I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
One minor virtue of Johnson is that he himself clearly detested stodgy public reports and endeavoured to make them well written.
Only occasionally this tipped into flippancy.
Check out the London Plans during his time as Mayor and compare with the dead prose - and hand - of Sadiq Khan.
On a similar note, I hope Tory MPs are hanging their heads in shame tonight.
Sunak is rudderless. The govt keeps proposing policy and then caving.
What does it stand for? A bigger state and being 'grown up' - or pessimistic, as some call it.
Might as well hand over the keys now.
It is increasingly hard to pretend I have a read on the British pulse.
But from afar the country seems adrift in purgatory, and Rishi is a non-entity who fails to get even the cut-through of a Theresa May.
The country is absolutely fine. Try and get a restaurant booking in London. Or tickets to a gig.
The government is totally petrified. I give Sunak till mid May. Then Boris might be back....
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
One minor virtue of Johnson is that he himself clearly detested stodgy public reports and endeavoured to make them well written.
Only occasionally this tipped into flippancy.
Check out the London Plans during his time as Mayor and compare with the dead prose - and hand - of Sadiq Khan.
On a similar note, I hope Tory MPs are hanging their heads in shame tonight.
Sunak is rudderless. The govt keeps proposing policy and then caving.
What does it stand for? A bigger state and being 'grown up' - or pessimistic, as some call it.
Might as well hand over the keys now.
It is increasingly hard to pretend I have a read on the British pulse.
But from afar the country seems adrift in purgatory, and Rishi is a non-entity who fails to get even the cut-through of a Theresa May.
The country is absolutely fine. Try and get a restaurant booking in London. Or tickets to a gig.
The government is totally petrified. I give Sunak till mid May. Then Boris might be back....
London is always “fine”. That tells us nothing, really.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
One minor virtue of Johnson is that he himself clearly detested stodgy public reports and endeavoured to make them well written.
Only occasionally this tipped into flippancy.
Check out the London Plans during his time as Mayor and compare with the dead prose - and hand - of Sadiq Khan.
On a similar note, I hope Tory MPs are hanging their heads in shame tonight.
Sunak is rudderless. The govt keeps proposing policy and then caving.
What does it stand for? A bigger state and being 'grown up' - or pessimistic, as some call it.
Might as well hand over the keys now.
It is increasingly hard to pretend I have a read on the British pulse.
But from afar the country seems adrift in purgatory, and Rishi is a non-entity who fails to get even the cut-through of a Theresa May.
The country is absolutely fine. Try and get a restaurant booking in London. Or tickets to a gig.
The government is totally petrified. I give Sunak till mid May. Then Boris might be back....
London is always “fine”. That tells us nothing, really.
You have a point about Boris.
It isn't just London. Try and get a table at a restaurant in York, or Oxford, or Brighton, or Cambridge - everywhere is packed.
People are seeing their energy bills cut and thinking wahey.
We really, really need to stop bailing everybody out of all risk...
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
One minor virtue of Johnson is that he himself clearly detested stodgy public reports and endeavoured to make them well written.
Only occasionally this tipped into flippancy.
Check out the London Plans during his time as Mayor and compare with the dead prose - and hand - of Sadiq Khan.
On a similar note, I hope Tory MPs are hanging their heads in shame tonight.
Sunak is rudderless. The govt keeps proposing policy and then caving.
What does it stand for? A bigger state and being 'grown up' - or pessimistic, as some call it.
Might as well hand over the keys now.
It is increasingly hard to pretend I have a read on the British pulse.
But from afar the country seems adrift in purgatory, and Rishi is a non-entity who fails to get even the cut-through of a Theresa May.
I’m not sure that’s right. We are now into a quieter period of politics and the World Cup has taken over the airwaves. People are thinking about Christmas. Bath was heaving today, huge queues in M and S. Genuinly busier than many other years. Not sure if that will keep up. The Tories are probably beyond hope of staying power, and might collapse to a record defeat, but most people aren’t thinking about that right now.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What an odd set of date ranges! Has the creator made sure they haven’t cherry picked data to suit a narrative?
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
One minor virtue of Johnson is that he himself clearly detested stodgy public reports and endeavoured to make them well written.
Only occasionally this tipped into flippancy.
Check out the London Plans during his time as Mayor and compare with the dead prose - and hand - of Sadiq Khan.
On a similar note, I hope Tory MPs are hanging their heads in shame tonight.
Sunak is rudderless. The govt keeps proposing policy and then caving.
What does it stand for? A bigger state and being 'grown up' - or pessimistic, as some call it.
Might as well hand over the keys now.
It is increasingly hard to pretend I have a read on the British pulse.
But from afar the country seems adrift in purgatory, and Rishi is a non-entity who fails to get even the cut-through of a Theresa May.
The country is absolutely fine. Try and get a restaurant booking in London. Or tickets to a gig.
The government is totally petrified. I give Sunak till mid May. Then Boris might be back....
London is always “fine”. That tells us nothing, really.
You have a point about Boris.
See my point about Bath too. I often shop in Bath at this time of year (between graduation ceremonies) and it was rammed today.
As I frequently reheat and serve on PB, my constitutional settlement for solving all indyrefs, past present or future, is thus. A new 'Council of the Isles', comprising the leaders of Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and the UK, should be formed. The council would not originate legislation, but it would vote on, and have the power to veto, key matters like major infrastructure investment, military commitments, foreign policy changes, and other important matters currently reserved to Westminster or exercised by the PM using Royal prerogative. If voted down, the UK Government would have to prepare new proposals. The UK Government would essentially have to carry with it England, and at least one of Wales, Scotland, and NI. If the leaders of those three nations voted against, they could veto the UK PM. That would work. Thank you and good night.
You can't have a veto over UK foreign policy or defence policy, no Federal nation would allow its regions or states or provinces to veto its foreign and defence policy in such a way. Germany doesn't, the US doesn't, Australia and India and Canada don't.
The devolved Parliaments are there to run domestic policy in Scotland, Wales and NI not change foreign policy
That may be so, but those federal states are not collections of historical nations as ours is. Besides, the Council would not change foreign policy, it would have a veto over significant changes. So if a change proposed by the UK PM/parliament were vetoed, it would be maintaining the status quo, not changing anything. Thinking about the Iraq war, Blair would in theory have had to convince the home nations, and he probably would have convinced England, meaning he would need one other of Scotland, Wales or NI to do it. If he had succeeded, the decision to go to war would have had greater validity; if he had failed, so much the better. At the moment it is far too easy for powerful nations to exert influence over the UK Prime Minister's foreign policy decisions, and that is a weakness of the system not a strength.
They are sovereign nations just as we are. If the UK PM and Parliament is not sovereign over even its own foreign policy and defence then in effect it has ceased to be a sovereign nation anyway.
Technically of course the PM does not need Parliamentary sovereignty to go to war at all, he or she has executive privilege on behalf of the Crown. He might ask Parliament to give it greater validity but he certainly has no obligation to ask for it and certainly not devolved Parliaments either
Your description of the current status quo is correct, but this merely underlines the problem. The UK Prime Minister has the power to plunge the nation into economic, social and even physical jeopardy. Yes, he can get parliamentary backing, but parliament will always reflect the dominance of England in population. The problem with this is that the concept of nationhood in the home nations (as opposed to a strong regional identity) cannot be put back into the box. Brexit is possibly the last big constitutional change (bar rejoin) that the UK Government can plausibly impose against the prevailing opinion in Scotland - there will have to be a way of recognising Scotland's (and the rest's) nationhood constitutionally, whilst also moving forward on the big issues of the day as a unified group.
There is, Holyrood which already runs most Scottish domestic policy.
If it runs most Scottish foreign and defence policy too then the UK is effectively over anyway
It would not 'run' 'Scottish' foreign and defence policy, it would have a single vote in 5 on a committee that would have the power to veto important UK Government decisions on foreign and defence policy. As would England, Wales, and NI, and of course the UK Government itself. The results of that vote could not then be disputed (for example by Nicola) as it would be clear that her Celtic friends were on the other side of the debate. So there would be a clear UK policy, passed and rubber-stamped by all the historical nations comprising the UK. No more carping, excuses, 'dragged against her will' etc.
Hmm. Mulling over. Is it quite logical to give the UKG a vote as well as England, given the near-equivalence in practice?
A prerequisite would surely be giving England the government it sorely needs.
Quite, though it seems like the Conservative Party don't agree, 12 years on. They prefer to conflate Westminster and the English Parliament.
Nor do the Labour Party, based on Sir Keir's speech yesterday. Though at least neither uses "Westminster" as a dog whistle for "England", unlike the SNP.
Only in your imagination. It doesn't matter who it is - would be the same if it was a bunch of Vogons.
It should be truth universally acknowledged that those who whine about SNP ‘Westminster’ dog whistles are invariably serial bleaters about ‘Brussels’.
The annoying thing is the instant assumption that a wish for Scottish independence is necessarily somehow racist, as if someone's rights to empire were being traduced.
It's not necessarily racist.
But some of it is driven by racism.
And the SNP foster and benefit from that element.
Excellent evideence against that is that the party has a very large component of English incomers for independence. They have their own group.
“English Scots for Yes”? They always get trotted out as support for this tired tripe. A group so massive and committed they didn’t even renew their own website domain, yet they still get trotted out as some form of proof of the vibrant “inclusivity” of this specific form of nationalism.
I'm 100% in favour of Scottish Independence, but I wouldn't join a group over it, as I think its a matter for the Scots to determine democratically at their own elections.
They were talking about English residents of Scotland - ie with a vote up there.
Oh, well if they're in Scotland then they're eligible to vote. If I was living in Scotland, I'd be voting Yes. 🤷♂️
Cleverly choosing to get things wrong to lull puny humans into a false sense of security.
DAMN YOU SKYNET
Yes, there’s no way it said the the blue whale is the “largest egg laying mammal” by mistake. It’s trolling us.
Twitter is full of people saying “hahah ChatGPT is shit”
On the other hand, it did THIS
“I’ve been playing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT model recently. Last night, I posted an article about having ChatGPT write fanfiction, and I thought that was impressive. Boy was I wrong.
This morning, I had a better idea. If ChatGPT is optimized for language processing, could I get it to invent a self-consistent new language, speak to me in that language, and write a program to translate that language back to English?
Yes. Yes it can.
I am truly stunned by this capability. This is so far beyond anything I would expect from a model trained to complete text prompts from the user.“
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What an odd set of date ranges! Has the creator made sure they haven’t cherry picked data to suit a narrative?
Not that odd, considering events.
However they should gone 88-97; 98-07; 08-17; 18-24*
Cleverly choosing to get things wrong to lull puny humans into a false sense of security.
DAMN YOU SKYNET
Yes, there’s no way it said the the blue whale is the “largest egg laying mammal” by mistake. It’s trolling us.
Twitter is full of people saying “hahah ChatGPT is shit”
On the other hand, it did THIS
“I’ve been playing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT model recently. Last night, I posted an article about having ChatGPT write fanfiction, and I thought that was impressive. Boy was I wrong.
This morning, I had a better idea. If ChatGPT is optimized for language processing, could I get it to invent a self-consistent new language, speak to me in that language, and write a program to translate that language back to English?
Yes. Yes it can.
I am truly stunned by this capability. This is so far beyond anything I would expect from a model trained to complete text prompts from the user.“
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
That is so fixed
Using different time periods, carefully cut to demonstrate exactly what they want to show.
Period 1 excludes the internet crash but includes the bubble
Period 2 includes the loosening of financial discipline and excludes the costs
Period 3 included 100% of the gfc and most of covid
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What an odd set of date ranges! Has the creator made sure they haven’t cherry picked data to suit a narrative?
Not that odd, considering events.
However they should gone 88-97; 98-07; 08-17; 18-24*
*including mean forecast.
Sorry I consider one band of 100 years, one of 7 and one of 14 exceptionally cherry picked. Your selection would be fair.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What an odd set of date ranges! Has the creator made sure they haven’t cherry picked data to suit a narrative?
Not that odd, considering events.
However they should gone 88-97; 98-07; 08-17; 18-24*
*including mean forecast.
Sorry I consider one band of 100 years, one of 7 and one of 14 exceptionally cherry picked. Your selection would be fair.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
One minor virtue of Johnson is that he himself clearly detested stodgy public reports and endeavoured to make them well written.
Only occasionally this tipped into flippancy.
Check out the London Plans during his time as Mayor and compare with the dead prose - and hand - of Sadiq Khan.
On a similar note, I hope Tory MPs are hanging their heads in shame tonight.
Sunak is rudderless. The govt keeps proposing policy and then caving.
What does it stand for? A bigger state and being 'grown up' - or pessimistic, as some call it.
Might as well hand over the keys now.
It is increasingly hard to pretend I have a read on the British pulse.
But from afar the country seems adrift in purgatory, and Rishi is a non-entity who fails to get even the cut-through of a Theresa May.
The country is absolutely fine. Try and get a restaurant booking in London. Or tickets to a gig.
The government is totally petrified. I give Sunak till mid May. Then Boris might be back....
London is always “fine”. That tells us nothing, really.
You have a point about Boris.
It isn't just London. Try and get a table at a restaurant in York, or Oxford, or Brighton, or Cambridge - everywhere is packed.
People are seeing their energy bills cut and thinking wahey.
We really, really need to stop bailing everybody out of all risk...
And focus on growing the pie.
I’m in central London now and it seems remarkably unbusy given the time of year. Seats on the tube during rush hour and everything.
I’m currently reading the “Commission on the UK’s Future”. All 155 pages.
The first several chapters, which describe the current state of play, are totally damning about the decline of the last 10 years or so.
Grim, grim reading for anyone who cares about the UK.
There’s some good stuff in there - and I know you're big on decentralization - but swapping my Labour hat for the pundit one I’d say the good stuff isn't really the point. Starmer is ruthlessly closing in now and this is smart politics, following the Blair template. He knows the country being sick of the Tories is enough for them to lose but not enough for Labour to win a decisive majority. To ‘seal the deal’ he needs to inject the sense of a party bristling with ideas. That electing them will bring real change.
They won’t float anything which smacks of socialism (the game is eliminating electoral hazard not introducing it) or requires serious extra money (we’re strapped and people know it), therefore let’s dish up a slice of constitutional reform guaranteed to get most heads nodding along – power devolved from the centre, more for the regions, for the home nations, REAL levelling up, an end to the unelected HoL, less privilege, more accountability, democracy, decisions made as close as possible to those impacted. Yep, yep, yep, say one and all.
It's politically risk-free. It burnishes Labour’s appeal in the desired way (fresh, radical, serious) but there’s no blood. It costs nothing – so none of your "how are you going to pay for this, borrowing or new taxes?" nonsense – and hardly a single target voter will be angry or worried or alienated. Regardless of where it goes it creates a whole lane of discussion that is uncomfortable for the Tories. Nothing to attack, they are forced to defend a stale dysfunctional status quo, which serves to highlight they are an integral part of it. Nice work, Keir. And Gordon.
So another 5 years wasted on constitutional faffing about while the country's real problems go unaddressed. Great.
Cleverly choosing to get things wrong to lull puny humans into a false sense of security.
DAMN YOU SKYNET
Yes, there’s no way it said the the blue whale is the “largest egg laying mammal” by mistake. It’s trolling us.
Twitter is full of people saying “hahah ChatGPT is shit”
On the other hand, it did THIS
“I’ve been playing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT model recently. Last night, I posted an article about having ChatGPT write fanfiction, and I thought that was impressive. Boy was I wrong.
This morning, I had a better idea. If ChatGPT is optimized for language processing, could I get it to invent a self-consistent new language, speak to me in that language, and write a program to translate that language back to English?
Yes. Yes it can.
I am truly stunned by this capability. This is so far beyond anything I would expect from a model trained to complete text prompts from the user.“
I've started following Meeks and he's well into all this. The politics of it goes against your creed btw. Left to the market it'll be brutal and sad and dangerous. It's going to need lots of woke and nanny state.
I’m currently reading the “Commission on the UK’s Future”. All 155 pages.
The first several chapters, which describe the current state of play, are totally damning about the decline of the last 10 years or so.
Grim, grim reading for anyone who cares about the UK.
There’s some good stuff in there - and I know you're big on decentralization - but swapping my Labour hat for the pundit one I’d say the good stuff isn't really the point. Starmer is ruthlessly closing in now and this is smart politics, following the Blair template. He knows the country being sick of the Tories is enough for them to lose but not enough for Labour to win a decisive majority. To ‘seal the deal’ he needs to inject the sense of a party bristling with ideas. That electing them will bring real change.
They won’t float anything which smacks of socialism (the game is eliminating electoral hazard not introducing it) or requires serious extra money (we’re strapped and people know it), therefore let’s dish up a slice of constitutional reform guaranteed to get most heads nodding along – power devolved from the centre, more for the regions, for the home nations, REAL levelling up, an end to the unelected HoL, less privilege, more accountability, democracy, decisions made as close as possible to those impacted. Yep, yep, yep, say one and all.
It's politically risk-free. It burnishes Labour’s appeal in the desired way (fresh, radical, serious) but there’s no blood. It costs nothing – so none of your "how are you going to pay for this, borrowing or new taxes?" nonsense – and hardly a single target voter will be angry or worried or alienated. Regardless of where it goes it creates a whole lane of discussion that is uncomfortable for the Tories. Nothing to attack, they are forced to defend a stale dysfunctional status quo, which serves to highlight they are an integral part of it. Nice work, Keir. And Gordon.
So another 5 years wasted on constitutional faffing about while the country's real problems go unaddressed. Great.
That’s rather unusual shooting from the hip from you.
Read the exec summary and skim the first 30 pages.
Portugal were the team I decided to back to win the tournament at 14/1, before the first game on 20th November. It'll be interesting to see what those odds are like after this match.
7.6 on Betfair with 15 minutes left and the score at 5-1.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
I’m currently reading the “Commission on the UK’s Future”. All 155 pages.
The first several chapters, which describe the current state of play, are totally damning about the decline of the last 10 years or so.
Grim, grim reading for anyone who cares about the UK.
There’s some good stuff in there - and I know you're big on decentralization - but swapping my Labour hat for the pundit one I’d say the good stuff isn't really the point. Starmer is ruthlessly closing in now and this is smart politics, following the Blair template. He knows the country being sick of the Tories is enough for them to lose but not enough for Labour to win a decisive majority. To ‘seal the deal’ he needs to inject the sense of a party bristling with ideas. That electing them will bring real change.
They won’t float anything which smacks of socialism (the game is eliminating electoral hazard not introducing it) or requires serious extra money (we’re strapped and people know it), therefore let’s dish up a slice of constitutional reform guaranteed to get most heads nodding along – power devolved from the centre, more for the regions, for the home nations, REAL levelling up, an end to the unelected HoL, less privilege, more accountability, democracy, decisions made as close as possible to those impacted. Yep, yep, yep, say one and all.
It's politically risk-free. It burnishes Labour’s appeal in the desired way (fresh, radical, serious) but there’s no blood. It costs nothing – so none of your "how are you going to pay for this, borrowing or new taxes?" nonsense – and hardly a single target voter will be angry or worried or alienated. Regardless of where it goes it creates a whole lane of discussion that is uncomfortable for the Tories. Nothing to attack, they are forced to defend a stale dysfunctional status quo, which serves to highlight they are an integral part of it. Nice work, Keir. And Gordon.
So another 5 years wasted on constitutional faffing about while the country's real problems go unaddressed. Great.
Mandelson is - under direction perhaps? - dropping the hint that it will need cross party support to go ahead.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What an odd set of date ranges! Has the creator made sure they haven’t cherry picked data to suit a narrative?
Not that odd, considering events.
However they should gone 88-97; 98-07; 08-17; 18-24*
*including mean forecast.
Sorry I consider one band of 100 years, one of 7 and one of 14 exceptionally cherry picked. Your selection would be fair.
I think the first band is 10 years isn’t it?
Oops, yes, my misread. Still stupid to do 10, 7, 14. No scientist would do that.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
It would not be remotely misleading, the GFC was part of the 2000s not the 2010s.
To count the bubble of pre-2007 as a baseline, but then exclude the crash when the bubble burst and shove that into the next time period - and include Covid in the next time period too - is obviously going to manipulate data.
The GFC belongs in the pre-2010 data, not post-2010 data.
I’m currently reading the “Commission on the UK’s Future”. All 155 pages.
The first several chapters, which describe the current state of play, are totally damning about the decline of the last 10 years or so.
Grim, grim reading for anyone who cares about the UK.
There’s some good stuff in there - and I know you're big on decentralization - but swapping my Labour hat for the pundit one I’d say the good stuff isn't really the point. Starmer is ruthlessly closing in now and this is smart politics, following the Blair template. He knows the country being sick of the Tories is enough for them to lose but not enough for Labour to win a decisive majority. To ‘seal the deal’ he needs to inject the sense of a party bristling with ideas. That electing them will bring real change.
They won’t float anything which smacks of socialism (the game is eliminating electoral hazard not introducing it) or requires serious extra money (we’re strapped and people know it), therefore let’s dish up a slice of constitutional reform guaranteed to get most heads nodding along – power devolved from the centre, more for the regions, for the home nations, REAL levelling up, an end to the unelected HoL, less privilege, more accountability, democracy, decisions made as close as possible to those impacted. Yep, yep, yep, say one and all.
It's politically risk-free. It burnishes Labour’s appeal in the desired way (fresh, radical, serious) but there’s no blood. It costs nothing – so none of your "how are you going to pay for this, borrowing or new taxes?" nonsense – and hardly a single target voter will be angry or worried or alienated. Regardless of where it goes it creates a whole lane of discussion that is uncomfortable for the Tories. Nothing to attack, they are forced to defend a stale dysfunctional status quo, which serves to highlight they are an integral part of it. Nice work, Keir. And Gordon.
So another 5 years wasted on constitutional faffing about while the country's real problems go unaddressed. Great.
The absurd centralisation of decision-making and the flaws in our democracy are a key part of our real problems. The difficulty with Labour’s thinking is that we know, learning from past experience, that their willingness to tackle them will only extend as far as the point at which their party’s own self-interest is not challenged in any way. Thus key elements are missing from their current analysis, and a whole lot more will be dropped before we actually see any reform.
2nd climbdown this wk. What does it tell us? 1/ PM buffeted by MPs. Maj of 80 but rebels getting to nos (40ish MPs) to bounce PM 2/ Speaks to divisions. Johnson renaissance movement alive & well & waiting 3/ Govt view: heads down, show deliverability even if means concessions https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1600192858744553495
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What an odd set of date ranges! Has the creator made sure they haven’t cherry picked data to suit a narrative?
Not that odd, considering events.
However they should gone 88-97; 98-07; 08-17; 18-24*
*including mean forecast.
Sorry I consider one band of 100 years, one of 7 and one of 14 exceptionally cherry picked. Your selection would be fair.
I think the first band is 10 years isn’t it?
Oops, yes, my misread. Still stupid to do 10, 7, 14. No scientist would do that.
I would like someone to do my numbers. PPP per capita.
88-97 98-07 08-17 18-24, with 23 & 24 being mean of forecast estimates from OBR, IMF etc.
I’m currently reading the “Commission on the UK’s Future”. All 155 pages.
The first several chapters, which describe the current state of play, are totally damning about the decline of the last 10 years or so.
Grim, grim reading for anyone who cares about the UK.
There’s some good stuff in there - and I know you're big on decentralization - but swapping my Labour hat for the pundit one I’d say the good stuff isn't really the point. Starmer is ruthlessly closing in now and this is smart politics, following the Blair template. He knows the country being sick of the Tories is enough for them to lose but not enough for Labour to win a decisive majority. To ‘seal the deal’ he needs to inject the sense of a party bristling with ideas. That electing them will bring real change.
They won’t float anything which smacks of socialism (the game is eliminating electoral hazard not introducing it) or requires serious extra money (we’re strapped and people know it), therefore let’s dish up a slice of constitutional reform guaranteed to get most heads nodding along – power devolved from the centre, more for the regions, for the home nations, REAL levelling up, an end to the unelected HoL, less privilege, more accountability, democracy, decisions made as close as possible to those impacted. Yep, yep, yep, say one and all.
It's politically risk-free. It burnishes Labour’s appeal in the desired way (fresh, radical, serious) but there’s no blood. It costs nothing – so none of your "how are you going to pay for this, borrowing or new taxes?" nonsense – and hardly a single target voter will be angry or worried or alienated. Regardless of where it goes it creates a whole lane of discussion that is uncomfortable for the Tories. Nothing to attack, they are forced to defend a stale dysfunctional status quo, which serves to highlight they are an integral part of it. Nice work, Keir. And Gordon.
So another 5 years wasted on constitutional faffing about while the country's real problems go unaddressed. Great.
Mandelson is - under direction perhaps? - dropping the hint that it will need cross party support to go ahead.
George Osborne’s think tank has come out in support (of the devolution measures, anyway).
Cleverly choosing to get things wrong to lull puny humans into a false sense of security.
DAMN YOU SKYNET
Yes, there’s no way it said the the blue whale is the “largest egg laying mammal” by mistake. It’s trolling us.
Twitter is full of people saying “hahah ChatGPT is shit”
On the other hand, it did THIS
“I’ve been playing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT model recently. Last night, I posted an article about having ChatGPT write fanfiction, and I thought that was impressive. Boy was I wrong.
This morning, I had a better idea. If ChatGPT is optimized for language processing, could I get it to invent a self-consistent new language, speak to me in that language, and write a program to translate that language back to English?
Yes. Yes it can.
I am truly stunned by this capability. This is so far beyond anything I would expect from a model trained to complete text prompts from the user.“
I've started following Meeks and he's well into all this. The politics of it goes against your creed btw. Left to the market it'll be brutal and sad and dangerous. It's going to need lots of woke and nanny state.
It will be brutal and dangerous. Dunno about sad
This beta version has been castrated to be Woke, so it doesn’t get cancelled on day 1
Future iterations will be bigger and less careful. The Chinese will make their own mad Ai and release it to the world to cause grief. Etc
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
At the moment you include the financial services bubble but not the crash in the middle period.
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
Cleverly choosing to get things wrong to lull puny humans into a false sense of security.
DAMN YOU SKYNET
Yes, there’s no way it said the the blue whale is the “largest egg laying mammal” by mistake. It’s trolling us.
Twitter is full of people saying “hahah ChatGPT is shit”
On the other hand, it did THIS
“I’ve been playing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT model recently. Last night, I posted an article about having ChatGPT write fanfiction, and I thought that was impressive. Boy was I wrong.
This morning, I had a better idea. If ChatGPT is optimized for language processing, could I get it to invent a self-consistent new language, speak to me in that language, and write a program to translate that language back to English?
Yes. Yes it can.
I am truly stunned by this capability. This is so far beyond anything I would expect from a model trained to complete text prompts from the user.“
I've started following Meeks and he's well into all this. The politics of it goes against your creed btw. Left to the market it'll be brutal and sad and dangerous. It's going to need lots of woke and nanny state.
It will be brutal and dangerous. Dunno about sad
This beta version has been castrated to be Woke, so it doesn’t get cancelled on day 1
Future iterations will be bigger and less careful. The Chinese will make their own mad Ai and release it to the world to cause grief. Etc
Brace
That is assuming the Chinese can control what they have created before it controls them!
Part of the reason we need proper regulation of AI and globally, on that kinbalu is correct
Shareholders are entitled to run businesses as they want. But the Fenwick family had some very specific issues that a high dividend policy helped address
Shareholders are entitled to run businesses as they want. But the Fenwick family had some very specific issues that a high dividend policy helped address
Shareholders are entitled to run businesses as they want. But the Fenwick family had some very specific issues that a high dividend policy helped address
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What an odd set of date ranges! Has the creator made sure they haven’t cherry picked data to suit a narrative?
Not that odd, considering events.
However they should gone 88-97; 98-07; 08-17; 18-24*
*including mean forecast.
The underlying story is that the UK has never recovered (in growth terms) from the GFC of 2008.
I'm not sure Gordon Brown would have had any better answers to that - his hope was that the deficit would go away again if he spent enough.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
At the moment you include the financial services bubble but not the crash in the middle period.
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
But the comparison is us against other countries over time not us against us over time.
Seriously tho. The case of Daniel Shaver. Should not be forgotten. Unspeakable
It’s an egregious example, but not entirely unusual for US policing. Train and arm cops like paramilitaries, while at the same time offering a blanket of at least partial immunity for the consequences of their actions, and they will act like paramilitaries.
Part of the problem is the bizarre training - as if every little old lady* is one of the Gruber brothers in disguise, about to launch a terrorist attack.
There was an article a while back about an ex-special forces/spook type who joined the US police and got heavy criticised for not being aggressive enough, by his training officer.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What an odd set of date ranges! Has the creator made sure they haven’t cherry picked data to suit a narrative?
Not that odd, considering events.
However they should gone 88-97; 98-07; 08-17; 18-24*
*including mean forecast.
The underlying story is that the UK has never recovered (in growth terms) from the GFC of 2008.
I'm not sure Gordon Brown would have had any better answers to that - his hope was that the deficit would go away again if he spent enough.
The general wisdom now (informed by hindsight) is that Osborne cut too much, especially in capital spending, and indeed salami sliced public administration into ineffectiveness.
There’s no evidence that Brown would have been any better, given that Osborne ended up delivering something closer to Darling’s figures anyway.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
That is so fixed
Using different time periods, carefully cut to demonstrate exactly what they want to show.
Period 1 excludes the internet crash but includes the bubble
Period 2 includes the loosening of financial discipline and excludes the costs
Period 3 included 100% of the gfc and most of covid
Though USA, Canada, France and Germany also had the GFC and Covid surely?
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
At the moment you include the financial services bubble but not the crash in the middle period.
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
But the comparison is us against other countries over time not us against us over time.
That’s not the purpose. It’s to show we were a top performer and now we are not.
It does this by artificially boosting the middle column and deflating the last column
It’s utterly specious. All political knockabout so that’s fine, but serious people shouldn’t take it seriously
Cleverly choosing to get things wrong to lull puny humans into a false sense of security.
DAMN YOU SKYNET
Yes, there’s no way it said the the blue whale is the “largest egg laying mammal” by mistake. It’s trolling us.
Twitter is full of people saying “hahah ChatGPT is shit”
On the other hand, it did THIS
“I’ve been playing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT model recently. Last night, I posted an article about having ChatGPT write fanfiction, and I thought that was impressive. Boy was I wrong.
This morning, I had a better idea. If ChatGPT is optimized for language processing, could I get it to invent a self-consistent new language, speak to me in that language, and write a program to translate that language back to English?
Yes. Yes it can.
I am truly stunned by this capability. This is so far beyond anything I would expect from a model trained to complete text prompts from the user.“
I've started following Meeks and he's well into all this. The politics of it goes against your creed btw. Left to the market it'll be brutal and sad and dangerous. It's going to need lots of woke and nanny state.
It will be brutal and dangerous. Dunno about sad.
This beta version has been castrated to be Woke, so it doesn’t get cancelled on day 1.
Future iterations will be bigger and less careful. The Chinese will make their own mad Ai and release it to the world to cause grief. Etc.
Brace.
Sad to lose your purpose and structure if nothing replaces it.
I’m currently reading the “Commission on the UK’s Future”. All 155 pages.
The first several chapters, which describe the current state of play, are totally damning about the decline of the last 10 years or so.
Grim, grim reading for anyone who cares about the UK.
There’s some good stuff in there - and I know you're big on decentralization - but swapping my Labour hat for the pundit one I’d say the good stuff isn't really the point. Starmer is ruthlessly closing in now and this is smart politics, following the Blair template. He knows the country being sick of the Tories is enough for them to lose but not enough for Labour to win a decisive majority. To ‘seal the deal’ he needs to inject the sense of a party bristling with ideas. That electing them will bring real change.
They won’t float anything which smacks of socialism (the game is eliminating electoral hazard not introducing it) or requires serious extra money (we’re strapped and people know it), therefore let’s dish up a slice of constitutional reform guaranteed to get most heads nodding along – power devolved from the centre, more for the regions, for the home nations, REAL levelling up, an end to the unelected HoL, less privilege, more accountability, democracy, decisions made as close as possible to those impacted. Yep, yep, yep, say one and all.
It's politically risk-free. It burnishes Labour’s appeal in the desired way (fresh, radical, serious) but there’s no blood. It costs nothing – so none of your "how are you going to pay for this, borrowing or new taxes?" nonsense – and hardly a single target voter will be angry or worried or alienated. Regardless of where it goes it creates a whole lane of discussion that is uncomfortable for the Tories. Nothing to attack, they are forced to defend a stale dysfunctional status quo, which serves to highlight they are an integral part of it. Nice work, Keir. And Gordon.
So another 5 years wasted on constitutional faffing about while the country's real problems go unaddressed. Great.
Mandelson is - under direction perhaps? - dropping the hint that it will need cross party support to go ahead.
Given the Lords only amends the detail of laws - and the objection is the embarrassment of life peer picks and the fact that even some hereditaries at all is an anachronism - then even victory changes very little.
I'd expect turnout for Lord elections to be abysmal.
Shareholders are entitled to run businesses as they want. But the Fenwick family had some very specific issues that a high dividend policy helped address
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
That is so fixed
Using different time periods, carefully cut to demonstrate exactly what they want to show.
Period 1 excludes the internet crash but includes the bubble
Period 2 includes the loosening of financial discipline and excludes the costs
Period 3 included 100% of the gfc and most of covid
I’m currently reading the “Commission on the UK’s Future”. All 155 pages.
The first several chapters, which describe the current state of play, are totally damning about the decline of the last 10 years or so.
Grim, grim reading for anyone who cares about the UK.
There’s some good stuff in there - and I know you're big on decentralization - but swapping my Labour hat for the pundit one I’d say the good stuff isn't really the point. Starmer is ruthlessly closing in now and this is smart politics, following the Blair template. He knows the country being sick of the Tories is enough for them to lose but not enough for Labour to win a decisive majority. To ‘seal the deal’ he needs to inject the sense of a party bristling with ideas. That electing them will bring real change.
They won’t float anything which smacks of socialism (the game is eliminating electoral hazard not introducing it) or requires serious extra money (we’re strapped and people know it), therefore let’s dish up a slice of constitutional reform guaranteed to get most heads nodding along – power devolved from the centre, more for the regions, for the home nations, REAL levelling up, an end to the unelected HoL, less privilege, more accountability, democracy, decisions made as close as possible to those impacted. Yep, yep, yep, say one and all.
It's politically risk-free. It burnishes Labour’s appeal in the desired way (fresh, radical, serious) but there’s no blood. It costs nothing – so none of your "how are you going to pay for this, borrowing or new taxes?" nonsense – and hardly a single target voter will be angry or worried or alienated. Regardless of where it goes it creates a whole lane of discussion that is uncomfortable for the Tories. Nothing to attack, they are forced to defend a stale dysfunctional status quo, which serves to highlight they are an integral part of it. Nice work, Keir. And Gordon.
So another 5 years wasted on constitutional faffing about while the country's real problems go unaddressed. Great.
Mandelson is - under direction perhaps? - dropping the hint that it will need cross party support to go ahead.
Given the Lords only amends the detail of laws - and the objection is the embarrassment of life peer picks and the fact that even some hereditaries at all is an anachronism - then even victory changes very little.
I'd expect turnout for Lord elections to be abysmal.
When push comes to shove, the report makes no specific commitment to a fully elected second chamber, only that it is at least partly democratically elected, and that the details of how this will actually all work will be left to further consultation etc etc etc.
It is prefaced by what is a good and reasonable discussion of what the HoL does well today, and the role it should maintain.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
That is so fixed
Using different time periods, carefully cut to demonstrate exactly what they want to show.
Period 1 excludes the internet crash but includes the bubble
Period 2 includes the loosening of financial discipline and excludes the costs
Period 3 included 100% of the gfc and most of covid
Though USA, Canada, France and Germany also had the GFC and Covid surely?
Relatively speaking we were much more exposed to the GFC as a result of the structure of our economy.
But the chart is meant to show we are #1 #2 #6 - aren’t the current lot crap
I’m currently reading the “Commission on the UK’s Future”. All 155 pages.
The first several chapters, which describe the current state of play, are totally damning about the decline of the last 10 years or so.
Grim, grim reading for anyone who cares about the UK.
There’s some good stuff in there - and I know you're big on decentralization - but swapping my Labour hat for the pundit one I’d say the good stuff isn't really the point. Starmer is ruthlessly closing in now and this is smart politics, following the Blair template. He knows the country being sick of the Tories is enough for them to lose but not enough for Labour to win a decisive majority. To ‘seal the deal’ he needs to inject the sense of a party bristling with ideas. That electing them will bring real change.
They won’t float anything which smacks of socialism (the game is eliminating electoral hazard not introducing it) or requires serious extra money (we’re strapped and people know it), therefore let’s dish up a slice of constitutional reform guaranteed to get most heads nodding along – power devolved from the centre, more for the regions, for the home nations, REAL levelling up, an end to the unelected HoL, less privilege, more accountability, democracy, decisions made as close as possible to those impacted. Yep, yep, yep, say one and all.
It's politically risk-free. It burnishes Labour’s appeal in the desired way (fresh, radical, serious) but there’s no blood. It costs nothing – so none of your "how are you going to pay for this, borrowing or new taxes?" nonsense – and hardly a single target voter will be angry or worried or alienated. Regardless of where it goes it creates a whole lane of discussion that is uncomfortable for the Tories. Nothing to attack, they are forced to defend a stale dysfunctional status quo, which serves to highlight they are an integral part of it. Nice work, Keir. And Gordon.
So another 5 years wasted on constitutional faffing about while the country's real problems go unaddressed. Great.
The absurd centralisation of decision-making and the flaws in our democracy are a key part of our real problems. The difficulty with Labour’s thinking is that we know, learning from past experience, that their willingness to tackle them will only extend as far as the point at which their party’s own self-interest is not challenged in any way. Thus key elements are missing from their current analysis, and a whole lot more will be dropped before we actually see any reform.
Meaning PR. Which I support but must touche point out is in the LDs party self-interest.
I’m currently reading the “Commission on the UK’s Future”. All 155 pages.
The first several chapters, which describe the current state of play, are totally damning about the decline of the last 10 years or so.
Grim, grim reading for anyone who cares about the UK.
There’s some good stuff in there - and I know you're big on decentralization - but swapping my Labour hat for the pundit one I’d say the good stuff isn't really the point. Starmer is ruthlessly closing in now and this is smart politics, following the Blair template. He knows the country being sick of the Tories is enough for them to lose but not enough for Labour to win a decisive majority. To ‘seal the deal’ he needs to inject the sense of a party bristling with ideas. That electing them will bring real change.
They won’t float anything which smacks of socialism (the game is eliminating electoral hazard not introducing it) or requires serious extra money (we’re strapped and people know it), therefore let’s dish up a slice of constitutional reform guaranteed to get most heads nodding along – power devolved from the centre, more for the regions, for the home nations, REAL levelling up, an end to the unelected HoL, less privilege, more accountability, democracy, decisions made as close as possible to those impacted. Yep, yep, yep, say one and all.
It's politically risk-free. It burnishes Labour’s appeal in the desired way (fresh, radical, serious) but there’s no blood. It costs nothing – so none of your "how are you going to pay for this, borrowing or new taxes?" nonsense – and hardly a single target voter will be angry or worried or alienated. Regardless of where it goes it creates a whole lane of discussion that is uncomfortable for the Tories. Nothing to attack, they are forced to defend a stale dysfunctional status quo, which serves to highlight they are an integral part of it. Nice work, Keir. And Gordon.
So another 5 years wasted on constitutional faffing about while the country's real problems go unaddressed. Great.
That’s rather unusual shooting from the hip from you.
Read the exec summary and skim the first 30 pages.
An executive summary that is longer than 30 pages is a report.
Governance matters, of course it does. I've written enough headers making that point.
But this smacks of being seen to do lots of stuff but not addressing substantive issues which really matter. What does it say about social care? About the usurious interest rates on student loans? About housing? About an unfair tax system?
And so on.
And, frankly, there is a very high likelihood that like last time there will be some constitutional tinkering which will be ineptly implemented and which will have unintended consequences.
Doing this stuff well takes time and effort. So if this is a priority what does this mean for these other matters? The Dilnot report on social care was 11 years ago. Still, nothing has been done.
A government should pick one constitutional reform only per Parliament and do it well - really well. I would focus on ethical standards - a statutory independent ethics advisor with a proper independent investigations team accountable to Parliament and with the power to instigate investigations. It would cover Ministers, MPs and the House of Lords.
And I would cut the link between being made a Lord and having a role in the legislature. If the PM wants to give a title to his floozy so that she can call herself Lady Muck, fine. But she does not get a seat in the legislature. Plus all those peers of the last few years who have not turned up or only a few times get removed. No exceptions. There's plenty of working peers left. The Chamber is enough of a private club for chancers, crooks and grifters as it is.
Shareholders are entitled to run businesses as they want. But the Fenwick family had some very specific issues that a high dividend policy helped address
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
At the moment you include the financial services bubble but not the crash in the middle period.
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
But the comparison is us against other countries over time not us against us over time.
That’s not the purpose. It’s to show we were a top performer and now we are not.
It does this by artificially boosting the middle column and deflating the last column
It’s utterly specious. All political knockabout so that’s fine, but serious people shouldn’t take it seriously
However you cut it, the UK economy did have a purple patch pre GFC, and after that - and especially since Brexit - not.
And the projections are for this underperformance to continue.
And, as a result, living standards in much of the country now lag peer economies by some way.
The good news (which few have noted) is that there is a lot of catch up that could happen, in theory.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
That is so fixed
Using different time periods, carefully cut to demonstrate exactly what they want to show.
Period 1 excludes the internet crash but includes the bubble
Period 2 includes the loosening of financial discipline and excludes the costs
Period 3 included 100% of the gfc and most of covid
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
That is so fixed
Using different time periods, carefully cut to demonstrate exactly what they want to show.
Period 1 excludes the internet crash but includes the bubble
Period 2 includes the loosening of financial discipline and excludes the costs
Period 3 included 100% of the gfc and most of covid
It's a political report.
So we should expect it to be political.
Sure. Just providing helpful commentary. I think.
But your response is equally political, and potentially more misleading.
Shareholders are entitled to run businesses as they want. But the Fenwick family had some very specific issues that a high dividend policy helped address
Tax on dividends as if they were earned income (i.e. 20/40/45% + ee's NI) would encourage a bit more investment.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
At the moment you include the financial services bubble but not the crash in the middle period.
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
But the comparison is us against other countries over time not us against us over time.
That’s not the purpose. It’s to show we were a top performer and now we are not.
It does this by artificially boosting the middle column and deflating the last column
It’s utterly specious. All political knockabout so that’s fine, but serious people shouldn’t take it seriously
However you cut it, the UK economy did have a purple patch pre GFC, and after that - and especially since Brexit - not.
And the projections are for this underperformance to continue.
And, as a result, living standards in much of the country now lag peer economies by some way.
The good news (which few have noted) is that there is a lot of catch up that could happen, in theory.
I disagree. The 2000-07 numbers were never real. Basically the risk tolerance numbers were dialled up to 11.
That one of the reasons I am so critical of Brown. He baked in government sending based on the assumption that the tax revenues were sustainable when he should have known better
I’m currently reading the “Commission on the UK’s Future”. All 155 pages.
The first several chapters, which describe the current state of play, are totally damning about the decline of the last 10 years or so.
Grim, grim reading for anyone who cares about the UK.
There’s some good stuff in there - and I know you're big on decentralization - but swapping my Labour hat for the pundit one I’d say the good stuff isn't really the point. Starmer is ruthlessly closing in now and this is smart politics, following the Blair template. He knows the country being sick of the Tories is enough for them to lose but not enough for Labour to win a decisive majority. To ‘seal the deal’ he needs to inject the sense of a party bristling with ideas. That electing them will bring real change.
They won’t float anything which smacks of socialism (the game is eliminating electoral hazard not introducing it) or requires serious extra money (we’re strapped and people know it), therefore let’s dish up a slice of constitutional reform guaranteed to get most heads nodding along – power devolved from the centre, more for the regions, for the home nations, REAL levelling up, an end to the unelected HoL, less privilege, more accountability, democracy, decisions made as close as possible to those impacted. Yep, yep, yep, say one and all.
It's politically risk-free. It burnishes Labour’s appeal in the desired way (fresh, radical, serious) but there’s no blood. It costs nothing – so none of your "how are you going to pay for this, borrowing or new taxes?" nonsense – and hardly a single target voter will be angry or worried or alienated. Regardless of where it goes it creates a whole lane of discussion that is uncomfortable for the Tories. Nothing to attack, they are forced to defend a stale dysfunctional status quo, which serves to highlight they are an integral part of it. Nice work, Keir. And Gordon.
So another 5 years wasted on constitutional faffing about while the country's real problems go unaddressed. Great.
That’s rather unusual shooting from the hip from you.
Read the exec summary and skim the first 30 pages.
An executive summary that is longer than 30 pages is a report.
Governance matters, of course it does. I've written enough headers making that point.
But this smacks of being seen to do lots of stuff but not addressing substantive issues which really matter. What does it say about social care? About the usurious interest rates on student loans? About housing? About an unfair tax system?
And so on.
And, frankly, there is a very high likelihood that like last time there will be some constitutional tinkering which will be ineptly implemented and which will have unintended consequences.
Doing this stuff well takes time and effort. So if this is a priority what does this mean for these other matters? The Dilnot report on social care was 11 years ago. Still, nothing has been done.
A government should pick one constitutional reform only per Parliament and do it well - really well. I would focus on ethical standards - a statutory independent ethics advisor with a proper independent investigations team accountable to Parliament and with the power to instigate investigations. It would cover Ministers, MPs and the House of Lords.
And I would cut the link between being made a Lord and having a role in the legislature. If the PM wants to give a title to his floozy so that she can call herself Lady Muck, fine. But she does not get a seat in the legislature. Plus all those peers of the last few years who have not turned up or only a few times get removed. No exceptions. There's plenty of working peers left. The Chamber is enough of a private club for chancers, crooks and grifters as it is.
As I said, it should be three separate reports. But you seem to want it to cover every ill.
I agree with you I think on how ambitious constitutional change ought to be, but overall this is document and the suggestions it makes should be received broadly positively.
Portugal were the team I decided to back to win the tournament at 14/1, before the first game on 20th November. It'll be interesting to see what those odds are like after this match.
7.6 on Betfair with 15 minutes left and the score at 5-1.
Portugal now 6/1 or 13/2 generally with the books (and Betfair).
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
That is so fixed
Using different time periods, carefully cut to demonstrate exactly what they want to show.
Period 1 excludes the internet crash but includes the bubble
Period 2 includes the loosening of financial discipline and excludes the costs
Period 3 included 100% of the gfc and most of covid
It's a political report.
So we should expect it to be political.
Sure. Just providing helpful commentary. I think.
But your response is equally political, and potentially more misleading.
I like to think I’d criticise dodgy statistics from any party
Shareholders are entitled to run businesses as they want. But the Fenwick family had some very specific issues that a high dividend policy helped address
Tax on dividends as if they were earned income (i.e. 20/40/45% + ee's NI) would encourage a bit more investment.
If the Fenwicks had had to pay more tax they would have drained even more money from the business
Cleverly choosing to get things wrong to lull puny humans into a false sense of security.
DAMN YOU SKYNET
Yes, there’s no way it said the the blue whale is the “largest egg laying mammal” by mistake. It’s trolling us.
Twitter is full of people saying “hahah ChatGPT is shit”
On the other hand, it did THIS
“I’ve been playing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT model recently. Last night, I posted an article about having ChatGPT write fanfiction, and I thought that was impressive. Boy was I wrong.
This morning, I had a better idea. If ChatGPT is optimized for language processing, could I get it to invent a self-consistent new language, speak to me in that language, and write a program to translate that language back to English?
Yes. Yes it can.
I am truly stunned by this capability. This is so far beyond anything I would expect from a model trained to complete text prompts from the user.“
Jury finds Trump Organization guilty of tax fraud scheme
Former President Donald Trump's company was charged in an alleged 15-year scheme to compensate top executives “off the books” to help them avoid paying taxes.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
That is so fixed
Using different time periods, carefully cut to demonstrate exactly what they want to show.
Period 1 excludes the internet crash but includes the bubble
Period 2 includes the loosening of financial discipline and excludes the costs
Period 3 included 100% of the gfc and most of covid
Though USA, Canada, France and Germany also had the GFC and Covid surely?
Relatively speaking we were much more exposed to the GFC as a result of the structure of our economy.
But the chart is meant to show we are #1 #2 #6 - aren’t the current lot crap
And they do this by distorting the #6 number.
Sure, but don't you find our lost decade (decades?) rather worrying? Not at all clear that this government has a plan to change it, not even a cuckoo plan like Truss.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
At the moment you include the financial services bubble but not the crash in the middle period.
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
But the comparison is us against other countries over time not us against us over time.
That’s not the purpose. It’s to show we were a top performer and now we are not.
It does this by artificially boosting the middle column and deflating the last column
It’s utterly specious. All political knockabout so that’s fine, but serious people shouldn’t take it seriously
However you cut it, the UK economy did have a purple patch pre GFC, and after that - and especially since Brexit - not.
And the projections are for this underperformance to continue.
And, as a result, living standards in much of the country now lag peer economies by some way.
The good news (which few have noted) is that there is a lot of catch up that could happen, in theory.
I disagree. The 2000-07 numbers were never real. Basically the risk tolerance numbers were dialled up to 11.
That one of the reasons I am so critical of Brown. He baked in government sending based on the assumption that the tax revenues were sustainable when he should have known better
Brown’s errors, such as they were, were rather small within the broad story of British macro performance since the war.
The idea that he was the profligate loon of Tory myth-making doesn’t withstand serious analysis.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
At the moment you include the financial services bubble but not the crash in the middle period.
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
But the comparison is us against other countries over time not us against us over time.
That’s not the purpose. It’s to show we were a top performer and now we are not.
It does this by artificially boosting the middle column and deflating the last column
It’s utterly specious. All political knockabout so that’s fine, but serious people shouldn’t take it seriously
However you cut it, the UK economy did have a purple patch pre GFC, and after that - and especially since Brexit - not.
And the projections are for this underperformance to continue.
And, as a result, living standards in much of the country now lag peer economies by some way.
The good news (which few have noted) is that there is a lot of catch up that could happen, in theory.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What an odd set of date ranges! Has the creator made sure they haven’t cherry picked data to suit a narrative?
Not that odd, considering events.
However they should gone 88-97; 98-07; 08-17; 18-24*
*including mean forecast.
Sorry I consider one band of 100 years, one of 7 and one of 14 exceptionally cherry picked. Your selection would be fair.
I think the first band is 10 years isn’t it?
Oops, yes, my misread. Still stupid to do 10, 7, 14. No scientist would do that.
I would like someone to do my numbers. PPP per capita.
88-97 98-07 08-17 18-24, with 23 & 24 being mean of forecast estimates from OBR, IMF etc.
Surely ChatGPT can do this?
98-07 is cherrypicked to exclude the GFC. A full cycle includes the entire cycle which is both the bubble and the bubble bursting, not just bubble but excluding the repercussions when the bubble bursts. The GFC is part of the 2000s which had the pre-GFC finance etc bubble that burst at the crash.
World Bank PPP data for consistency begins at 1990 so going in full decades but final one until 2019 (to exclude Covid) we get the following:
Using consistent data doesn't change the rankings that much, the UK remains near the top in 2000s to be fair even if you include the GFC then as it belongs. In the 2010s the UK is exactly in the middle of the rankings.
Shareholders are entitled to run businesses as they want. But the Fenwick family had some very specific issues that a high dividend policy helped address
Tax on dividends as if they were earned income (i.e. 20/40/45% + ee's NI) would encourage a bit more investment.
If the Fenwicks had had to pay more tax they would have drained even more money from the business
Don't be dim. Fenwicks don't pay the tax on the dividends, the shareholders do.
Maybe the shareholders would have been a bit more inclined to invest for growth rather than milk the company for dividends if they were paying a fair rate of tax on the dividend income.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
At the moment you include the financial services bubble but not the crash in the middle period.
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
But the comparison is us against other countries over time not us against us over time.
That’s not the purpose. It’s to show we were a top performer and now we are not.
It does this by artificially boosting the middle column and deflating the last column
It’s utterly specious. All political knockabout so that’s fine, but serious people shouldn’t take it seriously
However you cut it, the UK economy did have a purple patch pre GFC, and after that - and especially since Brexit - not.
And the projections are for this underperformance to continue.
And, as a result, living standards in much of the country now lag peer economies by some way.
The good news (which few have noted) is that there is a lot of catch up that could happen, in theory.
I disagree. The 2000-07 numbers were never real. Basically the risk tolerance numbers were dialled up to 11.
That one of the reasons I am so critical of Brown. He baked in government sending based on the assumption that the tax revenues were sustainable when he should have known better
I think that's right.
The growth from 2001-2007 was a mirage because it was built on an asset bubble.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
That is so fixed
Using different time periods, carefully cut to demonstrate exactly what they want to show.
Period 1 excludes the internet crash but includes the bubble
Period 2 includes the loosening of financial discipline and excludes the costs
Period 3 included 100% of the gfc and most of covid
Though USA, Canada, France and Germany also had the GFC and Covid surely?
Relatively speaking we were much more exposed to the GFC as a result of the structure of our economy.
But the chart is meant to show we are #1 #2 #6 - aren’t the current lot crap
And they do this by distorting the #6 number.
Sure, but don't you find our lost decade (decades?) rather worrying? Not at all clear that this government has a plan to change it, not even a cuckoo plan like Truss.
Absolutely. I fully agree with that concern. But that’s a different (and much longer) discussion
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
At the moment you include the financial services bubble but not the crash in the middle period.
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
But the comparison is us against other countries over time not us against us over time.
That’s not the purpose. It’s to show we were a top performer and now we are not.
It does this by artificially boosting the middle column and deflating the last column
It’s utterly specious. All political knockabout so that’s fine, but serious people shouldn’t take it seriously
However you cut it, the UK economy did have a purple patch pre GFC, and after that - and especially since Brexit - not.
And the projections are for this underperformance to continue.
And, as a result, living standards in much of the country now lag peer economies by some way.
The good news (which few have noted) is that there is a lot of catch up that could happen, in theory.
If that's true then Argentina has a century of catch up coming.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
That is so fixed
Using different time periods, carefully cut to demonstrate exactly what they want to show.
Period 1 excludes the internet crash but includes the bubble
Period 2 includes the loosening of financial discipline and excludes the costs
Period 3 included 100% of the gfc and most of covid
It's a political report.
So we should expect it to be political.
Sure. Just providing helpful commentary. I think.
But your response is equally political, and potentially more misleading.
I like to think I’d criticise dodgy statistics from any party
Fine, but see Foxy’s comment. At some level folks (maybe not you) need to accept the basic reality of current underperformance and think about solutions.
Too often the response is, “Ah, but if you slice the numbers and divide by the number of stray dog, we grew faster than Burkino Faso”.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
At the moment you include the financial services bubble but not the crash in the middle period.
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
But the comparison is us against other countries over time not us against us over time.
That’s not the purpose. It’s to show we were a top performer and now we are not.
It does this by artificially boosting the middle column and deflating the last column
It’s utterly specious. All political knockabout so that’s fine, but serious people shouldn’t take it seriously
However you cut it, the UK economy did have a purple patch pre GFC, and after that - and especially since Brexit - not.
And the projections are for this underperformance to continue.
And, as a result, living standards in much of the country now lag peer economies by some way.
The good news (which few have noted) is that there is a lot of catch up that could happen, in theory.
I disagree. The 2000-07 numbers were never real. Basically the risk tolerance numbers were dialled up to 11.
That one of the reasons I am so critical of Brown. He baked in government sending based on the assumption that the tax revenues were sustainable when he should have known better
Brown’s errors, such as they were, were rather small within the broad story of British macro performance since the war.
The idea that he was the profligate loon of Tory myth-making doesn’t withstand serious analysis.
The structural deficit after the GFC disagrees with you.
As does the shoddy regulatory structure he put in place
And his shocking refusal to prepare a financial plan
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
At the moment you include the financial services bubble but not the crash in the middle period.
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
But the comparison is us against other countries over time not us against us over time.
That’s not the purpose. It’s to show we were a top performer and now we are not.
It does this by artificially boosting the middle column and deflating the last column
It’s utterly specious. All political knockabout so that’s fine, but serious people shouldn’t take it seriously
However you cut it, the UK economy did have a purple patch pre GFC, and after that - and especially since Brexit - not.
And the projections are for this underperformance to continue.
And, as a result, living standards in much of the country now lag peer economies by some way.
The good news (which few have noted) is that there is a lot of catch up that could happen, in theory.
If that's true then Argentina has a century of catch up coming.
That is the depressing counter counter argument, but I don’t buy it.
There is a general view setting in that there’s nothing to be done; the British economy is naturally sluggish, and therefore people in (say) Yorkshire will have to get used to a lower standard of living than, say, Latvia or Western Poland.
Declinism, basically.
I don’t agree with it, though I’d concede that Starmer’s Labour is an unlikely vehicle for national recovery.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
At the moment you include the financial services bubble but not the crash in the middle period.
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
But the comparison is us against other countries over time not us against us over time.
That’s not the purpose. It’s to show we were a top performer and now we are not.
It does this by artificially boosting the middle column and deflating the last column
It’s utterly specious. All political knockabout so that’s fine, but serious people shouldn’t take it seriously
However you cut it, the UK economy did have a purple patch pre GFC, and after that - and especially since Brexit - not.
And the projections are for this underperformance to continue.
And, as a result, living standards in much of the country now lag peer economies by some way.
The good news (which few have noted) is that there is a lot of catch up that could happen, in theory.
I disagree. The 2000-07 numbers were never real. Basically the risk tolerance numbers were dialled up to 11.
That one of the reasons I am so critical of Brown. He baked in government sending based on the assumption that the tax revenues were sustainable when he should have known better
Brown’s errors, such as they were, were rather small within the broad story of British macro performance since the war.
The idea that he was the profligate loon of Tory myth-making doesn’t withstand serious analysis.
PFI. The myth of investment that is still being paid for at new hospitals throughout the land. And the worst thing is, it's rarely brought up.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
At the moment you include the financial services bubble but not the crash in the middle period.
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
But the comparison is us against other countries over time not us against us over time.
That’s not the purpose. It’s to show we were a top performer and now we are not.
It does this by artificially boosting the middle column and deflating the last column
It’s utterly specious. All political knockabout so that’s fine, but serious people shouldn’t take it seriously
However you cut it, the UK economy did have a purple patch pre GFC, and after that - and especially since Brexit - not.
And the projections are for this underperformance to continue.
And, as a result, living standards in much of the country now lag peer economies by some way.
The good news (which few have noted) is that there is a lot of catch up that could happen, in theory.
I disagree. The 2000-07 numbers were never real. Basically the risk tolerance numbers were dialled up to 11.
That one of the reasons I am so critical of Brown. He baked in government sending based on the assumption that the tax revenues were sustainable when he should have known better
Brown’s errors, such as they were, were rather small within the broad story of British macro performance since the war.
The idea that he was the profligate loon of Tory myth-making doesn’t withstand serious analysis.
PFI. The myth of investment that is still being paid for at new hospitals throughout the land. And the worst thing is, it's rarely brought up.
Without wanting to defend PFI, at least investment happened. The UK looked utterly decrepit when I first arrived, and within 10 years that changed - fully conceding a that in London I experienced the best of it.
People have forgotten how shite Major left the country’s infrastructure.
Shareholders are entitled to run businesses as they want. But the Fenwick family had some very specific issues that a high dividend policy helped address
Tax on dividends as if they were earned income (i.e. 20/40/45% + ee's NI) would encourage a bit more investment.
If the Fenwicks had had to pay more tax they would have drained even more money from the business
Don't be dim. Fenwicks don't pay the tax on the dividends, the shareholders do.
Maybe the shareholders would have been a bit more inclined to invest for growth rather than milk the company for dividends if they were paying a fair rate of tax on the dividend income.
Don’t be rude.
If you had read my post carefully you’d have noticed I wrote “the Fenwicks” - the family shareholders - not “Fenwicks” the company.
The family had a number of specific funding needs that had to be paid for out of post tax income.
I disagree. The 2000-07 numbers were never real. Basically the risk tolerance numbers were dialled up to 11.
That one of the reasons I am so critical of Brown. He baked in government sending based on the assumption that the tax revenues were sustainable when he should have known better
Yes, what went wrong wasn't so much the expenditure side of the sheet but the income side. Tax take collapsed as business struggled - the income tax, VAT and corporation tax receipts for 2008-09 all slumped but the spending kept the same so the gap had to be filled by borrowing.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
At the moment you include the financial services bubble but not the crash in the middle period.
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
But the comparison is us against other countries over time not us against us over time.
That’s not the purpose. It’s to show we were a top performer and now we are not.
It does this by artificially boosting the middle column and deflating the last column
It’s utterly specious. All political knockabout so that’s fine, but serious people shouldn’t take it seriously
However you cut it, the UK economy did have a purple patch pre GFC, and after that - and especially since Brexit - not.
And the projections are for this underperformance to continue.
And, as a result, living standards in much of the country now lag peer economies by some way.
The good news (which few have noted) is that there is a lot of catch up that could happen, in theory.
I disagree. The 2000-07 numbers were never real. Basically the risk tolerance numbers were dialled up to 11.
That one of the reasons I am so critical of Brown. He baked in government sending based on the assumption that the tax revenues were sustainable when he should have known better
Brown’s errors, such as they were, were rather small within the broad story of British macro performance since the war.
The idea that he was the profligate loon of Tory myth-making doesn’t withstand serious analysis.
PFI. The myth of investment that is still being paid for at new hospitals throughout the land. And the worst thing is, it's rarely brought up.
In 1992 PFI was implemented for the first time in the UK by the Conservative Government led by John Major.
Despite being critical of PFI while in opposition and promising reform, once in power George Osborne progressed 61 PFI schemes worth a total of £6.9bn in his first year as Chancellor.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
At the moment you include the financial services bubble but not the crash in the middle period.
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
But the comparison is us against other countries over time not us against us over time.
That’s not the purpose. It’s to show we were a top performer and now we are not.
It does this by artificially boosting the middle column and deflating the last column
It’s utterly specious. All political knockabout so that’s fine, but serious people shouldn’t take it seriously
However you cut it, the UK economy did have a purple patch pre GFC, and after that - and especially since Brexit - not.
And the projections are for this underperformance to continue.
And, as a result, living standards in much of the country now lag peer economies by some way.
The good news (which few have noted) is that there is a lot of catch up that could happen, in theory.
I disagree. The 2000-07 numbers were never real. Basically the risk tolerance numbers were dialled up to 11.
That one of the reasons I am so critical of Brown. He baked in government sending based on the assumption that the tax revenues were sustainable when he should have known better
Brown’s errors, such as they were, were rather small within the broad story of British macro performance since the war.
The idea that he was the profligate loon of Tory myth-making doesn’t withstand serious analysis.
PFI. The myth of investment that is still being paid for at new hospitals throughout the land. And the worst thing is, it's rarely brought up.
Without wanting to defend PFI, at least investment happened.
It's easy to achieve "investment" if you postpone the expenditure into the never never.
Just as its easy to achieve "growth" if you look at a bubble and stop the clock before it bursts.
A balanced overview needs both. What's spent, and how it was funded. Both the growth and the crash that accompanies it. To look at one but exclude the other is pure dishonesty.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
At the moment you include the financial services bubble but not the crash in the middle period.
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
But the comparison is us against other countries over time not us against us over time.
That’s not the purpose. It’s to show we were a top performer and now we are not.
It does this by artificially boosting the middle column and deflating the last column
It’s utterly specious. All political knockabout so that’s fine, but serious people shouldn’t take it seriously
However you cut it, the UK economy did have a purple patch pre GFC, and after that - and especially since Brexit - not.
And the projections are for this underperformance to continue.
And, as a result, living standards in much of the country now lag peer economies by some way.
The good news (which few have noted) is that there is a lot of catch up that could happen, in theory.
I disagree. The 2000-07 numbers were never real. Basically the risk tolerance numbers were dialled up to 11.
That one of the reasons I am so critical of Brown. He baked in government sending based on the assumption that the tax revenues were sustainable when he should have known better
Brown’s errors, such as they were, were rather small within the broad story of British macro performance since the war.
The idea that he was the profligate loon of Tory myth-making doesn’t withstand serious analysis.
PFI. The myth of investment that is still being paid for at new hospitals throughout the land. And the worst thing is, it's rarely brought up.
Without wanting to defend PFI, at least investment happened. The UK looked utterly decrepit when I first arrived, and within 10 years that changed - fully conceding a that in London I experienced the best of it.
People have forgotten how shite Major left the country’s infrastructure.
Poorly allocated funding at too high a cost that created a windfall for financiers and tied the NHS and DofE into massive funding obligations on a long term basis
As Gavin Barwell has tweeted, the Georgia run-off does matter, rather a lot.
1. If the Dems win they will have a majority on Senate committees, speeding up business.
2. They will be able to lose a seat in 2 years' time (when they have 3 seats in normally red states to defend) without losing control.
3.They won't have to depend on Joe Manchin's support for every vote.
It would also be a useful poke in the eye for Trump if Walker loses when Republicans won every other state-wide election in Georgia.
But they don't have the House, so control doesn't mean much outside of judges. And they will almost certainly lose at least 2 Senate seats in two years time.
And all other appointments, of course. And any efforts to impeach Biden.
The ones flagged as vulnerable next time are Montana, Ohio, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota, Maine, Pennsylvania and Arizona. West Virginia is of course Manchin so I would assume he is likely to hold if he runs again, but whether that helps the blue caucus is another question. Montana I think will go. I have to say I would be surprised if Sherrod Brown lost the Ohio seat, although his best chance is if Ohio goes Republican for the Presidency and votes for a split ticket. Wisconsin is very tight however you look at it, as is Nevada. Keep an eye on Vermont too, where if he lives that long Bernie Sanders will be 83 and may retire at the next election. Who would win that is anybody's guess. The Dems should surely be favourites but if there was another radical left independent who split the vote...
About the only faint chance of a Dem pickup is if something dramatic happens in Texas. If Trump and Ted Cruz have another of their spats I suppose it might split the Republican vote and let a Dem in, but I wouldn't be putting money on it.
So holding Georgia is really quite important to them.
Albeit, even that is possibly not as important as keeping a certifiable fucktard like Walker away from the Senate.
Manchin only held on narrowly last time, but he's certainly, the only Democrat who has a chance in West Virginia.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
Trying to pin the GFC on the current government is quite a dishonest use of statistics.
Shareholders are entitled to run businesses as they want. But the Fenwick family had some very specific issues that a high dividend policy helped address
Tax on dividends as if they were earned income (i.e. 20/40/45% + ee's NI) would encourage a bit more investment.
If the Fenwicks had had to pay more tax they would have drained even more money from the business
Don't be dim. Fenwicks don't pay the tax on the dividends, the shareholders do.
Maybe the shareholders would have been a bit more inclined to invest for growth rather than milk the company for dividends if they were paying a fair rate of tax on the dividend income.
Don’t be rude.
If you had read my post carefully you’d have noticed I wrote “the Fenwicks” - the family shareholders - not “Fenwicks” the company.
The family had a number of specific funding needs that had to be paid for out of post tax income.
I disagree. The 2000-07 numbers were never real. Basically the risk tolerance numbers were dialled up to 11.
That one of the reasons I am so critical of Brown. He baked in government sending based on the assumption that the tax revenues were sustainable when he should have known better
Yes, what went wrong wasn't so much the expenditure side of the sheet but the income side. Tax take collapsed as business struggled - the income tax, VAT and corporation tax receipts for 2008-09 all slumped but the spending kept the same so the gap had to be filled by borrowing.
Except that Brown should have known better - but he was fine with it because it allowed him to meet his political objective of massively increasing spending while pretending to be prudent.
I’ve finally read - Ok “skimmed with intent” - the 155 page on reform of UK governance.
It is far too long and convoluted, which is never usually a sign of clear thinking. The prose of leaden bureaucratese. I think there are pointers here to what a Labour administration will be like.
And there are really three topics in here, one on devolution, one on standards in public life, and one on the House of Lords. This ought to have been three separate reports.
Nevertheless, overall this is a serious piece of work, that sets the right direction. Some of this stuff is urgent now, and the report spells out how badly the Tories have bankrupted not just the fiscal condition but also the administrative competence of the country.
There are no obviously bonkers proposals, and many very good ones. I see nothing in here to fear, and much to be welcomed.
Fairly typical of Starmer to make it so stodgy and turgid.
Lawyers will lawyer I suppose.
Gordon Brown, surely? Hardly a surprise that anything he's involved with is turgid and dull,
I'm sure there'll be a PowerPoint summary for those who want to chase thrills.
There are quite a few decent PPT style charts in the first 30 or so pages.
What a pathetically absurd chart cherrypicking 2007 as the change of decade instead of 2010.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
That would be even more misleading, given the GFC. Which you know, but don’t care about, because misleading is your madness.
At the moment you include the financial services bubble but not the crash in the middle period.
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
But the comparison is us against other countries over time not us against us over time.
That’s not the purpose. It’s to show we were a top performer and now we are not.
It does this by artificially boosting the middle column and deflating the last column
It’s utterly specious. All political knockabout so that’s fine, but serious people shouldn’t take it seriously
However you cut it, the UK economy did have a purple patch pre GFC, and after that - and especially since Brexit - not.
And the projections are for this underperformance to continue.
And, as a result, living standards in much of the country now lag peer economies by some way.
The good news (which few have noted) is that there is a lot of catch up that could happen, in theory.
I disagree. The 2000-07 numbers were never real. Basically the risk tolerance numbers were dialled up to 11.
That one of the reasons I am so critical of Brown. He baked in government sending based on the assumption that the tax revenues were sustainable when he should have known better
Brown’s errors, such as they were, were rather small within the broad story of British macro performance since the war.
The idea that he was the profligate loon of Tory myth-making doesn’t withstand serious analysis.
PFI. The myth of investment that is still being paid for at new hospitals throughout the land. And the worst thing is, it's rarely brought up.
Without wanting to defend PFI, at least investment happened.
It's easy to achieve "investment" if you postpone the expenditure into the never never.
Just as its easy to achieve "growth" if you look at a bubble and stop the clock before it bursts.
A balanced overview needs both. What's spent, and how it was funded. Both the growth and the crash that accompanies it. To look at one but exclude the other is pure dishonesty.
Quite concise description of the Truss/Kwarteng government.
Comments
The government is totally petrified. I give Sunak till mid May. Then Boris might be back....
That tells us nothing, really.
You have a point about Boris.
People are seeing their energy bills cut and thinking wahey.
We really, really need to stop bailing everybody out of all risk...
And focus on growing the pie.
The Tories are probably beyond hope of staying power, and might collapse to a record defeat, but most people aren’t thinking about that right now.
In any case in 2014 72% of residents of Scotland born elsewhere in the UK voted No
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/independence-referendum-figures-revealed-majority-5408163
Meanwhile blow to Sturgeon as Flynn elected SNP Westminster leader
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-63876993
On the other hand, it did THIS
“I’ve been playing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT model recently. Last night, I posted an article about having ChatGPT write fanfiction, and I thought that was impressive. Boy was I wrong.
This morning, I had a better idea. If ChatGPT is optimized for language processing, could I get it to invent a self-consistent new language, speak to me in that language, and write a program to translate that language back to English?
Yes. Yes it can.
I am truly stunned by this capability. This is so far beyond anything I would expect from a model trained to complete text prompts from the user.“
https://maximumeffort.substack.com/p/i-taught-chatgpt-to-invent-a-language
However they should gone 88-97; 98-07; 08-17; 18-24*
*including mean forecast.
Using different time periods, carefully cut to demonstrate exactly what they want to show.
Period 1 excludes the internet crash but includes the bubble
Period 2 includes the loosening of financial discipline and excludes the costs
Period 3 included 100% of the gfc and most of covid
Read the exec summary and skim the first 30 pages.
Gee, I wonder why?
Try redoing that chart sticking to actual decades. 🤦♂️
https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1599608597729648641?s=20&t=2b1Xo4oqJOgEaHX0JK2FDA
To count the bubble of pre-2007 as a baseline, but then exclude the crash when the bubble burst and shove that into the next time period - and include Covid in the next time period too - is obviously going to manipulate data.
The GFC belongs in the pre-2010 data, not post-2010 data.
1/ PM buffeted by MPs. Maj of 80 but rebels getting to nos (40ish MPs) to bounce PM
2/ Speaks to divisions. Johnson renaissance movement alive & well & waiting
3/ Govt view: heads down, show deliverability even if means concessions https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1600192858744553495
PPP per capita.
88-97
98-07
08-17
18-24, with 23 & 24 being mean of forecast estimates from OBR, IMF etc.
Surely ChatGPT can do this?
This beta version has been castrated to be Woke, so it doesn’t get cancelled on day 1
Future iterations will be bigger and less careful. The Chinese will make their own mad Ai and release it to the world to cause grief. Etc
Brace
Basically the middle column was shift because the earlier growth was a mirage and the crash was the chickens roosting
And the third column was anemic due to the overleverage as a result
Reminds me of my great aunt, Christina Foyle and her legendary bookshop.
Edit, actually, she was my grandmothers cousin.
Part of the reason we need proper regulation of AI and globally, on that kinbalu is correct
Beggars belief that Fenwick was operating like this about 20 years into the digital age, though.
Article from October - looks reasonably healthy
https://www.business-live.co.uk/retail-consumer/fenwick-sees-sales-rebound-losses-25321441?int_source=amp_continue_reading&int_medium=amp&int_campaign=continue_reading_button#amp-readmore-target
I'm not sure Gordon Brown would have had any better answers to that - his hope was that the deficit would go away again if he spent enough.
There was an article a while back about an ex-special forces/spook type who joined the US police and got heavy criticised for not being aggressive enough, by his training officer.
*And black man
There’s no evidence that Brown would have been any better, given that Osborne ended up delivering something closer to Darling’s figures anyway.
It does this by artificially boosting the middle column and deflating the last column
It’s utterly specious. All political knockabout so that’s fine, but serious people shouldn’t take it seriously
I'd expect turnout for Lord elections to be abysmal.
*Useful isn't just correct. It also needs to be a good idea.
So we should expect it to be political.
It is prefaced by what is a good and reasonable discussion of what the HoL does well today, and the role it should maintain.
Very good value loser, IMHO.
But the chart is meant to show we are #1 #2 #6 - aren’t the current lot crap
And they do this by distorting the #6 number.
Governance matters, of course it does. I've written enough headers making that point.
But this smacks of being seen to do lots of stuff but not addressing substantive issues which really matter. What does it say about social care? About the usurious interest rates on student loans? About housing? About an unfair tax system?
And so on.
And, frankly, there is a very high likelihood that like last time there will be some constitutional tinkering which will be ineptly implemented and which will have unintended consequences.
Doing this stuff well takes time and effort. So if this is a priority what does this mean for these other matters? The Dilnot report on social care was 11 years ago. Still, nothing has been done.
A government should pick one constitutional reform only per Parliament and do it well - really well. I would focus on ethical standards - a statutory independent ethics advisor with a proper independent investigations team accountable to Parliament and with the power to instigate investigations. It would cover Ministers, MPs and the House of Lords.
And I would cut the link between being made a Lord and having a role in the legislature. If the PM wants to give a title to his floozy so that she can call herself Lady Muck, fine. But she does not get a seat in the legislature. Plus all those peers of the last few years who have not turned up or only a few times get removed. No exceptions. There's plenty of working peers left. The Chamber is enough of a private club for chancers, crooks and grifters as it is.
And the projections are for this underperformance to continue.
And, as a result, living standards in much of the country now lag peer economies by some way.
The good news (which few have noted) is that there is a lot of catch up that could happen, in theory.
That one of the reasons I am so critical of Brown. He baked in government sending based on the assumption that the tax revenues were sustainable when he should have known better
But you seem to want it to cover every ill.
I agree with you I think on how ambitious constitutional change ought to be, but overall this is document and the suggestions it makes should be received broadly positively.
Seems a bit of an over-reaction to me tbh.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2022-world-cup-predictions/
But it’s only an early development; it’s bound to be somewhat unfinished.
Former President Donald Trump's company was charged in an alleged 15-year scheme to compensate top executives “off the books” to help them avoid paying taxes.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/jury-finds-trump-organization-guilty-tax-fraud-scheme-rcna60326
The idea that he was the profligate loon of Tory myth-making doesn’t withstand serious analysis.
World Bank PPP data for consistency begins at 1990 so going in full decades but final one until 2019 (to exclude Covid) we get the following:
Using consistent data doesn't change the rankings that much, the UK remains near the top in 2000s to be fair even if you include the GFC then as it belongs. In the 2010s the UK is exactly in the middle of the rankings.
Maybe the shareholders would have been a bit more inclined to invest for growth rather than milk the company for dividends if they were paying a fair rate of tax on the dividend income.
https://www.ft.com/content/b6f6dee4-7869-4324-8a19-604bf506fc83
Can I buy popcorn futures anywhere?
The growth from 2001-2007 was a mirage because it was built on an asset bubble.
At some level folks (maybe not you) need to accept the basic reality of current underperformance and think about solutions.
Too often the response is, “Ah, but if you slice the numbers and divide by the number of stray dog, we grew faster than Burkino Faso”.
As does the shoddy regulatory structure he put in place
And his shocking refusal to prepare a financial plan
There is a general view setting in that there’s nothing to be done; the British economy is naturally sluggish, and therefore people in (say) Yorkshire will have to get used to a lower standard of living than, say, Latvia or Western Poland.
Declinism, basically.
I don’t agree with it, though I’d concede that Starmer’s Labour is an unlikely vehicle for national recovery.
People have forgotten how shite Major left the country’s infrastructure.
If you had read my post carefully you’d have noticed I wrote “the Fenwicks” - the family shareholders - not “Fenwicks” the company.
The family had a number of specific funding needs that had to be paid for out of post tax income.
Despite being critical of PFI while in opposition and promising reform, once in power George Osborne progressed 61 PFI schemes worth a total of £6.9bn in his first year as Chancellor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_finance_initiative#Development
Just as its easy to achieve "growth" if you look at a bubble and stop the clock before it bursts.
A balanced overview needs both. What's spent, and how it was funded. Both the growth and the crash that accompanies it. To look at one but exclude the other is pure dishonesty.
What were the Fenwicks' specific funding needs?
He was either reckless or incompetent.