Henrik Stenson has been removed as Europe's Ryder Cup skipper with immediate effect.
I am sure there are a few million reasons why he won't be too concerned.
Rumoured to be $40m - for someone who hasn’t won a tournament in three years.
I’m sure most of us would take the same decision. Outside the top dozen or so, pro golfers are not making massive bank and have a lot of expenses.
How on earth is LIV intending to get a return on all this ?
These are huge numbers for *checks notes* the 171st ranked golfer in the world.
That’s a very good question.
The first part of the answer is that they’re thinking long term, and have a couple of billion in the bank in the meantime.
The tournaments at the moment are little more than exhibition events, with 54 holes and ‘shotgun’ starts, streamed free on their website, Youtube and Facebook to build an audience.
I think their plan is to transition to OTT subscriptions, getting that existing audience of a few million to part with $10 a month, possibly alongside TV deals in key markets (but obviously no-one with PGA or DBW tour contract will touch them).
The big draw, is that eventually the vast majority of the top golfers will go where the money is, as happened in darts. They’ll play a smaller number of larger events per year.
The real sticking point is going to be the Majors, and how they react. I get the impression that LIV are prepared to raise court cases in the US and EU, to prevent restraint of trade of freelance professionals. If and when that happens, the incumbent tours are pretty much dead.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
EDF is a national champion owned by the French state.
Its the same incoherent jibberish they always come out with. "Government's Can Run Anything" they said handing out train franchise contracts to the German Government, the Italian Government, the Dutch Government, the French Government.
State owned commercial enterprise. A roaring success.
Various parts of Europe have Arriva trains or Arriva Buses.
Because it's better to put the name of Sunderland's old bus company on the side of the bus / train than Deutsche Bahn.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
There is an impediment. State champions almost always are dismal failures that are operated for the benefit of stakeholders and lobbyists and operate as a drain to the Exchequer. They are in general a terrible, terrible idea.
Successful state champions where that doesn't happen are very much the extremely small minority exception and not the norm and are not a good model to be followed.
Your logic is no better than someone cherry picking looking who won the lottery or made a fortune from a pyramid scheme then saying "look how great that was, sell everything, take as much money out in loans as you can and invest it into lottery tickets/Bitcoin".
So apart from EDF and DB and SNCF and La Poste and the aqueduct, they're always terrible.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
There is a simple reality that it is in the interest of every nation state to have ringfenced strategic national assets that cannot be taken off by the highest bidder. Everyone else seems to understand this except us. We can all exchange example of state bad / private good and vice-versa and all the examples will be valid. So a balance is needed. Like everyone else but us manages to hold.
Sizewell C specs look identical to Hinkley point C. I presume they think it can be done for 20 billion as it'll be a copy and paste of the Hinkley one ?
Henrik Stenson has been removed as Europe's Ryder Cup skipper with immediate effect.
I am sure there are a few million reasons why he won't be too concerned.
Rumoured to be $40m - for someone who hasn’t won a tournament in three years.
I’m sure most of us would take the same decision. Outside the top dozen or so, pro golfers are not making massive bank and have a lot of expenses.
How on earth is LIV intending to get a return on all this ?
These are huge numbers for *checks notes* the 171st ranked golfer in the world.
Quite. It's not a commercial proposition. The return is 'soft' - to improve the image of Saudi.
Initially it isn't. But if they make it work and become THE golf league, $100 million here or there is nothing. They are throwing something like $4bn at the project, but have a look how much PGA Tour have sold their rights for, last round of deals was about $3bn.
The big question I think is the majors. If they ban all the LIV golfers (and make it stick), I think that is problematic. But if they carry on with the well if you qualify you can play, I think there will be more elite golfers who say $100m to sign, thank you very much, and I will still play the big boy events.
"Saif Gaddafi: London life of former playboy who could lead Libya revealed A cache of emails and documents sheds light on the would-be ruler’s activities at a time when he was entering public life"
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
There is an impediment. State champions almost always are dismal failures that are operated for the benefit of stakeholders and lobbyists and operate as a drain to the Exchequer. They are in general a terrible, terrible idea.
Successful state champions where that doesn't happen are very much the extremely small minority exception and not the norm and are not a good model to be followed.
Your logic is no better than someone cherry picking looking who won the lottery or made a fortune from a pyramid scheme then saying "look how great that was, sell everything, take as much money out in loans as you can and invest it into lottery tickets/Bitcoin".
So apart from EDF and DB and SNCF and La Poste and the aqueduct, they're always terrible.
Yes.
Apart from a negligibly tiny proportion of state champions that thrived, the overwhelming majority of them were utterly dismal failures. That's why next to no sensible countries are trying to create new ones, especially in areas where other firms already with the existing competitive advantage already exist.
You only looking at the lottery winners while ignoring everyone else, does not mean that everyone who buys a lottery ticket ends up winning. Quite the opposite.
Globally new state champions tend to, for good reason, now only be done by countries with more money than sense who can see an opportunity not being filled by other major firms who think they can outlast any competition due to a blank cheque backing. See the golf discussion on LIV.
Setting up a state rival to EDF or DB etc is a stupid, foolish, incompetent idea.
Henrik Stenson has been removed as Europe's Ryder Cup skipper with immediate effect.
I am sure there are a few million reasons why he won't be too concerned.
Rumoured to be $40m - for someone who hasn’t won a tournament in three years.
I’m sure most of us would take the same decision. Outside the top dozen or so, pro golfers are not making massive bank and have a lot of expenses.
How on earth is LIV intending to get a return on all this ?
These are huge numbers for *checks notes* the 171st ranked golfer in the world.
I think the big question is, how will it work long term? They're signing up big names, but most are way past their best. If you're Cam Smith or Justin Thomas, would you risk jumping ship? What happens if the established tours hold firm and LIV packs up if the Saudis get bored or change their mind? They might find themselves unable to play anywhere.
The opened ended suspensions are going to end up in court. Poulter already won an initial reprieve from his DP World Tour (otherwise known as Europoean Tour) ban. I don't think permanent bans will hold because of anti-trust, PGA Tour supposed not-for-profit status, while being a monopoly (they own a big chunk of DP World Tour) whole load of stuff I have read form sports lawyers saying the PGA Tour really won't want to end up in court as the discovery could shed a light on lots of things they don't really want to talk about.
As for only signing old duffers, they seem to be slowly picking off both current elite players and up and comers. If rumours are true they have got Matsuyama, he is top 20 golfer, Cameron Smith certainly looks on the card. Patrick Reed has gone, Matt Wolf also (he dropped down the rankings, but only a 12-18 months since he was really up there with the best of them).
Lots of rumours more current high rankings players will go after Fed-ex.
I think a lot comes down to the majors. If LIV doesn't get world ranking points, then these golfers drop out of the World Top 50 and lose their exemptions for the majors (unless past champions, of course).
Will Augusta, the PGA (not PGA Tour), USGA, and R&A stand firm with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour?
I wonder what the funding model for Sizewell C is, HPC made some sense because it doesn't pay any RoI until it generates electricity. All of the risk sits with EDF. I worry that the government is going to be on the hook for SC in a way that we weren't for HPC. The risk of unlimited delays and cost overruns would sit with the taxpayer under the new arrangement. It doesn't keep EDF in line over costs and delivery time frames.
I think the shotgun start (albeit it needs a bit of tweaking) is a brilliant idea from LIV golf. From those at the event, its 4hrs rather than 12hrs, and you know where everybody will be when and of course then plenty of opportunity for drinks, food and entertainment pre / post the actual golf. For tv, again its brilliant, I don't have to waste my whole day to watch a golf tournament.
The lack of cut is really interesting too...you know when you buy tickets who you are going to get to see, rather than you buy the tickets months in advance, Dustin Johnson having a bad round and you turn up on a Saturday and he has missed the cut. It again allow marketing and promotion of the star names you are guaranteed to see. Also, increasingly the star names on PGA Tour don't play loads of the events because of such a heavy schedule.
Who is watching PGA Tour / DP World Tour events from 9am on a Thursday morning right through 4 days.
I wonder what the funding model for Sizewell C is, HPC made some sense because it doesn't pay any RoI until it generates electricity. All of the risk sits with EDF. I worry that the government is going to be on the hook for SC in a way that we weren't for HPC. The risk of unlimited delays and cost overruns would sit with the taxpayer under the new arrangement. It doesn't keep EDF in line over costs and delivery time frames.
20 B does seem very cheap too even if most of the drawing work is already done.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
It's worth emphasising how crap we are at doing these sort of long term projects where long term knowledge / specialist skills are required.
Nuclear power stations is 1 example, unless you continually build them one after another you quickly lose the knowledge required to build them. Equally we treat railways as stop start one off projects when we really do need to be planning what occurs after HS2 so the specialists have their next project ready to go.
Henrik Stenson has been removed as Europe's Ryder Cup skipper with immediate effect.
I am sure there are a few million reasons why he won't be too concerned.
Rumoured to be $40m - for someone who hasn’t won a tournament in three years.
I’m sure most of us would take the same decision. Outside the top dozen or so, pro golfers are not making massive bank and have a lot of expenses.
How on earth is LIV intending to get a return on all this ?
These are huge numbers for *checks notes* the 171st ranked golfer in the world.
I think the big question is, how will it work long term? They're signing up big names, but most are way past their best. If you're Cam Smith or Justin Thomas, would you risk jumping ship? What happens if the established tours hold firm and LIV packs up if the Saudis get bored or change their mind? They might find themselves unable to play anywhere.
The opened ended suspensions are going to end up in court. Poulter already won an initial reprieve from his DP World Tour (otherwise known as Europoean Tour) ban. I don't think permanent bans will hold because of anti-trust, PGA Tour supposed not-for-profit status, while being a monopoly (they own a big chunk of DP World Tour) whole load of stuff I have read form sports lawyers saying the PGA Tour really won't want to end up in court as the discovery could shed a light on lots of things they don't really want to talk about.
As for only signing old duffers, they seem to be slowly picking off both current elite players and up and comers. If rumours are true they have got Matsuyama, he is top 20 golfer, Cameron Smith certainly looks on the card. Patrick Reed has gone, Matt Wolf also (he dropped down the rankings, but only a 12-18 months since he was really up there with the best of them).
Lots of rumours more current high rankings players will go after Fed-ex.
I think a lot comes down to the majors. If LIV doesn't get world ranking points, then these golfers drop out of the World Top 50 and lose their exemptions for the majors (unless past champions, of course).
Will Augusta, the PGA (not PGA Tour), USGA, and R&A stand firm with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour?
That no doubt will be decided by a court case or 2..
Henrik Stenson has been removed as Europe's Ryder Cup skipper with immediate effect.
I am sure there are a few million reasons why he won't be too concerned.
Rumoured to be $40m - for someone who hasn’t won a tournament in three years.
I’m sure most of us would take the same decision. Outside the top dozen or so, pro golfers are not making massive bank and have a lot of expenses.
How on earth is LIV intending to get a return on all this ?
These are huge numbers for *checks notes* the 171st ranked golfer in the world.
I think the big question is, how will it work long term? They're signing up big names, but most are way past their best. If you're Cam Smith or Justin Thomas, would you risk jumping ship? What happens if the established tours hold firm and LIV packs up if the Saudis get bored or change their mind? They might find themselves unable to play anywhere.
The opened ended suspensions are going to end up in court. Poulter already won an initial reprieve from his DP World Tour (otherwise known as Europoean Tour) ban. I don't think permanent bans will hold because of anti-trust, PGA Tour supposed not-for-profit status, while being a monopoly (they own a big chunk of DP World Tour) whole load of stuff I have read form sports lawyers saying the PGA Tour really won't want to end up in court as the discovery could shed a light on lots of things they don't really want to talk about.
As for only signing old duffers, they seem to be slowly picking off both current elite players and up and comers. If rumours are true they have got Matsuyama, he is top 20 golfer, Cameron Smith certainly looks on the card. Patrick Reed has gone, Matt Wolf also (he dropped down the rankings, but only a 12-18 months since he was really up there with the best of them).
Lots of rumours more current high rankings players will go after Fed-ex.
I think a lot comes down to the majors. If LIV doesn't get world ranking points, then these golfers drop out of the World Top 50 and lose their exemptions for the majors (unless past champions, of course).
Will Augusta, the PGA (not PGA Tour), USGA, and R&A stand firm with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour?
Absolutely. The majors are complicated by the fact they are all differing entities in which they set their own criteria for eligibility. I have a suspicion the Masters in particular might not ban anybody, that 4 days a year requires them to sell it as the best of the best playing on one of the toughest courses in the world and as a result their tv deal alone is crazy amounts of money....and they ruthlessly interested in the dollar signs.
I give it about three months before the clamour for him to return begins. After a year of Sunak/Truss, or a minute of Starmer he will appear as some kind of titan, like Blair, but unblemished by any equivalent of Iraq
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Personally I'm not entirely sure of the need for nuclear. Renewables of various stripes are getting better and better. We have the dependability of tidal ranges all over the UK, we have excess wind power generation that we need to recover, and once we do that, as Malmesbury said, the potential for offshore wind is nearly limitless.
Nuclear is expensive, dubious environmentally, and dangerous. How often have we heard terrible warnings of nuclear power stations being caught in fighting (most recently in Ukraine)? If we are going to prod Putin and potentially China, is it really a great idea to be carpeted in nuclear power stations when we do so? Landlocked France, I can understand it. We have plenty of other options.
Henrik Stenson has been removed as Europe's Ryder Cup skipper with immediate effect.
I am sure there are a few million reasons why he won't be too concerned.
Rumoured to be $40m - for someone who hasn’t won a tournament in three years.
I’m sure most of us would take the same decision. Outside the top dozen or so, pro golfers are not making massive bank and have a lot of expenses.
How on earth is LIV intending to get a return on all this ?
These are huge numbers for *checks notes* the 171st ranked golfer in the world.
I think the big question is, how will it work long term? They're signing up big names, but most are way past their best. If you're Cam Smith or Justin Thomas, would you risk jumping ship? What happens if the established tours hold firm and LIV packs up if the Saudis get bored or change their mind? They might find themselves unable to play anywhere.
The opened ended suspensions are going to end up in court. Poulter already won an initial reprieve from his DP World Tour (otherwise known as Europoean Tour) ban. I don't think permanent bans will hold because of anti-trust, PGA Tour supposed not-for-profit status, while being a monopoly (they own a big chunk of DP World Tour) whole load of stuff I have read form sports lawyers saying the PGA Tour really won't want to end up in court as the discovery could shed a light on lots of things they don't really want to talk about.
As for only signing old duffers, they seem to be slowly picking off both current elite players and up and comers. If rumours are true they have got Matsuyama, he is top 20 golfer, Cameron Smith certainly looks on the card. Patrick Reed has gone, Matt Wolf also (he dropped down the rankings, but only a 12-18 months since he was really up there with the best of them).
Lots of rumours more current high rankings players will go after Fed-ex.
I think a lot comes down to the majors. If LIV doesn't get world ranking points, then these golfers drop out of the World Top 50 and lose their exemptions for the majors (unless past champions, of course).
Will Augusta, the PGA (not PGA Tour), USGA, and R&A stand firm with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour?
Absolutely. The majors are complicated by the fact they are all differing entities in which they set their own criteria for eligibility. I have a suspicion the Masters in particular might not ban anybody, that 4 days a year requires them to sell it as the best of the best playing on one of the toughest courses in the world and as a result their tv deal alone is crazy amounts of money....and they ruthlessly interested in the dollar signs.
Perhaps The Masters will actually go back to being a genuine invitational!
One thing is for certain, the lawyers are going to earn big out of LIV. I reckon some of the comments by the head of the PGA Tour has probably increased that bill substantially as it has given even more ammo to lawyers to get stuck into a monopoly provider making all sorts of claims/jibes about an upstart competitor.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
It's worth emphasising how crap we are at doing these sort of long term projects where long term knowledge / specialist skills are required.
Nuclear power stations is 1 example, unless you continually build them one after another you quickly lose the knowledge required to build them. Equally we treat railways as stop start one off projects when we really do need to be planning what occurs after HS2 so the specialists have their next project ready to go.
Indeed, it would be good to have someone privately create something like Marples Ridgway then see development after development being done using the same method like that again.
We still benefit as a nation now from all the investment done via firms like Marples Ridgway etc even now many decades later. More of that. 👍
Not been a fan of the standing ovation goodbye thing ever since it was invented for Blair.
Just p*** off and get packing, no need for all this mawkish backslapping stuff.
The Labour Party have also never reciprocated Cameron’s gesture of a mutual clap either (not that I blame them in this instance, but for Cameron and May it felt a bit petty). Easiest would just be to get rid of the whole thing.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Personally I'm not entirely sure of the need for nuclear. Renewables of various stripes are getting better and better. We have the dependability of tidal ranges all over the UK, we have excess wind power generation that we need to recover, and once we do that, as Malmesbury said, the potential for offshore wind is nearly limitless.
Nuclear is expensive, dubious environmentally, and dangerous. How often have we heard terrible warnings of nuclear power stations being caught in fighting (most recently in Ukraine)? If we are going to prod Putin and potentially China, is it really a great idea to be carpeted in nuclear power stations when we do so? Landlocked France, I can understand it. We have plenty of other options.
Only tidal as a continual 24/7 baseline supply though and I don't think any of us know the reasons behind it being rejected out of hand.
Storage is still very much a work in progress and that means we have to cover for extreme events like a week without wind...
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
It's worth emphasising how crap we are at doing these sort of long term projects where long term knowledge / specialist skills are required.
Nuclear power stations is 1 example, unless you continually build them one after another you quickly lose the knowledge required to build them. Equally we treat railways as stop start one off projects when we really do need to be planning what occurs after HS2 so the specialists have their next project ready to go.
That's very true for railways. During the Thatcher / Major governments, many hundreds of miles of railways were electrified. During the 13 years of Labour government that followed, only 9 miles were electrified (Kidsgrove to Crewe). (*) Lots of useful skills and knowledge were lost.
The government should (and in fact, should still) commit to a rolling program, where one line is completed and people move onto the next. Instead, we get four major projects announced at once, and when the first runs into problems due to lack of experience, prices go up.
One thing is for certain, the lawyers are going to earn big out of LIV. I reckon some of the comments by the head of the PGA Tour has probably increased that bill substantially as it has given even more ammo to lawyers to get stuck into a monopoly provider making all sorts of claims/jibes about an upstart competitor.
Strange how organisers of competitions hate competition.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Personally I'm not entirely sure of the need for nuclear. Renewables of various stripes are getting better and better. We have the dependability of tidal ranges all over the UK, we have excess wind power generation that we need to recover, and once we do that, as Malmesbury said, the potential for offshore wind is nearly limitless.
Nuclear is expensive, dubious environmentally, and dangerous. How often have we heard terrible warnings of nuclear power stations being caught in fighting (most recently in Ukraine)? If we are going to prod Putin and potentially China, is it really a great idea to be carpeted in nuclear power stations when we do so? Landlocked France, I can understand it. We have plenty of other options.
Only tidal as a continual 24/7 baseline supply though and I don't think any of us know the reasons behind it being rejected out of hand.
Storage is still very much a work in progress and that means we have to cover for extreme events like a week without wind...
'Who benefits?' is a good rule of thumb. But rather than go down the conspiracy rabbit hole, it's more positive to think that at some point, there will be someone whose calculus of costs/benefits ends up with a different outcome.
Little anecdote, parents of a friend who are stalwart white south coast working class, in their late 60s, and who were persuaded to vote Tory by Boris - are absolutely mystified and horrified that the Tories have dumped him. Can't believe it. He was their hero and even when he wasn't, he made them laugh
There are still a lot of Boris fans out there. Where they go next is a huge question
I give it about three months before the clamour for him to return begins. After a year of Sunak/Truss, or a minute of Starmer he will appear as some kind of titan, like Blair, but unblemished by any equivalent of Iraq
Henrik Stenson has been removed as Europe's Ryder Cup skipper with immediate effect.
I am sure there are a few million reasons why he won't be too concerned.
Rumoured to be $40m - for someone who hasn’t won a tournament in three years.
I’m sure most of us would take the same decision. Outside the top dozen or so, pro golfers are not making massive bank and have a lot of expenses.
How on earth is LIV intending to get a return on all this ?
These are huge numbers for *checks notes* the 171st ranked golfer in the world.
I think the big question is, how will it work long term? They're signing up big names, but most are way past their best. If you're Cam Smith or Justin Thomas, would you risk jumping ship? What happens if the established tours hold firm and LIV packs up if the Saudis get bored or change their mind? They might find themselves unable to play anywhere.
The opened ended suspensions are going to end up in court. Poulter already won an initial reprieve from his DP World Tour (otherwise known as Europoean Tour) ban. I don't think permanent bans will hold because of anti-trust, PGA Tour supposed not-for-profit status, while being a monopoly (they own a big chunk of DP World Tour) whole load of stuff I have read form sports lawyers saying the PGA Tour really won't want to end up in court as the discovery could shed a light on lots of things they don't really want to talk about.
As for only signing old duffers, they seem to be slowly picking off both current elite players and up and comers. If rumours are true they have got Matsuyama, he is top 20 golfer, Cameron Smith certainly looks on the card. Patrick Reed has gone, Matt Wolf also (he dropped down the rankings, but only a 12-18 months since he was really up there with the best of them).
Lots of rumours more current high rankings players will go after Fed-ex.
I think a lot comes down to the majors. If LIV doesn't get world ranking points, then these golfers drop out of the World Top 50 and lose their exemptions for the majors (unless past champions, of course).
Will Augusta, the PGA (not PGA Tour), USGA, and R&A stand firm with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour?
Absolutely. The majors are complicated by the fact they are all differing entities in which they set their own criteria for eligibility. I have a suspicion the Masters in particular might not ban anybody, that 4 days a year requires them to sell it as the best of the best playing on one of the toughest courses in the world and as a result their tv deal alone is crazy amounts of money....and they ruthlessly interested in the dollar signs.
Perhaps The Masters will actually go back to being a genuine invitational!
The Masters is nuts really....they have literally bought up block after block of housing around the course not just to lengthen the course and a new practice ground, but to make sure there is sufficient parking for the 4 days a year.
There is a great story where there is now one house left in this large area and they won't sell their very modest home despite being offered millions....partly because they previously owned another property on the edge of Augusta that they sold to them for millions.
"Augusta National spent over $200 million purchasing over 100 properties covering 270 acres since 1999. "
I give it about three months before the clamour for him to return begins. After a year of Sunak/Truss, or a minute of Starmer he will appear as some kind of titan, like Blair, but unblemished by any equivalent of Iraq
You should take up imaginative fiction.
Speculative fiction. And I am very good at it. I can extrapolate
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Your last paragraph is wrong. In many cases, those 'foreign citizens' ended up paying a subsidy to the UK's rail passengers!
And even they did, the subsidies were tiny, and had very little effect on the 'hugely inflated fares'.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Personally I'm not entirely sure of the need for nuclear. Renewables of various stripes are getting better and better. We have the dependability of tidal ranges all over the UK, we have excess wind power generation that we need to recover, and once we do that, as Malmesbury said, the potential for offshore wind is nearly limitless.
Nuclear is expensive, dubious environmentally, and dangerous. How often have we heard terrible warnings of nuclear power stations being caught in fighting (most recently in Ukraine)? If we are going to prod Putin and potentially China, is it really a great idea to be carpeted in nuclear power stations when we do so? Landlocked France, I can understand it. We have plenty of other options.
Only tidal as a continual 24/7 baseline supply though and I don't think any of us know the reasons behind it being rejected out of hand.
Storage is still very much a work in progress and that means we have to cover for extreme events like a week without wind...
'Who benefits?' is a good rule of thumb. But rather than go down the conspiracy rabbit hole, it's more positive to think that at some point, there will be someone whose calculus of costs/benefits ends up with a different outcome.
The figures I saw for tidal all put the tidal strike price at ~£150 plus whereas Sizewell C is a strike price of "just" £89.50 in comparison.
If tidal could be built for ~£80 or less strike price then it should be, but not at any price.
"A Ukrainian cat was found and evacuated to the controlled territory, cat has lived for several months in occupation" - the main intelligence department of Ukraine reports.
I give it about three months before the clamour for him to return begins. After a year of Sunak/Truss, or a minute of Starmer he will appear as some kind of titan, like Blair, but unblemished by any equivalent of Iraq
You should take up imaginative fiction.
Speculative fiction. And I am very good at it. I can extrapolate
Just watch
The only ones who'll want him back will be those (as you note) who never wanted him to go in the first place. You can fool some of the people all of the time is not exactly an original thought.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Personally I'm not entirely sure of the need for nuclear. Renewables of various stripes are getting better and better. We have the dependability of tidal ranges all over the UK, we have excess wind power generation that we need to recover, and once we do that, as Malmesbury said, the potential for offshore wind is nearly limitless.
Nuclear is expensive, dubious environmentally, and dangerous. How often have we heard terrible warnings of nuclear power stations being caught in fighting (most recently in Ukraine)? If we are going to prod Putin and potentially China, is it really a great idea to be carpeted in nuclear power stations when we do so? Landlocked France, I can understand it. We have plenty of other options.
Only tidal as a continual 24/7 baseline supply though and I don't think any of us know the reasons behind it being rejected out of hand.
Storage is still very much a work in progress and that means we have to cover for extreme events like a week without wind...
'Who benefits?' is a good rule of thumb. But rather than go down the conspiracy rabbit hole, it's more positive to think that at some point, there will be someone whose calculus of costs/benefits ends up with a different outcome.
The figures I saw for tidal all put the tidal strike price at ~£150 plus whereas Sizewell C is a strike price of "just" £89.50 in comparison.
If tidal could be built for ~£80 or less strike price then it should be, but not at any price.
I give it about three months before the clamour for him to return begins. After a year of Sunak/Truss, or a minute of Starmer he will appear as some kind of titan, like Blair, but unblemished by any equivalent of Iraq
You should take up imaginative fiction.
Speculative fiction. And I am very good at it. I can extrapolate
Just watch
The only ones who'll want him back will be those (as you note) who never wanted him to go in the first place. You can fool some of the people all of the time is not exactly an original thought.
You don't understand the human brain, and you don't appreciate - perhaps - just how boring these new guys will be (Tory or Labour) compared to Boris
And now at the next PMQs will we get a Brown 'its my first day' gaffe?? Opinium, it must be reminded is a forced chouce question with all 3 doing better than July 6th 49 30 sks vs boris HOWEVER! This metric has been steadily declining, it was better than all of these as recently as Jun 8th. For reference in late March which was the 'best' period recently for the Tories (Kantar tie etc) it was 42 35 to SKS, in late Feb it had been 46 33. So a sign of some bounceback from 'the chaos', but will it continue? 44 'poss good pm' for example suggests Sunak, at least, would get an initial bounce
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Personally I'm not entirely sure of the need for nuclear. Renewables of various stripes are getting better and better. We have the dependability of tidal ranges all over the UK, we have excess wind power generation that we need to recover, and once we do that, as Malmesbury said, the potential for offshore wind is nearly limitless.
Nuclear is expensive, dubious environmentally, and dangerous. How often have we heard terrible warnings of nuclear power stations being caught in fighting (most recently in Ukraine)? If we are going to prod Putin and potentially China, is it really a great idea to be carpeted in nuclear power stations when we do so? Landlocked France, I can understand it. We have plenty of other options.
Only tidal as a continual 24/7 baseline supply though and I don't think any of us know the reasons behind it being rejected out of hand.
Storage is still very much a work in progress and that means we have to cover for extreme events like a week without wind...
To be accurate, to allow for a sufficient drop to allow gravity to turn the turbines, each tidal lagoon operates for about 14 hours a day. However, the differential high tides around the coasts means you can achieve baseload with a series of these lagoons built to capture these differential high tides.
That rumour about the Cabinet Minister with the Estonian start up and the whole parrot gay thing jesus
There are many dogs that have not barked — yet! — in this leadership election. Nothing from Finnish social media, or #ClassicDom's fabled list, or dirt collected by rival campaigns or discovered by the Sunday papers or Private Eye or Guido.
Little anecdote, parents of a friend who are stalwart white south coast working class, in their late 60s, and who were persuaded to vote Tory by Boris - are absolutely mystified and horrified that the Tories have dumped him. Can't believe it. He was their hero and even when he wasn't, he made them laugh
There are still a lot of Boris fans out there. Where they go next is a huge question
Hell's teeth, I agree with you. There's a lot of Boris fans who actually aren't loyal Tories at all, particularly but not exclusively in the white working class. They won't be enamoured by Sunak or Truss. If Starmer could find a way of winning them over, he'd get a majority. But that's a huge if.
I give it about three months before the clamour for him to return begins. After a year of Sunak/Truss, or a minute of Starmer he will appear as some kind of titan, like Blair, but unblemished by any equivalent of Iraq
For this reason the Boris Derangement Syndrome might continue for a while, with people determined to pin some kind of Jan 6th level crime on him.
Little anecdote, parents of a friend who are stalwart white south coast working class, in their late 60s, and who were persuaded to vote Tory by Boris - are absolutely mystified and horrified that the Tories have dumped him. Can't believe it. He was their hero and even when he wasn't, he made them laugh
I think the shotgun start (albeit it needs a bit of tweaking) is a brilliant idea from LIV golf. From those at the event, its 4hrs rather than 12hrs, and you know where everybody will be when and of course then plenty of opportunity for drinks, food and entertainment pre / post the actual golf. For tv, again its brilliant, I don't have to waste my whole day to watch a golf tournament.
The lack of cut is really interesting too...you know when you buy tickets who you are going to get to see, rather than you buy the tickets months in advance, Dustin Johnson having a bad round and you turn up on a Saturday and he has missed the cut. It again allow marketing and promotion of the star names you are guaranteed to see. Also, increasingly the star names on PGA Tour don't play loads of the events because of such a heavy schedule.
Who is watching PGA Tour / DP World Tour events from 9am on a Thursday morning right through 4 days.
The one tweak I’d make, is to scrap the shotgun start on the last day. You want the excitement of each group on the 18th, at the end of the tournament.
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Always happens. In twenty years time people will be asking why politicians today are so crap and looking back to the glory days when titans like Gove, Sharma, Raab and Williamson were around.
The past is always turned to myth.
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Your last paragraph is wrong. In many cases, those 'foreign citizens' ended up paying a subsidy to the UK's rail passengers!
And even they did, the subsidies were tiny, and had very little effect on the 'hugely inflated fares'.
How did that work? Our government paid for Aviva to make a profit which it returns to its owner Deutsche Bahn who use the revenue to require less € from their own government. Our crazy fares subsidised foreigners. Directly.
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Oh for goodness sake!
He was the architect and engineer of his own downfall. If he had behaved himself he would be going nowhere. Neither you nor Johnson understand that.
The general consensus by all recent polling is that Johnson has been a poor Prime Minister despite his protestations to the contrary. As to the legacy, yes that will be Brexit. He needs to start praying that Brexit starts to look a bit sharper than it has appeared so far.
I give it about three months before the clamour for him to return begins. After a year of Sunak/Truss, or a minute of Starmer he will appear as some kind of titan, like Blair, but unblemished by any equivalent of Iraq
For this reason the Boris Derangement Syndrome might continue for a while, with people determined to pin some kind of Jan 6th level crime on him.
Yes, the whole Lebedev stuff. Demented
Boris will remain a dominant figure in British politics, and will haunt Remainer/Lefty nightmares for years
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Your last paragraph is wrong. In many cases, those 'foreign citizens' ended up paying a subsidy to the UK's rail passengers!
And even they did, the subsidies were tiny, and had very little effect on the 'hugely inflated fares'.
How did that work? Our government paid for Aviva to make a profit which it returns to its owner Deutsche Bahn who use the revenue to require less € from their own government. Our crazy fares subsidised foreigners. Directly.
If you can do better, set up a company, privately.
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Always happens. In twenty years time people will be asking why politicians today are so crap and looking back to the glory days when titans like Gove, Sharma, Raab and Williamson were around.
The past is always turned to myth.
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”
It's never really happened with James Callaghan, John Major or El Gord. Don't think it'll happen with Theresa May either.
It has happened with Wilson, Thatch and Blair (with Blair more so on the Conservatives side than the Labour side, bizarrely)
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Always happens. In twenty years time people will be asking why politicians today are so crap and looking back to the glory days when titans like Gove, Sharma, Raab and Williamson were around.
The past is always turned to myth.
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”
Little anecdote, parents of a friend who are stalwart white south coast working class, in their late 60s, and who were persuaded to vote Tory by Boris - are absolutely mystified and horrified that the Tories have dumped him. Can't believe it. He was their hero and even when he wasn't, he made them laugh
There are still a lot of Boris fans out there. Where they go next is a huge question
Politicians aren’t there to give people laughs . Good riddance to the pathological liar .
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Oh for goodness sake!
He was the architect and engineer of his own downfall. If he had behaved himself he would be going nowhere. Neither you nor Johnson understand that.
The general consensus by all recent polling is that Johnson has been a poor Prime Minister despite his protestations to the contrary. As to the legacy, yes that will be Brexit. He needs to start praying that Brexit starts to look a bit sharper than it has appeared so far.
What?
I said he had to go, when he had to go, because he had to go. And yes he was brought down by his own flaws. The laziness and the irresponsibility, the easy recourse to lies, the libertinism
I'm talking about the FUTURE. He will loom very large for a long time, unless he moves abroad to, say, America. But I doubt he will. He likes London and the UK, this is where his friends and contacts are
Nor do I entirely discount a return. It's not likely, but it is a possibility
Henrik Stenson has been removed as Europe's Ryder Cup skipper with immediate effect.
I am sure there are a few million reasons why he won't be too concerned.
Rumoured to be $40m - for someone who hasn’t won a tournament in three years.
I’m sure most of us would take the same decision. Outside the top dozen or so, pro golfers are not making massive bank and have a lot of expenses.
How on earth is LIV intending to get a return on all this ?
These are huge numbers for *checks notes* the 171st ranked golfer in the world.
I think the big question is, how will it work long term? They're signing up big names, but most are way past their best. If you're Cam Smith or Justin Thomas, would you risk jumping ship? What happens if the established tours hold firm and LIV packs up if the Saudis get bored or change their mind? They might find themselves unable to play anywhere.
The opened ended suspensions are going to end up in court. Poulter already won an initial reprieve from his DP World Tour (otherwise known as Europoean Tour) ban. I don't think permanent bans will hold because of anti-trust, PGA Tour supposed not-for-profit status, while being a monopoly (they own a big chunk of DP World Tour) whole load of stuff I have read form sports lawyers saying the PGA Tour really won't want to end up in court as the discovery could shed a light on lots of things they don't really want to talk about.
As for only signing old duffers, they seem to be slowly picking off both current elite players and up and comers. If rumours are true they have got Matsuyama, he is top 20 golfer, Cameron Smith certainly looks on the card. Patrick Reed has gone, Matt Wolf also (he dropped down the rankings, but only a 12-18 months since he was really up there with the best of them).
Lots of rumours more current high rankings players will go after Fed-ex.
I think a lot comes down to the majors. If LIV doesn't get world ranking points, then these golfers drop out of the World Top 50 and lose their exemptions for the majors (unless past champions, of course).
Will Augusta, the PGA (not PGA Tour), USGA, and R&A stand firm with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour?
Absolutely. The majors are complicated by the fact they are all differing entities in which they set their own criteria for eligibility. I have a suspicion the Masters in particular might not ban anybody, that 4 days a year requires them to sell it as the best of the best playing on one of the toughest courses in the world and as a result their tv deal alone is crazy amounts of money....and they ruthlessly interested in the dollar signs.
And two of the other three Majors describe themselves as open championships. Open to everyone, except the LIV Golfers?
I think the shotgun start (albeit it needs a bit of tweaking) is a brilliant idea from LIV golf. From those at the event, its 4hrs rather than 12hrs, and you know where everybody will be when and of course then plenty of opportunity for drinks, food and entertainment pre / post the actual golf. For tv, again its brilliant, I don't have to waste my whole day to watch a golf tournament.
The lack of cut is really interesting too...you know when you buy tickets who you are going to get to see, rather than you buy the tickets months in advance, Dustin Johnson having a bad round and you turn up on a Saturday and he has missed the cut. It again allow marketing and promotion of the star names you are guaranteed to see. Also, increasingly the star names on PGA Tour don't play loads of the events because of such a heavy schedule.
Who is watching PGA Tour / DP World Tour events from 9am on a Thursday morning right through 4 days.
The one tweak I’d make, is to scrap the shotgun start on the last day. You want the excitement of each group on the 18th, at the end of the tournament.
Could do that, or one thought I had is the winner rarely comes from outside the last 3 groups. Play the shotgun until the say the last 3 holes. Then hold them and play the last 3 holes in traditional manner, or even all together as one. Be really exciting to see top 6 players all battling head to head, shot for shot. I am sure we would have loved Cam Smith go head to head with Rory over those last few holes.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Two problems with that 'inflated fares in the UK claim':
1 - It's not "hugely inflated". It's "less subsidised".
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Always happens. In twenty years time people will be asking why politicians today are so crap and looking back to the glory days when titans like Gove, Sharma, Raab and Williamson were around.
The past is always turned to myth.
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”
World chess champion won't defend title because he 'does not particularly like it' 31-year-old Magnus Carlsen said he got into chess 'on a whim'
He was hoping for a next generation classic versus Firouzja but he imploded in the candidates tourney and i guess he cant be arsed to face Nepo again. Nepo vs Ding will be a good title match, Carlsen is boringly good, Nepo far more flighty and entertaining but capable of meltdown, Ding sometimes breathtakingly brilliant.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
It's worth emphasising how crap we are at doing these sort of long term projects where long term knowledge / specialist skills are required.
Nuclear power stations is 1 example, unless you continually build them one after another you quickly lose the knowledge required to build them. Equally we treat railways as stop start one off projects when we really do need to be planning what occurs after HS2 so the specialists have their next project ready to go.
That's very true for railways. During the Thatcher / Major governments, many hundreds of miles of railways were electrified. During the 13 years of Labour government that followed, only 9 miles were electrified (Kidsgrove to Crewe). (*) Lots of useful skills and knowledge were lost.
The government should (and in fact, should still) commit to a rolling program, where one line is completed and people move onto the next. Instead, we get four major projects announced at once, and when the first runs into problems due to lack of experience, prices go up.
(*) Never trust Labour with the railways ...
Don't trust either of them. The Tories brought in a private franchising structure so stupid that nobody else in the world copied it, and sold off the infrastructure in such a lax way that the private sector killed a load of people then needed rescuing. And then Labour did little to change the stupid for less stupid.
BTW, the expertise was lost before Labour had the chance to fuck things up. The multi-year hiatus in ordering new trains was enough to bankrupt and close the train manufacturing industry (bar 1 factory), the Rail Technical Centre was sold off and lost, the engineers flitted away.
We then ended up not able to do the basics like string up wires. Or re-signal the "victorian infrastructure" that Shapps Green seems obsessed with. The lunacy of the proposed Manchester South scheme as one example.
What we need is professionals running the shop. Neither party have offered that for decades, so trying to blame one lot for not fixing the other lot's mess is partisan silliness - BOTH were bad.
https://twitter.com/lynnekodonnell/status/1549397516210298883 l apologize for 3 or 4 reports written by me accusing the present authorities of forcefully marrying teenage girls and using teenage girls as sexual slaves by Taliban commanders. This was a premeditated attempt at character assassination and an affront to Afghan culture.
20 hrs later. https://twitter.com/lynnekodonnell/status/1549707743946235904 Tweet an apology or go to jail, said #Taliban intelligence. Whatever it takes: They dictated. I tweeted. They didn’t like it. Deleted, edited, re-tweeted. Made video of me saying I wasn't coerced. Re-did that too. #TwoTakesTaliban (I’m out now) #Afghanistan #journalism
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Your last paragraph is wrong. In many cases, those 'foreign citizens' ended up paying a subsidy to the UK's rail passengers!
And even they did, the subsidies were tiny, and had very little effect on the 'hugely inflated fares'.
How did that work? Our government paid for Aviva to make a profit which it returns to its owner Deutsche Bahn who use the revenue to require less € from their own government. Our crazy fares subsidised foreigners. Directly.
Many of them made a loss - hence they ended up subsidising the travelling public.
This was a significant reason the franchise system was failing: there were too few groups willing to act as operators, and some of them were getting their fingers burnt.
The point that there are a lot of Boris fans out there who aren't necessarily Conservatives is, however, entirely true. Quite what they see in him, I dunno. But politics as entertainment is surely a strong factor with them. They aren't represented here of course. But there are many.
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Always happens. In twenty years time people will be asking why politicians today are so crap and looking back to the glory days when titans like Gove, Sharma, Raab and Williamson were around.
The past is always turned to myth.
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”
It's never really happened with James Callaghan, John Major or El Gord. Don't think it'll happen with Theresa May either.
It has happened with Wilson, Thatch and Blair (with Blair more so on the Conservatives side than the Labour side, bizarrely)
It will absolutely happen with Boris. He has been the most high profile and charismatic British politician since Blair, and in some ways is more important than Blair (Brexit, Covid, Ukraine) despite serving a much briefer term
And one advantage of leaving the scene so early is that he won't be tarnished by the sour humdrum years that beckon. Those whom the Gods love best die young, etc
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Oh for goodness sake!
He was the architect and engineer of his own downfall. If he had behaved himself he would be going nowhere. Neither you nor Johnson understand that.
The general consensus by all recent polling is that Johnson has been a poor Prime Minister despite his protestations to the contrary. As to the legacy, yes that will be Brexit. He needs to start praying that Brexit starts to look a bit sharper than it has appeared so far.
What?
I said he had to go, when he had to go, because he had to go. And yes he was brought down by his own flaws. The laziness and the irresponsibility, the easy recourse to lies, the libertinism
I'm talking about the FUTURE. He will loom very large for a long time, unless he moves abroad to, say, America. But I doubt he will. He likes London and the UK, this is where his friends and contacts are
Nor do I entirely discount a return. It's not likely, but it is a possibility
Future, what future? What you mean is he will linger like a bad smell.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Your last paragraph is wrong. In many cases, those 'foreign citizens' ended up paying a subsidy to the UK's rail passengers!
And even they did, the subsidies were tiny, and had very little effect on the 'hugely inflated fares'.
How did that work? Our government paid for Aviva to make a profit which it returns to its owner Deutsche Bahn who use the revenue to require less € from their own government. Our crazy fares subsidised foreigners. Directly.
If you can do better, set up a company, privately.
Or perhaps DB know what they're doing?
Yes, DB do know what they are doing! And the shocker is that so did British Rail. In their final phase after sectorisation it was supremely good and efficient on a global scale. Intercity was the only profitable long-distance rail operator on the planet. Now its fragments require huge subsidies.
Ownership wasn't the issue, the lunatic privatisation chosen was. Major preferred your Japan-style regional vertical privatisation and was overruled by the ideologues. Recreate the old regional companies as was and it would likely have been a success.
Henrik Stenson has been removed as Europe's Ryder Cup skipper with immediate effect.
I am sure there are a few million reasons why he won't be too concerned.
Rumoured to be $40m - for someone who hasn’t won a tournament in three years.
I’m sure most of us would take the same decision. Outside the top dozen or so, pro golfers are not making massive bank and have a lot of expenses.
How on earth is LIV intending to get a return on all this ?
These are huge numbers for *checks notes* the 171st ranked golfer in the world.
I think the big question is, how will it work long term? They're signing up big names, but most are way past their best. If you're Cam Smith or Justin Thomas, would you risk jumping ship? What happens if the established tours hold firm and LIV packs up if the Saudis get bored or change their mind? They might find themselves unable to play anywhere.
The opened ended suspensions are going to end up in court. Poulter already won an initial reprieve from his DP World Tour (otherwise known as Europoean Tour) ban. I don't think permanent bans will hold because of anti-trust, PGA Tour supposed not-for-profit status, while being a monopoly (they own a big chunk of DP World Tour) whole load of stuff I have read form sports lawyers saying the PGA Tour really won't want to end up in court as the discovery could shed a light on lots of things they don't really want to talk about.
As for only signing old duffers, they seem to be slowly picking off both current elite players and up and comers. If rumours are true they have got Matsuyama, he is top 20 golfer, Cameron Smith certainly looks on the card. Patrick Reed has gone, Matt Wolf also (he dropped down the rankings, but only a 12-18 months since he was really up there with the best of them).
Lots of rumours more current high rankings players will go after Fed-ex.
I think a lot comes down to the majors. If LIV doesn't get world ranking points, then these golfers drop out of the World Top 50 and lose their exemptions for the majors (unless past champions, of course).
Will Augusta, the PGA (not PGA Tour), USGA, and R&A stand firm with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour?
Absolutely. The majors are complicated by the fact they are all differing entities in which they set their own criteria for eligibility. I have a suspicion the Masters in particular might not ban anybody, that 4 days a year requires them to sell it as the best of the best playing on one of the toughest courses in the world and as a result their tv deal alone is crazy amounts of money....and they ruthlessly interested in the dollar signs.
And two of the other three Majors describe themselves as open championships. Open to everyone, except the LIV Golfers?
No surprise that extremely rich golfers in their greed have signed up to LIV for even more. I read today that West Ham want Jesse Lingard, but are reluctant to pay his full demand of £180,000 a week. For a pretty average footballer. The world's mad.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Two problems with that 'inflated fares in the UK claim':
1 - It's not "hugely inflated". It's "less subsidised".
Rail isn't actually that expensive until you get to the point when the train is full - so that is rush hours and various other times which are now busy due to the change in travelling habits. For instance ECML now has a "rush" hour on Fridays and Sundays as people go away for the weekend.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Two problems with that 'inflated fares in the UK claim':
1 - It's not "hugely inflated". It's "less subsidised".
Yes, it is too often forgotten that UK fares are actually competitive, save the commuter routes into London which are subsidised much less than those in European large metros.
The problem I always thought was the bewildering array of fare options and the very clunky UX of the ticketing machines.
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Oh for goodness sake!
He was the architect and engineer of his own downfall. If he had behaved himself he would be going nowhere. Neither you nor Johnson understand that.
The general consensus by all recent polling is that Johnson has been a poor Prime Minister despite his protestations to the contrary. As to the legacy, yes that will be Brexit. He needs to start praying that Brexit starts to look a bit sharper than it has appeared so far.
What?
I said he had to go, when he had to go, because he had to go. And yes he was brought down by his own flaws. The laziness and the irresponsibility, the easy recourse to lies, the libertinism
I'm talking about the FUTURE. He will loom very large for a long time, unless he moves abroad to, say, America. But I doubt he will. He likes London and the UK, this is where his friends and contacts are
Nor do I entirely discount a return. It's not likely, but it is a possibility
Future, what future? What you mean is he will linger like a bad smell.
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Your last paragraph is wrong. In many cases, those 'foreign citizens' ended up paying a subsidy to the UK's rail passengers!
And even they did, the subsidies were tiny, and had very little effect on the 'hugely inflated fares'.
How did that work? Our government paid for Aviva to make a profit which it returns to its owner Deutsche Bahn who use the revenue to require less € from their own government. Our crazy fares subsidised foreigners. Directly.
Many of them made a loss - hence they ended up subsidising the travelling public.
This was a significant reason the franchise system was failing: there were too few groups willing to act as operators, and some of them were getting their fingers burnt.
But Cap and Collar meant that they didn't really make a loss - they took the profits and then handed the franchise back when the profits disappeared.
Anyway, do we both agree that StateCo operators demonstrated that public ownership in the European model works?
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Always happens. In twenty years time people will be asking why politicians today are so crap and looking back to the glory days when titans like Gove, Sharma, Raab and Williamson were around.
The past is always turned to myth.
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”
Personally I miss Chris Grayling. We will not see his like again. Fondly remember the day all 3 items on the evening news were separate Chris Grayling cock-ups. That takes talent.
I think the shotgun start (albeit it needs a bit of tweaking) is a brilliant idea from LIV golf. From those at the event, its 4hrs rather than 12hrs, and you know where everybody will be when and of course then plenty of opportunity for drinks, food and entertainment pre / post the actual golf. For tv, again its brilliant, I don't have to waste my whole day to watch a golf tournament.
The lack of cut is really interesting too...you know when you buy tickets who you are going to get to see, rather than you buy the tickets months in advance, Dustin Johnson having a bad round and you turn up on a Saturday and he has missed the cut. It again allow marketing and promotion of the star names you are guaranteed to see. Also, increasingly the star names on PGA Tour don't play loads of the events because of such a heavy schedule.
Who is watching PGA Tour / DP World Tour events from 9am on a Thursday morning right through 4 days.
The one tweak I’d make, is to scrap the shotgun start on the last day. You want the excitement of each group on the 18th, at the end of the tournament.
Could do that, or one thought I had is the winner rarely comes from outside the last 3 groups. Play the shotgun until the say the last 3 holes. Then hold them and play the last 3 holes in traditional manner, or even all together as one. Be really exciting to see top 6 players all battling head to head, shot for shot. I am sure we would have loved Cam Smith go head to head with Rory over those last few holes.
Wouldn't that mean some people do the par 3 9th while missing the par 5 6th while others do the reverse?
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
It's worth emphasising how crap we are at doing these sort of long term projects where long term knowledge / specialist skills are required.
Nuclear power stations is 1 example, unless you continually build them one after another you quickly lose the knowledge required to build them. Equally we treat railways as stop start one off projects when we really do need to be planning what occurs after HS2 so the specialists have their next project ready to go.
That's very true for railways. During the Thatcher / Major governments, many hundreds of miles of railways were electrified. During the 13 years of Labour government that followed, only 9 miles were electrified (Kidsgrove to Crewe). (*) Lots of useful skills and knowledge were lost.
The government should (and in fact, should still) commit to a rolling program, where one line is completed and people move onto the next. Instead, we get four major projects announced at once, and when the first runs into problems due to lack of experience, prices go up.
(*) Never trust Labour with the railways ...
Don't trust either of them. The Tories brought in a private franchising structure so stupid that nobody else in the world copied it, and sold off the infrastructure in such a lax way that the private sector killed a load of people then needed rescuing. And then Labour did little to change the stupid for less stupid.
BTW, the expertise was lost before Labour had the chance to fuck things up. The multi-year hiatus in ordering new trains was enough to bankrupt and close the train manufacturing industry (bar 1 factory), the Rail Technical Centre was sold off and lost, the engineers flitted away.
We then ended up not able to do the basics like string up wires. Or re-signal the "victorian infrastructure" that Shapps Green seems obsessed with. The lunacy of the proposed Manchester South scheme as one example.
What we need is professionals running the shop. Neither party have offered that for decades, so trying to blame one lot for not fixing the other lot's mess is partisan silliness - BOTH were bad.
You can go away with the "private sector killed a load of people" sh*t. Yes, Railtrack had problems. But, in case you had not noticed, so did BR in the decades before. The list is long and inglorious. Mentioning things like Hatfield and not mentioning the likes of Crowden, Clapham, Stafford, Cannon Street, Purley Belgrove, Lockington (all fatal crashes in the ten years before privatisation) is odd.
Unless nationalised deaths are fine, privatised ones are evil?
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Your last paragraph is wrong. In many cases, those 'foreign citizens' ended up paying a subsidy to the UK's rail passengers!
And even they did, the subsidies were tiny, and had very little effect on the 'hugely inflated fares'.
How did that work? Our government paid for Aviva to make a profit which it returns to its owner Deutsche Bahn who use the revenue to require less € from their own government. Our crazy fares subsidised foreigners. Directly.
If you can do better, set up a company, privately.
Or perhaps DB know what they're doing?
Yes, DB do know what they are doing! And the shocker is that so did British Rail. In their final phase after sectorisation it was supremely good and efficient on a global scale. Intercity was the only profitable long-distance rail operator on the planet. Now its fragments require huge subsidies.
Ownership wasn't the issue, the lunatic privatisation chosen was. Major preferred your Japan-style regional vertical privatisation and was overruled by the ideologues. Recreate the old regional companies as was and it would likely have been a success.
So redo privatisation problem, Japan style, as it always should have been. Get Japanese companies involved for expertise if need be.
Ownership is a problem, but it's never the only issue.
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Oh for goodness sake!
He was the architect and engineer of his own downfall. If he had behaved himself he would be going nowhere. Neither you nor Johnson understand that.
The general consensus by all recent polling is that Johnson has been a poor Prime Minister despite his protestations to the contrary. As to the legacy, yes that will be Brexit. He needs to start praying that Brexit starts to look a bit sharper than it has appeared so far.
What?
I said he had to go, when he had to go, because he had to go. And yes he was brought down by his own flaws. The laziness and the irresponsibility, the easy recourse to lies, the libertinism
I'm talking about the FUTURE. He will loom very large for a long time, unless he moves abroad to, say, America. But I doubt he will. He likes London and the UK, this is where his friends and contacts are
Nor do I entirely discount a return. It's not likely, but it is a possibility
Future, what future? What you mean is he will linger like a bad smell.
Graun feed comment:
'And that leads on to the third, and most interesting, feature of his valedictory - the very strong hint that he wants to stage a comeback. “Mission largely accomplished - for now,” he said. And he concluded with a line from Terminator 2 normally translated as “See you later.” Another famous line from the same film is “I’ll be back.”'
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Two problems with that 'inflated fares in the UK claim':
1 - It's not "hugely inflated". It's "less subsidised".
Yes, it is too often forgotten that UK fares are actually competitive, save the commuter routes into London which are subsidised much less than those in European large metros.
The problem I always thought was the bewildering array of fare options and the very clunky UX of the ticketing machines.
The ticket machines aren't great but almost inevitable given the complexity of our ticketing models.
For what I gather when GBR comes on board the plan is for everyone to use an LNER style matrix for prices...
The point that there are a lot of Boris fans out there who aren't necessarily Conservatives is, however, entirely true. Quite what they see in him, I dunno. But politics as entertainment is surely a strong factor with them. They aren't represented here of course. But there are many.
I'm not sure about this. I thought there might be something specific to T May that won her votes in the East Midlands in 2017. I was wrong, these places are just trending Tory.
Henrik Stenson has been removed as Europe's Ryder Cup skipper with immediate effect.
I am sure there are a few million reasons why he won't be too concerned.
Rumoured to be $40m - for someone who hasn’t won a tournament in three years.
I’m sure most of us would take the same decision. Outside the top dozen or so, pro golfers are not making massive bank and have a lot of expenses.
How on earth is LIV intending to get a return on all this ?
These are huge numbers for *checks notes* the 171st ranked golfer in the world.
I think the big question is, how will it work long term? They're signing up big names, but most are way past their best. If you're Cam Smith or Justin Thomas, would you risk jumping ship? What happens if the established tours hold firm and LIV packs up if the Saudis get bored or change their mind? They might find themselves unable to play anywhere.
The opened ended suspensions are going to end up in court. Poulter already won an initial reprieve from his DP World Tour (otherwise known as Europoean Tour) ban. I don't think permanent bans will hold because of anti-trust, PGA Tour supposed not-for-profit status, while being a monopoly (they own a big chunk of DP World Tour) whole load of stuff I have read form sports lawyers saying the PGA Tour really won't want to end up in court as the discovery could shed a light on lots of things they don't really want to talk about.
As for only signing old duffers, they seem to be slowly picking off both current elite players and up and comers. If rumours are true they have got Matsuyama, he is top 20 golfer, Cameron Smith certainly looks on the card. Patrick Reed has gone, Matt Wolf also (he dropped down the rankings, but only a 12-18 months since he was really up there with the best of them).
Lots of rumours more current high rankings players will go after Fed-ex.
I think a lot comes down to the majors. If LIV doesn't get world ranking points, then these golfers drop out of the World Top 50 and lose their exemptions for the majors (unless past champions, of course).
Will Augusta, the PGA (not PGA Tour), USGA, and R&A stand firm with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour?
Absolutely. The majors are complicated by the fact they are all differing entities in which they set their own criteria for eligibility. I have a suspicion the Masters in particular might not ban anybody, that 4 days a year requires them to sell it as the best of the best playing on one of the toughest courses in the world and as a result their tv deal alone is crazy amounts of money....and they ruthlessly interested in the dollar signs.
And two of the other three Majors describe themselves as open championships. Open to everyone, except the LIV Golfers?
No surprise that extremely rich golfers in their greed have signed up to LIV for even more. I read today that West Ham want Jesse Lingard, but are reluctant to pay his full demand of £180,000 a week. For a pretty average footballer. The world's mad.
The whole point, is that the vast majority of professional golfers are nowhere near extremely rich.
On the US Tour, half the players each week “don’t make the cut”, and get paid nothing. They still have to turn up, pay their entry fee, their caddy, their hotel bill - but leave with no cheque.
If professional golfers were all rich, there would be no need for LIV Golf.
Picture the scene in say, 2024, when Prime Minister Liz Yawn Truss is doing an election walkabout in Newent, and the sparse crowds are politely chatting, and looking at their phones, and drifting off.... and then a mop of blonde hair appears
OMFG it's BORIS!!
BORIS!!
Suddenly the crowds rush to get a glimpse, and to shake hands with the great man, and laugh at his feeble but well delivered jokes, and they walk away with a smile, and Liz Wossface remains ignored in the corner. Along with Rishi Sunak
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Oh for goodness sake!
He was the architect and engineer of his own downfall. If he had behaved himself he would be going nowhere. Neither you nor Johnson understand that.
The general consensus by all recent polling is that Johnson has been a poor Prime Minister despite his protestations to the contrary. As to the legacy, yes that will be Brexit. He needs to start praying that Brexit starts to look a bit sharper than it has appeared so far.
What?
I said he had to go, when he had to go, because he had to go. And yes he was brought down by his own flaws. The laziness and the irresponsibility, the easy recourse to lies, the libertinism
I'm talking about the FUTURE. He will loom very large for a long time, unless he moves abroad to, say, America. But I doubt he will. He likes London and the UK, this is where his friends and contacts are
Nor do I entirely discount a return. It's not likely, but it is a possibility
Future, what future? What you mean is he will linger like a bad smell.
You hate the guy so much it blinds you
I see it as it is Leon.
I have accepted that on the credit side we have his (indirect) response to vaccines, and grudgingly I concede, it seems he faced off Sunak when it came to Ukraine. But in the debit column...where do I begin?
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Two problems with that 'inflated fares in the UK claim':
1 - It's not "hugely inflated". It's "less subsidised".
Yes, it is too often forgotten that UK fares are actually competitive, save the commuter routes into London which are subsidised much less than those in European large metros.
The problem I always thought was the bewildering array of fare options and the very clunky UX of the ticketing machines.
Some advance fares - especially with competing operators - are extremely cheap. The rest are expensive compared to most similar trips elsewhere. And the same with the tube and the buses. We could choose to cap fares but we don't. When its almost always cheaper to fly internally than get the train we are clearly doing something wrong.
Henrik Stenson has been removed as Europe's Ryder Cup skipper with immediate effect.
I am sure there are a few million reasons why he won't be too concerned.
Rumoured to be $40m - for someone who hasn’t won a tournament in three years.
I’m sure most of us would take the same decision. Outside the top dozen or so, pro golfers are not making massive bank and have a lot of expenses.
How on earth is LIV intending to get a return on all this ?
These are huge numbers for *checks notes* the 171st ranked golfer in the world.
I think the big question is, how will it work long term? They're signing up big names, but most are way past their best. If you're Cam Smith or Justin Thomas, would you risk jumping ship? What happens if the established tours hold firm and LIV packs up if the Saudis get bored or change their mind? They might find themselves unable to play anywhere.
The opened ended suspensions are going to end up in court. Poulter already won an initial reprieve from his DP World Tour (otherwise known as Europoean Tour) ban. I don't think permanent bans will hold because of anti-trust, PGA Tour supposed not-for-profit status, while being a monopoly (they own a big chunk of DP World Tour) whole load of stuff I have read form sports lawyers saying the PGA Tour really won't want to end up in court as the discovery could shed a light on lots of things they don't really want to talk about.
As for only signing old duffers, they seem to be slowly picking off both current elite players and up and comers. If rumours are true they have got Matsuyama, he is top 20 golfer, Cameron Smith certainly looks on the card. Patrick Reed has gone, Matt Wolf also (he dropped down the rankings, but only a 12-18 months since he was really up there with the best of them).
Lots of rumours more current high rankings players will go after Fed-ex.
I think a lot comes down to the majors. If LIV doesn't get world ranking points, then these golfers drop out of the World Top 50 and lose their exemptions for the majors (unless past champions, of course).
Will Augusta, the PGA (not PGA Tour), USGA, and R&A stand firm with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour?
Absolutely. The majors are complicated by the fact they are all differing entities in which they set their own criteria for eligibility. I have a suspicion the Masters in particular might not ban anybody, that 4 days a year requires them to sell it as the best of the best playing on one of the toughest courses in the world and as a result their tv deal alone is crazy amounts of money....and they ruthlessly interested in the dollar signs.
And two of the other three Majors describe themselves as open championships. Open to everyone, except the LIV Golfers?
No surprise that extremely rich golfers in their greed have signed up to LIV for even more. I read today that West Ham want Jesse Lingard, but are reluctant to pay his full demand of £180,000 a week. For a pretty average footballer. The world's mad.
The whole point, is that the vast majority of professional golfers are nowhere near extremely rich.
On the US Tour, half the players each week “don’t make the cut”, and get paid nothing. They still have to turn up, pay their entry fee, their caddy, their hotel bill - but leave with no cheque.
If professional golfers were all rich, there would be no need for LIV Golf.
Little anecdote, parents of a friend who are stalwart white south coast working class, in their late 60s, and who were persuaded to vote Tory by Boris - are absolutely mystified and horrified that the Tories have dumped him. Can't believe it. He was their hero and even when he wasn't, he made them laugh
There are still a lot of Boris fans out there. Where they go next is a huge question
The government has granted development consent for the new Sizewell C nuclear power plant on the Suffolk coast.
The project, mainly funded by the French energy company EDF, is expected to cost in the region of £20bn.
Blimey, sounds quite cheap tbh.
Why do we outsource this stuff to the French govt rather than setting up our own national champion?
Because EDF is a company with a lot of expertise in this, its something they have a competitive advantage in and they'll do it for their best value for money.
Any state-owned "national champion" would be a bloated mess of a 'company' that would operate instead to the advantage of "stakeholders" and lobbyists and bailed out by the taxpayers time and again. 👎
But EDF is state-owned. And yet is "a company with a lot of expertise" who have found a "competitive advantage".
So there is no impediment whatsoever in being state-owned and commercially excellent. In your own words. Yet you oppose it...
Indeed this was exactly the point of my question. We threw the baby out with the bath water with privatisation and forgot that the benefits it brings are down to the implied incentive structure and little else. It’s perfectly possible to create an efficient state owned company if you’re careful about it, as is shown around the world.
Some countries understand strategic resilience and some don’t. Unfortunately we sold off our strategic resilience to fund our structural current account deficit. Sad.
By the way Bart, the “private sector” makes the key components for our nuclear powered subs. But really that’s a charade. It’s a ring fenced unit within Rolls Royce that decades after the Thatcher bail out, still benefits from cost plus govt contracts and has very little turnover of staff, because a) it’s such a cushy number, b) they have to be security cleared and pretty much only employ British nationals.
So it’s private sector but without the upside. And in a similar way, it’s possible to create state sector but without the downside. I’m a Tory at heart but at the first opportunity I’d be nationalising Gupta’s steel interests, as well as the oil refineries owned by Essar and Gary Klesch. Let more competent private sector people run them, with pay structures inversely proportional to the level of state subsidy required to keep them running in the national interest.
I can see where you're coming from, but it's an irrelevance in this case. Our nationalised power company would not have any expertise in building new nuclear power stations, as the government has not ordered any for thirty years. - and some governments were rather cold on nuclear power as well.
So create one. Private sector expertise is out there, so hire them. Instead of having engineers spending our money for the good of a foreign government, hire them to do the exact same job for the good of our government!
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Two problems with that 'inflated fares in the UK claim':
1 - It's not "hugely inflated". It's "less subsidised".
Yes, it is too often forgotten that UK fares are actually competitive, save the commuter routes into London which are subsidised much less than those in European large metros.
The problem I always thought was the bewildering array of fare options and the very clunky UX of the ticketing machines.
The ticket machines aren't great but almost inevitable given the complexity of our ticketing models.
For what I gather when GBR comes on board the plan is for everyone to use an LNER style matrix for prices...
I don’t it’s inevitable.
It’s one of those minor but ongoing irritants, but look at what kayak and others did for airline ticket UX.
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Always happens. In twenty years time people will be asking why politicians today are so crap and looking back to the glory days when titans like Gove, Sharma, Raab and Williamson were around.
The past is always turned to myth.
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”
It's never really happened with James Callaghan, John Major or El Gord. Don't think it'll happen with Theresa May either.
It has happened with Wilson, Thatch and Blair (with Blair more so on the Conservatives side than the Labour side, bizarrely)
It will absolutely happen with Boris. He has been the most high profile and charismatic British politician since Blair, and in some ways is more important than Blair (Brexit, Covid, Ukraine) despite serving a much briefer term
And one advantage of leaving the scene so early is that he won't be tarnished by the sour humdrum years that beckon. Those whom the Gods love best die young, etc
His legend will grow. The lost king
I have a feeling he is more the Bonnie Prince after Culloden than the all conquering hero storming through Lancashire to Derby as the King throws his robes into a case and prepares to flee. His folliwers still believe and lick their wounds and gird themselves for the blowback but Boris will flee to Skye, dressed as Nadine Dorries and live out a drunken and debauched exile in the media.
Edit - as he always has, Legendary Boris will let down everyone who invests faith in him as the King over Water. Yet faith will there be of course.
Hes the anti Nixon. Nixon was never loved by the people. Boris was, and for some stiil is. Its what made his fuck ups harder to bear
He will lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Oh for goodness sake!
He was the architect and engineer of his own downfall. If he had behaved himself he would be going nowhere. Neither you nor Johnson understand that.
The general consensus by all recent polling is that Johnson has been a poor Prime Minister despite his protestations to the contrary. As to the legacy, yes that will be Brexit. He needs to start praying that Brexit starts to look a bit sharper than it has appeared so far.
What?
I said he had to go, when he had to go, because he had to go. And yes he was brought down by his own flaws. The laziness and the irresponsibility, the easy recourse to lies, the libertinism
I'm talking about the FUTURE. He will loom very large for a long time, unless he moves abroad to, say, America. But I doubt he will. He likes London and the UK, this is where his friends and contacts are
Nor do I entirely discount a return. It's not likely, but it is a possibility
Future, what future? What you mean is he will linger like a bad smell.
You hate the guy so much it blinds you
I see it as it is Leon.
I have accepted that on the credit side we have his (indirect) response to vaccines, and grudgingly I concede, it seems he faced off Sunak when it came to Ukraine. But in the debit column...where do I begin?
I'm not talking about ANY of that. I am not talking about his successes or failures or whatever. Read better
I am talking about his sheer box office quality, the boffoness. The charisma. There is no one to compare in British politics and he still has it, see that final speech in the Commons
He is 58, he is not old. He is younger than Starmer, for instance
He will still be a massive presence, which is a problem for both sides. The next Tory leader will be overshadowed, Starmer's boringness will seem even more boring
I would like to see the train stations nationalised, and the track/operators bundled into private franchises.
Village stations could be run by local volunteers, a kind of national trust operation.
There’s enough bloody rail enthusiasts out there.
An anecdote. I can't remember which station it was, but a while back the locals near one station asked a BR manager for permission to 'do up' their local small station: plant flowers, tidy things up, litter pick, give things a lick of paint. Permission was given, and necessary training give to a few people. From memory, it also included locals taking shifts to greet trains arriving and help out.
Passenger numbers rocketed up. Then another manager came in, and he stopped the nonsense. Passenger numbers slowly fell.
(I wish I could remember which station it was...) Yes, there are problems in having untrained people mucking about near railway lines. But there's also a great deal of goodwill for 'local# stations. The Settle and Carlisle showed how it should be done in the face of adversity in the 1980s; I think some other lines have similar groups.
Comments
The first part of the answer is that they’re thinking long term, and have a couple of billion in the bank in the meantime.
The tournaments at the moment are little more than exhibition events, with 54 holes and ‘shotgun’ starts, streamed free on their website, Youtube and Facebook to build an audience.
I think their plan is to transition to OTT subscriptions, getting that existing audience of a few million to part with $10 a month, possibly alongside TV deals in key markets (but obviously no-one with PGA or DBW tour contract will touch them).
The big draw, is that eventually the vast majority of the top golfers will go where the money is, as happened in darts. They’ll play a smaller number of larger events per year.
The real sticking point is going to be the Majors, and how they react. I get the impression that LIV are prepared to raise court cases in the US and EU, to prevent restraint of trade of freelance professionals. If and when that happens, the incumbent tours are pretty much dead.
Because it's better to put the name of Sunderland's old bus company on the side of the bus / train than Deutsche Bahn.
The big question I think is the majors. If they ban all the LIV golfers (and make it stick), I think that is problematic. But if they carry on with the well if you qualify you can play, I think there will be more elite golfers who say $100m to sign, thank you very much, and I will still play the big boy events.
"Saif Gaddafi: London life of former playboy who could lead Libya revealed
A cache of emails and documents sheds light on the would-be ruler’s activities at a time when he was entering public life"
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/20/saif-gaddafi-the-london-life-of-the-former-playboy-who-could-lead-libya
Its the same argument as where we have had UK rail passengers paying hugely inflated fares to pay for the pensions of foreign citizens. Bonkers.
Apart from a negligibly tiny proportion of state champions that thrived, the overwhelming majority of them were utterly dismal failures. That's why next to no sensible countries are trying to create new ones, especially in areas where other firms already with the existing competitive advantage already exist.
You only looking at the lottery winners while ignoring everyone else, does not mean that everyone who buys a lottery ticket ends up winning. Quite the opposite.
Globally new state champions tend to, for good reason, now only be done by countries with more money than sense who can see an opportunity not being filled by other major firms who think they can outlast any competition due to a blank cheque backing. See the golf discussion on LIV.
Setting up a state rival to EDF or DB etc is a stupid, foolish, incompetent idea.
Will Augusta, the PGA (not PGA Tour), USGA, and R&A stand firm with the PGA Tour and DP World Tour?
The lack of cut is really interesting too...you know when you buy tickets who you are going to get to see, rather than you buy the tickets months in advance, Dustin Johnson having a bad round and you turn up on a Saturday and he has missed the cut. It again allow marketing and promotion of the star names you are guaranteed to see. Also, increasingly the star names on PGA Tour don't play loads of the events because of such a heavy schedule.
Who is watching PGA Tour / DP World Tour events from 9am on a Thursday morning right through 4 days.
Nuclear power stations is 1 example, unless you continually build them one after another you quickly lose the knowledge required to build them. Equally we treat railways as stop start one off projects when we really do need to be planning what occurs after HS2 so the specialists have their next project ready to go.
https://twitter.com/BloombergUK/status/1549724511695736834?s=20&t=3NwFw-_nIphMOEmyyOPRag
I give it about three months before the clamour for him to return begins. After a year of Sunak/Truss, or a minute of Starmer he will appear as some kind of titan, like Blair, but unblemished by any equivalent of Iraq
Nuclear is expensive, dubious environmentally, and dangerous. How often have we heard terrible warnings of nuclear power stations being caught in fighting (most recently in Ukraine)? If we are going to prod Putin and potentially China, is it really a great idea to be carpeted in nuclear power stations when we do so? Landlocked France, I can understand it. We have plenty of other options.
We still benefit as a nation now from all the investment done via firms like Marples Ridgway etc even now many decades later. More of that. 👍
Just p*** off and get packing, no need for all this mawkish backslapping stuff.
The Labour Party have also never reciprocated Cameron’s gesture of a mutual clap either (not that I blame them in this instance, but for Cameron and May it felt a bit petty). Easiest would just be to get rid of the whole thing.
Storage is still very much a work in progress and that means we have to cover for extreme events like a week without wind...
The government should (and in fact, should still) commit to a rolling program, where one line is completed and people move onto the next. Instead, we get four major projects announced at once, and when the first runs into problems due to lack of experience, prices go up.
(*) Never trust Labour with the railways ...
There are still a lot of Boris fans out there. Where they go next is a huge question
There is a great story where there is now one house left in this large area and they won't sell their very modest home despite being offered millions....partly because they previously owned another property on the edge of Augusta that they sold to them for millions.
"Augusta National spent over $200 million purchasing over 100 properties covering 270 acres since 1999. "
https://www.insider.com/masters-augusta-national-house-not-for-sale-neighbors-property-2022-4
Just watch
And even they did, the subsidies were tiny, and had very little effect on the 'hugely inflated fares'.
If tidal could be built for ~£80 or less strike price then it should be, but not at any price.
SHOCK NEWS FROM SNAKE ISLAND
"A Ukrainian cat was found and evacuated to the controlled territory, cat has lived for several months in occupation" - the main intelligence department of Ukraine reports.
You can fool some of the people all of the time is not exactly an original thought.
That's the big idea?
Cost of living.
"Boris was a master of the Commons. We won't see his like again"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/07/20/boris-master-commons-wont-see-like-time/
He will be lionised and idolised, and turned into this great lost leader, treacherously slain by midgets, and replaced by bores
Opinium, it must be reminded is a forced chouce question with all 3 doing better than July 6th 49 30 sks vs boris
HOWEVER! This metric has been steadily declining, it was better than all of these as recently as Jun 8th.
For reference in late March which was the 'best' period recently for the Tories (Kantar tie etc) it was 42 35 to SKS, in late Feb it had been 46 33.
So a sign of some bounceback from 'the chaos', but will it continue? 44 'poss good pm' for example suggests Sunak, at least, would get an initial bounce
31-year-old Magnus Carlsen said he got into chess 'on a whim'
The past is always turned to myth.
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”
He was the architect and engineer of his own downfall. If he had behaved himself he would be going nowhere. Neither you nor Johnson understand that.
The general consensus by all recent polling is that Johnson has been a poor Prime Minister despite his protestations to the contrary. As to the legacy, yes that will be Brexit. He needs to start praying that Brexit starts to look a bit sharper than it has appeared so far.
Boris will remain a dominant figure in British politics, and will haunt Remainer/Lefty nightmares for years
See also, for example the puce faced Lee in the Commons declaring his undying loyalty to Boris.
Or perhaps DB know what they're doing?
It has happened with Wilson, Thatch and Blair (with Blair more so on the Conservatives side than the Labour side, bizarrely)
I said he had to go, when he had to go, because he had to go. And yes he was brought down by his own flaws. The laziness and the irresponsibility, the easy recourse to lies, the libertinism
I'm talking about the FUTURE. He will loom very large for a long time, unless he moves abroad to, say, America. But I doubt he will. He likes London and the UK, this is where his friends and contacts are
Nor do I entirely discount a return. It's not likely, but it is a possibility
1 - It's not "hugely inflated". It's "less subsidised".
2 - The claim is largely a newspaper soundbite from cherry-picking journalists. We have a model which is more aligned to market demand for travel, which is merely sensible.
https://www.seat61.com/uk-europe-train-fares-comparison.html
Nepo vs Ding will be a good title match, Carlsen is boringly good, Nepo far more flighty and entertaining but capable of meltdown, Ding sometimes breathtakingly brilliant.
BTW, the expertise was lost before Labour had the chance to fuck things up. The multi-year hiatus in ordering new trains was enough to bankrupt and close the train manufacturing industry (bar 1 factory), the Rail Technical Centre was sold off and lost, the engineers flitted away.
We then ended up not able to do the basics like string up wires. Or re-signal the "victorian infrastructure" that Shapps Green seems obsessed with. The lunacy of the proposed Manchester South scheme as one example.
What we need is professionals running the shop. Neither party have offered that for decades, so trying to blame one lot for not fixing the other lot's mess is partisan silliness - BOTH were bad.
https://twitter.com/lynnekodonnell/status/1549397516210298883
l apologize for 3 or 4 reports written by me accusing the present
authorities of forcefully marrying teenage girls and using teenage girls as sexual slaves by Taliban commanders.
This was a premeditated attempt at character assassination and an affront to Afghan culture.
20 hrs later.
https://twitter.com/lynnekodonnell/status/1549707743946235904
Tweet an apology or go to jail, said #Taliban intelligence. Whatever it takes: They dictated. I tweeted. They didn’t like it. Deleted, edited, re-tweeted. Made video of me saying I wasn't coerced. Re-did that too.
#TwoTakesTaliban (I’m out now) #Afghanistan #journalism
This was a significant reason the franchise system was failing: there were too few groups willing to act as operators, and some of them were getting their fingers burnt.
Quite what they see in him, I dunno. But politics as entertainment is surely a strong factor with them.
They aren't represented here of course. But there are many.
And one advantage of leaving the scene so early is that he won't be tarnished by the sour humdrum years that beckon. Those whom the Gods love best die young, etc
His legend will grow. The lost king
Ownership wasn't the issue, the lunatic privatisation chosen was. Major preferred your Japan-style regional vertical privatisation and was overruled by the ideologues. Recreate the old regional companies as was and it would likely have been a success.
I read today that West Ham want Jesse Lingard, but are reluctant to pay his full demand of £180,000 a week. For a pretty average footballer. The world's mad.
The problem I always thought was the bewildering array of fare options and the very clunky UX of the ticketing machines.
Anyway, do we both agree that StateCo operators demonstrated that public ownership in the European model works?
Village stations could be run by local volunteers, a kind of national trust operation.
There’s enough bloody rail enthusiasts out there.
Unless nationalised deaths are fine, privatised ones are evil?
Ownership is a problem, but it's never the only issue.
'And that leads on to the third, and most interesting, feature of his valedictory - the very strong hint that he wants to stage a comeback. “Mission largely accomplished - for now,” he said. And he concluded with a line from Terminator 2 normally translated as “See you later.” Another famous line from the same film is “I’ll be back.”'
For what I gather when GBR comes on board the plan is for everyone to use an LNER style matrix for prices...
On the US Tour, half the players each week “don’t make the cut”, and get paid nothing. They still have to turn up, pay their entry fee, their caddy, their hotel bill - but leave with no cheque.
If professional golfers were all rich, there would be no need for LIV Golf.
OMFG it's BORIS!!
BORIS!!
Suddenly the crowds rush to get a glimpse, and to shake hands with the great man, and laugh at his feeble but well delivered jokes, and they walk away with a smile, and Liz Wossface remains ignored in the corner. Along with Rishi Sunak
Repeat for PM Starmer at state events, perhaps
I have accepted that on the credit side we have his (indirect) response to vaccines, and grudgingly I concede, it seems he faced off Sunak when it came to Ukraine. But in the debit column...where do I begin?
It’s one of those minor but ongoing irritants, but look at what kayak and others did for airline ticket UX.
Indeed, Trainline does a pretty good job.
His folliwers still believe and lick their wounds and gird themselves for the blowback but Boris will flee to Skye, dressed as Nadine Dorries and live out a drunken and debauched exile in the media.
Edit - as he always has, Legendary Boris will let down everyone who invests faith in him as the King over Water. Yet faith will there be of course.
Hes the anti Nixon. Nixon was never loved by the people. Boris was, and for some stiil is. Its what made his fuck ups harder to bear
I am talking about his sheer box office quality, the boffoness. The charisma. There is no one to compare in British politics and he still has it, see that final speech in the Commons
He is 58, he is not old. He is younger than Starmer, for instance
He will still be a massive presence, which is a problem for both sides. The next Tory leader will be overshadowed, Starmer's boringness will seem even more boring
Passenger numbers rocketed up. Then another manager came in, and he stopped the nonsense. Passenger numbers slowly fell.
(I wish I could remember which station it was...) Yes, there are problems in having untrained people mucking about near railway lines. But there's also a great deal of goodwill for 'local# stations. The Settle and Carlisle showed how it should be done in the face of adversity in the 1980s; I think some other lines have similar groups.