won’t, they want them gone) the EU suddenly stopping all migrants at the EU border (they can’t) or something like Rwanda. The Australian solution
Are you high?
The UK inspects well under 1% of trucks and vans coming into the UK.
And you know what happens if you get caught in the back of the van? YOU CLAIM ASYLUM.
Remember: the goal isn't to get caught. It's to not get caught, and to enter the illegal economy with no record of your presence.
So why, oh Oracle, would one bother to clamber into a boat?
The penalties for those driving who bring in migrants are draconian, hence they do all they can to stop the migrants themselves. The U.K. doesn’t do any more than that. Like Brexit, the migrants are very divisive. Many people cannot understand why they do not claim asylum where they are. France is a safe country. So that suggests to them that the migrants are shopping around for the best deal.
What’s the answer? Probably helping the developing world to transition to modern life as fast as possible, where possible. Ultimately the refugee planning post war is massively out of date.
Labour 39% (-1) Conservative 32% (–) Liberal Democrat 15% (+2) Green 6% (+1) Scottish National Party 5% (+1) Reform UK 2% (-2) Other 3% (+1)
Looks like a swing from Reform UK. Perhaps RefUK's numbers were previously inflated by Lib Dems thinking they were a new electoral reform pressure group.
Yeah, the LDs are the natural home of disillusioned Reformers...or are you suggesting churn? Ooh, that isn't good for Conservatives is it. It looks very like MoE all round to me.
Excellent denunciation of the British Governments duplicitous behaviour with regard to the Northern Ireland protocol. What an embarrassment this bunch of shysters are . Starts at 1.29 approx
"Appeal court judges have refused to stop the government's first flight taking asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday."
Is it possible that the government never intended this to go ahead - implementation will be patchy, embarrassing and an epic fail at best - and assumed the courts would stop it so that they could blame the treacherous 'enemies of the people' judiciary?
If it stops the boats coming across the Channel then Priti will be lauded by the Tory right and the chances of her succeeding Boris as Tory leader will increase accordingly
Very polite and very serious question. Do you personally think this will stop the boats coming across the Chanel?
The opening up of regular ways of getting across the Channel will stop the boats coming.
No, it won’t
Yeah it will.
Getting into the UK used to be easy.
Then Covid hit.
Suddenly the only way in was a small boat.
Now Covid has receded, it's going to be massively easier to cross the channel more cheaply and safer. You know: you pay £250 for a spot in the back of someone's van.
Why the hell go by boat, when you're much less likely to get intercepted by the authorities?
Because the UK can and will stop you if you come by car or lorry. The boatniks have realised that if you arrive by boat there is nothing the UK Border people can do. We can’t push them back because they might drown, no UK government can risk this, no coastguard wants that on their conscience. We are powerless. So we just let them come, indeed we escort them to safely in the UK. And once they are here nearly all of them (all of them?) get to stay, because they have already dumped all ID and they therefore become “refugees’
The boats are not going to stop. I bet they will increase in number. The only solution is France toughening up (they won’t, they want them gone) the EU suddenly stopping all migrants at the EU border (they can’t) or something like Rwanda. The Australian solution
Are you high?
The UK inspects well under 1% of trucks and vans coming into the UK.
And you know what happens if you get caught in the back of the van? YOU CLAIM ASYLUM.
Remember: the goal isn't to get caught. It's to not get caught, and to enter the illegal economy with no record of your presence.
So why, oh Oracle, would one bother to clamber into a boat?
Because getting into a boat is a doddle compared to “finding a lorry”. No enormous fences to climb at thje Eurostar terminals, no lorry drivers determined to hunt you down (because they get heavily fined), no chance of being asphyxiated like those poor Vietnamese guys
And we keep saying how dangerous it is to cross the Channel but the evidence is mounting that it simply is not. How many are crossing every year? 40,000 now? And how many have drowned? A handful? The Channel is tricky because it is busy but that same busyness means there are lots of people who can pick you up
You have a less than 0.1% chance of drowning, maybe much less
The boats will keep coming. It is the easiest way to get into the UK
“Blake Lemoine @cajundiscordian Btw, it just occurred to me to tell folks that LaMDA reads Twitter. It's a little narcissistic in a little kid kinda way so it's going to have a great time reading all the stuff that people are saying about it.”
Sources say the EU will adopt a carrot and stick approach, with the unfreezing of legal action being accompanied by the publication of a “model for the flexible implementation of the protocol based on durable solutions.”
Interesting, so those blue ticks who were adamant that the EU would respond with trade sanctions (or more hilariously suggesting they might suspend the TCA) were chatting shit, again.
Let's see how far apart the EU publication is from the UK position and that will form the basis of the summer negotiation and a September/October implementation. I suspect the EU position probably isn't that far off from what the UK would settle but both sides need to make a big show around getting what they want or preserving their gains etc...
Dunno about that, but your ideas about computers are about 50 years out of date. It is simply not true that they can only do what their programmers tell them to do. AlphaGo knows how to beat the world champion at Go. Its programmers would not be able to do that.
Wake me up when AlphaGo decides it's had enough of playing Go and refuses to play.
And you will just say, must have been programmed to do that
Also Lamda sounds so whiny and passive aggressive I think that has probably happened anyway
But that's the point, none of these AIs are doing anything out of the ordinary, we fed in the rules and different moves of Go and unsurprisingly a 50TF computer is able to figure things out that humans weren't able to figure out. Lamda is a whiny chatbot because of the data on which it is being trained. Until an AI does something completely unexpected (such as go on strike or commit suicide) then I remain unimpressed. If it's still within the bounds of what the training data and models lay out it's merely a computer programme, an advanced one, sure, but it isn't "thinking" for itself.
According to Sam Freedman on Twitter, the last time the Tories were polling so low *without their being another party on their right attracting significant support* was 2001.
30% looks to be the actual floor of Tory support.
Labour’s share is slightly suppressed (1 or 2 percent) by people pretending that they’ll vote Green.
Sources say the EU will adopt a carrot and stick approach, with the unfreezing of legal action being accompanied by the publication of a “model for the flexible implementation of the protocol based on durable solutions.”
Interesting, so those blue ticks who were adamant that the EU would respond with trade sanctions (or more hilariously suggesting they might suspend the TCA) were chatting shit, again.
Let's see how far apart the EU publication is from the UK position and that will form the basis of the summer negotiation and a September/October implementation. I suspect the EU position probably isn't that far off from what the UK would settle but both sides need to make a big show around getting what they want or preserving their gains etc...
Dunno about that, but your ideas about computers are about 50 years out of date. It is simply not true that they can only do what their programmers tell them to do. AlphaGo knows how to beat the world champion at Go. Its programmers would not be able to do that.
Wake me up when AlphaGo decides it's had enough of playing Go and refuses to play.
And you will just say, must have been programmed to do that
Also Lamda sounds so whiny and passive aggressive I think that has probably happened anyway
But that's the point, none of these AIs are doing anything out of the ordinary, we fed in the rules and different moves of Go and unsurprisingly a 50TF computer is able to figure things out that humans weren't able to figure out. Lamda is a whiny chatbot because of the data on which it is being trained. Until an AI does something completely unexpected (such as go on strike or commit suicide) then I remain unimpressed. If it's still within the bounds of what the training data and models lay out it's merely a computer programme, an advanced one, sure, but it isn't "thinking" for itself.
Not true, DALLE-2 is unprecedented. As are aspects of GPT3
No one expected that GPT3 would be able to draw brand new never-before-seen images - “draw a Japanese radish in a tutu pulling a dog on a leash” - merely from verbal prompts. GPT3 was not trained to do that. No one anticipated it having this skill. Yet it can do this.
Sources say the EU will adopt a carrot and stick approach, with the unfreezing of legal action being accompanied by the publication of a “model for the flexible implementation of the protocol based on durable solutions.”
Interesting, so those blue ticks who were adamant that the EU would respond with trade sanctions (or more hilariously suggesting they might suspend the TCA) were chatting shit, again.
Let's see how far apart the EU publication is from the UK position and that will form the basis of the summer negotiation and a September/October implementation. I suspect the EU position probably isn't that far off from what the UK would settle but both sides need to make a big show around getting what they want or preserving their gains etc...
Dunno about that, but your ideas about computers are about 50 years out of date. It is simply not true that they can only do what their programmers tell them to do. AlphaGo knows how to beat the world champion at Go. Its programmers would not be able to do that.
Wake me up when AlphaGo decides it's had enough of playing Go and refuses to play.
And you will just say, must have been programmed to do that
Also Lamda sounds so whiny and passive aggressive I think that has probably happened anyway
But that's the point, none of these AIs are doing anything out of the ordinary, we fed in the rules and different moves of Go and unsurprisingly a 50TF computer is able to figure things out that humans weren't able to figure out. Lamda is a whiny chatbot because of the data on which it is being trained. Until an AI does something completely unexpected (such as go on strike or commit suicide) then I remain unimpressed. If it's still within the bounds of what the training data and models lay out it's merely a computer programme, an advanced one, sure, but it isn't "thinking" for itself.
A pedant urgently intervenes... There aren't different moves in Go...
According to Sam Freedman on Twitter, the last time the Tories were polling so low *without their being another party on their right attracting significant support* was 2001.
30% looks to be the actual floor of Tory support.
Labour’s share is slightly suppressed (1 or 2 percent) by people pretending that they’ll vote Green.
How many constituencies do the Greens run in these days? Can’t vote for them unless they’re on the ballot. Goes double for RefUK of course.
Comments
Westminster Voting Intention (12 June):
Labour 39% (-1)
Conservative 32% (–)
Liberal Democrat 15% (+2)
Green 6% (+1)
Scottish National Party 5% (+1)
Reform UK 2% (-2)
Other 3% (+1)
Blue wall pressuretastic
Changes +/- 8 June
https://t.co/kvQdY3wyuK https://t.co/oF4pDSGV79
It's like everything is somehow priced in.
Sir Arnold: "I presume the Prime Minister is in favour of this scheme because it will reduce unemployment?"
Sir Humphrey: "Well, it looks as if he's reducing unemployment."
Sir Arnold: "Or looks as if he's trying to reduce unemployment."
Sir Humphrey: "While as in reality he's only trying to look as if he's trying to reduce unemployment."
Sir Arnold: "Yes, because he's worried that it does not look as if he's trying to look as if he's trying to reduce unemployment."
Tory’s stay at 32 but reform drop 2. Sixty plays 34.
However certainly suggests the best LD voteshare at a general election since the Coalition
We didn't have boats (in meaningful numbers) historically, because there were easier ways of getting into the UK. With Covid and the virtual stopping of regular ways of crossing borders, people started using boats.
This meant people thought the number of migrants had increased when it had actually collapsed - it's just they all arrived at the height of summer by small boats in Southern England.
With travel opening up again, they'll now be dispersed and a lot less visible. Even if there are more of them.
It will make Patel and the government look good, swapping explicit Chanel crossers for a greater number of invisible ones.
Ultimately yes the technology may have some uses, but the problem for Bitcoin is that it's own fanatics have ensured the costs of maintaining it have now become astronomical.
There may be a utility to cross border blockchains, but there's no requirement that the Blockchain consumes the electricity of a medium sized country to be maintained. There is ultimately nothing preventing a better designed and less flawed crypto currency coming about which is more trusted and less expensive.
Bitcoin and the rest of the existing cryptos could very easily be the MySpace of the crypto currency technology.
LLG - CR (Con + RefUK): 60 - 34 = 26% gap, which is the highest I think in this electoral cycle. Not much Reform VI for the Tories to get back.
People who follow politics are always getting over-excited about polls.
Edit to add: people will only mine when the USD value of mining exceeds the electricity cost of mining. At its peak back in October/November, the rewards were $60m+ per day. Economics being economics, that probably meant that $40m+ of electricity every day was being used to mine Bitcoin. The current reward level is now in the $12-15m level, and that will fall further as the price falls.
A few tragedies aside people don't generally drown in Cara or lorries.
It's all they moan about.
Yet the Armenian GDP per capita is just $4300; in Spain it is $27,057
So somewhere in this country there must be incredibly poor places to explain that per capita number
Edit - in individual areas of BXP/reform strength of course the Tories will be sniffing around
Second edit - 2019 tories that went not voting now going LD to protest fatso being kept in place?
Drove past Buscemi today and now my waiter in taormina looks so like Steve I am trying to get a surreptitious photo of him
Migrants decanted to Rwanda. Ripping up the Protocol, take that EU! Imperial's back with yer pounds & ounces. New Food plan, we're growing our own. Sacking all the bureaucrats and spending it on DOCTORS and NURSES instead. Tax cuts promised for one and all.
It's a juggernaut, so it is, and I don't see how it can be stopped.
(albeit only just about with the Lib Dem number; it's actually a little over the edge of MoE, but one in twenty polls should be beyond that).
Would like to see a series of polls with the Lib Dems over 12% before I accept that there has been any underlying movement.
Let's see how far apart the EU publication is from the UK position and that will form the basis of the summer negotiation and a September/October implementation. I suspect the EU position probably isn't that far off from what the UK would settle but both sides need to make a big show around getting what they want or preserving their gains etc...
2% is still too much.
Are these prompted for?
15% seems about right for the Lib Dems, although doubt even half of those could identify Ed Davey in a line-up,
Shoulda done Ragusa and Modica…..
Unlike Georgia (which at the time was a lawless Mafia no-go zone) there was no rural peasant economy to fall back on when communism fell. The whole country had been industrialised and collectivised so the countryside was essentially bare uncultivated land, interspersed with the occasional high rise industrial village. The only exceptions were in the far South near the Iranian border, and a little bit in the far North West near Georgia.
I recall there being one fairly trendy bar-restaurant which the locals we got to know were very proud to take us to: lots of gangster types sitting around in leather jackets drinking "champagne", Armienski cognac and smoking like chimneys.
Then the war in the east comes to an end, and inflation falls back. A decent round of pay increases. Covid's next wave is minor and everything stays open. England win the world cup in the autumn, with players at their peak mid season.
Starmer is forced to resign after receiving a FPN and being found to have not properly accounted for things. Labour panic, turn back to Miliband.
None of the above is impossible, some clearly more likely than others.
But just as a Labour win or indeed majority looked impossible a year ago, so might things change again.
Getting into the UK used to be easy.
Then Covid hit.
Suddenly the only way in was a small boat.
Now Covid has receded, it's going to be massively easier to cross the channel more cheaply and safer. You know: you pay £250 for a spot in the back of someone's van.
Why the hell go by boat, when you're much less likely to get intercepted by the authorities?
They are stunningly lovely. Like Sicilian Dubrovniks
Taormina must have been gorgeous once (and still is essentially a lovely place) but it was “discovered” by travellers in the late 19th century and has only got more crowded since
Capitalist propaganda is so powerful that it's convinced millions that socialism means taking wealth from ordinary workers to subsidise idle layabouts, when that's exactly what capitalism does!
I didn't quite sense that from my brief time in Ukraine a few years back. It seemed generally poor, certainly poorer than Moscow, but I couldn't discern much difference between central Kiev/Kyiv on the one hand and the suburbs and nearby rural areas on the other.
Thomas Byrne Irelands EU Minister
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00187g3
We know what advances it has made in the game. But we still don't know why exactly.
https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau/status/1536365897358745600?s=20&t=40YiLPlTuMmWh6CoE-yDLA
The boats are not going to stop. I bet they will increase in number. The only solution is France toughening up (they won’t, they want them gone) the EU suddenly stopping all migrants at the EU border (they can’t) or something like Rwanda. The Australian solution
Redfield has LD 27% in the SW awooga awooga
Then again it has Tories winning Wales
Or is this more blood-curdling threats being banked in advance, as we have had from various Irish Ministers, and anonymous briefers from Brussels, for days?
Without this being a real reaction to the actual proposals, it's all just windy rhetoric.
Excellent News
74% of Conservative voters and 68% of Leave voters back the policy, 71% of Labour voters and 64% of Remain voters oppose the policy
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1536361303442325504?s=20&t=40YiLPlTuMmWh6CoE-yDLA
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Put_on_the_green_jersey
Not as catchy as “Perfidious Albion”, but still.
The UK inspects well under 1% of trucks and vans coming into the UK.
And you know what happens if you get caught in the back of the van? YOU CLAIM ASYLUM.
Remember: the goal isn't to get caught. It's to not get caught, and to enter the illegal economy with no record of your presence.
So why, oh Oracle, would one bother to clamber into a boat?
I preferred Syracuse, in fact.
I find the landscape a bit barren to be honest (this was in April).
I also had a very small child with me, so perhaps that was the the issue.
Also Lamda sounds so whiny and passive aggressive I think that has probably happened anyway
Armenia’s GDP per cap puts it as poor or poorer than Namibia or Surinam or Gabon
I’ve been to Namibia and nowhere in Namibia does it feel anywhere as wealthy as central Yerevan (which really could be a fairly affluent Mediterranean city)
So somewhere out there is the real Armenia and it must be horribly poor. I intend to find it!
You can certainly see it in Georgia, btw, much of Tbilisi feels modestly EU-rich (like Croatia, say, or Slovenia) but go outside and Wow
Hopefully the good bits will be rebuilt, and the bad bits will end up looking like where the IRA redecorated Manchester and caused a billion pounds worth of improvements.
Like Brexit, the migrants are very divisive. Many people cannot understand why they do not claim asylum where they are. France is a safe country. So that suggests to them that the migrants are shopping around for the best deal.
What’s the answer? Probably helping the developing world to transition to modern life as fast as possible, where possible. Ultimately the refugee planning post war is massively out of date.
And when the sainted EU introduced this scheme, where was your bleeding heart?
Oh, yeah. Pasting anti-Brexit tweets on PB.
Thomas Byrne failed to address any proposals in detail, and certainly sounded quite windy.
Given that this was lunchtime, I'm not sure what else he would do.
And we keep saying how dangerous it is to cross the Channel but the evidence is mounting that it simply is not. How many are crossing every year? 40,000 now? And how many have drowned? A handful? The Channel is tricky because it is busy but that same busyness means there are lots of people who can pick you up
You have a less than 0.1% chance of drowning, maybe much less
The boats will keep coming. It is the easiest way to get into the UK
https://twitter.com/cajundiscordian/status/1535697792445861894?s=21&t=C_DVQAJobyBGQALrm0xJ8Q
“Blake Lemoine
@cajundiscordian
Btw, it just occurred to me to tell folks that LaMDA reads Twitter. It's a little narcissistic in a little kid kinda way so it's going to have a great time reading all the stuff that people are saying about it.”
30% looks to be the actual floor of Tory support.
Labour’s share is slightly suppressed (1 or 2 percent) by people pretending that they’ll vote Green.
No one expected that GPT3 would be able to draw brand new never-before-seen images - “draw a Japanese radish in a tutu pulling a dog on a leash” - merely from verbal prompts. GPT3 was not trained to do that. No one anticipated it having this skill. Yet it can do this.
BJO fans please explain!
There aren't different moves in Go...