Mr. xP, surely it should be called: Queue II - Queue Harder ?
Next you'll be saying it's a Christmas Queue
It's only 100 days until Die Hard.
But it's a long while since a Bruce was on the throne.
That's odd. Isn't KCIII a direct descendant of the Bruce, via James I, and James VI? Or is there something we ought to know about?
He is descended via Robert's daughter and then James' daughter and granddaughter, with a further two breaks in the 'direct' line in 1901 and of course, now.
So yes, although he can trace his line back to Robert, it isn't 'direct' in dynastic terms and he isn't considered a Bruce.
Unless you also want to consider him a member of the House of Wessex.
Nah, that's Edward, isn't it?
You can say it Severn times but it will not be true.
Edit - incidentally you threw me there. As we'd been talking about Bruces I thought for a moment you meant Edward I!
Mr. xP, surely it should be called: Queue II - Queue Harder ?
Next you'll be saying it's a Christmas Queue
It's only 100 days until Die Hard.
But it's a long while since a Bruce was on the throne.
That's odd. Isn't KCIII a direct descendant of the Bruce, via James I, and James VI? Or is there something we ought to know about?
He is descended via Robert's daughter and then James' daughter and granddaughter, with a further two breaks in the 'direct' line in 1901 and of course, now.
So yes, although he can trace his line back to Robert, it isn't 'direct' in dynastic terms and he isn't considered a Bruce.
Unless you also want to consider him a member of the House of Wessex.
HYUFD was saying the other day that KCIII was infallibly a Scot because he was descended from Marie Stuart. So on the same logic he is infallibly also a Stewart, and therefore a Bruce - but also, as you say, a Wessex -wotsit, and a Dutchman, and a Greek, and so on and so forth.
But in reality we are getting into some very small fractions here.
Hyufd says lots of things. Not all of them are correct.
It would be funny though if Charles decided to overturn his mother's (and Churchill's) earlier decision on the dynastic name and went for the House of Edinburgh.
Random sample looking this minute at the live stream (for @thart if he's still with us).
Asian woman White bloke (a rev as it turns out) White couple White woman White woman White woman White woman White bloke White bloke White woman White woman
OK I am prepared to say that the queue to pay respect is pretty white.
Don't like this double line business either. Would be well stressed if I was on the outer line.
Anyway, enough with queues.
11 out of 12 white, 91%. National total is 86% so not ridiculously out of line, if you'll forgive the pun. Especially considering that the queue almost certainly skews older than the population as a whole.
86% was at the 2011 census. Net migration has average around 300000 a year since. Thats about 3,300,000 extra ethnic minorities over 11 years. That accounts to an extra 5%. So now likely around 81% white british. And of course London much lower. So well out of line
I quoted white, not white British (which is indeed around 81% on the source I used). Also people will have travelled from outside of London, and some will be tourists.
All in all, the sample quoted isn't enough to legitimately try divisive race-baiting nonsense.
The point i am making is there is less support for the monarchy amongst ethnic minorities.
Yes, divisive race-baiting.
If it is true, why is it divisive race-baiting, rather than just an interesting and important fact?
Ive just counted 70 people in latest queue livestream. Only 3 from ethnic minorities or less than 5%. The bigger the sample size the better
How many would you expect to see, assuming they were equally represented?
Ok white population of london likely 50% now but in uk as a whole likely 80%. Lets assume half of the queue is from people outside london. So we split the difference between the 2 figures to get 65% expected white proportion of the queue. Reality is around 95%. So way out of line
You lot are supposed to be polling experts and you’re really having a conversation based on a sample size of 12?
Edit - I see this one is based on 70. I watched the other night for 10-20 mins and saw loads of mix in terms of race, age, social class. I didn’t care to count.
You didnt care to count. That says it all. At some point when i have time i will do a bigger count of several hundred. Yes ethnic minorities are there but a very low percentage. I will also do a count of the younger people. If ethnic minorities are a similar proportion of the young there then we are not looking at an age related phenomena at all
Joan Armatrading was on Ch4 news yesterday and she sounded keen on the monarchy. Seems an age - because it IS an age - since her 70s heyday but even after all that time she's still black.
Anecdotes vs data my friend
It was data. She was on Ch4 news. I saw it.
It's your lived experience, so I can't question it. Nonetheless, my lived experience is that 'data' may be stretching it a bit. 'Datum'?
Well let's say a single data point but of the very highest quality.
Is My Myself I data or datum?
I just don't do "datum" tbh Captain. It sounds finickety and wrong.
But finickety doesn't sound finickety is that right?
No, that sounds fine. In fact I like it.
Also, apols for not getting your little Joan joke. Duh me.
Re; Ben Okri, I haven't followed his latest works, but looking up I saw that he's got too recent books out - "the age of magic" and "the freedom artist". I agree with you that he's a good, richly imaginative writer.
He wrote this quite nice piece about the Queen last week, which got very little exposure. I don't agree with everythng he says, but I think it's broadly good , and it's striking how he reveals more by taking such a different tone to the ultra-secular tone of the majority of modern society, but also remaining liberal and open. I haven't see a single other writer or journalist cover it in this sort of way.
"Queen Elizabeth ruled at a time when the spiritual energy of the world was moving from a male-centred universe to one desperately in need of feminine energies. After two world wars, after the toxicity of Nazism, which was male energy at its most disordered and insane, what the world truly needed, at the level of its subconscious, was a female force, a stable, balancing, presence."
Interesting that there are Okri fans on here - I thought Famished Road was one of most turgid things I had ever read, as did the friend who lent it to me. Another (bookshop-owning) friend finds his books sell to the sort of people she describews as 'shelf-decorators'.
Yes not for everyone. A bit like Mantel or, yes, Proust or even JJ himself. You've got to give yourself over completely to their world. If so much as your big toe remains outside it's all over.
Re; Ben Okri, I haven't followed his latest works, but looking up I saw that he's got too recent books out - "the age of magic" and "the freedom artist". I agree with you that he's a good, richly imaginative writer.
He wrote this quite nice piece about the Queen last week, which got very little exposure. I don't agree with everythng he says, but I think it's broadly good , and it's striking how he reveals more by taking such a different tone to the ultra-secular tone of the majority of modern society, but also remaining liberal and open. I haven't see a single other writer or journalist cover it in this sort of way.
"Queen Elizabeth ruled at a time when the spiritual energy of the world was moving from a male-centred universe to one desperately in need of feminine energies. After two world wars, after the toxicity of Nazism, which was male energy at its most disordered and insane, what the world truly needed, at the level of its subconscious, was a female force, a stable, balancing, presence."
Interesting that there are Okri fans on here - I thought Famished Road was one of most turgid things I had ever read, as did the friend who lent it to me. Another (bookshop-owning) friend finds his books sell to the sort of people she describews as 'shelf-decorators'.
Yes not for everyone. A bit like Mantel or, yes, Proust or even JJ himself. You've got to give yourself over completely to their world. If so much as your big toe remains outside it's all over.
And yet Mantel and Proust are fine for me (haven't read Joyce). The big modern worldbuilder for me is John Crowley. The Aegypt cycle is extremely dense and rewarding.
Are you saying that people have different tastes in literature???
I will have to give it a go never heard of him, embarrassing to say.
As for the "shelf-decorators" it begs two questions - first, are there really people who buy books just so they can have an impressive bookcase; and secondly, the more important question - what proportion of your books should you legitimately not have read and be planning to.
Is Lake Como anywhere near Milan? I've been there for a couple of days in 2017.
Yes. Como, the city (which is also lovely btw) is 50km north of Milan and at the southern end of one leg of Lake Como.
I think next time we go to Lake Como we will stay in Como itself as there looked to be lots of see and you can easily get boats up the lake to any most of the lakeside villages.
So long as you can afford to stay in a quiet spot by the lakeside. The town itself isn’t particularly attractive and is traffic-choked both in the centre and on most roads in and out.
I just wanted to correct this. I can't speak for the roads in and out of Como town (we visited by boat) but the centre, the old Roman town, is almost entirely pedestrianised, traffic-free, and lovely to stroll around in. Or at least it was last week.
(And yes that's an Oxford comma, so up yours Coffey!)
2 nuggets from last nights locals - Reform UK managed 0.8% in Bolton, when they stand, they fail Compare to Sussex where the OMRLP managed 5%, and beat the Greens. Reform are an irrelevance and that 5% odd they sometimes are getting to in polling will go somewhere......
Mr. xP, surely it should be called: Queue II - Queue Harder ?
Next you'll be saying it's a Christmas Queue
It's only 100 days until Die Hard.
But it's a long while since a Bruce was on the throne.
That's odd. Isn't KCIII a direct descendant of the Bruce, via James I, and James VI? Or is there something we ought to know about?
He is descended via Robert's daughter and then James' daughter and granddaughter, with a further two breaks in the 'direct' line in 1901 and of course, now.
So yes, although he can trace his line back to Robert, it isn't 'direct' in dynastic terms and he isn't considered a Bruce.
Unless you also want to consider him a member of the House of Wessex.
Nah, that's Edward, isn't it?
You can say it Severn times but it will not be true.
Edit - incidentally you threw me there. As we'd been talking about Bruces I thought for a moment you meant Edward I!
I first put 'his brother', then remembered there's also the other one we don't talk about in polite society.
Is Lake Como anywhere near Milan? I've been there for a couple of days in 2017.
Yes. Como, the city (which is also lovely btw) is 50km north of Milan and at the southern end of one leg of Lake Como.
I think next time we go to Lake Como we will stay in Como itself as there looked to be lots of see and you can easily get boats up the lake to any most of the lakeside villages.
So long as you can afford to stay in a quiet spot by the lakeside. The town itself isn’t particularly attractive and is traffic-choked both in the centre and on most roads in and out.
I just wanted to correct this. I can't speak for the roads in and out of Como town (we visited by boat) but the centre, the old Roman town, is almost entirely pedestrianised, traffic-free, and lovely to stroll around in. Or at least it was last week.
(And yes that's an Oxford comma, so up yours Coffey!)
Do I remember there being a surfeit of Gucci-type shops including Gucci shops, tho? Or is that Lake Como (and how is it different)?
Mr. xP, surely it should be called: Queue II - Queue Harder ?
Next you'll be saying it's a Christmas Queue
It's only 100 days until Die Hard.
But it's a long while since a Bruce was on the throne.
That's odd. Isn't KCIII a direct descendant of the Bruce, via James I, and James VI? Or is there something we ought to know about?
He is descended via Robert's daughter and then James' daughter and granddaughter, with a further two breaks in the 'direct' line in 1901 and of course, now.
So yes, although he can trace his line back to Robert, it isn't 'direct' in dynastic terms and he isn't considered a Bruce.
Unless you also want to consider him a member of the House of Wessex.
HYUFD was saying the other day that KCIII was infallibly a Scot because he was descended from Marie Stuart. So on the same logic he is infallibly also a Stewart, and therefore a Bruce - but also, as you say, a Wessex -wotsit, and a Dutchman, and a Greek, and so on and so forth.
But in reality we are getting into some very small fractions here.
Hyufd says lots of things. Not all of them are correct.
It would be funny though if Charles decided to overturn his mother's (and Churchill's) earlier decision on the dynastic name and went for the House of Edinburgh.
More logical as well.
Charles is very Danish through his Dad and a bit Danish through his Mum. He is more Danish than any of these other suggestions. I think we should all recognise and celebrate his Danishness by… umm… building Lego models and eating bacon?
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
Mr. xP, surely it should be called: Queue II - Queue Harder ?
Next you'll be saying it's a Christmas Queue
It's only 100 days until Die Hard.
But it's a long while since a Bruce was on the throne.
That's odd. Isn't KCIII a direct descendant of the Bruce, via James I, and James VI? Or is there something we ought to know about?
He is descended via Robert's daughter and then James' daughter and granddaughter, with a further two breaks in the 'direct' line in 1901 and of course, now.
So yes, although he can trace his line back to Robert, it isn't 'direct' in dynastic terms and he isn't considered a Bruce.
Unless you also want to consider him a member of the House of Wessex.
HYUFD was saying the other day that KCIII was infallibly a Scot because he was descended from Marie Stuart. So on the same logic he is infallibly also a Stewart, and therefore a Bruce - but also, as you say, a Wessex -wotsit, and a Dutchman, and a Greek, and so on and so forth.
But in reality we are getting into some very small fractions here.
Hyufd says lots of things. Not all of them are correct.
It would be funny though if Charles decided to overturn his mother's (and Churchill's) earlier decision on the dynastic name and went for the House of Edinburgh.
More logical as well.
Charles is very Danish through his Dad and a bit Danish through his Mum. He is more Danish than any of these other suggestions. I think we should all recognise and celebrate his Danishness by… umm… building Lego models and eating bacon?
2 nuggets from last nights locals - Reform UK managed 0.8% in Bolton, when they stand, they fail Compare to Sussex where the OMRLP managed 5%, and beat the Greens. Reform are an irrelevance and that 5% odd they sometimes are getting to in polling will go somewhere......
Funny, then,. the tories are adopting so many of Reform's policies. Hard tax cuts, fracking, deregulation. Tice has been banging on about all of the above for months.
Conservatives are toast...removing cap on banker bonuses it an utterly appalling policy
Removing the cap on banker bonuses isn’t the only thing the Government has done. They’ve also removed the ban on fracking, which is surely almost but not quite as unpopular…
Mr. xP, surely it should be called: Queue II - Queue Harder ?
Next you'll be saying it's a Christmas Queue
It's only 100 days until Die Hard.
But it's a long while since a Bruce was on the throne.
That's odd. Isn't KCIII a direct descendant of the Bruce, via James I, and James VI? Or is there something we ought to know about?
He is descended via Robert's daughter and then James' daughter and granddaughter, with a further two breaks in the 'direct' line in 1901 and of course, now.
So yes, although he can trace his line back to Robert, it isn't 'direct' in dynastic terms and he isn't considered a Bruce.
Unless you also want to consider him a member of the House of Wessex.
Nah, that's Edward, isn't it?
You can say it Severn times but it will not be true.
Edit - incidentally you threw me there. As we'd been talking about Bruces I thought for a moment you meant Edward I!
I first put 'his brother', then remembered there's also the other one we don't talk about in polite society.
Well, that came in Andy for tripping me up.
On a slightly related subject, I am glad to see Charles has said Harry should be allowed to wear army uniform. I know he gave up his position voluntarily and so on, but it still jarred a bit that the only two people not in uniform in that cortège were him and Andrew, whom he is not remotely comparable too, and who were also the only ones to serve in combat.
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Leon A couple of weeks ago you mentioned a particular kind of lightbulb that was useful for reducing SAD. Are you in a position to recommend any particular brand?
Search Amazon for SAD light and you'll get dozens of hits all offering 10000 lux which seems to be the standard. I have used one for 2 winters. Dunno how effective they are but for what they cost, worth a try.
Is Lake Como anywhere near Milan? I've been there for a couple of days in 2017.
Yes. Como, the city (which is also lovely btw) is 50km north of Milan and at the southern end of one leg of Lake Como.
I think next time we go to Lake Como we will stay in Como itself as there looked to be lots of see and you can easily get boats up the lake to any most of the lakeside villages.
So long as you can afford to stay in a quiet spot by the lakeside. The town itself isn’t particularly attractive and is traffic-choked both in the centre and on most roads in and out.
I just wanted to correct this. I can't speak for the roads in and out of Como town (we visited by boat) but the centre, the old Roman town, is almost entirely pedestrianised, traffic-free, and lovely to stroll around in. Or at least it was last week.
(And yes that's an Oxford comma, so up yours Coffey!)
Fair enough. But avoid the modern, commercial centre, as well as the main roads, which do have cheaper accommodation that may tempt the unwary.
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
Uk retail sales down 5.4 % vs a year ago. Bad economic data seeping in now. Truss is a dead woman walking
And what's the yoy figure after you smooth out the impact of just having come out of lockdown this time last year, thus releasing a pent-up wave of delayed spending?
Well if you think people are spending freely at the moment outside the top 10 % i have a bridge to sell you
Someone managed to sell it to you in the first place then?
I can't imagine that Charles uses anything other than a fountain pen - he's a traditionalist. Biro is far too modern.
Even if you do like modern, biros are just straight-up bad as writing instruments compared to a good disposable gel ink pen, which writes far more smoothly and reliably. The only thing biros have going for them is that they are the cheapest of the cheap, and then you get what you pay for...
About Joan Armatrading, there does seem to be a bit of a divide between younger and older people in Afro-Carribean and African communities. Ben Okri is another slightly older figure who's been making his broadly both liberal and monarchist views fairly clear this week.
It is extremely important for the Royals that they don't allow themselves to become totems of one side of a culture war against Harry and Meghan, as the Daily Mail and others would so dearly like, and they've made quite a bit of progress on that this week too.
The Royal Family needs to be careful not to get tied to the Conservative Party. Having the Prime Minister trail round the country with the new King is one danger point, and some recent guest lists have looked a tad lopsided.
I understood that had now been abandoned (Truss hanging on the Royal coattails)
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
Hartlepool simian of fame, I presume you know, but the link with Prez Zelenskii escapes me too. So I would welcome elucidation too.
He has clarified that it is because they were both joke/celebrity/novelty/celebrity (delete according to preference) candidates when first elected.
Though of course he wasn't, he ran on a very serious anti-corruption platform.
Though I can well understand why our Russian friend would consider democracy, electing people and being opposed to corruption would all be alien concepts.
Very sad the Queen has died but I don't care anymore, sorry
You cared enough to comment, completely off topic on the thread.
Off topic.
Rumour has it that the Queen had a wicked sense of humour.
This would seem to be confirmed by even in death, her trolling of her most detested (even more so, it is alleged than Blair) Prime Minister by ensuring she soldiered on until he was no longer PM. Johnson had prepared his best ever eulogy speech, a speech few listened to, and no one now cares about. He had selected and practiced his funereal reading, one that he will never read. He must be so downhearted.
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
Conservatives are toast...removing cap on banker bonuses it an utterly appalling policy
Why? Do we have a cap on the obscene wages of EPL players? Pop stars? Social Media influencers? No, we let the market decide. Those attacking the removal of the cap are hitting the wrong target. Why are skills in financial services, or the provision of financial services so valuable? It never used to be that way in the previous century. The people making profits from banks and finance were the shareholders, not the employees.
I think the answer to this is, in part, well meaning regulation. The barriers to entry in the industry are now such that those in it have an oligarchal ability to extract excess profits. We need much more competition in the provision of such services so that price competitiveness is restored.
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Leon A couple of weeks ago you mentioned a particular kind of lightbulb that was useful for reducing SAD. Are you in a position to recommend any particular brand?
Search Amazon for SAD light and you'll get dozens of hits all offering 10000 lux which seems to be the standard. I have used one for 2 winters. Dunno how effective they are but for what they cost, worth a try.
Re; Ben Okri, I haven't followed his latest works, but looking up I saw that he's got too recent books out - "the age of magic" and "the freedom artist". I agree with you that he's a good, richly imaginative writer.
He wrote this quite nice piece about the Queen last week, which got very little exposure. I don't agree with everythng he says, but I think it's broadly good , and it's striking how he reveals more by taking such a different tone to the ultra-secular tone of the majority of modern society, but also remaining liberal and open. I haven't see a single other writer or journalist cover it in this sort of way.
"Queen Elizabeth ruled at a time when the spiritual energy of the world was moving from a male-centred universe to one desperately in need of feminine energies. After two world wars, after the toxicity of Nazism, which was male energy at its most disordered and insane, what the world truly needed, at the level of its subconscious, was a female force, a stable, balancing, presence."
Interesting that there are Okri fans on here - I thought Famished Road was one of most turgid things I had ever read, as did the friend who lent it to me. Another (bookshop-owning) friend finds his books sell to the sort of people she describews as 'shelf-decorators'.
Yes not for everyone. A bit like Mantel or, yes, Proust or even JJ himself. You've got to give yourself over completely to their world. If so much as your big toe remains outside it's all over.
And yet Mantel and Proust are fine for me (haven't read Joyce). The big modern worldbuilder for me is John Crowley. The Aegypt cycle is extremely dense and rewarding.
Are you saying that people have different tastes in literature???
I will have to give it a go never heard of him, embarrassing to say.
As for the "shelf-decorators" it begs two questions - first, are there really people who buy books just so they can have an impressive bookcase; and secondly, the more important question - what proportion of your books should you legitimately not have read and be planning to.
Re the shelf-decorators: yes, I can attest to this as a former bookseller myself. Keys are: they buy hardbacks; they won't buy more than one by any given author; prizewinners are important; the author's name needs to be very visible from a distance. I've heard people talk about who's getting 'demoted' to make room for a current big name. Mantel was v. popular because of the size of her Wolf Hall series.
What proportion of books can you have unread, but be planning to? For me it's currently running at around 5%: nearly 3000 books, of which around 150 are on the 'to be read' shelves.
Joyce: no, haven't got round to him yet. Even at around 100 books a year, there's only so much I can get through.
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
What holds us back on growth are poor productivity and a lack of public and private investment.
How does scrapping the cap on bankers' bonuses help with that?
All for sustainable long-term growth. A short-term boomlet which does nothing to address underlying issues: no.
Truss only concern is winning the next election....i dont think shes bothered if she does long term damage
Truss is not acting as if her only concern is winning the next election. Allowing fracking and megabonuses for bankers are not electorally popular policies that are going to win her election. She appears to be acting out of ideological belief.
Conservatives are toast...removing cap on banker bonuses it an utterly appalling policy
Why? Do we have a cap on the obscene wages of EPL players? Pop stars? Social Media influencers? No, we let the market decide. Those attacking the removal of the cap are hitting the wrong target. Why are skills in financial services, or the provision of financial services so valuable? It never used to be that way in the previous century. The people making profits from banks and finance were the shareholders, not the employees.
I think the answer to this is, in part, well meaning regulation. The barriers to entry in the industry are now such that those in it have an oligarchal ability to extract excess profits. We need much more competition in the provision of such services so that price competitiveness is restored.
Indeed. Normally if employees earn excessive wages in a free market competituon will move in to drive wages down. However we live in a system where the BOE prints money and the investment banks are closest to the money printer. Hence the obscene salaries. Does anyone seriously think JRM is worth what he has earned
In a longer term setting Sterling (broad, & vs USD) has been on a downward drift for 25Y but largely punctuated by two devaluation "events" (GFC & Brexit) when demand for Sterling assets took a structural downward move. Recent move looks more like dollar strength than a 3rd event
This is not to say a 3rd event can't crystallise - certainly loose talk on playing hari-kiri with UK's macroeconomic framework (OBR, BoE, fiscal rules) is making foreign investors nervous - which is why next week is big: a mini Budget & eyes on BoE for signs of fiscal dominance
What holds us back on growth are poor productivity and a lack of public and private investment.
How does scrapping the cap on bankers' bonuses help with that?
All for sustainable long-term growth. A short-term boomlet which does nothing to address underlying issues: no.
Truss only concern is winning the next election....i dont think shes bothered if she does long term damage
Truss is not acting as if her only concern is winning the next election. Allowing fracking and megabonuses for bankers are not electorally popular policies that are going to win her election. She appears to be acting out of ideological belief.
Conservatives are toast...removing cap on banker bonuses it an utterly appalling policy
Why? Do we have a cap on the obscene wages of EPL players? Pop stars? Social Media influencers? No, we let the market decide. Those attacking the removal of the cap are hitting the wrong target. Why are skills in financial services, or the provision of financial services so valuable? It never used to be that way in the previous century. The people making profits from banks and finance were the shareholders, not the employees.
I think the answer to this is, in part, well meaning regulation. The barriers to entry in the industry are now such that those in it have an oligarchal ability to extract excess profits. We need much more competition in the provision of such services so that price competitiveness is restored.
The high incomes of football players and pop stars may or may not be obscene, but they’ve never crashed the entire economy. The financial sector has. Ergo greater regulation is appropriate. The state effectively has to underwrite the finance sector, so the state gets to set the rules.
Re; Ben Okri, I haven't followed his latest works, but looking up I saw that he's got too recent books out - "the age of magic" and "the freedom artist". I agree with you that he's a good, richly imaginative writer.
He wrote this quite nice piece about the Queen last week, which got very little exposure. I don't agree with everythng he says, but I think it's broadly good , and it's striking how he reveals more by taking such a different tone to the ultra-secular tone of the majority of modern society, but also remaining liberal and open. I haven't see a single other writer or journalist cover it in this sort of way.
"Queen Elizabeth ruled at a time when the spiritual energy of the world was moving from a male-centred universe to one desperately in need of feminine energies. After two world wars, after the toxicity of Nazism, which was male energy at its most disordered and insane, what the world truly needed, at the level of its subconscious, was a female force, a stable, balancing, presence."
Interesting that there are Okri fans on here - I thought Famished Road was one of most turgid things I had ever read, as did the friend who lent it to me. Another (bookshop-owning) friend finds his books sell to the sort of people she describews as 'shelf-decorators'.
Yes not for everyone. A bit like Mantel or, yes, Proust or even JJ himself. You've got to give yourself over completely to their world. If so much as your big toe remains outside it's all over.
And yet Mantel and Proust are fine for me (haven't read Joyce). The big modern worldbuilder for me is John Crowley. The Aegypt cycle is extremely dense and rewarding.
Are you saying that people have different tastes in literature???
I will have to give it a go never heard of him, embarrassing to say.
As for the "shelf-decorators" it begs two questions - first, are there really people who buy books just so they can have an impressive bookcase; and secondly, the more important question - what proportion of your books should you legitimately not have read and be planning to.
Re the shelf-decorators: yes, I can attest to this as a former bookseller myself. Keys are: they buy hardbacks; they won't buy more than one by any given author; prizewinners are important; the author's name needs to be very visible from a distance. I've heard people talk about who's getting 'demoted' to make room for a current big name. Mantel was v. popular because of the size of her Wolf Hall series.
What proportion of books can you have unread, but be planning to? For me it's currently running at around 5%: nearly 3000 books, of which around 150 are on the 'to be read' shelves.
Joyce: no, haven't got round to him yet. Even at around 100 books a year, there's only so much I can get through.
Yes, quite so: I know this phenom. Okri is a classic shelf decorator. Allegedly highbrow literature bought by decidedly middlebrow people like @Topping, who then mention that they've read him, quite a lot. As here
Re; Ben Okri, I haven't followed his latest works, but looking up I saw that he's got too recent books out - "the age of magic" and "the freedom artist". I agree with you that he's a good, richly imaginative writer.
He wrote this quite nice piece about the Queen last week, which got very little exposure. I don't agree with everythng he says, but I think it's broadly good , and it's striking how he reveals more by taking such a different tone to the ultra-secular tone of the majority of modern society, but also remaining liberal and open. I haven't see a single other writer or journalist cover it in this sort of way.
"Queen Elizabeth ruled at a time when the spiritual energy of the world was moving from a male-centred universe to one desperately in need of feminine energies. After two world wars, after the toxicity of Nazism, which was male energy at its most disordered and insane, what the world truly needed, at the level of its subconscious, was a female force, a stable, balancing, presence."
Interesting that there are Okri fans on here - I thought Famished Road was one of most turgid things I had ever read, as did the friend who lent it to me. Another (bookshop-owning) friend finds his books sell to the sort of people she describews as 'shelf-decorators'.
Yes not for everyone. A bit like Mantel or, yes, Proust or even JJ himself. You've got to give yourself over completely to their world. If so much as your big toe remains outside it's all over.
And yet Mantel and Proust are fine for me (haven't read Joyce). The big modern worldbuilder for me is John Crowley. The Aegypt cycle is extremely dense and rewarding.
Are you saying that people have different tastes in literature???
I will have to give it a go never heard of him, embarrassing to say.
As for the "shelf-decorators" it begs two questions - first, are there really people who buy books just so they can have an impressive bookcase; and secondly, the more important question - what proportion of your books should you legitimately not have read and be planning to.
Re the shelf-decorators: yes, I can attest to this as a former bookseller myself. Keys are: they buy hardbacks; they won't buy more than one by any given author; prizewinners are important; the author's name needs to be very visible from a distance. I've heard people talk about who's getting 'demoted' to make room for a current big name. Mantel was v. popular because of the size of her Wolf Hall series.
What proportion of books can you have unread, but be planning to? For me it's currently running at around 5%: nearly 3000 books, of which around 150 are on the 'to be read' shelves.
Joyce: no, haven't got round to him yet. Even at around 100 books a year, there's only so much I can get through.
5% is great. I haven't done the math for mine.
I find it very difficult to get through, these days, even the Times Saturday Review without being tempted.
There are some that I purposely keep unread, waiting, as a treat at some point.
I detest people who say "oh you should read this" as the motives are near-universal point-scoring but....I don't think anyone should go through life without reading Portrait of the Artist.
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
Re; Ben Okri, I haven't followed his latest works, but looking up I saw that he's got too recent books out - "the age of magic" and "the freedom artist". I agree with you that he's a good, richly imaginative writer.
He wrote this quite nice piece about the Queen last week, which got very little exposure. I don't agree with everythng he says, but I think it's broadly good , and it's striking how he reveals more by taking such a different tone to the ultra-secular tone of the majority of modern society, but also remaining liberal and open. I haven't see a single other writer or journalist cover it in this sort of way.
"Queen Elizabeth ruled at a time when the spiritual energy of the world was moving from a male-centred universe to one desperately in need of feminine energies. After two world wars, after the toxicity of Nazism, which was male energy at its most disordered and insane, what the world truly needed, at the level of its subconscious, was a female force, a stable, balancing, presence."
Interesting that there are Okri fans on here - I thought Famished Road was one of most turgid things I had ever read, as did the friend who lent it to me. Another (bookshop-owning) friend finds his books sell to the sort of people she describews as 'shelf-decorators'.
Yes not for everyone. A bit like Mantel or, yes, Proust or even JJ himself. You've got to give yourself over completely to their world. If so much as your big toe remains outside it's all over.
And yet Mantel and Proust are fine for me (haven't read Joyce). The big modern worldbuilder for me is John Crowley. The Aegypt cycle is extremely dense and rewarding.
Are you saying that people have different tastes in literature???
I will have to give it a go never heard of him, embarrassing to say.
As for the "shelf-decorators" it begs two questions - first, are there really people who buy books just so they can have an impressive bookcase; and secondly, the more important question - what proportion of your books should you legitimately not have read and be planning to.
Re the shelf-decorators: yes, I can attest to this as a former bookseller myself. Keys are: they buy hardbacks; they won't buy more than one by any given author; prizewinners are important; the author's name needs to be very visible from a distance. I've heard people talk about who's getting 'demoted' to make room for a current big name. Mantel was v. popular because of the size of her Wolf Hall series.
What proportion of books can you have unread, but be planning to? For me it's currently running at around 5%: nearly 3000 books, of which around 150 are on the 'to be read' shelves.
Joyce: no, haven't got round to him yet. Even at around 100 books a year, there's only so much I can get through.
Yes, quite so: I know this phenom. Okri is a classic shelf decorator. Allegedly highbrow literature bought by decidedly middlebrow people like @Topping, who then mention that they've read him, quite a lot. As here
LOL excellently catty!
Loving it. I suppose for you middlebrow writing is a mountain you have yet to climb.
Conservatives are toast...removing cap on banker bonuses it an utterly appalling policy
Why? Do we have a cap on the obscene wages of EPL players? Pop stars? Social Media influencers? No, we let the market decide. Those attacking the removal of the cap are hitting the wrong target. Why are skills in financial services, or the provision of financial services so valuable? It never used to be that way in the previous century. The people making profits from banks and finance were the shareholders, not the employees.
I think the answer to this is, in part, well meaning regulation. The barriers to entry in the industry are now such that those in it have an oligarchal ability to extract excess profits. We need much more competition in the provision of such services so that price competitiveness is restored.
Indeed. Normally if employees earn excessive wages in a free market competituon will move in to drive wages down. However we live in a system where the BOE prints money and the investment banks are closest to the money printer. Hence the obscene salaries. Does anyone seriously think JRM is worth what he has earned
Conservatives are toast...removing cap on banker bonuses it an utterly appalling policy
Why? Do we have a cap on the obscene wages of EPL players? Pop stars? Social Media influencers? No, we let the market decide. Those attacking the removal of the cap are hitting the wrong target. Why are skills in financial services, or the provision of financial services so valuable? It never used to be that way in the previous century. The people making profits from banks and finance were the shareholders, not the employees.
I think the answer to this is, in part, well meaning regulation. The barriers to entry in the industry are now such that those in it have an oligarchal ability to extract excess profits. We need much more competition in the provision of such services so that price competitiveness is restored.
Indeed. Normally if employees earn excessive wages in a free market competituon will move in to drive wages down. However we live in a system where the BOE prints money and the investment banks are closest to the money printer. Hence the obscene salaries. Does anyone seriously think JRM is worth what he has earned
Does anyone think Lineker is worth what he earns
@DavidL is right on this though it is not real best optics at present
Re; Ben Okri, I haven't followed his latest works, but looking up I saw that he's got too recent books out - "the age of magic" and "the freedom artist". I agree with you that he's a good, richly imaginative writer.
He wrote this quite nice piece about the Queen last week, which got very little exposure. I don't agree with everythng he says, but I think it's broadly good , and it's striking how he reveals more by taking such a different tone to the ultra-secular tone of the majority of modern society, but also remaining liberal and open. I haven't see a single other writer or journalist cover it in this sort of way.
"Queen Elizabeth ruled at a time when the spiritual energy of the world was moving from a male-centred universe to one desperately in need of feminine energies. After two world wars, after the toxicity of Nazism, which was male energy at its most disordered and insane, what the world truly needed, at the level of its subconscious, was a female force, a stable, balancing, presence."
Interesting that there are Okri fans on here - I thought Famished Road was one of most turgid things I had ever read, as did the friend who lent it to me. Another (bookshop-owning) friend finds his books sell to the sort of people she describews as 'shelf-decorators'.
Yes not for everyone. A bit like Mantel or, yes, Proust or even JJ himself. You've got to give yourself over completely to their world. If so much as your big toe remains outside it's all over.
And yet Mantel and Proust are fine for me (haven't read Joyce). The big modern worldbuilder for me is John Crowley. The Aegypt cycle is extremely dense and rewarding.
Are you saying that people have different tastes in literature???
I will have to give it a go never heard of him, embarrassing to say.
As for the "shelf-decorators" it begs two questions - first, are there really people who buy books just so they can have an impressive bookcase; and secondly, the more important question - what proportion of your books should you legitimately not have read and be planning to.
Re the shelf-decorators: yes, I can attest to this as a former bookseller myself. Keys are: they buy hardbacks; they won't buy more than one by any given author; prizewinners are important; the author's name needs to be very visible from a distance. I've heard people talk about who's getting 'demoted' to make room for a current big name. Mantel was v. popular because of the size of her Wolf Hall series.
What proportion of books can you have unread, but be planning to? For me it's currently running at around 5%: nearly 3000 books, of which around 150 are on the 'to be read' shelves.
Joyce: no, haven't got round to him yet. Even at around 100 books a year, there's only so much I can get through.
I use the Library Thing website to keep a track of my books. Currently just under 4000 of which I have read about 2/3rds. Like you, I try to read 100 books a year but rarely ever hit the target. Normally around 80-90. So I reckon that as long as I live a reasonably long life I still have plenty of time to finish all the books I own but have not yet read.
Re; Ben Okri, I haven't followed his latest works, but looking up I saw that he's got too recent books out - "the age of magic" and "the freedom artist". I agree with you that he's a good, richly imaginative writer.
He wrote this quite nice piece about the Queen last week, which got very little exposure. I don't agree with everythng he says, but I think it's broadly good , and it's striking how he reveals more by taking such a different tone to the ultra-secular tone of the majority of modern society, but also remaining liberal and open. I haven't see a single other writer or journalist cover it in this sort of way.
"Queen Elizabeth ruled at a time when the spiritual energy of the world was moving from a male-centred universe to one desperately in need of feminine energies. After two world wars, after the toxicity of Nazism, which was male energy at its most disordered and insane, what the world truly needed, at the level of its subconscious, was a female force, a stable, balancing, presence."
Interesting that there are Okri fans on here - I thought Famished Road was one of most turgid things I had ever read, as did the friend who lent it to me. Another (bookshop-owning) friend finds his books sell to the sort of people she describews as 'shelf-decorators'.
Yes not for everyone. A bit like Mantel or, yes, Proust or even JJ himself. You've got to give yourself over completely to their world. If so much as your big toe remains outside it's all over.
And yet Mantel and Proust are fine for me (haven't read Joyce). The big modern worldbuilder for me is John Crowley. The Aegypt cycle is extremely dense and rewarding.
Are you saying that people have different tastes in literature???
I will have to give it a go never heard of him, embarrassing to say.
As for the "shelf-decorators" it begs two questions - first, are there really people who buy books just so they can have an impressive bookcase; and secondly, the more important question - what proportion of your books should you legitimately not have read and be planning to.
Re the shelf-decorators: yes, I can attest to this as a former bookseller myself. Keys are: they buy hardbacks; they won't buy more than one by any given author; prizewinners are important; the author's name needs to be very visible from a distance. I've heard people talk about who's getting 'demoted' to make room for a current big name. Mantel was v. popular because of the size of her Wolf Hall series.
What proportion of books can you have unread, but be planning to? For me it's currently running at around 5%: nearly 3000 books, of which around 150 are on the 'to be read' shelves.
Joyce: no, haven't got round to him yet. Even at around 100 books a year, there's only so much I can get through.
Yes, quite so: I know this phenom. Okri is a classic shelf decorator. Allegedly highbrow literature bought by decidedly middlebrow people like @Topping, who then mention that they've read him, quite a lot. As here
LOL excellently catty!
Loving it. I suppose for you middlebrow writing is a mountain you have yet to climb.
A coffee table book of "Photographs of lunches yet to be consumed" might work.
What holds us back on growth are poor productivity and a lack of public and private investment.
How does scrapping the cap on bankers' bonuses help with that?
All for sustainable long-term growth. A short-term boomlet which does nothing to address underlying issues: no.
Truss only concern is winning the next election....i dont think shes bothered if she does long term damage
Truss is not acting as if her only concern is winning the next election. Allowing fracking and megabonuses for bankers are not electorally popular policies that are going to win her election. She appears to be acting out of ideological belief.
I am always amused at faux liberal concern for the fate of the conservatives. This is going to get them in so much trouble...!
Re; Ben Okri, I haven't followed his latest works, but looking up I saw that he's got too recent books out - "the age of magic" and "the freedom artist". I agree with you that he's a good, richly imaginative writer.
He wrote this quite nice piece about the Queen last week, which got very little exposure. I don't agree with everythng he says, but I think it's broadly good , and it's striking how he reveals more by taking such a different tone to the ultra-secular tone of the majority of modern society, but also remaining liberal and open. I haven't see a single other writer or journalist cover it in this sort of way.
"Queen Elizabeth ruled at a time when the spiritual energy of the world was moving from a male-centred universe to one desperately in need of feminine energies. After two world wars, after the toxicity of Nazism, which was male energy at its most disordered and insane, what the world truly needed, at the level of its subconscious, was a female force, a stable, balancing, presence."
Interesting that there are Okri fans on here - I thought Famished Road was one of most turgid things I had ever read, as did the friend who lent it to me. Another (bookshop-owning) friend finds his books sell to the sort of people she describews as 'shelf-decorators'.
Yes not for everyone. A bit like Mantel or, yes, Proust or even JJ himself. You've got to give yourself over completely to their world. If so much as your big toe remains outside it's all over.
And yet Mantel and Proust are fine for me (haven't read Joyce). The big modern worldbuilder for me is John Crowley. The Aegypt cycle is extremely dense and rewarding.
Are you saying that people have different tastes in literature???
I will have to give it a go never heard of him, embarrassing to say.
As for the "shelf-decorators" it begs two questions - first, are there really people who buy books just so they can have an impressive bookcase; and secondly, the more important question - what proportion of your books should you legitimately not have read and be planning to.
Re the shelf-decorators: yes, I can attest to this as a former bookseller myself. Keys are: they buy hardbacks; they won't buy more than one by any given author; prizewinners are important; the author's name needs to be very visible from a distance. I've heard people talk about who's getting 'demoted' to make room for a current big name. Mantel was v. popular because of the size of her Wolf Hall series.
What proportion of books can you have unread, but be planning to? For me it's currently running at around 5%: nearly 3000 books, of which around 150 are on the 'to be read' shelves.
Joyce: no, haven't got round to him yet. Even at around 100 books a year, there's only so much I can get through.
Yes, quite so: I know this phenom. Okri is a classic shelf decorator. Allegedly highbrow literature bought by decidedly middlebrow people like @Topping, who then mention that they've read him, quite a lot. As here
He's always suffered from this sort of label, but after I read a couple of his books I didn't agree. The key with him is just how mystically vivid his imagination is. It's out of step with a lot of current literature and thinking, but it can be very effective.
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Leon A couple of weeks ago you mentioned a particular kind of lightbulb that was useful for reducing SAD. Are you in a position to recommend any particular brand?
I don't believe that was me, TBH. I can't remember talking about these lamps for months
That said, I did buy and use one during the wintry horror of lockdown 3, when I was in black despair for many reasons, and my SAD was overwhelming
Did it help? Maybe. Not obviously
But if you have a friend or relative with bad SAD it's probably worth a go
The sovereign remedy is of course warm bright sunshine. A couple of weeks in the tropics. Just a fortnight can get me through the rest of the British winter. I always aim to do it in the middle of January, say 15-30th, when the winter seems endlessly cruel (I often do more than 2 weeks but I am talking bare minimum here)
By the time you are home it is Feb 1 and - at least in southern England - you get the first tiny hint of winter's end. Maybe the odd slightly warmer day. The sun no longer sets at about half 3 (or so it feels). Then in mid Feb you get a definite turn, the sun can have strength on a clear day. Slowly you crawl back to sanity and light
SAD is no laughing matter. For me it is grim, for some it is nightmarish (I have a couple of friends who go into catatonic depression)
I do appreciate my remedy is expensive and impractical for many
He was the mascot of Hartlepool United FC who got elected as the mayor of that benighted shit hole. It was the first place in the UK to have an Anne Summers next to an Early Learning Centre. It just saves time.
I suspect Dynamo is rejecting the green t-shirt dialectic of the Prince of the Kievan Rus' and drawing a comparison with novelty candidates who inadvertently find themselves thrust into Great Events.
What holds us back on growth are poor productivity and a lack of public and private investment.
How does scrapping the cap on bankers' bonuses help with that?
All for sustainable long-term growth. A short-term boomlet which does nothing to address underlying issues: no.
Politically, the Unherd article (while typical of Unherd) is surely wrong. Polls show strong support for "government interference" in things like not allowing adverts of fatty stuff alongside kids' programmes. Uncapping bankers' bonuses definitely does fail the smell test when everyone's worried about the cost of living.
I agree there's a case that splendid growth trumps everything and if we generally feel prosperous in 2024 then the Tories have a good chance. But does anyone really think that growth will suddenly explode as happy bankers get huge bonuses and instantly spend them in the shops and the benefits will have trickled down in two years' time?
Conservatives are toast...removing cap on banker bonuses it an utterly appalling policy
Why? Do we have a cap on the obscene wages of EPL players? Pop stars? Social Media influencers? No, we let the market decide. Those attacking the removal of the cap are hitting the wrong target. Why are skills in financial services, or the provision of financial services so valuable? It never used to be that way in the previous century. The people making profits from banks and finance were the shareholders, not the employees.
I think the answer to this is, in part, well meaning regulation. The barriers to entry in the industry are now such that those in it have an oligarchal ability to extract excess profits. We need much more competition in the provision of such services so that price competitiveness is restored.
The high incomes of football players and pop stars may or may not be obscene, but they’ve never crashed the entire economy. The financial sector has. Ergo greater regulation is appropriate. The state effectively has to underwrite the finance sector, so the state gets to set the rules.
I am not sure greater regulation is having the desired effect for the reasons I stated. Certainly most of the Basel 2 and 3 stuff has merely reduced competition in the sector and driven up the price of what remains. It has also made the supply of capital much more expensive given the capital ratios banks need to comply with. This has an adverse effect on growth.
What I think became clear is that the ultimate guarantee of the BoE was a huge, hidden subsidy for the sector. And that the sector as a whole should be paying for it.
Conservatives are toast...removing cap on banker bonuses it an utterly appalling policy
Why? Do we have a cap on the obscene wages of EPL players? Pop stars? Social Media influencers? No, we let the market decide. Those attacking the removal of the cap are hitting the wrong target. Why are skills in financial services, or the provision of financial services so valuable? It never used to be that way in the previous century. The people making profits from banks and finance were the shareholders, not the employees.
I think the answer to this is, in part, well meaning regulation. The barriers to entry in the industry are now such that those in it have an oligarchal ability to extract excess profits. We need much more competition in the provision of such services so that price competitiveness is restored.
The high incomes of football players and pop stars may or may not be obscene, but they’ve never crashed the entire economy. The financial sector has. Ergo greater regulation is appropriate. The state effectively has to underwrite the finance sector, so the state gets to set the rules.
No longer true. Every strategically important bank must issue certain amounts of debt that becomes equity if capital ratios dip below certain levels.
This means that if banks get into trouble, they are effectively forgiven certain debt at the expense of the fund managers who own it. The latter take the losses.
Conservatives are toast...removing cap on banker bonuses it an utterly appalling policy
Why? Do we have a cap on the obscene wages of EPL players? Pop stars? Social Media influencers? No, we let the market decide. Those attacking the removal of the cap are hitting the wrong target. Why are skills in financial services, or the provision of financial services so valuable? It never used to be that way in the previous century. The people making profits from banks and finance were the shareholders, not the employees.
I think the answer to this is, in part, well meaning regulation. The barriers to entry in the industry are now such that those in it have an oligarchal ability to extract excess profits. We need much more competition in the provision of such services so that price competitiveness is restored.
Indeed. Normally if employees earn excessive wages in a free market competituon will move in to drive wages down. However we live in a system where the BOE prints money and the investment banks are closest to the money printer. Hence the obscene salaries. Does anyone seriously think JRM is worth what he has earned
Conservatives are toast...removing cap on banker bonuses it an utterly appalling policy
Why? Do we have a cap on the obscene wages of EPL players? Pop stars? Social Media influencers? No, we let the market decide. Those attacking the removal of the cap are hitting the wrong target. Why are skills in financial services, or the provision of financial services so valuable? It never used to be that way in the previous century. The people making profits from banks and finance were the shareholders, not the employees.
I think the answer to this is, in part, well meaning regulation. The barriers to entry in the industry are now such that those in it have an oligarchal ability to extract excess profits. We need much more competition in the provision of such services so that price competitiveness is restored.
Indeed. Normally if employees earn excessive wages in a free market competituon will move in to drive wages down. However we live in a system where the BOE prints money and the investment banks are closest to the money printer. Hence the obscene salaries. Does anyone seriously think JRM is worth what he has earned
Does anyone think Lineker is worth what he earns
@DavidL is right on this though it is not real best optics at present
Apparently the BOE has endorsed the policy today
What has that got to do with Lineker. He is an free agent, and if his employers including the BBC deem him worthy of his remuneration, good luck to him. You are a free market Conservative and it's a free market, good for him.
Re; Ben Okri, I haven't followed his latest works, but looking up I saw that he's got too recent books out - "the age of magic" and "the freedom artist". I agree with you that he's a good, richly imaginative writer.
He wrote this quite nice piece about the Queen last week, which got very little exposure. I don't agree with everythng he says, but I think it's broadly good , and it's striking how he reveals more by taking such a different tone to the ultra-secular tone of the majority of modern society, but also remaining liberal and open. I haven't see a single other writer or journalist cover it in this sort of way.
"Queen Elizabeth ruled at a time when the spiritual energy of the world was moving from a male-centred universe to one desperately in need of feminine energies. After two world wars, after the toxicity of Nazism, which was male energy at its most disordered and insane, what the world truly needed, at the level of its subconscious, was a female force, a stable, balancing, presence."
Interesting that there are Okri fans on here - I thought Famished Road was one of most turgid things I had ever read, as did the friend who lent it to me. Another (bookshop-owning) friend finds his books sell to the sort of people she describews as 'shelf-decorators'.
Yes not for everyone. A bit like Mantel or, yes, Proust or even JJ himself. You've got to give yourself over completely to their world. If so much as your big toe remains outside it's all over.
And yet Mantel and Proust are fine for me (haven't read Joyce). The big modern worldbuilder for me is John Crowley. The Aegypt cycle is extremely dense and rewarding.
Are you saying that people have different tastes in literature???
I will have to give it a go never heard of him, embarrassing to say.
As for the "shelf-decorators" it begs two questions - first, are there really people who buy books just so they can have an impressive bookcase; and secondly, the more important question - what proportion of your books should you legitimately not have read and be planning to.
Re the shelf-decorators: yes, I can attest to this as a former bookseller myself. Keys are: they buy hardbacks; they won't buy more than one by any given author; prizewinners are important; the author's name needs to be very visible from a distance. I've heard people talk about who's getting 'demoted' to make room for a current big name. Mantel was v. popular because of the size of her Wolf Hall series.
What proportion of books can you have unread, but be planning to? For me it's currently running at around 5%: nearly 3000 books, of which around 150 are on the 'to be read' shelves.
Joyce: no, haven't got round to him yet. Even at around 100 books a year, there's only so much I can get through.
Yes, quite so: I know this phenom. Okri is a classic shelf decorator. Allegedly highbrow literature bought by decidedly middlebrow people like @Topping, who then mention that they've read him, quite a lot. As here
LOL excellently catty!
Loving it. I suppose for you middlebrow writing is a mountain you have yet to climb.
I forgot to mention I really enjoyed your angry, wounded amour propre: when you failed to recognise Masaccio's Holy Trinity
What holds us back on growth are poor productivity and a lack of public and private investment.
How does scrapping the cap on bankers' bonuses help with that?
All for sustainable long-term growth. A short-term boomlet which does nothing to address underlying issues: no.
Truss only concern is winning the next election....i dont think shes bothered if she does long term damage
I agree but I don't see how the Banker's bonus move helps her in that.
The best case (which the Ian Leslie piece someone linked to earlier points to) is that there's not much to be done, but fracking and freeing the City sound like the sort of things that might grow the economy... that she's making the right noises, even if they're futile. And there is a strand of politics that acts as if saying you want growth will make growth happen. A bit like the "name it and claim it" bits of evangelical Christianity.
The worst case is that Truss and her Cabinet are pretty much all caught up in the bubble of low tax / low regulation / small state being the route to prosperity (IEA/TPA/ERG et al), and she actually believes this will work and be popular.
Conservatives are toast...removing cap on banker bonuses it an utterly appalling policy
Why? Do we have a cap on the obscene wages of EPL players? Pop stars? Social Media influencers? No, we let the market decide. Those attacking the removal of the cap are hitting the wrong target. Why are skills in financial services, or the provision of financial services so valuable? It never used to be that way in the previous century. The people making profits from banks and finance were the shareholders, not the employees.
I think the answer to this is, in part, well meaning regulation. The barriers to entry in the industry are now such that those in it have an oligarchal ability to extract excess profits. We need much more competition in the provision of such services so that price competitiveness is restored.
The high incomes of football players and pop stars may or may not be obscene, but they’ve never crashed the entire economy. The financial sector has. Ergo greater regulation is appropriate. The state effectively has to underwrite the finance sector, so the state gets to set the rules.
I am not sure greater regulation is having the desired effect for the reasons I stated. Certainly most of the Basel 2 and 3 stuff has merely reduced competition in the sector and driven up the price of what remains. It has also made the supply of capital much more expensive given the capital ratios banks need to comply with. This has an adverse effect on growth.
What I think became clear is that the ultimate guarantee of the BoE was a huge, hidden subsidy for the sector. And that the sector as a whole should be paying for it.
There’s a pretty clear pattern that reducing regulation leads to almighty crashes. But, sure, you should try and do the right regulation.
Conservatives are toast...removing cap on banker bonuses it an utterly appalling policy
Why? Do we have a cap on the obscene wages of EPL players? Pop stars? Social Media influencers? No, we let the market decide. Those attacking the removal of the cap are hitting the wrong target. Why are skills in financial services, or the provision of financial services so valuable? It never used to be that way in the previous century. The people making profits from banks and finance were the shareholders, not the employees.
I think the answer to this is, in part, well meaning regulation. The barriers to entry in the industry are now such that those in it have an oligarchal ability to extract excess profits. We need much more competition in the provision of such services so that price competitiveness is restored.
The high incomes of football players and pop stars may or may not be obscene, but they’ve never crashed the entire economy. The financial sector has. Ergo greater regulation is appropriate. The state effectively has to underwrite the finance sector, so the state gets to set the rules.
No longer true. Every strategically important bank must issue certain amounts of debt that becomes equity if capital ratios dip below certain levels.
This means that if banks get into trouble, they are effectively forgiven certain debt at the expense of the fund managers who own it. The latter take the losses.
Those are the rules, now.
Yes, the rules imposed by Government, a form of regulation, that we should keep.
And if the rules don’t work, which is always a possibility, it will still be the Government, i.e. all of us as taxpayers, who will have to pay up.
He was the mascot of Hartlepool United FC who got elected as the mayor of that benighted shit hole. It was the first place in the UK to have an Anne Summers next to an Early Learning Centre. It just saves time.
I suspect Dynamo is rejecting the green t-shirt dialectic of the Prince of the Kievan Rus' and drawing a comparison with novelty candidates who inadvertently find themselves thrust into Great Events.
If he were, Boris Johnson would be a much better parallel. A man who launched his career by being a TV comedian on satirical programmes.
But there, without forgetting Zelensky has himself been linked to oligarchs and some dodgy dealing, the resemblance ends.
Conservatives are toast...removing cap on banker bonuses it an utterly appalling policy
Why? Do we have a cap on the obscene wages of EPL players? Pop stars? Social Media influencers? No, we let the market decide. Those attacking the removal of the cap are hitting the wrong target. Why are skills in financial services, or the provision of financial services so valuable? It never used to be that way in the previous century. The people making profits from banks and finance were the shareholders, not the employees.
I think the answer to this is, in part, well meaning regulation. The barriers to entry in the industry are now such that those in it have an oligarchal ability to extract excess profits. We need much more competition in the provision of such services so that price competitiveness is restored.
The high incomes of football players and pop stars may or may not be obscene, but they’ve never crashed the entire economy. The financial sector has. Ergo greater regulation is appropriate. The state effectively has to underwrite the finance sector, so the state gets to set the rules.
I am not sure greater regulation is having the desired effect for the reasons I stated. Certainly most of the Basel 2 and 3 stuff has merely reduced competition in the sector and driven up the price of what remains. It has also made the supply of capital much more expensive given the capital ratios banks need to comply with. This has an adverse effect on growth.
What I think became clear is that the ultimate guarantee of the BoE was a huge, hidden subsidy for the sector. And that the sector as a whole should be paying for it.
There’s a pretty clear pattern that reducing regulation leads to almighty crashes. But, sure, you should try and do the right regulation.
What evidence do you have for that assertion? Banking was way more regulated in 2008 than in the wild west 1980s, for example but it was in the former period we saw the banking crash. There was a crash in 1987 but that was stock market driven.
Re; Ben Okri, I haven't followed his latest works, but looking up I saw that he's got too recent books out - "the age of magic" and "the freedom artist". I agree with you that he's a good, richly imaginative writer.
He wrote this quite nice piece about the Queen last week, which got very little exposure. I don't agree with everythng he says, but I think it's broadly good , and it's striking how he reveals more by taking such a different tone to the ultra-secular tone of the majority of modern society, but also remaining liberal and open. I haven't see a single other writer or journalist cover it in this sort of way.
"Queen Elizabeth ruled at a time when the spiritual energy of the world was moving from a male-centred universe to one desperately in need of feminine energies. After two world wars, after the toxicity of Nazism, which was male energy at its most disordered and insane, what the world truly needed, at the level of its subconscious, was a female force, a stable, balancing, presence."
Interesting that there are Okri fans on here - I thought Famished Road was one of most turgid things I had ever read, as did the friend who lent it to me. Another (bookshop-owning) friend finds his books sell to the sort of people she describews as 'shelf-decorators'.
Yes not for everyone. A bit like Mantel or, yes, Proust or even JJ himself. You've got to give yourself over completely to their world. If so much as your big toe remains outside it's all over.
And yet Mantel and Proust are fine for me (haven't read Joyce). The big modern worldbuilder for me is John Crowley. The Aegypt cycle is extremely dense and rewarding.
Are you saying that people have different tastes in literature???
I will have to give it a go never heard of him, embarrassing to say.
As for the "shelf-decorators" it begs two questions - first, are there really people who buy books just so they can have an impressive bookcase; and secondly, the more important question - what proportion of your books should you legitimately not have read and be planning to.
Re the shelf-decorators: yes, I can attest to this as a former bookseller myself. Keys are: they buy hardbacks; they won't buy more than one by any given author; prizewinners are important; the author's name needs to be very visible from a distance. I've heard people talk about who's getting 'demoted' to make room for a current big name. Mantel was v. popular because of the size of her Wolf Hall series.
What proportion of books can you have unread, but be planning to? For me it's currently running at around 5%: nearly 3000 books, of which around 150 are on the 'to be read' shelves.
Joyce: no, haven't got round to him yet. Even at around 100 books a year, there's only so much I can get through.
Yes, quite so: I know this phenom. Okri is a classic shelf decorator. Allegedly highbrow literature bought by decidedly middlebrow people like @Topping, who then mention that they've read him, quite a lot. As here
LOL excellently catty!
Loving it. I suppose for you middlebrow writing is a mountain you have yet to climb.
I forgot to mention I really enjoyed your angry, wounded amour propre: when you failed to recognise Masaccio's Holy Trinity
That whole you posting bits of art after you'd googled it was one of the funnier episodes of PB.
@Leon: Randomly googles A N Other artist Posts picture by A N Other artist on PB Asks PB - "I bet you don't know what A N Other artist's favourite fruit was. I know. I know. I bet you don't know. Does anyone know? It's an apple. He loved apples."
Like a cross between David Brent and Abigail's Party.
He was the mascot of Hartlepool United FC who got elected as the mayor of that benighted shit hole. It was the first place in the UK to have an Anne Summers next to an Early Learning Centre. It just saves time.
I suspect Dynamo is rejecting the green t-shirt dialectic of the Prince of the Kievan Rus' and drawing a comparison with novelty candidates who inadvertently find themselves thrust into Great Events.
Some of them do just fine, others are Boris Johnson. There have been stacks of hereditary monarchs who were spectacularly good at their jobs, so maybe how you got the gig is not so important. On current showing, being a TV comic seems to work better than murdering for the KGB.
Some of it is genuinely funny, some brusque and crude - but still likely effective
For the record, I abhor plenty of his views, especially his vile havering over Putin's war. But I can recognise powerful polemics, using humour
Yes interesting. Would be rather like moving a bunch of asylum seekers to Hampstead
Carlson has the second most watched show on US cable news. He is a pivotal media figure, and will be important in the POTUS elex
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
Conservatives are toast...removing cap on banker bonuses it an utterly appalling policy
Why? Do we have a cap on the obscene wages of EPL players? Pop stars? Social Media influencers? No, we let the market decide. Those attacking the removal of the cap are hitting the wrong target. Why are skills in financial services, or the provision of financial services so valuable? It never used to be that way in the previous century. The people making profits from banks and finance were the shareholders, not the employees.
I think the answer to this is, in part, well meaning regulation. The barriers to entry in the industry are now such that those in it have an oligarchal ability to extract excess profits. We need much more competition in the provision of such services so that price competitiveness is restored.
The high incomes of football players and pop stars may or may not be obscene, but they’ve never crashed the entire economy. The financial sector has. Ergo greater regulation is appropriate. The state effectively has to underwrite the finance sector, so the state gets to set the rules.
No longer true. Every strategically important bank must issue certain amounts of debt that becomes equity if capital ratios dip below certain levels.
This means that if banks get into trouble, they are effectively forgiven certain debt at the expense of the fund managers who own it. The latter take the losses.
Those are the rules, now.
Yes, the rules imposed by Government, a form of regulation, that we should keep.
And if the rules don’t work, which is always a possibility, it will still be the Government, i.e. all of us as taxpayers, who will have to pay up.
The rules are actually agreed and imposed along internationally agreed lines I believe, as opposed to by any one government.
Re; Ben Okri, I haven't followed his latest works, but looking up I saw that he's got too recent books out - "the age of magic" and "the freedom artist". I agree with you that he's a good, richly imaginative writer.
He wrote this quite nice piece about the Queen last week, which got very little exposure. I don't agree with everythng he says, but I think it's broadly good , and it's striking how he reveals more by taking such a different tone to the ultra-secular tone of the majority of modern society, but also remaining liberal and open. I haven't see a single other writer or journalist cover it in this sort of way.
"Queen Elizabeth ruled at a time when the spiritual energy of the world was moving from a male-centred universe to one desperately in need of feminine energies. After two world wars, after the toxicity of Nazism, which was male energy at its most disordered and insane, what the world truly needed, at the level of its subconscious, was a female force, a stable, balancing, presence."
Interesting that there are Okri fans on here - I thought Famished Road was one of most turgid things I had ever read, as did the friend who lent it to me. Another (bookshop-owning) friend finds his books sell to the sort of people she describews as 'shelf-decorators'.
Yes not for everyone. A bit like Mantel or, yes, Proust or even JJ himself. You've got to give yourself over completely to their world. If so much as your big toe remains outside it's all over.
And yet Mantel and Proust are fine for me (haven't read Joyce). The big modern worldbuilder for me is John Crowley. The Aegypt cycle is extremely dense and rewarding.
Are you saying that people have different tastes in literature???
I will have to give it a go never heard of him, embarrassing to say.
As for the "shelf-decorators" it begs two questions - first, are there really people who buy books just so they can have an impressive bookcase; and secondly, the more important question - what proportion of your books should you legitimately not have read and be planning to.
Re the shelf-decorators: yes, I can attest to this as a former bookseller myself. Keys are: they buy hardbacks; they won't buy more than one by any given author; prizewinners are important; the author's name needs to be very visible from a distance. I've heard people talk about who's getting 'demoted' to make room for a current big name. Mantel was v. popular because of the size of her Wolf Hall series.
What proportion of books can you have unread, but be planning to? For me it's currently running at around 5%: nearly 3000 books, of which around 150 are on the 'to be read' shelves.
Joyce: no, haven't got round to him yet. Even at around 100 books a year, there's only so much I can get through.
Yes, quite so: I know this phenom. Okri is a classic shelf decorator. Allegedly highbrow literature bought by decidedly middlebrow people like @Topping, who then mention that they've read him, quite a lot. As here
LOL excellently catty!
Loving it. I suppose for you middlebrow writing is a mountain you have yet to climb.
I forgot to mention I really enjoyed your angry, wounded amour propre: when you failed to recognise Masaccio's Holy Trinity
That whole you posting bits of art after you'd googled it was one of the funnier episodes of PB.
@Leon: Randomly googles A N Other artist Posts picture by A N Other artist on PB Asks PB - "I bet you don't know what A N Other artist's favourite fruit was. I know. I know. I bet you don't know. Does anyone know? It's an apple. He loved apples."
Like a cross between David Brent and Abigail's Party.
Re; Ben Okri, I haven't followed his latest works, but looking up I saw that he's got too recent books out - "the age of magic" and "the freedom artist". I agree with you that he's a good, richly imaginative writer.
He wrote this quite nice piece about the Queen last week, which got very little exposure. I don't agree with everythng he says, but I think it's broadly good , and it's striking how he reveals more by taking such a different tone to the ultra-secular tone of the majority of modern society, but also remaining liberal and open. I haven't see a single other writer or journalist cover it in this sort of way.
"Queen Elizabeth ruled at a time when the spiritual energy of the world was moving from a male-centred universe to one desperately in need of feminine energies. After two world wars, after the toxicity of Nazism, which was male energy at its most disordered and insane, what the world truly needed, at the level of its subconscious, was a female force, a stable, balancing, presence."
Interesting that there are Okri fans on here - I thought Famished Road was one of most turgid things I had ever read, as did the friend who lent it to me. Another (bookshop-owning) friend finds his books sell to the sort of people she describews as 'shelf-decorators'.
Yes not for everyone. A bit like Mantel or, yes, Proust or even JJ himself. You've got to give yourself over completely to their world. If so much as your big toe remains outside it's all over.
And yet Mantel and Proust are fine for me (haven't read Joyce). The big modern worldbuilder for me is John Crowley. The Aegypt cycle is extremely dense and rewarding.
Are you saying that people have different tastes in literature???
I will have to give it a go never heard of him, embarrassing to say.
As for the "shelf-decorators" it begs two questions - first, are there really people who buy books just so they can have an impressive bookcase; and secondly, the more important question - what proportion of your books should you legitimately not have read and be planning to.
Re the shelf-decorators: yes, I can attest to this as a former bookseller myself. Keys are: they buy hardbacks; they won't buy more than one by any given author; prizewinners are important; the author's name needs to be very visible from a distance. I've heard people talk about who's getting 'demoted' to make room for a current big name. Mantel was v. popular because of the size of her Wolf Hall series.
What proportion of books can you have unread, but be planning to? For me it's currently running at around 5%: nearly 3000 books, of which around 150 are on the 'to be read' shelves.
Joyce: no, haven't got round to him yet. Even at around 100 books a year, there's only so much I can get through.
Yes, quite so: I know this phenom. Okri is a classic shelf decorator. Allegedly highbrow literature bought by decidedly middlebrow people like @Topping, who then mention that they've read him, quite a lot. As here
LOL excellently catty!
Loving it. I suppose for you middlebrow writing is a mountain you have yet to climb.
I forgot to mention I really enjoyed your angry, wounded amour propre: when you failed to recognise Masaccio's Holy Trinity
That whole you posting bits of art after you'd googled it was one of the funnier episodes of PB.
@Leon: Randomly googles A N Other artist Posts picture by A N Other artist on PB Asks PB - "I bet you don't know what A N Other artist's favourite fruit was. I know. I know. I bet you don't know. Does anyone know? It's an apple. He loved apples."
Like a cross between David Brent and Abigail's Party.
Re; Ben Okri, I haven't followed his latest works, but looking up I saw that he's got too recent books out - "the age of magic" and "the freedom artist". I agree with you that he's a good, richly imaginative writer.
He wrote this quite nice piece about the Queen last week, which got very little exposure. I don't agree with everythng he says, but I think it's broadly good , and it's striking how he reveals more by taking such a different tone to the ultra-secular tone of the majority of modern society, but also remaining liberal and open. I haven't see a single other writer or journalist cover it in this sort of way.
"Queen Elizabeth ruled at a time when the spiritual energy of the world was moving from a male-centred universe to one desperately in need of feminine energies. After two world wars, after the toxicity of Nazism, which was male energy at its most disordered and insane, what the world truly needed, at the level of its subconscious, was a female force, a stable, balancing, presence."
Interesting that there are Okri fans on here - I thought Famished Road was one of most turgid things I had ever read, as did the friend who lent it to me. Another (bookshop-owning) friend finds his books sell to the sort of people she describews as 'shelf-decorators'.
Yes not for everyone. A bit like Mantel or, yes, Proust or even JJ himself. You've got to give yourself over completely to their world. If so much as your big toe remains outside it's all over.
And yet Mantel and Proust are fine for me (haven't read Joyce). The big modern worldbuilder for me is John Crowley. The Aegypt cycle is extremely dense and rewarding.
Are you saying that people have different tastes in literature???
I will have to give it a go never heard of him, embarrassing to say.
As for the "shelf-decorators" it begs two questions - first, are there really people who buy books just so they can have an impressive bookcase; and secondly, the more important question - what proportion of your books should you legitimately not have read and be planning to.
Re the shelf-decorators: yes, I can attest to this as a former bookseller myself. Keys are: they buy hardbacks; they won't buy more than one by any given author; prizewinners are important; the author's name needs to be very visible from a distance. I've heard people talk about who's getting 'demoted' to make room for a current big name. Mantel was v. popular because of the size of her Wolf Hall series.
What proportion of books can you have unread, but be planning to? For me it's currently running at around 5%: nearly 3000 books, of which around 150 are on the 'to be read' shelves.
Joyce: no, haven't got round to him yet. Even at around 100 books a year, there's only so much I can get through.
I can't imagine that Charles uses anything other than a fountain pen - he's a traditionalist. Biro is far too modern.
Even if you do like modern, biros are just straight-up bad as writing instruments compared to a good disposable gel ink pen, which writes far more smoothly and reliably. The only thing biros have going for them is that they are the cheapest of the cheap, and then you get what you pay for...
To be fair they make an excellent dummy for adults bored in office meetings too.
Comments
Edit - incidentally you threw me there. As we'd been talking about Bruces I thought for a moment you meant Edward I!
It would be funny though if Charles decided to overturn his mother's (and Churchill's) earlier decision on the dynastic name and went for the House of Edinburgh.
More logical as well.
Also, apols for not getting your little Joan joke. Duh me.
CON: 28% (=)
LDM: 10% (+1)
GRN: 6% (-1)
RFM: 5% (+1)
SNP: 4% (-1)
Via @PeoplePolling, 13 Sep.
Changes w/ 7 Sep.
No change with the new boys
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
I will have to give it a go never heard of him, embarrassing to say.
As for the "shelf-decorators" it begs two questions - first, are there really people who buy books just so they can have an impressive bookcase; and secondly, the more important question - what proportion of your books should you legitimately not have read and be planning to.
Edit: WAIT, WHAT??? Haven't read Joyce???????????????
(And yes that's an Oxford comma, so up yours Coffey!)
Compare to Sussex where the OMRLP managed 5%, and beat the Greens.
Reform are an irrelevance and that 5% odd they sometimes are getting to in polling will go somewhere......
In this day and age why would anyone use a fountain pen? I mean the clue is in the title: expect to be sprayed in ink.
That said, he only gets 3.2m viewers, which is fairly pitiful given the size of the USA, indeed the viewer figures for all cable news are eye-openingly low
The top ten are all Fox, apart from one, Rachel Maddow, at 9
https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/here-are-the-top-rated-cable-news-shows-for-q2-2022/510090/
The highest rated CNN news show is Anderson Cooper. He gets 767,000 viewers. It's TINY. He probably gets fewer viewers than GB News
Where, then, are Americans getting their news?!
Man who just lost his mother forgets to specify a non-leaking pen. Hardly damning.
Sky even showed the signatures
On a slightly related subject, I am glad to see Charles has said Harry should be allowed to wear army uniform. I know he gave up his position voluntarily and so on, but it still jarred a bit that the only two people not in uniform in that cortège were him and Andrew, whom he is not remotely comparable too, and who were also the only ones to serve in combat.
https://twitter.com/vtchakarova/status/1570443922450817026
How does scrapping the cap on bankers' bonuses help with that?
All for sustainable long-term growth. A short-term boomlet which does nothing to address underlying issues: no.
Though I can well understand why our Russian friend would consider democracy, electing people and being opposed to corruption would all be alien concepts.
Rumour has it that the Queen had a wicked sense of humour.
This would seem to be confirmed by even in death, her trolling of her most detested (even more so, it is alleged than Blair) Prime Minister by ensuring she soldiered on until he was no longer PM. Johnson had prepared his best ever eulogy speech, a speech few listened to, and no one now cares about. He had selected and practiced his funereal reading, one that he will never read. He must be so downhearted.
HMQ is smiling!
The Ron Burgundy tier, as we might call it?
Do we have a cap on the obscene wages of EPL players? Pop stars? Social Media influencers? No, we let the market decide. Those attacking the removal of the cap are hitting the wrong target. Why are skills in financial services, or the provision of financial services so valuable? It never used to be that way in the previous century. The people making profits from banks and finance were the shareholders, not the employees.
I think the answer to this is, in part, well meaning regulation. The barriers to entry in the industry are now such that those in it have an oligarchal ability to extract excess profits. We need much more competition in the provision of such services so that price competitiveness is restored.
The Hill
What proportion of books can you have unread, but be planning to? For me it's currently running at around 5%: nearly 3000 books, of which around 150 are on the 'to be read' shelves.
Joyce: no, haven't got round to him yet. Even at around 100 books a year, there's only so much I can get through.
I wonder if that is still true (about FB), and even if it is true, the news has to be generated somewhere else. FB is merely the medium
Simon French
@shjfrench
·
2h
Replying to @shjfrench
In a longer term setting Sterling (broad, & vs USD) has been on a downward drift for 25Y but largely punctuated by two devaluation "events" (GFC & Brexit) when demand for Sterling assets took a structural downward move. Recent move looks more like dollar strength than a 3rd event
This is not to say a 3rd event can't crystallise - certainly loose talk on playing hari-kiri with UK's macroeconomic framework (OBR, BoE, fiscal rules) is making foreign investors nervous - which is why next week is big: a mini Budget & eyes on BoE for signs of fiscal dominance
https://twitter.com/shjfrench/status/1570702885020925952
The equivalent in Ukraine would be a candidate running as Vasily Goloborodko.
So the explanation is as risible and unconvincing as - well, most things from that poster.
I find it very difficult to get through, these days, even the Times Saturday Review without being tempted.
There are some that I purposely keep unread, waiting, as a treat at some point.
I detest people who say "oh you should read this" as the motives are near-universal point-scoring but....I don't think anyone should go through life without reading Portrait of the Artist.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lessons-Land-Pork-Scratchings-Miserable/dp/1847370667/
He appears to have become less fun and more trumpy since.
Loving it. I suppose for you middlebrow writing is a mountain you have yet to climb.
@DavidL is right on this though it is not real best optics at present
Apparently the BOE has endorsed the policy today
I am always amused at faux liberal concern for the fate of the conservatives. This is going to get them in so much trouble...!
There are many collector's items on the site.
That said, I did buy and use one during the wintry horror of lockdown 3, when I was in black despair for many reasons, and my SAD was overwhelming
Did it help? Maybe. Not obviously
But if you have a friend or relative with bad SAD it's probably worth a go
The sovereign remedy is of course warm bright sunshine. A couple of weeks in the tropics. Just a fortnight can get me through the rest of the British winter. I always aim to do it in the middle of January, say 15-30th, when the winter seems endlessly cruel (I often do more than 2 weeks but I am talking bare minimum here)
By the time you are home it is Feb 1 and - at least in southern England - you get the first tiny hint of winter's end. Maybe the odd slightly warmer day. The sun no longer sets at about half 3 (or so it feels). Then in mid Feb you get a definite turn, the sun can have strength on a clear day. Slowly you crawl back to sanity and light
SAD is no laughing matter. For me it is grim, for some it is nightmarish (I have a couple of friends who go into catatonic depression)
I do appreciate my remedy is expensive and impractical for many
I suspect Dynamo is rejecting the green t-shirt dialectic of the Prince of the Kievan Rus' and drawing a comparison with novelty candidates who inadvertently find themselves thrust into Great Events.
2 polis stabbed in Leicester Square this morning
I agree there's a case that splendid growth trumps everything and if we generally feel prosperous in 2024 then the Tories have a good chance. But does anyone really think that growth will suddenly explode as happy bankers get huge bonuses and instantly spend them in the shops and the benefits will have trickled down in two years' time?
What I think became clear is that the ultimate guarantee of the BoE was a huge, hidden subsidy for the sector. And that the sector as a whole should be paying for it.
This means that if banks get into trouble, they are effectively forgiven certain debt at the expense of the fund managers who own it. The latter take the losses.
Those are the rules, now.
The worst case is that Truss and her Cabinet are pretty much all caught up in the bubble of low tax / low regulation / small state being the route to prosperity (IEA/TPA/ERG et al), and she actually believes this will work and be popular.
And if the rules don’t work, which is always a possibility, it will still be the Government, i.e. all of us as taxpayers, who will have to pay up.
But there, without forgetting Zelensky has himself been linked to oligarchs and some dodgy dealing, the resemblance ends.
What evidence do you have for that assertion? Banking was way more regulated in 2008 than in the wild west 1980s, for example but it was in the former period we saw the banking crash. There was a crash in 1987 but that was stock market driven.
@Leon:
Randomly googles A N Other artist
Posts picture by A N Other artist on PB
Asks PB - "I bet you don't know what A N Other artist's favourite fruit was. I know. I know. I bet you don't know. Does anyone know? It's an apple. He loved apples."
Like a cross between David Brent and Abigail's Party.
I'll grudgingly give Burble a couple of points for style tho'.
I had no idea he'd gone to America and found cable news fame. Fascinating
New iPhone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRX13oJu5OQ