An entertaining 5 minutes: 1. Get an email from Royal Mail saying my lost package is being delivered today 2. Doorbell rings. David the postie with my package 3. Neighbour waves me over. Big hole dug in my lawn next to his driveway. With bumblebees swarming around in the bottom of it
And??!? What happened next? Where did the hole come from? What are the bumblebees doing? Don’t leave us hanging!
Appears that a bumble bee nest had been founded under the grass near a big tree. And the badgers dug them out last night
Badgers in the area - my immediate thought is get a decent outside night-time camera up to watch what they do...
Have nearly run the sodding things over enough times going up the side lane to get into our property!
Be glad the badgers found it.
My mum once stepped on a wasp's nest in that type of situation. It took two days before the swelling round her eyes from the stings went down enough so she could see.
I am in a particularly sentimental mood about animals today, perhaps - because my older daughter's beloved dog Bramble had a series of epileptic seizures this morning, and may not last the day
He's only 2 years old and she ADORES that bloody dog. If PBers have any spare prayers, donations are welcome
I do find the "Tories have a problem in that they are uncoalitionable" argument bizarre.
SIlly old Right, having consolidated their positions to the extent they only need one party, while the Left sensibly splits itself into multiple factions because they can't agree on anything.
It should be obvious that the former arrangement is outright better under FPTP (and, really, any remotely reasonable system, even PR). The issue the Tories have right now is unpopularity, not the lack of a(nother) junior coalition partner to cannibalise.
An entertaining 5 minutes: 1. Get an email from Royal Mail saying my lost package is being delivered today 2. Doorbell rings. David the postie with my package 3. Neighbour waves me over. Big hole dug in my lawn next to his driveway. With bumblebees swarming around in the bottom of it
And??!? What happened next? Where did the hole come from? What are the bumblebees doing? Don’t leave us hanging!
Appears that a bumble bee nest had been founded under the grass near a big tree. And the badgers dug them out last night
We had a Nest in the compost bin last year. We just left them to it.
Why would the badgers go after a bumble nest. They don’t produce honey do they ?
A lot of things have been predicted in this war that haven't happened. And quite a few things have been said to happen that never happened. So I'm trying to concentrate on what can be verified. This is quite a nice recent example of where a more reliable twitterer is deflating some of the over-excitement.
Ukraine have been doing well using HIMARS to attack the Russian rear, but I think it's very unlikely that they have sufficient reserves available to launch a major counteroffensive.
I would like to point out that Threshed Thought has been far ahead of the curve on most aspects of this war so far. He was wrong that Putin wouldn’t launch a full invasion but since then he’s been spot on.
Go back to the early days in Feb and against the narrative of the time, he was one of the very first who called it correctly that the invasion was going to fail (this was actually the reason why he wasn’t expecting the invasion, he knew it would likely end in Russian defeat). He has more or less exactly predicted how the Battle of Kharkiv and Battle of Donbas would play out. And he started speaking many weeks ago about how Donbas was the military side show and that attention should instead be on what was happening in the south around Kherson. At the time this was a fringe view but is now generally accepted.
If he says we’re about to see a full counter thrust around Kherson, he has earned the right to be listened to. He has also by the way been saying for a long time that Ukraine can and will eventually end up attacking and retaking Crimea.
He’s no mug this dude, impressive cv on this subject and a growing roll call of media citations.
I want it to be true, but I'm cautious because we've seen limited counterattacks from Ukraine that have come to an early halt due to lack of available forces to reinforce success - around Kharkiv, and Kherson. We also know that Ukrainian losses in the Donbas have also been high.
The Ukrainians are also a long way from achieving air superiority. There's a big risk that a precipitous attempt at a grand counteroffensive would turn into a very costly failure.
I know that there is some value in trying to predict the future, but for myself, I feel like this is one of those situations where it's hard enough to get an accurate sense of the present, and the recent past, that it's worth concentrating on that.
A lot of things have been predicted in this war that haven't happened. And quite a few things have been said to happen that never happened. So I'm trying to concentrate on what can be verified. This is quite a nice recent example of where a more reliable twitterer is deflating some of the over-excitement.
Ukraine have been doing well using HIMARS to attack the Russian rear, but I think it's very unlikely that they have sufficient reserves available to launch a major counteroffensive.
I would like to point out that Threshed Thought has been far ahead of the curve on most aspects of this war so far. He was wrong that Putin wouldn’t launch a full invasion but since then he’s been spot on.
Go back to the early days in Feb and against the narrative of the time, he was one of the very first who called it correctly that the invasion was going to fail (this was actually the reason why he wasn’t expecting the invasion, he knew it would likely end in Russian defeat). He has more or less exactly predicted how the Battle of Kharkiv and Battle of Donbas would play out. And he started speaking many weeks ago about how Donbas was the military side show and that attention should instead be on what was happening in the south around Kherson. At the time this was a fringe view but is now generally accepted.
If he says we’re about to see a full counter thrust around Kherson, he has earned the right to be listened to. He has also by the way been saying for a long time that Ukraine can and will eventually end up attacking and retaking Crimea.
He’s no mug this dude, impressive cv on this subject and a growing roll call of media citations.
Who knows, but I generally think that the number of public statements that X is poised to attack Y soon is in inverse proportion to the likelihood of their doing it. So I take the numerous Russian claims of imminent offensive and the Ukrainian ones of pending assault of Kherson both with a pinch of salt. The fronts look pretty deadlocked to me.
But you are not a military analyst. A seemingly deadlocked front in the Donbas was something he predicted ages ago and how it would then feed into a Ukrainian counteroffensive as we approached the end of summer. He might be wrong this time but so far he’s got it almost spot on.
Of course if he’s right then Putin starts to run out of cards fast, if he loses not only his landbridge to Crimea but potentially Crimea itself (perhaps notable the Russian navy has just relocated from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk). And one of Putin’s last cards is the natural gas weapon. I reckon he’ll hope to tie it to Ukraine attacking innocent Russians in the Russian sovereign territory of Crimea.
An entertaining 5 minutes: 1. Get an email from Royal Mail saying my lost package is being delivered today 2. Doorbell rings. David the postie with my package 3. Neighbour waves me over. Big hole dug in my lawn next to his driveway. With bumblebees swarming around in the bottom of it
And??!? What happened next? Where did the hole come from? What are the bumblebees doing? Don’t leave us hanging!
Appears that a bumble bee nest had been founded under the grass near a big tree. And the badgers dug them out last night
We had a Nest in the compost bin last year. We just left them to it.
Why would the badgers go after a bumble nest. They don’t produce honey do they ?
An alternative to the Diet of Worms (acknowledges the other theological minutiae thread whilst avoiding it like the plague).
Bumblebees have many predators, some of which are mammals and birds. These predators have co-existed with bumblebees for thousands of years and are not a cause for conservation concern – it is the human-caused problems like habitat loss, pesticide exposure and climate change which make natural predation more of an issue for bumblebee populations.
The main mammalian predators are badgers, which use their strong claws to dig up nests and eat the larvae and food stores. Badger predation seems to be more likely to happen when conditions are dry and it is harder for badgers to forage on their preferred food source – worms. Generally larger nests seem to be attacked, presumably because the badgers can smell them out more easily; in combination, this seems to mean that by the time nests are predated they are likely to have been able to produce new reproductive individuals (males and/or queens). https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/bee-faqs/bumblebee-predators/
An entertaining 5 minutes: 1. Get an email from Royal Mail saying my lost package is being delivered today 2. Doorbell rings. David the postie with my package 3. Neighbour waves me over. Big hole dug in my lawn next to his driveway. With bumblebees swarming around in the bottom of it
And??!? What happened next? Where did the hole come from? What are the bumblebees doing? Don’t leave us hanging!
Appears that a bumble bee nest had been founded under the grass near a big tree. And the badgers dug them out last night
We had a Nest in the compost bin last year. We just left them to it.
Why would the badgers go after a bumble nest. They don’t produce honey do they ?
An entertaining 5 minutes: 1. Get an email from Royal Mail saying my lost package is being delivered today 2. Doorbell rings. David the postie with my package 3. Neighbour waves me over. Big hole dug in my lawn next to his driveway. With bumblebees swarming around in the bottom of it
And??!? What happened next? Where did the hole come from? What are the bumblebees doing? Don’t leave us hanging!
Appears that a bumble bee nest had been founded under the grass near a big tree. And the badgers dug them out last night
We had a Nest in the compost bin last year. We just left them to it.
Why would the badgers go after a bumble nest. They don’t produce honey do they ?
Why? Because they are bastards...
Careful of badgers. You can shoot them in Gloucestershire and Somerset, but disturb their habitat elsewhere and it's you that will be shot!
An entertaining 5 minutes: 1. Get an email from Royal Mail saying my lost package is being delivered today 2. Doorbell rings. David the postie with my package 3. Neighbour waves me over. Big hole dug in my lawn next to his driveway. With bumblebees swarming around in the bottom of it
And??!? What happened next? Where did the hole come from? What are the bumblebees doing? Don’t leave us hanging!
Appears that a bumble bee nest had been founded under the grass near a big tree. And the badgers dug them out last night
We had a Nest in the compost bin last year. We just left them to it.
Why would the badgers go after a bumble nest. They don’t produce honey do they ?
Why? Because they are bastards...
Careful of badgers. You can shoot them in Gloucestershire and Somerset, but disturb their habitat elsewhere and it's you that will be shot!
Sadly for the hedgehogs. Why does Brian bloody May have such a hard on for Badgers at the expense of the rest of Britain's biosphere?
It'd be good to see its design docs - and I bet the Russians want to see them as well. As a non-expert, it appears to be some form of hollow box structure: in which case most of the strength would be in the side beams of the box, and the thin top deck is mainly there to transfer loads to the side beams. As others have said elsewhere, there are no signs of any post-tensioning cables.
Repair could be anything from just chucking some steel road plates over the top, to impossible in any reasonable timescale. But allegedly the Russians are trying to build a pontoon bridge alongside it, so it might be more towards the latter.
“Yes, interest rates have to go up and it’s a good thing,” Minford said. “A normal level is more like 5-7 per cent and I don’t think it will be any bad thing if we got back to that level.”
There's also no statement how quickly we get there, if at all ...
There is of course the sand on the beach theory of aliens.
When you go to the beach and are sitting on the sand, say, two feet away from you and two feet down into the sand could be an ant colony. You would never see or know about it despite being close to it.
The aliens could be in the vicinity, cosmic-wise but they never bother to investigate or happen upon the infinitesimally tiny part that is our planet.
There's a lot of sci fi on a similarish theme - Roadside Picnic, William Gibson short whose name I forget, Gateway in reverse: if we do encounter aliens, it won't do us much good, any more than it would a swarm (?) of ants investigating the remains of a human picnic. might get a discarded apple core out of it.
The experience of the Aztec, the Incas, the tribes of Africa, the Natives of North America, the indigenes of Japan, the aborigines of Australia, the locals in Papua New Guinea, even the Neanderthals, all suggest that when a relatively inferior civilisation (in terms of tech, etc) meets an obviously superior civilisation, the result is a catastrophe for the more primitive lifeform
I see no reason why we would be different; I was amazed last night by the number of PB-ers who think humans would just shrug and continue as normal if it was proved we are being visited by super-powerful aliens
Yes but we have nuclear weapons unlike the aborigines, Indians Aztecs etc.
Aliens would have to be super powerful to neutralise a nuclear weapon if our weapon of last resort if they attacked us or tried to colonise us
Yeah hate to break it to you but there’s been quite a bit of on the record testimony now that UAP sightings have coincided with mysterious and inexplicable shutdowns in nuclear facilities. Both US and Soviet.
Read between the lines on this from the Canadians last month too:
If aliens were so powerful they could have destroyed all our nuclear weapons and nuclear facilities long ago.
If they wanted to colonise us they would have done.
In any case I believe in eternal life with the Lord aliens or no aliens
I agree, I am not a subscriber to Dark Forest theory. I suspect far more likely we are the end result of directed panspermia. I would also not be in the least surprised if almost all of Earth’s religious traditions have their routes in The Phenomona, whatever it turns out to be.
I suspect Leon’s mate is wrong and if a secret has been kept, it’s nothing to do with “their” hostile intent. It’s because those with the info worry about how it would unwind religion. Lue Elizondo formally accused his superiors of this in his complaint to the Pentagon’s IG - that evidence was getting wilfully stuck halfway up the chain of command due to various individuals’ religious beliefs getting in the way. Mind you Lue has also said we should be looking very carefully at human dna. If his implication turned out to be true, then it certainly would unwind global religions!
Again, what proportion of human endeavour should be spent looking for signs of intelligent design or external interference in human dna? More than none in my opinion.
I don't see why it should affect religions.
God created the earth and ultimately humans whatever our dna, there is no mention of specific dna in the bible.
Even if we are destroyed by aliens that could just be an implementation of the Book of Revelation, we turned too far away from God and Christ and God sent alien beings to destroy humanity before the second coming of Christ
IANAT* but I have never really understood this idea that God requires us to worship him** and would get so angry about us not doing it that he would wipe out humanity in response. Would a supreme being capable of creating an entire universe of such infinite beauty and variety really be such a needy prick?
*I am not a theologian **may seem sexist but if God was really like this he would definitely be a he.
I quite like the following comment I found on the Internet
A lot of things have been predicted in this war that haven't happened. And quite a few things have been said to happen that never happened. So I'm trying to concentrate on what can be verified. This is quite a nice recent example of where a more reliable twitterer is deflating some of the over-excitement.
Ukraine have been doing well using HIMARS to attack the Russian rear, but I think it's very unlikely that they have sufficient reserves available to launch a major counteroffensive.
They don't need HIMARS to attack Kherson and its environs aiui.
Even the bridge recently hit is only about 20km from the frontline. It is within range of a lot of systems.
Only if you are prepared to bring your systems to the front line.
Being able to reach 50Km means that you can easily hit something 20km behind the enemy lines, while keeping your system up 20km behind your own lines (plus a bit for manoeuvring).
If the enemy has artillery that can reach 20km, then even if he risks putting it up front, he can't hit you back (with artillery).
It'd be good to see its design docs - and I bet the Russians want to see them as well. As a non-expert, it appears to be some form of hollow box structure: in which case most of the strength would be in the side beams of the box, and the thin top deck is mainly there to transfer loads to the side beams. As others have said elsewhere, there are no signs of any post-tensioning cables.
Repair could be anything from just chucking some steel road plates over the top, to impossible in any reasonable timescale. But allegedly the Russians are trying to build a pontoon bridge alongside it, so it might be more towards the latter.
(IANAE.)
The indication seems to be that the Ukrainians wanted to make it impassable to heavy equipment but without completely destroying it, as they might want to make use of it later in the campaign. Let's see how the pontoon bridge goes, there was that attempt from a couple of months ago in the north that was a Grade A cluster wasn't there.
There is of course the sand on the beach theory of aliens.
When you go to the beach and are sitting on the sand, say, two feet away from you and two feet down into the sand could be an ant colony. You would never see or know about it despite being close to it.
The aliens could be in the vicinity, cosmic-wise but they never bother to investigate or happen upon the infinitesimally tiny part that is our planet.
There's a lot of sci fi on a similarish theme - Roadside Picnic, William Gibson short whose name I forget, Gateway in reverse: if we do encounter aliens, it won't do us much good, any more than it would a swarm (?) of ants investigating the remains of a human picnic. might get a discarded apple core out of it.
The experience of the Aztec, the Incas, the tribes of Africa, the Natives of North America, the indigenes of Japan, the aborigines of Australia, the locals in Papua New Guinea, even the Neanderthals, all suggest that when a relatively inferior civilisation (in terms of tech, etc) meets an obviously superior civilisation, the result is a catastrophe for the more primitive lifeform
I see no reason why we would be different; I was amazed last night by the number of PB-ers who think humans would just shrug and continue as normal if it was proved we are being visited by super-powerful aliens
If they are that much smarter than us presumably resistance would indeed be useless, in which case shrugging and carrying as normal would be able all we could do.
If they were much smarter than us and wanted to colonise us they would likely have done so by now
Or they’re waiting to see if their candidate makes it to PM?
It'd be good to see its design docs - and I bet the Russians want to see them as well. As a non-expert, it appears to be some form of hollow box structure: in which case most of the strength would be in the side beams of the box, and the thin top deck is mainly there to transfer loads to the side beams. As others have said elsewhere, there are no signs of any post-tensioning cables.
Repair could be anything from just chucking some steel road plates over the top, to impossible in any reasonable timescale. But allegedly the Russians are trying to build a pontoon bridge alongside it, so it might be more towards the latter.
(IANAE.)
The indication seems to be that the Ukrainians wanted to make it impassable to heavy equipment but without completely destroying it, as they might want to make use of it later in the campaign. Let's see how the pontoon bridge goes, there was that attempt from a couple of months ago in the north that was a Grade A cluster wasn't there.
You also need to provide Russians with a safe return / evacuation route - otherwise they have to keep on fighting...
There is of course the sand on the beach theory of aliens.
When you go to the beach and are sitting on the sand, say, two feet away from you and two feet down into the sand could be an ant colony. You would never see or know about it despite being close to it.
The aliens could be in the vicinity, cosmic-wise but they never bother to investigate or happen upon the infinitesimally tiny part that is our planet.
There's a lot of sci fi on a similarish theme - Roadside Picnic, William Gibson short whose name I forget, Gateway in reverse: if we do encounter aliens, it won't do us much good, any more than it would a swarm (?) of ants investigating the remains of a human picnic. might get a discarded apple core out of it.
The experience of the Aztec, the Incas, the tribes of Africa, the Natives of North America, the indigenes of Japan, the aborigines of Australia, the locals in Papua New Guinea, even the Neanderthals, all suggest that when a relatively inferior civilisation (in terms of tech, etc) meets an obviously superior civilisation, the result is a catastrophe for the more primitive lifeform
I see no reason why we would be different; I was amazed last night by the number of PB-ers who think humans would just shrug and continue as normal if it was proved we are being visited by super-powerful aliens
If they are that much smarter than us presumably resistance would indeed be useless, in which case shrugging and carrying as normal would be able all we could do.
If they were much smarter than us and wanted to colonise us they would likely have done so by now
Or they’re waiting to see if their candidate makes it to PM?
PMI data today shows the region already on the brink of recession, a day after the ECB managed to hike rates back to zero. Meanwhile inflation for July expected to be....er.....8.8%.
At the same time, the EU is seeking mandatory powers to impose 15 per cent gas usage cuts across the region over the winter after Germany's Russiagas strategy backfired spectacularly.
How on earth do you borrow money at interest rates of 7%
Borrowing money to cut taxes may make sense when interest rates are at 1% (it isn't but hey ho) but it surely makes zero sense if you are borrowing money at 7% + a year...
“Yes, interest rates have to go up and it’s a good thing,” Minford said. “A normal level is more like 5-7 per cent and I don’t think it will be any bad thing if we got back to that level.”
There's also no statement how quickly we get there, if at all ...
“Yes, interest rates have to go up and it’s a good thing,” Minford said. “A normal level is more like 5-7 per cent and I don’t think it will be any bad thing if we got back to that level.”
There's also no statement how quickly we get there, if at all ...
The headline needed a "could". And by now we should all know what a "could" in a headline means.
“Yes, interest rates have to go up and it’s a good thing,” Minford said. “A normal level is more like 5-7 per cent and I don’t think it will be any bad thing if we got back to that level.”
There's also no statement how quickly we get there, if at all ...
That will be decided by Bailey & Co anyway.
Even 5% means borrowing money to reduce taxation makes zero sense because you need 5% of the tax cut the next year just to pay the interest on the money you borrowed.
Mr. Boy, I feel pride at the oiled magnificence of my wiffle stick. There is no shame in the lace-clad excellence of morris dancing.
Mr. kamski, I could but it'd get tedious for both me and others if I just regurgitated the same line about it being odd to feel pride at something one hasn't achieved when referring to sporting events.
Mr. Pete, I do my best (but often forget) to include sufficient context in answers, or quoted sentences, so people don't have to do that. Embedding paragraphs is something I am unlikely to do.
“Yes, interest rates have to go up and it’s a good thing,” Minford said. “A normal level is more like 5-7 per cent and I don’t think it will be any bad thing if we got back to that level.”
There's also no statement how quickly we get there, if at all ...
That will be decided by Bailey & Co anyway.
Even 5% means borrowing money to reduce taxation makes zero sense because you need 5% of the tax cut the next year just to pay the interest on the money you borrowed.
True but as has often been pointed out on here, the BoE borrows long and yield curves can be negative. Plus if inflation fell sharply we wouldn't be getting caned on the inflation linked stuff.
How on earth do you borrow money at interest rates of 7%
Borrowing money to cut taxes may make sense when interest rates are at 1% (it isn't but hey ho) but it surely makes zero sense if you are borrowing money at 7% + a year...
Government borrowing rates are different from the Bank base rate, aren't they?
Priti Patel has been unusually quiet recently. Hopefully she’s busy sorting the Dover border and passport backlog.
Priti Patel has been burying the report into the uselessness of the Border Force. The report was sneaked out on the last day of the session after sitting in the Home Office safe for five months.
Priti is an interesting customer in that she has never been an uncritical Boris acolyte like JRM or Nadine Dorries, or even a dutiful stooge like Dominic Raab.
How on earth do you borrow money at interest rates of 7%
Borrowing money to cut taxes may make sense when interest rates are at 1% (it isn't but hey ho) but it surely makes zero sense if you are borrowing money at 7% + a year...
Would surely solve the problem of an overheated housing market, though.
(It might keep the plates spinning for just long enough to get past a general election, but after that... Oh stepmomma.)
How on earth do you borrow money at interest rates of 7%
Borrowing money to cut taxes may make sense when interest rates are at 1% (it isn't but hey ho) but it surely makes zero sense if you are borrowing money at 7% + a year...
Government borrowing rates are different from the Bank base rate, aren't they?
Usually based on it though - so the Government may be able to borrow at 4.5-5.5% depending on mood if interest rates are at 5%.
The one thing the Government won't be doing is borrowing at 0.5%....
It's also worth noting that one of Minford's hopes is that high interest rates kill off old zombie companies that haven't died yet.
It may do that but low Corporation Tax is also going to encourage companies to go for short term profits (to make the most of what are likely to be short term low Corporation Tax rates) rather than investing money on productivity...
So we will be back to the old story of British staff are unproductive because we throw cheap labour at the problem instead of using technology.
There is of course the sand on the beach theory of aliens.
When you go to the beach and are sitting on the sand, say, two feet away from you and two feet down into the sand could be an ant colony. You would never see or know about it despite being close to it.
The aliens could be in the vicinity, cosmic-wise but they never bother to investigate or happen upon the infinitesimally tiny part that is our planet.
There's a lot of sci fi on a similarish theme - Roadside Picnic, William Gibson short whose name I forget, Gateway in reverse: if we do encounter aliens, it won't do us much good, any more than it would a swarm (?) of ants investigating the remains of a human picnic. might get a discarded apple core out of it.
The experience of the Aztec, the Incas, the tribes of Africa, the Natives of North America, the indigenes of Japan, the aborigines of Australia, the locals in Papua New Guinea, even the Neanderthals, all suggest that when a relatively inferior civilisation (in terms of tech, etc) meets an obviously superior civilisation, the result is a catastrophe for the more primitive lifeform
I see no reason why we would be different; I was amazed last night by the number of PB-ers who think humans would just shrug and continue as normal if it was proved we are being visited by super-powerful aliens
Yes but we have nuclear weapons unlike the aborigines, Indians Aztecs etc.
Aliens would have to be super powerful to neutralise a nuclear weapon if our weapon of last resort if they attacked us or tried to colonise us
Yeah hate to break it to you but there’s been quite a bit of on the record testimony now that UAP sightings have coincided with mysterious and inexplicable shutdowns in nuclear facilities. Both US and Soviet.
Read between the lines on this from the Canadians last month too:
If aliens were so powerful they could have destroyed all our nuclear weapons and nuclear facilities long ago.
If they wanted to colonise us they would have done.
In any case I believe in eternal life with the Lord aliens or no aliens
I agree, I am not a subscriber to Dark Forest theory. I suspect far more likely we are the end result of directed panspermia. I would also not be in the least surprised if almost all of Earth’s religious traditions have their routes in The Phenomona, whatever it turns out to be.
I suspect Leon’s mate is wrong and if a secret has been kept, it’s nothing to do with “their” hostile intent. It’s because those with the info worry about how it would unwind religion. Lue Elizondo formally accused his superiors of this in his complaint to the Pentagon’s IG - that evidence was getting wilfully stuck halfway up the chain of command due to various individuals’ religious beliefs getting in the way. Mind you Lue has also said we should be looking very carefully at human dna. If his implication turned out to be true, then it certainly would unwind global religions!
Again, what proportion of human endeavour should be spent looking for signs of intelligent design or external interference in human dna? More than none in my opinion.
I don't see why it should affect religions.
God created the earth and ultimately humans whatever our dna, there is no mention of specific dna in the bible.
Even if we are destroyed by aliens that could just be an implementation of the Book of Revelation, we turned too far away from God and Christ and God sent alien beings to destroy humanity before the second coming of Christ
Yes, she comes across quite well there. I can see the warmth and humour others speak of (much more than May or Brown, these are rubbish comparisons)
I'm coming round to the idea she MIGHT be OK. Labour would be foolish to completely dismiss her as a nutjob
I thought Boris might be ok.
I wonder if there is a good biography of Truss out there? Having read Sonia Purnell's biography of Johnson long before he became PM I felt well prepared for his premiership, and none of the subsequent developments surprised me.
It'd be good to see its design docs - and I bet the Russians want to see them as well. As a non-expert, it appears to be some form of hollow box structure: in which case most of the strength would be in the side beams of the box, and the thin top deck is mainly there to transfer loads to the side beams. As others have said elsewhere, there are no signs of any post-tensioning cables.
Repair could be anything from just chucking some steel road plates over the top, to impossible in any reasonable timescale. But allegedly the Russians are trying to build a pontoon bridge alongside it, so it might be more towards the latter.
(IANAE.)
The indication seems to be that the Ukrainians wanted to make it impassable to heavy equipment but without completely destroying it, as they might want to make use of it later in the campaign. Let's see how the pontoon bridge goes, there was that attempt from a couple of months ago in the north that was a Grade A cluster wasn't there.
Yes - against weapons with an accuracy of metres and cheap satellite recon footage updated hourly, pontoon bridges have not proved to be the best idea.
“Yes, interest rates have to go up and it’s a good thing,” Minford said. “A normal level is more like 5-7 per cent and I don’t think it will be any bad thing if we got back to that level.”
There's also no statement how quickly we get there, if at all ...
That will be decided by Bailey & Co anyway.
Even 5% means borrowing money to reduce taxation makes zero sense because you need 5% of the tax cut the next year just to pay the interest on the money you borrowed.
If the tax cut is announced in autumn 2022, implemented in spring 2023, and the election is in spring 2024 - then paying the interest on the debt is a post-election problem, assuming the financial markets lend you the money in the first place.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I can see why it might help to win an election. The voters are hardly going to be enthusiastic about voting for a party promising to reverse tax cuts in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and if Labour don't promise to reverse them, then how are they different anyway?
I think Truss has the politics of this right, just as Johnson did with Brexit. No idea what we do when it all falls apart, but that isn't going to be a problem for Starmer if he loses the next election.
“Yes, interest rates have to go up and it’s a good thing,” Minford said. “A normal level is more like 5-7 per cent and I don’t think it will be any bad thing if we got back to that level.”
There's also no statement how quickly we get there, if at all ...
That will be decided by Bailey & Co anyway.
Even 5% means borrowing money to reduce taxation makes zero sense because you need 5% of the tax cut the next year just to pay the interest on the money you borrowed.
If the tax cut is announced in autumn 2022, implemented in spring 2023, and the election is in spring 2024 - then paying the interest on the debt is a post-election problem, assuming the financial markets lend you the money in the first place.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I can see why it might help to win an election. The voters are hardly going to be enthusiastic about voting for a party promising to reverse tax cuts in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and if Labour don't promise to reverse them, then how are they different anyway?
I think Truss has the politics of this right, just as Johnson did with Brexit. No idea what we do when it all falls apart, but that isn't going to be a problem for Starmer if he loses the next election.
The tax cuts aren't things anyone earning less than £35,000 are going to care about - it's corporation tax and NI...
How on earth do you borrow money at interest rates of 7%
Borrowing money to cut taxes may make sense when interest rates are at 1% (it isn't but hey ho) but it surely makes zero sense if you are borrowing money at 7% + a year...
Government borrowing rates are different from the Bank base rate, aren't they?
Pretty tightly constrained by them; why lend to the govt if they pay less than depositing with the bank?
How on earth do you borrow money at interest rates of 7%
Borrowing money to cut taxes may make sense when interest rates are at 1% (it isn't but hey ho) but it surely makes zero sense if you are borrowing money at 7% + a year...
Would surely solve the problem of an overheated housing market, though.
(It might keep the plates spinning for just long enough to get past a general election, but after that... Oh stepmomma.)
If interest rates are going to 5-6% I will be encouraging twin A to stay at home and save for another year or so because bargains will be coming...
Mr. Boy, I feel pride at the oiled magnificence of my wiffle stick. There is no shame in the lace-clad excellence of morris dancing.
Mr. kamski, I could but it'd get tedious for both me and others if I just regurgitated the same line about it being odd to feel pride at something one hasn't achieved when referring to sporting events.
Mr. Pete, I do my best (but often forget) to include sufficient context in answers, or quoted sentences, so people don't have to do that. Embedding paragraphs is something I am unlikely to do.
It's really easy, and I'm a technophobe. Click on the quote button and bingo it embeds the post. It is really, really helpful to contextualise the often quite excellent points you are making.
How on earth do you borrow money at interest rates of 7%
Borrowing money to cut taxes may make sense when interest rates are at 1% (it isn't but hey ho) but it surely makes zero sense if you are borrowing money at 7% + a year...
Would surely solve the problem of an overheated housing market, though.
(It might keep the plates spinning for just long enough to get past a general election, but after that... Oh stepmomma.)
If interest rates are going to 5-6% I will be encouraging twin A to stay at home and save for another year or so because bargains will be coming...
And send twin B straight out into the housing market as a control?
There is of course the sand on the beach theory of aliens.
When you go to the beach and are sitting on the sand, say, two feet away from you and two feet down into the sand could be an ant colony. You would never see or know about it despite being close to it.
The aliens could be in the vicinity, cosmic-wise but they never bother to investigate or happen upon the infinitesimally tiny part that is our planet.
There's a lot of sci fi on a similarish theme - Roadside Picnic, William Gibson short whose name I forget, Gateway in reverse: if we do encounter aliens, it won't do us much good, any more than it would a swarm (?) of ants investigating the remains of a human picnic. might get a discarded apple core out of it.
The experience of the Aztec, the Incas, the tribes of Africa, the Natives of North America, the indigenes of Japan, the aborigines of Australia, the locals in Papua New Guinea, even the Neanderthals, all suggest that when a relatively inferior civilisation (in terms of tech, etc) meets an obviously superior civilisation, the result is a catastrophe for the more primitive lifeform
I see no reason why we would be different; I was amazed last night by the number of PB-ers who think humans would just shrug and continue as normal if it was proved we are being visited by super-powerful aliens
If they are that much smarter than us presumably resistance would indeed be useless, in which case shrugging and carrying as normal would be able all we could do.
If they were much smarter than us and wanted to colonise us they would likely have done so by now
Or they’re waiting to see if their candidate makes it to PM?
HG Wells probably had it right when he said we'd go the same way as the Tasmanian aborigines, if there were technologically superior aliens.
Admittedly, our military technology has caught up with Mars' in recent decades.
“Yes, interest rates have to go up and it’s a good thing,” Minford said. “A normal level is more like 5-7 per cent and I don’t think it will be any bad thing if we got back to that level.”
There's also no statement how quickly we get there, if at all ...
That will be decided by Bailey & Co anyway.
Even 5% means borrowing money to reduce taxation makes zero sense because you need 5% of the tax cut the next year just to pay the interest on the money you borrowed.
If the tax cut is announced in autumn 2022, implemented in spring 2023, and the election is in spring 2024 - then paying the interest on the debt is a post-election problem, assuming the financial markets lend you the money in the first place.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I can see why it might help to win an election. The voters are hardly going to be enthusiastic about voting for a party promising to reverse tax cuts in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and if Labour don't promise to reverse them, then how are they different anyway?
I think Truss has the politics of this right, just as Johnson did with Brexit. No idea what we do when it all falls apart, but that isn't going to be a problem for Starmer if he loses the next election.
The tax cuts aren't things anyone earning less than £35,000 are going to care about - it's corporation tax and NI...
I thought it was also VAT on energy, and the social/green policy levies on energy and some other stuff?
If it's enough to cause inflationary knock-on effects, then it's enough for people to notice and for it to keep the economy moving forward a bit longer.
It'd be good to see its design docs - and I bet the Russians want to see them as well. As a non-expert, it appears to be some form of hollow box structure: in which case most of the strength would be in the side beams of the box, and the thin top deck is mainly there to transfer loads to the side beams. As others have said elsewhere, there are no signs of any post-tensioning cables.
Repair could be anything from just chucking some steel road plates over the top, to impossible in any reasonable timescale. But allegedly the Russians are trying to build a pontoon bridge alongside it, so it might be more towards the latter.
(IANAE.)
Some of whatever munitions hit the bridge appear to have gone bang *inside* the box structure. Which would mean all kinds of extra damage to look for and fix.
How on earth do you borrow money at interest rates of 7%
Borrowing money to cut taxes may make sense when interest rates are at 1% (it isn't but hey ho) but it surely makes zero sense if you are borrowing money at 7% + a year...
Would surely solve the problem of an overheated housing market, though.
(It might keep the plates spinning for just long enough to get past a general election, but after that... Oh stepmomma.)
If interest rates are going to 5-6% I will be encouraging twin A to stay at home and save for another year or so because bargains will be coming...
And send twin B straight out into the housing market as a control?
If you have twins A and B, I think you are meant to send one of them off on a spaceship travelling near the speed of light, in order to provide case studies of special relativity.
“Yes, interest rates have to go up and it’s a good thing,” Minford said. “A normal level is more like 5-7 per cent and I don’t think it will be any bad thing if we got back to that level.”
There's also no statement how quickly we get there, if at all ...
That will be decided by Bailey & Co anyway.
Even 5% means borrowing money to reduce taxation makes zero sense because you need 5% of the tax cut the next year just to pay the interest on the money you borrowed.
If the tax cut is announced in autumn 2022, implemented in spring 2023, and the election is in spring 2024 - then paying the interest on the debt is a post-election problem, assuming the financial markets lend you the money in the first place.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I can see why it might help to win an election. The voters are hardly going to be enthusiastic about voting for a party promising to reverse tax cuts in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and if Labour don't promise to reverse them, then how are they different anyway?
I think Truss has the politics of this right, just as Johnson did with Brexit. No idea what we do when it all falls apart, but that isn't going to be a problem for Starmer if he loses the next election.
Labour isn't going to campaign on introducing a tax increase - I suspect they will be looking at a wealth tax to reduce working taxes (so income or NI) while replacing council tax and possibly stamp duty.
Seems Patrick Minford will be to ET as Alan Waters was to MT. Her chancellor will have to learn the script.
I attended a Walters lecture at a conference in Europe once. It was before the launch of the euro and Sir Alan was asked what form he thought the single current would take.
He replied along the lines of a coin with a European symbol on one side and the head of a local famous person on the other,
So in Britain Churchill's head, In France De Gaulle's head 'and in Germany (to a packed pan European audience) Hitler's head.'
How on earth do you borrow money at interest rates of 7%
Borrowing money to cut taxes may make sense when interest rates are at 1% (it isn't but hey ho) but it surely makes zero sense if you are borrowing money at 7% + a year...
Would surely solve the problem of an overheated housing market, though.
(It might keep the plates spinning for just long enough to get past a general election, but after that... Oh stepmomma.)
If interest rates are going to 5-6% I will be encouraging twin A to stay at home and save for another year or so because bargains will be coming...
And send twin B straight out into the housing market as a control?
twin B is at uni - the odds of her buying a house in the next few years are zilch.
Twin A is in a position to buy one tomorrow if she wanted to...
“Yes, interest rates have to go up and it’s a good thing,” Minford said. “A normal level is more like 5-7 per cent and I don’t think it will be any bad thing if we got back to that level.”
There's also no statement how quickly we get there, if at all ...
That will be decided by Bailey & Co anyway.
Even 5% means borrowing money to reduce taxation makes zero sense because you need 5% of the tax cut the next year just to pay the interest on the money you borrowed.
If the tax cut is announced in autumn 2022, implemented in spring 2023, and the election is in spring 2024 - then paying the interest on the debt is a post-election problem, assuming the financial markets lend you the money in the first place.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I can see why it might help to win an election. The voters are hardly going to be enthusiastic about voting for a party promising to reverse tax cuts in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and if Labour don't promise to reverse them, then how are they different anyway?
I think Truss has the politics of this right, just as Johnson did with Brexit. No idea what we do when it all falls apart, but that isn't going to be a problem for Starmer if he loses the next election.
The tax cuts aren't things anyone earning less than £35,000 are going to care about - it's corporation tax and NI...
How on earth do you borrow money at interest rates of 7%
Borrowing money to cut taxes may make sense when interest rates are at 1% (it isn't but hey ho) but it surely makes zero sense if you are borrowing money at 7% + a year...
Would surely solve the problem of an overheated housing market, though.
(It might keep the plates spinning for just long enough to get past a general election, but after that... Oh stepmomma.)
If interest rates are going to 5-6% I will be encouraging twin A to stay at home and save for another year or so because bargains will be coming...
And send twin B straight out into the housing market as a control?
If you have twins A and B, I think you are meant to send one of them off on a spaceship travelling near the speed of light, in order to provide case studies of special relativity.
.... to purchase a house on a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri. Because, even after you factor in the commute...
There is of course the sand on the beach theory of aliens.
When you go to the beach and are sitting on the sand, say, two feet away from you and two feet down into the sand could be an ant colony. You would never see or know about it despite being close to it.
The aliens could be in the vicinity, cosmic-wise but they never bother to investigate or happen upon the infinitesimally tiny part that is our planet.
There's a lot of sci fi on a similarish theme - Roadside Picnic, William Gibson short whose name I forget, Gateway in reverse: if we do encounter aliens, it won't do us much good, any more than it would a swarm (?) of ants investigating the remains of a human picnic. might get a discarded apple core out of it.
The experience of the Aztec, the Incas, the tribes of Africa, the Natives of North America, the indigenes of Japan, the aborigines of Australia, the locals in Papua New Guinea, even the Neanderthals, all suggest that when a relatively inferior civilisation (in terms of tech, etc) meets an obviously superior civilisation, the result is a catastrophe for the more primitive lifeform
I see no reason why we would be different; I was amazed last night by the number of PB-ers who think humans would just shrug and continue as normal if it was proved we are being visited by super-powerful aliens
If they are that much smarter than us presumably resistance would indeed be useless, in which case shrugging and carrying as normal would be able all we could do.
If they were much smarter than us and wanted to colonise us they would likely have done so by now
Or they’re waiting to see if their candidate makes it to PM?
HG Wells probably had it right when he said we'd go the same way as the Tasmanian aborigines, if there were technologically superior aliens.
Admittedly, our military technology has caught up with Mars' in recent decades.
H G Wells wasn't very good at biology (why should Martians be susceptible to earthly microbes?) We were in competition with the Tasmanians to occupy the same ecological niche; why would a random alien want the same things we want in the same way the Tasmanians wanted Tasmania, and so did we?
“Yes, interest rates have to go up and it’s a good thing,” Minford said. “A normal level is more like 5-7 per cent and I don’t think it will be any bad thing if we got back to that level.”
There's also no statement how quickly we get there, if at all ...
That will be decided by Bailey & Co anyway.
Even 5% means borrowing money to reduce taxation makes zero sense because you need 5% of the tax cut the next year just to pay the interest on the money you borrowed.
If the tax cut is announced in autumn 2022, implemented in spring 2023, and the election is in spring 2024 - then paying the interest on the debt is a post-election problem, assuming the financial markets lend you the money in the first place.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I can see why it might help to win an election. The voters are hardly going to be enthusiastic about voting for a party promising to reverse tax cuts in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and if Labour don't promise to reverse them, then how are they different anyway?
I think Truss has the politics of this right, just as Johnson did with Brexit. No idea what we do when it all falls apart, but that isn't going to be a problem for Starmer if he loses the next election.
The tax cuts aren't things anyone earning less than £35,000 are going to care about - it's corporation tax and NI...
Neither of those is a proposed cut...
What cuts have been proposed? - as all I've see is reversal of the corporation tax increase and reversal of the new Social Levy / NI...
Seems Patrick Minford will be to ET as Alan Waters was to MT. Her chancellor will have to learn the script.
I attended a Walters lecture at a conference in Europe once. It was before the launch of the euro and Sir Alan was asked what form he thought the single current would take.
He replied along the lines of a coin with a European symbol on one side and the head of a local famous person on the other,
So in Britain Churchill's head, In France De Gaulle's head 'and in Germany (to a packed pan European audience) Hitler's head.'
The Napoleon prize.... It's for the statesman who's made the biggest contribution to European unity. Sir Humphrey: Since Napoleon, that is, if you don't count Hitler.
How on earth do you borrow money at interest rates of 7%
Borrowing money to cut taxes may make sense when interest rates are at 1% (it isn't but hey ho) but it surely makes zero sense if you are borrowing money at 7% + a year...
Would surely solve the problem of an overheated housing market, though.
(It might keep the plates spinning for just long enough to get past a general election, but after that... Oh stepmomma.)
If interest rates are going to 5-6% I will be encouraging twin A to stay at home and save for another year or so because bargains will be coming...
And send twin B straight out into the housing market as a control?
If you have twins A and B, I think you are meant to send one of them off on a spaceship travelling near the speed of light, in order to provide case studies of special relativity.
You do that with identical twins - not non-identical ones..
There is of course the sand on the beach theory of aliens.
When you go to the beach and are sitting on the sand, say, two feet away from you and two feet down into the sand could be an ant colony. You would never see or know about it despite being close to it.
The aliens could be in the vicinity, cosmic-wise but they never bother to investigate or happen upon the infinitesimally tiny part that is our planet.
There's a lot of sci fi on a similarish theme - Roadside Picnic, William Gibson short whose name I forget, Gateway in reverse: if we do encounter aliens, it won't do us much good, any more than it would a swarm (?) of ants investigating the remains of a human picnic. might get a discarded apple core out of it.
The experience of the Aztec, the Incas, the tribes of Africa, the Natives of North America, the indigenes of Japan, the aborigines of Australia, the locals in Papua New Guinea, even the Neanderthals, all suggest that when a relatively inferior civilisation (in terms of tech, etc) meets an obviously superior civilisation, the result is a catastrophe for the more primitive lifeform
I see no reason why we would be different; I was amazed last night by the number of PB-ers who think humans would just shrug and continue as normal if it was proved we are being visited by super-powerful aliens
If they are that much smarter than us presumably resistance would indeed be useless, in which case shrugging and carrying as normal would be able all we could do.
If they were much smarter than us and wanted to colonise us they would likely have done so by now
Or they’re waiting to see if their candidate makes it to PM?
HG Wells probably had it right when he said we'd go the same way as the Tasmanian aborigines, if there were technologically superior aliens.
Admittedly, our military technology has caught up with Mars' in recent decades.
H G Wells wasn't very good at biology (why should Martians be susceptible to earthly microbes?) We were in competition with the Tasmanians to occupy the same ecological niche; why would a random alien want the same things we want in the same way the Tasmanians wanted Tasmania, and so did we?
Quite right re the microbes, but on a p of o, hunter-gatherers Tasmanian style don't occupy the same niche(s) as farmer-urban types.
“Yes, interest rates have to go up and it’s a good thing,” Minford said. “A normal level is more like 5-7 per cent and I don’t think it will be any bad thing if we got back to that level.”
There's also no statement how quickly we get there, if at all ...
That will be decided by Bailey & Co anyway.
Even 5% means borrowing money to reduce taxation makes zero sense because you need 5% of the tax cut the next year just to pay the interest on the money you borrowed.
If the tax cut is announced in autumn 2022, implemented in spring 2023, and the election is in spring 2024 - then paying the interest on the debt is a post-election problem, assuming the financial markets lend you the money in the first place.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I can see why it might help to win an election. The voters are hardly going to be enthusiastic about voting for a party promising to reverse tax cuts in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and if Labour don't promise to reverse them, then how are they different anyway?
I think Truss has the politics of this right, just as Johnson did with Brexit. No idea what we do when it all falls apart, but that isn't going to be a problem for Starmer if he loses the next election.
Labour isn't going to campaign on introducing a tax increase - I suspect they will be looking at a wealth tax to reduce working taxes (so income or NI) while replacing council tax and possibly stamp duty.
A wealth tax on houses will be suicide. Poll Tax multiplied by 'Ands 'Orf 'Me 'Ouse.
There is of course the sand on the beach theory of aliens.
When you go to the beach and are sitting on the sand, say, two feet away from you and two feet down into the sand could be an ant colony. You would never see or know about it despite being close to it.
The aliens could be in the vicinity, cosmic-wise but they never bother to investigate or happen upon the infinitesimally tiny part that is our planet.
There's a lot of sci fi on a similarish theme - Roadside Picnic, William Gibson short whose name I forget, Gateway in reverse: if we do encounter aliens, it won't do us much good, any more than it would a swarm (?) of ants investigating the remains of a human picnic. might get a discarded apple core out of it.
The experience of the Aztec, the Incas, the tribes of Africa, the Natives of North America, the indigenes of Japan, the aborigines of Australia, the locals in Papua New Guinea, even the Neanderthals, all suggest that when a relatively inferior civilisation (in terms of tech, etc) meets an obviously superior civilisation, the result is a catastrophe for the more primitive lifeform
I see no reason why we would be different; I was amazed last night by the number of PB-ers who think humans would just shrug and continue as normal if it was proved we are being visited by super-powerful aliens
If they are that much smarter than us presumably resistance would indeed be useless, in which case shrugging and carrying as normal would be able all we could do.
If they were much smarter than us and wanted to colonise us they would likely have done so by now
Or they’re waiting to see if their candidate makes it to PM?
HG Wells probably had it right when he said we'd go the same way as the Tasmanian aborigines, if there were technologically superior aliens.
Admittedly, our military technology has caught up with Mars' in recent decades.
H G Wells wasn't very good at biology (why should Martians be susceptible to earthly microbes?) We were in competition with the Tasmanians to occupy the same ecological niche; why would a random alien want the same things we want in the same way the Tasmanians wanted Tasmania, and so did we?
But ALL the historical and circumstantial evidence is with H G Wells. Unless you can think of an example where a much superior civilisation met a relatively primitive civilisation and it all went swimmingly
I'm not sure I can think of one. At the very least the inferior species/civilisation gets subjugated, even if it is meant kindly. And the worst examples mean genocide
Seems Patrick Minford will be to ET as Alan Waters was to MT. Her chancellor will have to learn the script.
I attended a Walters lecture at a conference in Europe once. It was before the launch of the euro and Sir Alan was asked what form he thought the single current would take.
He replied along the lines of a coin with a European symbol on one side and the head of a local famous person on the other,
So in Britain Churchill's head, In France De Gaulle's head 'and in Germany (to a packed pan European audience) Hitler's head.'
The Napoleon prize.... It's for the statesman who's made the biggest contribution to European unity. Sir Humphrey: Since Napoleon, that is, if you don't count Hitler.
We can add Putin now. Well, at least initially. Who knows after a winter with no gas.
There is of course the sand on the beach theory of aliens.
When you go to the beach and are sitting on the sand, say, two feet away from you and two feet down into the sand could be an ant colony. You would never see or know about it despite being close to it.
The aliens could be in the vicinity, cosmic-wise but they never bother to investigate or happen upon the infinitesimally tiny part that is our planet.
There's a lot of sci fi on a similarish theme - Roadside Picnic, William Gibson short whose name I forget, Gateway in reverse: if we do encounter aliens, it won't do us much good, any more than it would a swarm (?) of ants investigating the remains of a human picnic. might get a discarded apple core out of it.
The experience of the Aztec, the Incas, the tribes of Africa, the Natives of North America, the indigenes of Japan, the aborigines of Australia, the locals in Papua New Guinea, even the Neanderthals, all suggest that when a relatively inferior civilisation (in terms of tech, etc) meets an obviously superior civilisation, the result is a catastrophe for the more primitive lifeform
I see no reason why we would be different; I was amazed last night by the number of PB-ers who think humans would just shrug and continue as normal if it was proved we are being visited by super-powerful aliens
If they are that much smarter than us presumably resistance would indeed be useless, in which case shrugging and carrying as normal would be able all we could do.
If they were much smarter than us and wanted to colonise us they would likely have done so by now
Or they’re waiting to see if their candidate makes it to PM?
HG Wells probably had it right when he said we'd go the same way as the Tasmanian aborigines, if there were technologically superior aliens.
Admittedly, our military technology has caught up with Mars' in recent decades.
H G Wells wasn't very good at biology (why should Martians be susceptible to earthly microbes?) We were in competition with the Tasmanians to occupy the same ecological niche; why would a random alien want the same things we want in the same way the Tasmanians wanted Tasmania, and so did we?
Quite right re the microbes, but on a p of o, hunter-gatherers Tasmanian style don't occupy the same niche(s) as farmer-urban types.
No, but there is an overlap in wanting control of land. cf farmers vs ranchers in the US of A.
How on earth do you borrow money at interest rates of 7%
Borrowing money to cut taxes may make sense when interest rates are at 1% (it isn't but hey ho) but it surely makes zero sense if you are borrowing money at 7% + a year...
How quickly will the six, seven, eight, nine, ten, fifteen percent interest rates take to bed in after Truss's tax cuts? I ask as someone who needs to offload a student property in Portsmouth in the next month or two.
“Yes, interest rates have to go up and it’s a good thing,” Minford said. “A normal level is more like 5-7 per cent and I don’t think it will be any bad thing if we got back to that level.”
There's also no statement how quickly we get there, if at all ...
That will be decided by Bailey & Co anyway.
Even 5% means borrowing money to reduce taxation makes zero sense because you need 5% of the tax cut the next year just to pay the interest on the money you borrowed.
If the tax cut is announced in autumn 2022, implemented in spring 2023, and the election is in spring 2024 - then paying the interest on the debt is a post-election problem, assuming the financial markets lend you the money in the first place.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I can see why it might help to win an election. The voters are hardly going to be enthusiastic about voting for a party promising to reverse tax cuts in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and if Labour don't promise to reverse them, then how are they different anyway?
I think Truss has the politics of this right, just as Johnson did with Brexit. No idea what we do when it all falls apart, but that isn't going to be a problem for Starmer if he loses the next election.
Labour isn't going to campaign on introducing a tax increase - I suspect they will be looking at a wealth tax to reduce working taxes (so income or NI) while replacing council tax and possibly stamp duty.
A wealth tax on houses will be suicide. Poll Tax multiplied by 'Ands 'Orf 'Me 'Ouse.
A wealth tax on other assets won't rase much.
One factor is that there is a desperate need for a council tax rebanding exercise - and if you are doing that - transforming it into something else that is regularly and easily updated makes complete sense.
“Yes, interest rates have to go up and it’s a good thing,” Minford said. “A normal level is more like 5-7 per cent and I don’t think it will be any bad thing if we got back to that level.”
There's also no statement how quickly we get there, if at all ...
That will be decided by Bailey & Co anyway.
Even 5% means borrowing money to reduce taxation makes zero sense because you need 5% of the tax cut the next year just to pay the interest on the money you borrowed.
If the tax cut is announced in autumn 2022, implemented in spring 2023, and the election is in spring 2024 - then paying the interest on the debt is a post-election problem, assuming the financial markets lend you the money in the first place.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I can see why it might help to win an election. The voters are hardly going to be enthusiastic about voting for a party promising to reverse tax cuts in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and if Labour don't promise to reverse them, then how are they different anyway?
I think Truss has the politics of this right, just as Johnson did with Brexit. No idea what we do when it all falls apart, but that isn't going to be a problem for Starmer if he loses the next election.
Labour isn't going to campaign on introducing a tax increase - I suspect they will be looking at a wealth tax to reduce working taxes (so income or NI) while replacing council tax and possibly stamp duty.
A wealth tax on houses will be suicide. Poll Tax multiplied by 'Ands 'Orf 'Me 'Ouse.
A wealth tax on other assets won't rase much.
Quite, look at Georgie Osborne heading GB's election over IHT. Wealth tax is an IHT boot stamping on your face, forever. Plus it'll get rolled up and payable on death in most cases (death significantly after retirement) so it'll be IHT anyway in reality.
Seems Patrick Minford will be to ET as Alan Waters was to MT. Her chancellor will have to learn the script.
I attended a Walters lecture at a conference in Europe once. It was before the launch of the euro and Sir Alan was asked what form he thought the single current would take.
He replied along the lines of a coin with a European symbol on one side and the head of a local famous person on the other,
So in Britain Churchill's head, In France De Gaulle's head 'and in Germany (to a packed pan European audience) Hitler's head.'
Oof! He was impressive in a seminar setting; could think on his feet and argue his case persuasively though quietly spoken.
What if the aliens are really...... hot? And we want to sleep with them?
Yod be very lucky if the pl;umbing even sort of fitted.
Well, you'd think any intelligent alien species would at least have some sort of a hand equivalent that could do a job.
I am trying to remember who it was who wrote SF, where humans contact aliens.
They discover that the aliens are in fact corporations who have become sentient AIs, running on Matrioshka Brains. They want the humans uploaded minds as currency to trade with....
There was a riff with lobsters who have been upgraded to sentient, as well...
There is of course the sand on the beach theory of aliens.
When you go to the beach and are sitting on the sand, say, two feet away from you and two feet down into the sand could be an ant colony. You would never see or know about it despite being close to it.
The aliens could be in the vicinity, cosmic-wise but they never bother to investigate or happen upon the infinitesimally tiny part that is our planet.
There's a lot of sci fi on a similarish theme - Roadside Picnic, William Gibson short whose name I forget, Gateway in reverse: if we do encounter aliens, it won't do us much good, any more than it would a swarm (?) of ants investigating the remains of a human picnic. might get a discarded apple core out of it.
The experience of the Aztec, the Incas, the tribes of Africa, the Natives of North America, the indigenes of Japan, the aborigines of Australia, the locals in Papua New Guinea, even the Neanderthals, all suggest that when a relatively inferior civilisation (in terms of tech, etc) meets an obviously superior civilisation, the result is a catastrophe for the more primitive lifeform
I see no reason why we would be different; I was amazed last night by the number of PB-ers who think humans would just shrug and continue as normal if it was proved we are being visited by super-powerful aliens
Is the human race a catastrophe for the gnat population?
lol. Are you arguing we are NOT a catastrophe for thousands of animal and plant species across the world?
The megafauna of Australia say Hi
99.99% of all species who ever existed are extinct and humans had nothing to do with almost all of that.
Going extinct is normal, and one day it will be our turn.
Another ridiculous post
We can make species extinct in a couple of centuries, even decades, maybe even years if we put our mind to it
See the passenger pigeon, which numbered maybe 5 BILLION in 1750, and was all gone - every last one - by 1914
There is of course the sand on the beach theory of aliens.
When you go to the beach and are sitting on the sand, say, two feet away from you and two feet down into the sand could be an ant colony. You would never see or know about it despite being close to it.
The aliens could be in the vicinity, cosmic-wise but they never bother to investigate or happen upon the infinitesimally tiny part that is our planet.
There's a lot of sci fi on a similarish theme - Roadside Picnic, William Gibson short whose name I forget, Gateway in reverse: if we do encounter aliens, it won't do us much good, any more than it would a swarm (?) of ants investigating the remains of a human picnic. might get a discarded apple core out of it.
The experience of the Aztec, the Incas, the tribes of Africa, the Natives of North America, the indigenes of Japan, the aborigines of Australia, the locals in Papua New Guinea, even the Neanderthals, all suggest that when a relatively inferior civilisation (in terms of tech, etc) meets an obviously superior civilisation, the result is a catastrophe for the more primitive lifeform
I see no reason why we would be different; I was amazed last night by the number of PB-ers who think humans would just shrug and continue as normal if it was proved we are being visited by super-powerful aliens
If they are that much smarter than us presumably resistance would indeed be useless, in which case shrugging and carrying as normal would be able all we could do.
If they were much smarter than us and wanted to colonise us they would likely have done so by now
Or they’re waiting to see if their candidate makes it to PM?
HG Wells probably had it right when he said we'd go the same way as the Tasmanian aborigines, if there were technologically superior aliens.
Admittedly, our military technology has caught up with Mars' in recent decades.
H G Wells wasn't very good at biology (why should Martians be susceptible to earthly microbes?) We were in competition with the Tasmanians to occupy the same ecological niche; why would a random alien want the same things we want in the same way the Tasmanians wanted Tasmania, and so did we?
Quite right re the microbes, but on a p of o, hunter-gatherers Tasmanian style don't occupy the same niche(s) as farmer-urban types.
No, but there is an overlap in wanting control of land. cf farmers vs ranchers in the US of A.
What if the aliens are really...... hot? And we want to sleep with them?
Yod be very lucky if the pl;umbing even sort of fitted.
Well, you'd think any intelligent alien species would at least have some sort of a hand equivalent that could do a job.
I am trying to remember who it was who wrote SF, where humans contact aliens.
They discover that the aliens are in fact corporations who have become sentient AIs, running on Matrioshka Brains. They want the humans uploaded minds as currency to trade with....
There was a riff with lobsters who have been upgraded to sentient, as well...
Their Deluxe Senate forecast has a 50% chance of Democrat control (equal highest - previously only reached on 29 June). And the Polls Only forecast now has a 65% chance of Democrat control (highest ever - was 61% on 29 June).
What if the aliens are really...... hot? And we want to sleep with them?
Yod be very lucky if the pl;umbing even sort of fitted.
Well, you'd think any intelligent alien species would at least have some sort of a hand equivalent that could do a job.
I am trying to remember who it was who wrote SF, where humans contact aliens.
They discover that the aliens are in fact corporations who have become sentient AIs, running on Matrioshka Brains. They want the humans uploaded minds as currency to trade with....
There was a riff with lobsters who have been upgraded to sentient, as well...
Lobsters sounds like Charlie Stross's Accelerando series of short stories.
Yep that's the series I remember the first story way more than the rest.
Comments
My mum once stepped on a wasp's nest in that type of situation. It took two days before the swelling round her eyes from the stings went down enough so she could see.
SIlly old Right, having consolidated their positions to the extent they only need one party, while the Left sensibly splits itself into multiple factions because they can't agree on anything.
It should be obvious that the former arrangement is outright better under FPTP (and, really, any remotely reasonable system, even PR). The issue the Tories have right now is unpopularity, not the lack of a(nother) junior coalition partner to cannibalise.
Why would the badgers go after a bumble nest. They don’t produce honey do they ?
Days as Home Secretary are numbered, surely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0zmwTmNwxw
The Ukrainians are also a long way from achieving air superiority. There's a big risk that a precipitous attempt at a grand counteroffensive would turn into a very costly failure.
I know that there is some value in trying to predict the future, but for myself, I feel like this is one of those situations where it's hard enough to get an accurate sense of the present, and the recent past, that it's worth concentrating on that.
Of course if he’s right then Putin starts to run out of cards fast, if he loses not only his landbridge to Crimea but potentially Crimea itself (perhaps notable the Russian navy has just relocated from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk). And one of Putin’s last cards is the natural gas weapon. I reckon he’ll hope to tie it to Ukraine attacking innocent Russians in the Russian sovereign territory of Crimea.
Bumblebees have many predators, some of which are mammals and birds. These predators have co-existed with bumblebees for thousands of years and are not a cause for conservation concern – it is the human-caused problems like habitat loss, pesticide exposure and climate change which make natural predation more of an issue for bumblebee populations.
The main mammalian predators are badgers, which use their strong claws to dig up nests and eat the larvae and food stores. Badger predation seems to be more likely to happen when conditions are dry and it is harder for badgers to forage on their preferred food source – worms. Generally larger nests seem to be attacked, presumably because the badgers can smell them out more easily; in combination, this seems to mean that by the time nests are predated they are likely to have been able to produce new reproductive individuals (males and/or queens).
https://www.bumblebeeconservation.org/bee-faqs/bumblebee-predators/
Liz Truss’s tax cuts mean interest rates of up to 7%, admits her economic guru
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/aa838ccc-09b7-11ed-8c31-545bf77a6173?shareToken=2bf031988b32609c65cd1ab1b0fc7b84
https://twitter.com/jonlis1/status/1550197765904515074
It'd be good to see its design docs - and I bet the Russians want to see them as well.
Repair could be anything from just chucking some steel road plates over the top, to impossible in any reasonable timescale. But allegedly the Russians are trying to build a pontoon bridge alongside it, so it might be more towards the latter.
(IANAE.)
Is it a day with D in it?
“Yes, interest rates have to go up and it’s a good thing,” Minford said. “A normal level is more like 5-7 per cent and I don’t think it will be any bad thing if we got back to that level.”
There's also no statement how quickly we get there, if at all ...
Being able to reach 50Km means that you can easily hit something 20km behind the enemy lines, while keeping your system up 20km behind your own lines (plus a bit for manoeuvring).
If the enemy has artillery that can reach 20km, then even if he risks putting it up front, he can't hit you back (with artillery).
PMI data today shows the region already on the brink of recession, a day after the ECB managed to hike rates back to zero. Meanwhile inflation for July expected to be....er.....8.8%.
At the same time, the EU is seeking mandatory powers to impose 15 per cent gas usage cuts across the region over the winter after Germany's Russiagas strategy backfired spectacularly.
I'm coming round to the idea she MIGHT be OK. Labour would be foolish to completely dismiss her as a nutjob
Borrowing money to cut taxes may make sense when interest rates are at 1% (it isn't but hey ho) but it surely makes zero sense if you are borrowing money at 7% + a year...
Mr. kamski, I could but it'd get tedious for both me and others if I just regurgitated the same line about it being odd to feel pride at something one hasn't achieved when referring to sporting events.
Mr. Pete, I do my best (but often forget) to include sufficient context in answers, or quoted sentences, so people don't have to do that. Embedding paragraphs is something I am unlikely to do.
But point taken.
Priti is an interesting customer in that she has never been an uncritical Boris acolyte like JRM or Nadine Dorries, or even a dutiful stooge like Dominic Raab.
(It might keep the plates spinning for just long enough to get past a general election, but after that... Oh stepmomma.)
The one thing the Government won't be doing is borrowing at 0.5%....
It's also worth noting that one of Minford's hopes is that high interest rates kill off old zombie companies that haven't died yet.
It may do that but low Corporation Tax is also going to encourage companies to go for short term profits (to make the most of what are likely to be short term low Corporation Tax rates) rather than investing money on productivity...
So we will be back to the old story of British staff are unproductive because we throw cheap labour at the problem instead of using technology.
These pay deals keep rising.
Her chancellor will have to learn the script.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, but I can see why it might help to win an election. The voters are hardly going to be enthusiastic about voting for a party promising to reverse tax cuts in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and if Labour don't promise to reverse them, then how are they different anyway?
I think Truss has the politics of this right, just as Johnson did with Brexit. No idea what we do when it all falls apart, but that isn't going to be a problem for Starmer if he loses the next election.
Admittedly, our military technology has caught up with Mars' in recent decades.
If it's enough to cause inflationary knock-on effects, then it's enough for people to notice and for it to keep the economy moving forward a bit longer.
He replied along the lines of a coin with a European symbol on one side and the head of a local famous person on the other,
So in Britain Churchill's head, In France De Gaulle's head 'and in Germany (to a packed pan European audience) Hitler's head.'
Twin A is in a position to buy one tomorrow if she wanted to...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-62172343
The Napoleon prize.... It's for the statesman who's made the biggest contribution to European unity.
Sir Humphrey: Since Napoleon, that is, if you don't count Hitler.
I was surprised he is still working and how (relatively) young he looked - just checked and he's 79. I thought he would have been older than that.
A wealth tax on other assets won't rase much.
I'm not sure I can think of one. At the very least the inferior species/civilisation gets subjugated, even if it is meant kindly. And the worst examples mean genocide
They discover that the aliens are in fact corporations who have become sentient AIs, running on Matrioshka Brains. They want the humans uploaded minds as currency to trade with....
There was a riff with lobsters who have been upgraded to sentient, as well...
http://naturalhistory.si.edu/research/vertebrate-zoology/birds/collections-overview/martha-last-passenger-pigeon#:~:text=Martha, the Passenger Pigeon, passed,attracting long lines of visitors.
But maybe that's why they've come all this way, across a trillion light years? For specialised tastes
OMFG we are being invaded by HORDES OF KINKSTER ALIENS WITH TOSHIBA WANDS THE SIZE OF THE SHARD
Their Deluxe Senate forecast has a 50% chance of Democrat control (equal highest - previously only reached on 29 June). And the Polls Only forecast now has a 65% chance of Democrat control (highest ever - was 61% on 29 June).
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-election-forecast/senate/?cid=rrpromo
Yep that's the series I remember the first story way more than the rest.