'Sir: On the day after the Brexit vote, I met my daughter (a City lawyer) who was absolutely incandescent at my decision. She did not mince her words. Nearly seven years on she was right and I was wrong. There is no defence to Brexit.'
Right about what? If the question was Brexit will make the country better off in 7 years time, then fine, it’s not. But that wasn’t the question was it? Brexit was about more than just GDP. It was about opting out of the European super state. It was about free trade with the whole world, not just the cartel on our doorstep.
Oh my god, you still believe all of that? Wow, just wow.
Which bit? Opting out of ever closer union? Trading more widely with the world? I missed the adverts which said Brexit is purely about GDP.
BTW I voted remain. But I understand why others voted for Brexit, and I found it an agonising choice. Never had so much mental wrangling over a vote.
The very concept “trading more widely with the world” betrays a fundamental error of logic.
If you are still swallowing that canard, I pity you.
Yes of course it makes more sense to trade freely with Europe. I could be forgiven for thinking we had a free trade agreement in place…
Eh?
Trade with Europe has fallen, and trade beyond Europe doesn’t look very healthy either.
Britain’s economic position was as a highly amenable entrepôt inside Europe, and thus the default choice of traders and investors around the world.
Although I agree that this was insufficient in spreading wealth around the country, the blame for that lies inside Westminster and Treasury.
Brexit killed the golden goose. It is truly difficult to think of viable alternative economic models.
The UK is a big economy in its own right, and the balance of trade in the single market was not in its favour. Thinking that it can prosper as merely a European entrepôt is more of a dead duck than a golden goose.
It was a big economy. Slightly smaller nowadays, relatively speaking.
As for the balance of trade, the sort of argument you are implying died out about two hundred years ago.
The entrepôt was not everything, but it paid for much of the rest of the stuff. Just one example, Hunt had to pay for the budget by kicking out social care funding until after the next election, which his government is very likely to lose.
Well, absolutely. Brexit means we can no longer afford the things we used to. That’s true for government and consumers.
Some will say it is worth it for the extra sovereignty.
Talk of the balance of payments/trade may not be the toast of pubs, but the concept is still as vital as it ever was.
What does vital mean here?
Standard dictionary definition. If a nation spends more than it earns on a consistent basis, it is heading for bankruptcy whether there is lots of 'trade' going on or not. Indeed the volume of trade, if it is uneven, merely hastens the process.
No, it’s not headed for bankruptcy.
You have a static model in your head, in which a fixed slice of pie gets traded around the world.
You miss the effects of endogenous innovation and wealth creation. In other words, Britain keeps making new pies and indeed new types of pie.
I happen to agree that Britain’s goods deficit was too large, but my main issue is/was that it reflected a lack of productivity in the traditional manufacturing regions.
Finally, Britain’s trade deficit seems to have increased significantly since leaving the single market.
No, it is not 'headed' for bankruptcy, it is 'heading' for bankruptcy. Nothing you have said remotely argues otherwise.
As many have said before, and you have surely understood without too much difficulty, Brexit has just given us more tools in the toolbox. Tools don't build things on their own, competent users of those tools build things. Brexit wasn't a vote to eliminate useless Governments and their even more useless administrators - if it was, it would have been 99% in favour not 52%.
There are many more than a hundred people that die each day in England.
70m/70years/365days - that's 2.5k.
I am guessing that the LH axel is percentages of an average.
Nope - total number. Fewer that 60 people dying per day of COVID at the moment.
Which seems remarkable given the number of people I know who have had it recently. And several of these have remained positive for 10 days+.
Everyone in the country (basically) has had and/or multiple vaccinations/multiple infections.
This massively reduces the seriousness of the disease.
Yes, but given its prevalence you would expect more people to be dying with Covid as opposed to of it.
Well quite a few probably are dying with it. There is no one correct way to measure covid deaths, as we have been over on pb more times than Leon has wet his pants over AI/woke/covid/UAPs. And that’s a lot. The upshot is, baring anything unexpected, the U.K. is over the pandemic. We just need to recover from it, with may take decades.
One thing that surprises me about the World Cup, is the (apparent, at least to me) lack of mass filling out of bracket predictions, as with NCCA men's basketball "March Madness" tournament.
Note that in 2022 tournament, estimated number of brackets filled out = 36.5 million
? I have litterally no idea what your post means!
A bit like a World Cup sweepstake, but less random.
'Sir: On the day after the Brexit vote, I met my daughter (a City lawyer) who was absolutely incandescent at my decision. She did not mince her words. Nearly seven years on she was right and I was wrong. There is no defence to Brexit.'
Right about what? If the question was Brexit will make the country better off in 7 years time, then fine, it’s not. But that wasn’t the question was it? Brexit was about more than just GDP. It was about opting out of the European super state. It was about free trade with the whole world, not just the cartel on our doorstep.
Oh my god, you still believe all of that? Wow, just wow.
Which bit? Opting out of ever closer union? Trading more widely with the world? I missed the adverts which said Brexit is purely about GDP.
BTW I voted remain. But I understand why others voted for Brexit, and I found it an agonising choice. Never had so much mental wrangling over a vote.
The very concept “trading more widely with the world” betrays a fundamental error of logic.
If you are still swallowing that canard, I pity you.
Yes of course it makes more sense to trade freely with Europe. I could be forgiven for thinking we had a free trade agreement in place…
Eh?
Trade with Europe has fallen, and trade beyond Europe doesn’t look very healthy either.
Britain’s economic position was as a highly amenable entrepôt inside Europe, and thus the default choice of traders and investors around the world.
Although I agree that this was insufficient in spreading wealth around the country, the blame for that lies inside Westminster and Treasury.
Brexit killed the golden goose. It is truly difficult to think of viable alternative economic models.
The UK is a big economy in its own right, and the balance of trade in the single market was not in its favour. Thinking that it can prosper as merely a European entrepôt is more of a dead duck than a golden goose.
It astounds me that so many are reluctant to recognise that we were getting closer and closer to insolvency whilst our standard of living declined in the SM. That was mainly our own fault but the idea that continuing on the same course was either viable or sane really is delusional. I completely accept that the necessary changes could have been done within the EU but disruption and poor relative performance was inevitable.
The idea that Britain’s “standard of living declined in the SM” is…
…unique.
We were living well beyond our means with a standard of living we were not earning and falling into debt. Those are the facts. We went from having a significant surplus on foreign investment to an almost unsustainable deficit because so many assets were sold to cover the deficits. If you think that was success you really are delusional.
Brexit has made us collectively poorer by causing big falls in trade and investment. The means we were living beyond have reduced further. How does that help?
I really don't understand your logic.
We need to reduce consumption. That involves reducing income in real terms. We need to reduce our currency value because we were not competitive at the previous exchange rate. We need to decrease borrowing by our government. The pressure from the markets is ensuring that. These are small steps in the right direction to a sustainable economy. They hurt because we are bringing ourselves closer to our real earnings. We have got used to living beyond those means over more than 20 years.
As I have said we could have taken steps in these directions within the EU but it was frankly too comfortable and we were destined to proceed down the same route. Our imports from the EU have fallen sharply. Some of that has been offset by increased imports from elsewhere but a lot of this has been fuel related.
What is clear is that the comparator is not between where we were in the SM and where we are now. What we had was not sustainable. Things had to change. And they still need to.
'Sir: On the day after the Brexit vote, I met my daughter (a City lawyer) who was absolutely incandescent at my decision. She did not mince her words. Nearly seven years on she was right and I was wrong. There is no defence to Brexit.'
How on earth could we let Northern and Midlands and Essex and Welsh working class oiks get a say on more tightly controlling immigration? All they have done is made my nanny, cleaner and plumber supply more restricted, meant I have to queue an hour longer when going skiing in Klosters and to our summer villa in Tuscany and reduced the number of corporate deals across the EU my firm deals with.
How dare they!!!
Yes, indeed, but if Brexit is fucking up London then it is fucking up UK PLC
London rejected Brexit even in 2016, in part it was 2 fingers to London from the English provinces and Wales, not just to Brussels.
Most Leavers wanted Levelling up and reduced immigration and regained sovereignty, not an even stronger globalist London disconnected from the rest of the country
But we aren't getting reduced immigration. We imported half a million people last year, and Labour will do the same
Meanwhile the dinghy people keep coming
I can understand why many Leavers, rich or poor, are now looking at the state of things and wondering: What was Brexit all FOR?
Personally, I can see the arguments from democracy and sovereignty, but I get why many don't
Apart from controlling immigration from Europe there was nothing of importance we wanted to do that we couldn't have done as EU members. Although there were a couple of big forbidden things we didn't want to do - (i) old style clause 4 socialism and (ii) deregulated cowboy capitalism. Both of these adventures would have been impossible, so required Brexit.
Course if Labour offered (i) or the Tories (ii) in a general election they'd get their arses handed to them because there's no appetite for either vision. The upshot is a bit Donald Rumsfeld: By leaving the EU we can now do things we don't want to do, but we won't since we don't want to, and in return for this privilege it's become harder, in some cases impossible, to do lots of things we do want to do
Democracy in action or just a bit stupid?
Perhaps both?
I can see a pretty convincing argument that Brexit was the right decision taken at the wrong time. You couldn't choose a worse time to seriously upset your trading arrangments than: just before a global plague, a European war, and a worldwide slowdown (or even a slump). So the democratic motivation was justified but it was done at a stupidly bad time
However - I hate to bang on - all this is overshadowed by AI
Over the next five-ten-twenty years this tech is going to utterly transform the world economy, in ways good and bad, and in ways we cannot imagine:
"If you’re looking for historical analogues, this would be like the printing press, the steam drill, and the light bulb having a baby, and that baby having access to the entire corpus of human knowledge and understanding"
In that enormous context, maybe Brexit does not really matter at all
AI/VR is fascinating but how does it map to the big global issues? It's easy in our gilded bubble to forget what these are. So a reminder of the top 5:
Abject poverty Oppression of women Political repression Pollution War
If it doesn't help eradicate these things it's no gamechanger imo.
Category error
This is your narrow mind at work again
What were the biggest issues in the late Victorian world? Probably quite similar to the five you name now, minus pollution
How did the advent of electricity affect poverty, the oppression of women, or "war"? See: it's a silly question. You're not thinking about it right
Fair cop. Where 'narrow' = elevated and startlingly original.
But seriously, all joshing aside, in this case I'm doing Applied rather than Pure. Both of these MOs are necessary in order to harness revolutionary tech for the greater good.
And re "how did electricity impact on things like poverty and female emancipation?"
No, the question doesn't seem 'silly' phrased like that. Quite the opposite. It looks all the more interesting. I'd welcome your views after you've given it some thought.
Please tag me - I'll check in later and take a look.
Electricity freed women from substantial amounts of domestic drudgery, creating the space to pursue careers outside the home in a modern industrial economy.
The washing machine has to be one of the most positively influential applications of new tech ever. Hopefully there'll be many equivalents arising from AI/VR.
But many people and many parts of the world are excluded from technological advancement. This is one reason why so much poverty and inequality persists imo.
Will this next leap forward be an exception to this or will it be same old same old? - excitement in the gilded bubble, shrug of the shoulders outside.
It is fairly plain that the amount of household appliances in the home correlates quite well with female empowerment around the world.
"In the week ending 25 November 2022 (Week 47), 11,483 deaths were registered in England and Wales; 348 of these deathsmentioned'novel coronavirus (COVID-19)'."
Or to be more exact, with SARSCoV2, the SARS variant that everyone's been talking about. The definition of Covid-19 changed from an illness including double diffuse pneumonia in the presence of a SARSCoV2 infection (an illness that was originally called NCIP for Novel Coronavirus-Infected Pneumonia) to just the viral infection.
You should see the looks I get when somebody says they were a bit under the weather for a day because they had Covid and I ask them how long they had the double pneumonia for.
Covid has always been about more than pneumonitis, which has become less of an issue fortunately as the virus evolved. It has always been also a vasculitis.
Why? Football is about winning, not being the most sexy footballing side. Brazil looked tired and I doubt they would have got past France anyway.
What's all this "France" business?
They have a massive quarter to get through first.
I’m resigned to our fate.
Well I'm not. 50/50 game. If we play well and get the breaks we're going through. Then a VERY winnable semi, and after that ... well let's just say a prospect even more exciting (!) than GPTr2d2 awaits.
'Sir: On the day after the Brexit vote, I met my daughter (a City lawyer) who was absolutely incandescent at my decision. She did not mince her words. Nearly seven years on she was right and I was wrong. There is no defence to Brexit.'
How on earth could we let Northern and Midlands and Essex and Welsh working class oiks get a say on more tightly controlling immigration? All they have done is made my nanny, cleaner and plumber supply more restricted, meant I have to queue an hour longer when going skiing in Klosters and to our summer villa in Tuscany and reduced the number of corporate deals across the EU my firm deals with.
How dare they!!!
Yes, indeed, but if Brexit is fucking up London then it is fucking up UK PLC
London rejected Brexit even in 2016, in part it was 2 fingers to London from the English provinces and Wales, not just to Brussels.
Most Leavers wanted Levelling up and reduced immigration and regained sovereignty, not an even stronger globalist London disconnected from the rest of the country
But we aren't getting reduced immigration. We imported half a million people last year, and Labour will do the same
Meanwhile the dinghy people keep coming
I can understand why many Leavers, rich or poor, are now looking at the state of things and wondering: What was Brexit all FOR?
Personally, I can see the arguments from democracy and sovereignty, but I get why many don't
Apart from controlling immigration from Europe there was nothing of importance we wanted to do that we couldn't have done as EU members. Although there were a couple of big forbidden things we didn't want to do - (i) old style clause 4 socialism and (ii) deregulated cowboy capitalism. Both of these adventures would have been impossible, so required Brexit.
Course if Labour offered (i) or the Tories (ii) in a general election they'd get their arses handed to them because there's no appetite for either vision. The upshot is a bit Donald Rumsfeld: By leaving the EU we can now do things we don't want to do, but we won't since we don't want to, and in return for this privilege it's become harder, in some cases impossible, to do lots of things we do want to do
Democracy in action or just a bit stupid?
Perhaps both?
I can see a pretty convincing argument that Brexit was the right decision taken at the wrong time. You couldn't choose a worse time to seriously upset your trading arrangments than: just before a global plague, a European war, and a worldwide slowdown (or even a slump). So the democratic motivation was justified but it was done at a stupidly bad time
However - I hate to bang on - all this is overshadowed by AI
Over the next five-ten-twenty years this tech is going to utterly transform the world economy, in ways good and bad, and in ways we cannot imagine:
"If you’re looking for historical analogues, this would be like the printing press, the steam drill, and the light bulb having a baby, and that baby having access to the entire corpus of human knowledge and understanding"
In that enormous context, maybe Brexit does not really matter at all
AI/VR is fascinating but how does it map to the big global issues? It's easy in our gilded bubble to forget what these are. So a reminder of the top 5:
Abject poverty Oppression of women Political repression Pollution War
If it doesn't help eradicate these things it's no gamechanger imo.
Category error
This is your narrow mind at work again
What were the biggest issues in the late Victorian world? Probably quite similar to the five you name now, minus pollution
How did the advent of electricity affect poverty, the oppression of women, or "war"? See: it's a silly question. You're not thinking about it right
Fair cop. Where 'narrow' = elevated and startlingly original.
But seriously, all joshing aside, in this case I'm doing Applied rather than Pure. Both of these MOs are necessary in order to harness revolutionary tech for the greater good.
And re "how did electricity impact on things like poverty and female emancipation?"
No, the question doesn't seem 'silly' phrased like that. Quite the opposite. It looks all the more interesting. I'd welcome your views after you've given it some thought.
Please tag me - I'll check in later and take a look.
Electricity freed women from substantial amounts of domestic drudgery, creating the space to pursue careers outside the home in a modern industrial economy.
The washing machine has to be one of the most positively influential applications of new tech ever. Hopefully there'll be many equivalents arising from AI/VR.
But many people and many parts of the world are excluded from technological advancement. This is one reason why so much poverty and inequality persists imo.
Will this next leap forward be an exception to this or will it be same old same old? - excitement in the gilded bubble, shrug of the shoulders outside.
It's all fun and games till the washing machine becomes essentially sentient.
I'm sort of imagining something like the uber cheery toaster from Red Dwarf.
Not familiar but sounds rather annoying. I don't appreciate chat with my toast.
There are many more than a hundred people that die each day in England.
70m/70years/365days - that's 2.5k.
I am guessing that the LH axel is percentages of an average.
Nope - total number. Fewer that 60 people dying per day of COVID at the moment.
Which seems remarkable given the number of people I know who have had it recently. And several of these have remained positive for 10 days+.
Everyone in the country (basically) has had and/or multiple vaccinations/multiple infections.
This massively reduces the seriousness of the disease.
Yes, but given its prevalence you would expect more people to be dying with Covid as opposed to of it.
Well quite a few probably are dying with it. There is no one correct way to measure covid deaths, as we have been over on pb more times than Leon has wet his pants over AI/woke/covid/UAPs. And that’s a lot. The upshot is, baring anything unexpected, the U.K. is over the pandemic. We just need to recover from it, with may take decades.
Are we any closer to getting any kind of explanation as to why we seem to be getting hit by long Covid so much harder than many other countries?
There are many more than a hundred people that die each day in England.
70m/70years/365days - that's 2.5k.
I am guessing that the LH axel is percentages of an average.
Nope - total number. Fewer that 60 people dying per day of COVID at the moment.
Which seems remarkable given the number of people I know who have had it recently. And several of these have remained positive for 10 days+.
Everyone in the country (basically) has had and/or multiple vaccinations/multiple infections.
This massively reduces the seriousness of the disease.
Yes, but given its prevalence you would expect more people to be dying with Covid as opposed to of it.
Well quite a few probably are dying with it. There is no one correct way to measure covid deaths, as we have been over on pb more times than Leon has wet his pants over AI/woke/covid/UAPs. And that’s a lot. The upshot is, baring anything unexpected, the U.K. is over the pandemic. We just need to recover from it, with may take decades.
Are we any closer to getting any kind of explanation as to why we seem to be getting hit by long Covid so much harder than many other countries?
Mad Cow’s Disease finally broke. Also explains the Brexit vote.
One thing that surprises me about the World Cup, is the (apparent, at least to me) lack of mass filling out of bracket predictions, as with NCCA men's basketball "March Madness" tournament.
Note that in 2022 tournament, estimated number of brackets filled out = 36.5 million
"It has become extremely common in popular culture to predict the outcomes of each game, even among non-sports fans; it is estimated that tens of millions of Americans participate in a bracket pool contest every year.
Mainstream media outlets such as ESPN, CBS Sports and Fox Sports host tournaments online where contestants can enter for free. Employers have also noticed a change in the behavior of employees during this time: they have seen an increase in the number of sick days used, extended lunch breaks and even the rescheduling of conference calls to allow for more tournament watching.Many handicappers and pundits also offer advice for winning their own bracket."
'Sir: On the day after the Brexit vote, I met my daughter (a City lawyer) who was absolutely incandescent at my decision. She did not mince her words. Nearly seven years on she was right and I was wrong. There is no defence to Brexit.'
How on earth could we let Northern and Midlands and Essex and Welsh working class oiks get a say on more tightly controlling immigration? All they have done is made my nanny, cleaner and plumber supply more restricted, meant I have to queue an hour longer when going skiing in Klosters and to our summer villa in Tuscany and reduced the number of corporate deals across the EU my firm deals with.
How dare they!!!
Yes, indeed, but if Brexit is fucking up London then it is fucking up UK PLC
London rejected Brexit even in 2016, in part it was 2 fingers to London from the English provinces and Wales, not just to Brussels.
Most Leavers wanted Levelling up and reduced immigration and regained sovereignty, not an even stronger globalist London disconnected from the rest of the country
But we aren't getting reduced immigration. We imported half a million people last year, and Labour will do the same
Meanwhile the dinghy people keep coming
I can understand why many Leavers, rich or poor, are now looking at the state of things and wondering: What was Brexit all FOR?
Personally, I can see the arguments from democracy and sovereignty, but I get why many don't
Apart from controlling immigration from Europe there was nothing of importance we wanted to do that we couldn't have done as EU members. Although there were a couple of big forbidden things we didn't want to do - (i) old style clause 4 socialism and (ii) deregulated cowboy capitalism. Both of these adventures would have been impossible, so required Brexit.
Course if Labour offered (i) or the Tories (ii) in a general election they'd get their arses handed to them because there's no appetite for either vision. The upshot is a bit Donald Rumsfeld: By leaving the EU we can now do things we don't want to do, but we won't since we don't want to, and in return for this privilege it's become harder, in some cases impossible, to do lots of things we do want to do
Democracy in action or just a bit stupid?
Perhaps both?
I can see a pretty convincing argument that Brexit was the right decision taken at the wrong time. You couldn't choose a worse time to seriously upset your trading arrangments than: just before a global plague, a European war, and a worldwide slowdown (or even a slump). So the democratic motivation was justified but it was done at a stupidly bad time
However - I hate to bang on - all this is overshadowed by AI
Over the next five-ten-twenty years this tech is going to utterly transform the world economy, in ways good and bad, and in ways we cannot imagine:
"If you’re looking for historical analogues, this would be like the printing press, the steam drill, and the light bulb having a baby, and that baby having access to the entire corpus of human knowledge and understanding"
In that enormous context, maybe Brexit does not really matter at all
AI/VR is fascinating but how does it map to the big global issues? It's easy in our gilded bubble to forget what these are. So a reminder of the top 5:
Abject poverty Oppression of women Political repression Pollution War
If it doesn't help eradicate these things it's no gamechanger imo.
Category error
This is your narrow mind at work again
What were the biggest issues in the late Victorian world? Probably quite similar to the five you name now, minus pollution
How did the advent of electricity affect poverty, the oppression of women, or "war"? See: it's a silly question. You're not thinking about it right
Fair cop. Where 'narrow' = elevated and startlingly original.
But seriously, all joshing aside, in this case I'm doing Applied rather than Pure. Both of these MOs are necessary in order to harness revolutionary tech for the greater good.
And re "how did electricity impact on things like poverty and female emancipation?"
No, the question doesn't seem 'silly' phrased like that. Quite the opposite. It looks all the more interesting. I'd welcome your views after you've given it some thought.
Please tag me - I'll check in later and take a look.
Electricity freed women from substantial amounts of domestic drudgery, creating the space to pursue careers outside the home in a modern industrial economy.
The washing machine has to be one of the most positively influential applications of new tech ever. Hopefully there'll be many equivalents arising from AI/VR.
But many people and many parts of the world are excluded from technological advancement. This is one reason why so much poverty and inequality persists imo.
Will this next leap forward be an exception to this or will it be same old same old? - excitement in the gilded bubble, shrug of the shoulders outside.
It's all fun and games till the washing machine becomes essentially sentient.
I'm sort of imagining something like the uber cheery toaster from Red Dwarf.
Not familiar but sounds rather annoying. I don't appreciate chat with my toast.
There are many more than a hundred people that die each day in England.
70m/70years/365days - that's 2.5k.
I am guessing that the LH axel is percentages of an average.
Nope - total number. Fewer that 60 people dying per day of COVID at the moment.
Which seems remarkable given the number of people I know who have had it recently. And several of these have remained positive for 10 days+.
Everyone in the country (basically) has had and/or multiple vaccinations/multiple infections.
This massively reduces the seriousness of the disease.
Yes, but given its prevalence you would expect more people to be dying with Covid as opposed to of it.
Well quite a few probably are dying with it. There is no one correct way to measure covid deaths, as we have been over on pb more times than Leon has wet his pants over AI/woke/covid/UAPs. And that’s a lot. The upshot is, baring anything unexpected, the U.K. is over the pandemic. We just need to recover from it, with may take decades.
Are we any closer to getting any kind of explanation as to why we seem to be getting hit by long Covid so much harder than many other countries?
Lack of capacity in the health care system counts for a lot.
Why? Football is about winning, not being the most sexy footballing side. Brazil looked tired and I doubt they would have got past France anyway.
What's all this "France" business?
They have a massive quarter to get through first.
I’m resigned to our fate.
Well I'm not. 50/50 game. If we play well and get the breaks we're going through. Then a VERY winnable semi, and after that ... well let's just say a prospect even more exciting (!) than GPTr2d2 awaits.
Loving your optimism but I’ve watched England sports teams too long…
We've just won the 20/20 WC and the latest data for football is semi then final. I think you're doing that "don't tempt fate' thing. Irrational but deeply understandable so I'll play along - France will kill us!
Why? Football is about winning, not being the most sexy footballing side. Brazil looked tired and I doubt they would have got past France anyway.
What's all this "France" business?
They have a massive quarter to get through first.
I’m resigned to our fate.
Well I'm not. 50/50 game. If we play well and get the breaks we're going through. Then a VERY winnable semi, and after that ... well let's just say a prospect even more exciting (!) than GPTr2d2 awaits.
Theory: this is a World Cup too soon for England
They are young. They will probably peak in 2026
I have found a good rule of thumb in this WC is that the younger teams tend to do better. Not sure if it is the heat or the climate but older players have struggled. Belgium was a good example. I think England having a young squad is an advantage but I also think that they will still lose to France.
'Sir: On the day after the Brexit vote, I met my daughter (a City lawyer) who was absolutely incandescent at my decision. She did not mince her words. Nearly seven years on she was right and I was wrong. There is no defence to Brexit.'
How on earth could we let Northern and Midlands and Essex and Welsh working class oiks get a say on more tightly controlling immigration? All they have done is made my nanny, cleaner and plumber supply more restricted, meant I have to queue an hour longer when going skiing in Klosters and to our summer villa in Tuscany and reduced the number of corporate deals across the EU my firm deals with.
How dare they!!!
Yes, indeed, but if Brexit is fucking up London then it is fucking up UK PLC
London rejected Brexit even in 2016, in part it was 2 fingers to London from the English provinces and Wales, not just to Brussels.
Most Leavers wanted Levelling up and reduced immigration and regained sovereignty, not an even stronger globalist London disconnected from the rest of the country
But we aren't getting reduced immigration. We imported half a million people last year, and Labour will do the same
Meanwhile the dinghy people keep coming
I can understand why many Leavers, rich or poor, are now looking at the state of things and wondering: What was Brexit all FOR?
Personally, I can see the arguments from democracy and sovereignty, but I get why many don't
Apart from controlling immigration from Europe there was nothing of importance we wanted to do that we couldn't have done as EU members. Although there were a couple of big forbidden things we didn't want to do - (i) old style clause 4 socialism and (ii) deregulated cowboy capitalism. Both of these adventures would have been impossible, so required Brexit.
Course if Labour offered (i) or the Tories (ii) in a general election they'd get their arses handed to them because there's no appetite for either vision. The upshot is a bit Donald Rumsfeld: By leaving the EU we can now do things we don't want to do, but we won't since we don't want to, and in return for this privilege it's become harder, in some cases impossible, to do lots of things we do want to do
Democracy in action or just a bit stupid?
Perhaps both?
I can see a pretty convincing argument that Brexit was the right decision taken at the wrong time. You couldn't choose a worse time to seriously upset your trading arrangments than: just before a global plague, a European war, and a worldwide slowdown (or even a slump). So the democratic motivation was justified but it was done at a stupidly bad time
However - I hate to bang on - all this is overshadowed by AI
Over the next five-ten-twenty years this tech is going to utterly transform the world economy, in ways good and bad, and in ways we cannot imagine:
"If you’re looking for historical analogues, this would be like the printing press, the steam drill, and the light bulb having a baby, and that baby having access to the entire corpus of human knowledge and understanding"
In that enormous context, maybe Brexit does not really matter at all
AI/VR is fascinating but how does it map to the big global issues? It's easy in our gilded bubble to forget what these are. So a reminder of the top 5:
Abject poverty Oppression of women Political repression Pollution War
If it doesn't help eradicate these things it's no gamechanger imo.
Category error
This is your narrow mind at work again
What were the biggest issues in the late Victorian world? Probably quite similar to the five you name now, minus pollution
How did the advent of electricity affect poverty, the oppression of women, or "war"? See: it's a silly question. You're not thinking about it right
Actually:
Electricity accelerated economic development and reduced abject poverty
Wealth begat civil society and reduced oppression of women
And political repression
Pollution is worse, although London was famously smelly (the great stink)
Peaceful democracies typically don’t go to war with each other
So electricity has helped each of those. May be not globally but the Uk is in almost every way better than in the Victorian era
'Sir: On the day after the Brexit vote, I met my daughter (a City lawyer) who was absolutely incandescent at my decision. She did not mince her words. Nearly seven years on she was right and I was wrong. There is no defence to Brexit.'
How on earth could we let Northern and Midlands and Essex and Welsh working class oiks get a say on more tightly controlling immigration? All they have done is made my nanny, cleaner and plumber supply more restricted, meant I have to queue an hour longer when going skiing in Klosters and to our summer villa in Tuscany and reduced the number of corporate deals across the EU my firm deals with.
How dare they!!!
Yes, indeed, but if Brexit is fucking up London then it is fucking up UK PLC
London rejected Brexit even in 2016, in part it was 2 fingers to London from the English provinces and Wales, not just to Brussels.
Most Leavers wanted Levelling up and reduced immigration and regained sovereignty, not an even stronger globalist London disconnected from the rest of the country
But we aren't getting reduced immigration. We imported half a million people last year, and Labour will do the same
Meanwhile the dinghy people keep coming
I can understand why many Leavers, rich or poor, are now looking at the state of things and wondering: What was Brexit all FOR?
Personally, I can see the arguments from democracy and sovereignty, but I get why many don't
Apart from controlling immigration from Europe there was nothing of importance we wanted to do that we couldn't have done as EU members. Although there were a couple of big forbidden things we didn't want to do - (i) old style clause 4 socialism and (ii) deregulated cowboy capitalism. Both of these adventures would have been impossible, so required Brexit.
Course if Labour offered (i) or the Tories (ii) in a general election they'd get their arses handed to them because there's no appetite for either vision. The upshot is a bit Donald Rumsfeld: By leaving the EU we can now do things we don't want to do, but we won't since we don't want to, and in return for this privilege it's become harder, in some cases impossible, to do lots of things we do want to do
Democracy in action or just a bit stupid?
Perhaps both?
I can see a pretty convincing argument that Brexit was the right decision taken at the wrong time. You couldn't choose a worse time to seriously upset your trading arrangments than: just before a global plague, a European war, and a worldwide slowdown (or even a slump). So the democratic motivation was justified but it was done at a stupidly bad time
However - I hate to bang on - all this is overshadowed by AI
Over the next five-ten-twenty years this tech is going to utterly transform the world economy, in ways good and bad, and in ways we cannot imagine:
"If you’re looking for historical analogues, this would be like the printing press, the steam drill, and the light bulb having a baby, and that baby having access to the entire corpus of human knowledge and understanding"
In that enormous context, maybe Brexit does not really matter at all
AI/VR is fascinating but how does it map to the big global issues? It's easy in our gilded bubble to forget what these are. So a reminder of the top 5:
Abject poverty Oppression of women Political repression Pollution War
If it doesn't help eradicate these things it's no gamechanger imo.
Category error
This is your narrow mind at work again
What were the biggest issues in the late Victorian world? Probably quite similar to the five you name now, minus pollution
How did the advent of electricity affect poverty, the oppression of women, or "war"? See: it's a silly question. You're not thinking about it right
Fair cop. Where 'narrow' = elevated and startlingly original.
But seriously, all joshing aside, in this case I'm doing Applied rather than Pure. Both of these MOs are necessary in order to harness revolutionary tech for the greater good.
And re "how did electricity impact on things like poverty and female emancipation?"
No, the question doesn't seem 'silly' phrased like that. Quite the opposite. It looks all the more interesting. I'd welcome your views after you've given it some thought.
Please tag me - I'll check in later and take a look.
Electricity freed women from substantial amounts of domestic drudgery, creating the space to pursue careers outside the home in a modern industrial economy.
The washing machine has to be one of the most positively influential applications of new tech ever. Hopefully there'll be many equivalents arising from AI/VR.
But many people and many parts of the world are excluded from technological advancement. This is one reason why so much poverty and inequality persists imo.
Will this next leap forward be an exception to this or will it be same old same old? - excitement in the gilded bubble, shrug of the shoulders outside.
It's all fun and games till the washing machine becomes essentially sentient.
I'm sort of imagining something like the uber cheery toaster from Red Dwarf.
Not familiar but sounds rather annoying. I don't appreciate chat with my toast.
'Sir: On the day after the Brexit vote, I met my daughter (a City lawyer) who was absolutely incandescent at my decision. She did not mince her words. Nearly seven years on she was right and I was wrong. There is no defence to Brexit.'
Right about what? If the question was Brexit will make the country better off in 7 years time, then fine, it’s not. But that wasn’t the question was it? Brexit was about more than just GDP. It was about opting out of the European super state. It was about free trade with the whole world, not just the cartel on our doorstep.
Oh my god, you still believe all of that? Wow, just wow.
Which bit? Opting out of ever closer union? Trading more widely with the world? I missed the adverts which said Brexit is purely about GDP.
BTW I voted remain. But I understand why others voted for Brexit, and I found it an agonising choice. Never had so much mental wrangling over a vote.
The very concept “trading more widely with the world” betrays a fundamental error of logic.
If you are still swallowing that canard, I pity you.
Yes of course it makes more sense to trade freely with Europe. I could be forgiven for thinking we had a free trade agreement in place…
Eh?
Trade with Europe has fallen, and trade beyond Europe doesn’t look very healthy either.
Britain’s economic position was as a highly amenable entrepôt inside Europe, and thus the default choice of traders and investors around the world.
Although I agree that this was insufficient in spreading wealth around the country, the blame for that lies inside Westminster and Treasury.
Brexit killed the golden goose. It is truly difficult to think of viable alternative economic models.
The UK is a big economy in its own right, and the balance of trade in the single market was not in its favour. Thinking that it can prosper as merely a European entrepôt is more of a dead duck than a golden goose.
It astounds me that so many are reluctant to recognise that we were getting closer and closer to insolvency whilst our standard of living declined in the SM. That was mainly our own fault but the idea that continuing on the same course was either viable or sane really is delusional. I completely accept that the necessary changes could have been done within the EU but disruption and poor relative performance was inevitable.
The idea that Britain’s “standard of living declined in the SM” is…
…unique.
We were living well beyond our means with a standard of living we were not earning and falling into debt. Those are the facts. We went from having a significant surplus on foreign investment to an almost unsustainable deficit because so many assets were sold to cover the deficits. If you think that was success you really are delusional.
Brexit has made us collectively poorer by causing big falls in trade and investment. The means we were living beyond have reduced further. How does that help?
I really don't understand your logic.
We need to reduce consumption. That involves reducing income in real terms. We need to reduce our currency value because we were not competitive at the previous exchange rate. We need to decrease borrowing by our government. The pressure from the markets is ensuring that. These are small steps in the right direction to a sustainable economy. They hurt because we are bringing ourselves closer to our real earnings. We have got used to living beyond those means over more than 20 years.
As I have said we could have taken steps in these directions within the EU but it was frankly too comfortable and we were destined to proceed down the same route. Our imports from the EU have fallen sharply. Some of that has been offset by increased imports from elsewhere but a lot of this has been fuel related.
What is clear is that the comparator is not between where we were in the SM and where we are now. What we had was not sustainable. Things had to change. And they still need to.
But the direct effect of leaving the Single Market is to bring those earnings down. I still don't understand how that helps get into balance if we are living beyond our means. There are two ways get into balance: increase our earnings or reduce our spending. The second will be forced on us at some point whether we are in the Single Market or not, as Greece also discovered. Brexit just means it happens with more pain.
There are many more than a hundred people that die each day in England.
70m/70years/365days - that's 2.5k.
I am guessing that the LH axel is percentages of an average.
Nope - total number. Fewer that 60 people dying per day of COVID at the moment.
Which seems remarkable given the number of people I know who have had it recently. And several of these have remained positive for 10 days+.
Everyone in the country (basically) has had and/or multiple vaccinations/multiple infections.
This massively reduces the seriousness of the disease.
Yes, but given its prevalence you would expect more people to be dying with Covid as opposed to of it.
Well quite a few probably are dying with it. There is no one correct way to measure covid deaths, as we have been over on pb more times than Leon has wet his pants over AI/woke/covid/UAPs. And that’s a lot. The upshot is, baring anything unexpected, the U.K. is over the pandemic. We just need to recover from it, with may take decades.
Are we any closer to getting any kind of explanation as to why we seem to be getting hit by long Covid so much harder than many other countries?
Lack of capacity in the health care system counts for a lot.
Interesting. So you would blame the fact that the NHS was already operating near or at full capacity before Covid came? Long Covid is basically a consequence of delays in treatment?
There are many more than a hundred people that die each day in England.
70m/70years/365days - that's 2.5k.
I am guessing that the LH axel is percentages of an average.
Nope - total number. Fewer that 60 people dying per day of COVID at the moment.
Which seems remarkable given the number of people I know who have had it recently. And several of these have remained positive for 10 days+.
Everyone in the country (basically) has had and/or multiple vaccinations/multiple infections.
This massively reduces the seriousness of the disease.
Yes, but given its prevalence you would expect more people to be dying with Covid as opposed to of it.
Well quite a few probably are dying with it. There is no one correct way to measure covid deaths, as we have been over on pb more times than Leon has wet his pants over AI/woke/covid/UAPs. And that’s a lot. The upshot is, baring anything unexpected, the U.K. is over the pandemic. We just need to recover from it, with may take decades.
Are we any closer to getting any kind of explanation as to why we seem to be getting hit by long Covid so much harder than many other countries?
I wasn’t aware that we are, although if pushed I’d suggest an overwhelmed health service not being able to help those who would benefit from it. Long covid is complex, with multi factorial symptoms. In some there is clear physical damage to key bits of the body, but not in all. In some it shares presentation with ME and also FND. Again, things can be done here too, but only if the help is available.
There are many more than a hundred people that die each day in England.
70m/70years/365days - that's 2.5k.
I am guessing that the LH axel is percentages of an average.
Nope - total number. Fewer that 60 people dying per day of COVID at the moment.
Which seems remarkable given the number of people I know who have had it recently. And several of these have remained positive for 10 days+.
Everyone in the country (basically) has had and/or multiple vaccinations/multiple infections.
This massively reduces the seriousness of the disease.
Yes, but given its prevalence you would expect more people to be dying with Covid as opposed to of it.
Well quite a few probably are dying with it. There is no one correct way to measure covid deaths, as we have been over on pb more times than Leon has wet his pants over AI/woke/covid/UAPs. And that’s a lot. The upshot is, baring anything unexpected, the U.K. is over the pandemic. We just need to recover from it, with may take decades.
Are we any closer to getting any kind of explanation as to why we seem to be getting hit by long Covid so much harder than many other countries?
Mad Cow’s Disease finally broke. Also explains the Brexit vote.
Would be hitting the French hard then. We were much more honest about BSE.
Why? Football is about winning, not being the most sexy footballing side. Brazil looked tired and I doubt they would have got past France anyway.
What's all this "France" business?
They have a massive quarter to get through first.
I’m resigned to our fate.
Well I'm not. 50/50 game. If we play well and get the breaks we're going through. Then a VERY winnable semi, and after that ... well let's just say a prospect even more exciting (!) than GPTr2d2 awaits.
Theory: this is a World Cup too soon for England
They are young. They will probably peak in 2026
Let's save that theory for if we don't win. We'll need it then.
Why? Football is about winning, not being the most sexy footballing side. Brazil looked tired and I doubt they would have got past France anyway.
What's all this "France" business?
They have a massive quarter to get through first.
I’m resigned to our fate.
Well I'm not. 50/50 game. If we play well and get the breaks we're going through. Then a VERY winnable semi, and after that ... well let's just say a prospect even more exciting (!) than GPTr2d2 awaits.
Loving your optimism but I’ve watched England sports teams too long…
We've just won the 20/20 WC and the latest data for football is semi then final. I think you're doing that "don't tempt fate' thing. Irrational but deeply understandable so I'll play along - France will kill us!
In all the years I’ve watched the sports I follow (cricket, football, rugby), England have won three World Cup tournaments (four if you include the previous T20 win, which I don’t think was a World Cup). I think this England tea is good, but we are playing the World Cup winners from 2018, with probably the worlds best player, and I rate our chances no higher than 10-15%.
There are many more than a hundred people that die each day in England.
70m/70years/365days - that's 2.5k.
I am guessing that the LH axel is percentages of an average.
Nope - total number. Fewer that 60 people dying per day of COVID at the moment.
Which seems remarkable given the number of people I know who have had it recently. And several of these have remained positive for 10 days+.
Everyone in the country (basically) has had and/or multiple vaccinations/multiple infections.
This massively reduces the seriousness of the disease.
Yes, but given its prevalence you would expect more people to be dying with Covid as opposed to of it.
Well quite a few probably are dying with it. There is no one correct way to measure covid deaths, as we have been over on pb more times than Leon has wet his pants over AI/woke/covid/UAPs. And that’s a lot. The upshot is, baring anything unexpected, the U.K. is over the pandemic. We just need to recover from it, with may take decades.
Are we any closer to getting any kind of explanation as to why we seem to be getting hit by long Covid so much harder than many other countries?
Lack of capacity in the health care system counts for a lot.
Interesting. So you would blame the fact that the NHS was already operating near or at full capacity before Covid came? Long Covid is basically a consequence of delays in treatment?
More that people cannot get help currently, I think.
Grigory Kochenov (41) creative director of IT company Agima, died in Nizhny Novgorod. As per local media and Telegram channels, he fell from the balcony when police raided his flat.
'Sir: On the day after the Brexit vote, I met my daughter (a City lawyer) who was absolutely incandescent at my decision. She did not mince her words. Nearly seven years on she was right and I was wrong. There is no defence to Brexit.'
'Sir: On the day after the Brexit vote, I met my daughter (a City lawyer) who was absolutely incandescent at my decision. She did not mince her words. Nearly seven years on she was right and I was wrong. There is no defence to Brexit.'
Right about what? If the question was Brexit will make the country better off in 7 years time, then fine, it’s not. But that wasn’t the question was it? Brexit was about more than just GDP. It was about opting out of the European super state. It was about free trade with the whole world, not just the cartel on our doorstep.
Oh my god, you still believe all of that? Wow, just wow.
Which bit? Opting out of ever closer union? Trading more widely with the world? I missed the adverts which said Brexit is purely about GDP.
BTW I voted remain. But I understand why others voted for Brexit, and I found it an agonising choice. Never had so much mental wrangling over a vote.
The very concept “trading more widely with the world” betrays a fundamental error of logic.
If you are still swallowing that canard, I pity you.
Yes of course it makes more sense to trade freely with Europe. I could be forgiven for thinking we had a free trade agreement in place…
Eh?
Trade with Europe has fallen, and trade beyond Europe doesn’t look very healthy either.
Britain’s economic position was as a highly amenable entrepôt inside Europe, and thus the default choice of traders and investors around the world.
Although I agree that this was insufficient in spreading wealth around the country, the blame for that lies inside Westminster and Treasury.
Brexit killed the golden goose. It is truly difficult to think of viable alternative economic models.
The UK is a big economy in its own right, and the balance of trade in the single market was not in its favour. Thinking that it can prosper as merely a European entrepôt is more of a dead duck than a golden goose.
It astounds me that so many are reluctant to recognise that we were getting closer and closer to insolvency whilst our standard of living declined in the SM. That was mainly our own fault but the idea that continuing on the same course was either viable or sane really is delusional. I completely accept that the necessary changes could have been done within the EU but disruption and poor relative performance was inevitable.
The idea that Britain’s “standard of living declined in the SM” is…
…unique.
We were living well beyond our means with a standard of living we were not earning and falling into debt. Those are the facts. We went from having a significant surplus on foreign investment to an almost unsustainable deficit because so many assets were sold to cover the deficits. If you think that was success you really are delusional.
Brexit has made us collectively poorer by causing big falls in trade and investment. The means we were living beyond have reduced further. How does that help?
I really don't understand your logic.
We need to reduce consumption. That involves reducing income in real terms. We need to reduce our currency value because we were not competitive at the previous exchange rate. We need to decrease borrowing by our government. The pressure from the markets is ensuring that. These are small steps in the right direction to a sustainable economy. They hurt because we are bringing ourselves closer to our real earnings. We have got used to living beyond those means over more than 20 years.
As I have said we could have taken steps in these directions within the EU but it was frankly too comfortable and we were destined to proceed down the same route. Our imports from the EU have fallen sharply. Some of that has been offset by increased imports from elsewhere but a lot of this has been fuel related.
What is clear is that the comparator is not between where we were in the SM and where we are now. What we had was not sustainable. Things had to change. And they still need to.
But the direct effect of leaving the Single Market is to bring those earnings down. I still don't understand how that helps get into balance if we are living beyond our means. There are two ways get into balance: increase our earnings or reduce our spending. The second will be forced on us at some point whether we are in the Single Market or not, as Greece also discovered. Brexit just means it happens with more pain.
Your assumption is that the SM was increasing income. That was not necessarily so. Firstly, we were importing £80bn of goods that were not being made here every year. That was draining cash and spending power from the UK. Secondly, the elastic supply of labour did mean that employers were open to employing more people (reducing unemployment) but we were very poor at investing in capital goods or training. There is now more pressure to do those things but an economy based on highly elastic supplies of labour is obviously suffering from the change of mindset, despite high levels of immigration.
The fundamental point remains we needed to change.
Claremont Institute Fellow: "even if conducted legitimately, elections no longer reflect the will of the people" therefore the right should stop participating in "the technocratic accumulation of votes" https://twitter.com/UrbanAchievr/status/1601240384054886400
'Sir: On the day after the Brexit vote, I met my daughter (a City lawyer) who was absolutely incandescent at my decision. She did not mince her words. Nearly seven years on she was right and I was wrong. There is no defence to Brexit.'
How on earth could we let Northern and Midlands and Essex and Welsh working class oiks get a say on more tightly controlling immigration? All they have done is made my nanny, cleaner and plumber supply more restricted, meant I have to queue an hour longer when going skiing in Klosters and to our summer villa in Tuscany and reduced the number of corporate deals across the EU my firm deals with.
How dare they!!!
Yes, indeed, but if Brexit is fucking up London then it is fucking up UK PLC
London rejected Brexit even in 2016, in part it was 2 fingers to London from the English provinces and Wales, not just to Brussels.
Most Leavers wanted Levelling up and reduced immigration and regained sovereignty, not an even stronger globalist London disconnected from the rest of the country
But we aren't getting reduced immigration. We imported half a million people last year, and Labour will do the same
Meanwhile the dinghy people keep coming
I can understand why many Leavers, rich or poor, are now looking at the state of things and wondering: What was Brexit all FOR?
Personally, I can see the arguments from democracy and sovereignty, but I get why many don't
Apart from controlling immigration from Europe there was nothing of importance we wanted to do that we couldn't have done as EU members. Although there were a couple of big forbidden things we didn't want to do - (i) old style clause 4 socialism and (ii) deregulated cowboy capitalism. Both of these adventures would have been impossible, so required Brexit.
Course if Labour offered (i) or the Tories (ii) in a general election they'd get their arses handed to them because there's no appetite for either vision. The upshot is a bit Donald Rumsfeld: By leaving the EU we can now do things we don't want to do, but we won't since we don't want to, and in return for this privilege it's become harder, in some cases impossible, to do lots of things we do want to do
Democracy in action or just a bit stupid?
Perhaps both?
I can see a pretty convincing argument that Brexit was the right decision taken at the wrong time. You couldn't choose a worse time to seriously upset your trading arrangments than: just before a global plague, a European war, and a worldwide slowdown (or even a slump). So the democratic motivation was justified but it was done at a stupidly bad time
However - I hate to bang on - all this is overshadowed by AI
Over the next five-ten-twenty years this tech is going to utterly transform the world economy, in ways good and bad, and in ways we cannot imagine:
"If you’re looking for historical analogues, this would be like the printing press, the steam drill, and the light bulb having a baby, and that baby having access to the entire corpus of human knowledge and understanding"
In that enormous context, maybe Brexit does not really matter at all
AI/VR is fascinating but how does it map to the big global issues? It's easy in our gilded bubble to forget what these are. So a reminder of the top 5:
Abject poverty Oppression of women Political repression Pollution War
If it doesn't help eradicate these things it's no gamechanger imo.
Category error
This is your narrow mind at work again
What were the biggest issues in the late Victorian world? Probably quite similar to the five you name now, minus pollution
How did the advent of electricity affect poverty, the oppression of women, or "war"? See: it's a silly question. You're not thinking about it right
Actually:
Electricity accelerated economic development and reduced abject poverty
Wealth begat civil society and reduced oppression of women
And political repression
Pollution is worse, although London was famously smelly (the great stink)
Peaceful democracies typically don’t go to war with each other
So electricity has helped each of those. May be not globally but the Uk is in almost every way better than in the Victorian era
So will GPTi do this? Or will it damage more people than it helps? In our capitalist world will it deliver power and riches and fulfillment to a tiny minority? - ie as now but worse.
There are many more than a hundred people that die each day in England.
70m/70years/365days - that's 2.5k.
I am guessing that the LH axel is percentages of an average.
Nope - total number. Fewer that 60 people dying per day of COVID at the moment.
Which seems remarkable given the number of people I know who have had it recently. And several of these have remained positive for 10 days+.
Everyone in the country (basically) has had and/or multiple vaccinations/multiple infections.
This massively reduces the seriousness of the disease.
Yes, but given its prevalence you would expect more people to be dying with Covid as opposed to of it.
Well quite a few probably are dying with it. There is no one correct way to measure covid deaths, as we have been over on pb more times than Leon has wet his pants over AI/woke/covid/UAPs. And that’s a lot. The upshot is, baring anything unexpected, the U.K. is over the pandemic. We just need to recover from it, with may take decades.
Are we any closer to getting any kind of explanation as to why we seem to be getting hit by long Covid so much harder than many other countries?
Lack of capacity in the health care system counts for a lot.
Interesting. So you would blame the fact that the NHS was already operating near or at full capacity before Covid came? Long Covid is basically a consequence of delays in treatment?
More that people cannot get help currently, I think.
Is that not the same thing? Although some parts of the NHS seem to have had a collapse in productivity.
There are many more than a hundred people that die each day in England.
70m/70years/365days - that's 2.5k.
I am guessing that the LH axel is percentages of an average.
Nope - total number. Fewer that 60 people dying per day of COVID at the moment.
Which seems remarkable given the number of people I know who have had it recently. And several of these have remained positive for 10 days+.
Everyone in the country (basically) has had and/or multiple vaccinations/multiple infections.
This massively reduces the seriousness of the disease.
Yes, but given its prevalence you would expect more people to be dying with Covid as opposed to of it.
Well quite a few probably are dying with it. There is no one correct way to measure covid deaths, as we have been over on pb more times than Leon has wet his pants over AI/woke/covid/UAPs. And that’s a lot. The upshot is, baring anything unexpected, the U.K. is over the pandemic. We just need to recover from it, with may take decades.
Are we any closer to getting any kind of explanation as to why we seem to be getting hit by long Covid so much harder than many other countries?
Lack of capacity in the health care system counts for a lot.
Interesting. So you would blame the fact that the NHS was already operating near or at full capacity before Covid came? Long Covid is basically a consequence of delays in treatment?
More that people cannot get help currently, I think.
Is that not the same thing? Although some parts of the NHS seem to have had a collapse in productivity.
I possibly misinterpreted you as referring to delays in treating the initial covid. Yes delays and the ability to get help. FND type need psychological help, others possibly graded exercise and assistance in regaining their health.
'Sir: On the day after the Brexit vote, I met my daughter (a City lawyer) who was absolutely incandescent at my decision. She did not mince her words. Nearly seven years on she was right and I was wrong. There is no defence to Brexit.'
Right about what? If the question was Brexit will make the country better off in 7 years time, then fine, it’s not. But that wasn’t the question was it? Brexit was about more than just GDP. It was about opting out of the European super state. It was about free trade with the whole world, not just the cartel on our doorstep.
Oh my god, you still believe all of that? Wow, just wow.
Which bit? Opting out of ever closer union? Trading more widely with the world? I missed the adverts which said Brexit is purely about GDP.
BTW I voted remain. But I understand why others voted for Brexit, and I found it an agonising choice. Never had so much mental wrangling over a vote.
The very concept “trading more widely with the world” betrays a fundamental error of logic.
If you are still swallowing that canard, I pity you.
Yes of course it makes more sense to trade freely with Europe. I could be forgiven for thinking we had a free trade agreement in place…
Eh?
Trade with Europe has fallen, and trade beyond Europe doesn’t look very healthy either.
Britain’s economic position was as a highly amenable entrepôt inside Europe, and thus the default choice of traders and investors around the world.
Although I agree that this was insufficient in spreading wealth around the country, the blame for that lies inside Westminster and Treasury.
Brexit killed the golden goose. It is truly difficult to think of viable alternative economic models.
The UK is a big economy in its own right, and the balance of trade in the single market was not in its favour. Thinking that it can prosper as merely a European entrepôt is more of a dead duck than a golden goose.
It astounds me that so many are reluctant to recognise that we were getting closer and closer to insolvency whilst our standard of living declined in the SM. That was mainly our own fault but the idea that continuing on the same course was either viable or sane really is delusional. I completely accept that the necessary changes could have been done within the EU but disruption and poor relative performance was inevitable.
The idea that Britain’s “standard of living declined in the SM” is…
…unique.
We were living well beyond our means with a standard of living we were not earning and falling into debt. Those are the facts. We went from having a significant surplus on foreign investment to an almost unsustainable deficit because so many assets were sold to cover the deficits. If you think that was success you really are delusional.
Brexit has made us collectively poorer by causing big falls in trade and investment. The means we were living beyond have reduced further. How does that help?
I really don't understand your logic.
We need to reduce consumption. That involves reducing income in real terms. We need to reduce our currency value because we were not competitive at the previous exchange rate. We need to decrease borrowing by our government. The pressure from the markets is ensuring that. These are small steps in the right direction to a sustainable economy. They hurt because we are bringing ourselves closer to our real earnings. We have got used to living beyond those means over more than 20 years.
As I have said we could have taken steps in these directions within the EU but it was frankly too comfortable and we were destined to proceed down the same route. Our imports from the EU have fallen sharply. Some of that has been offset by increased imports from elsewhere but a lot of this has been fuel related.
What is clear is that the comparator is not between where we were in the SM and where we are now. What we had was not sustainable. Things had to change. And they still need to.
But the direct effect of leaving the Single Market is to bring those earnings down. I still don't understand how that helps get into balance if we are living beyond our means. There are two ways get into balance: increase our earnings or reduce our spending. The second will be forced on us at some point whether we are in the Single Market or not, as Greece also discovered. Brexit just means it happens with more pain.
Your assumption is that the SM was increasing income. That was not necessarily so. Firstly, we were importing £80bn of goods that were not being made here every year. That was draining cash and spending power from the UK. Secondly, the elastic supply of labour did mean that employers were open to employing more people (reducing unemployment) but we were very poor at investing in capital goods or training. There is now more pressure to do those things but an economy based on highly elastic supplies of labour is obviously suffering from the change of mindset, despite high levels of immigration.
The fundamental point remains we needed to change.
Question is whether 2016 was a decision to change path, or identifying another bit of furniture that we could chuck on the fire to postpone the fateful day.
I fear it was the latter. After all, net immigration is running at similar levels to before, just with a different national mix and more paperwork.
'Sir: On the day after the Brexit vote, I met my daughter (a City lawyer) who was absolutely incandescent at my decision. She did not mince her words. Nearly seven years on she was right and I was wrong. There is no defence to Brexit.'
Right about what? If the question was Brexit will make the country better off in 7 years time, then fine, it’s not. But that wasn’t the question was it? Brexit was about more than just GDP. It was about opting out of the European super state. It was about free trade with the whole world, not just the cartel on our doorstep.
Oh my god, you still believe all of that? Wow, just wow.
Which bit? Opting out of ever closer union? Trading more widely with the world? I missed the adverts which said Brexit is purely about GDP.
BTW I voted remain. But I understand why others voted for Brexit, and I found it an agonising choice. Never had so much mental wrangling over a vote.
The very concept “trading more widely with the world” betrays a fundamental error of logic.
If you are still swallowing that canard, I pity you.
Yes of course it makes more sense to trade freely with Europe. I could be forgiven for thinking we had a free trade agreement in place…
Eh?
Trade with Europe has fallen, and trade beyond Europe doesn’t look very healthy either.
Britain’s economic position was as a highly amenable entrepôt inside Europe, and thus the default choice of traders and investors around the world.
Although I agree that this was insufficient in spreading wealth around the country, the blame for that lies inside Westminster and Treasury.
Brexit killed the golden goose. It is truly difficult to think of viable alternative economic models.
The UK is a big economy in its own right, and the balance of trade in the single market was not in its favour. Thinking that it can prosper as merely a European entrepôt is more of a dead duck than a golden goose.
It astounds me that so many are reluctant to recognise that we were getting closer and closer to insolvency whilst our standard of living declined in the SM. That was mainly our own fault but the idea that continuing on the same course was either viable or sane really is delusional. I completely accept that the necessary changes could have been done within the EU but disruption and poor relative performance was inevitable.
The idea that Britain’s “standard of living declined in the SM” is…
…unique.
We were living well beyond our means with a standard of living we were not earning and falling into debt. Those are the facts. We went from having a significant surplus on foreign investment to an almost unsustainable deficit because so many assets were sold to cover the deficits. If you think that was success you really are delusional.
Brexit has made us collectively poorer by causing big falls in trade and investment. The means we were living beyond have reduced further. How does that help?
I really don't understand your logic.
We need to reduce consumption. That involves reducing income in real terms. We need to reduce our currency value because we were not competitive at the previous exchange rate. We need to decrease borrowing by our government. The pressure from the markets is ensuring that. These are small steps in the right direction to a sustainable economy. They hurt because we are bringing ourselves closer to our real earnings. We have got used to living beyond those means over more than 20 years.
As I have said we could have taken steps in these directions within the EU but it was frankly too comfortable and we were destined to proceed down the same route. Our imports from the EU have fallen sharply. Some of that has been offset by increased imports from elsewhere but a lot of this has been fuel related.
What is clear is that the comparator is not between where we were in the SM and where we are now. What we had was not sustainable. Things had to change. And they still need to.
But the direct effect of leaving the Single Market is to bring those earnings down. I still don't understand how that helps get into balance if we are living beyond our means. There are two ways get into balance: increase our earnings or reduce our spending. The second will be forced on us at some point whether we are in the Single Market or not, as Greece also discovered. Brexit just means it happens with more pain.
Your assumption is that the SM was increasing income. That was not necessarily so. Firstly, we were importing £80bn of goods that were not being made here every year. That was draining cash and spending power from the UK. Secondly, the elastic supply of labour did mean that employers were open to employing more people (reducing unemployment) but we were very poor at investing in capital goods or training. There is now more pressure to do those things but an economy based on highly elastic supplies of labour is obviously suffering from the change of mindset, despite high levels of immigration.
The fundamental point remains we needed to change.
Question is whether 2016 was a decision to change path, or identifying another bit of furniture that we could chuck on the fire to postpone the fateful day.
I fear it was the latter. After all, net immigration is running at similar levels to before, just with a different national mix and more paperwork.
Brexit was never going to be a bust, it was always about rust.
Man U fans remember so many games when Van Gaal was in charge where there was lots of pretty football but no penetration. It looks the same for the Dutch, sadly.
'Sir: On the day after the Brexit vote, I met my daughter (a City lawyer) who was absolutely incandescent at my decision. She did not mince her words. Nearly seven years on she was right and I was wrong. There is no defence to Brexit.'
How on earth could we let Northern and Midlands and Essex and Welsh working class oiks get a say on more tightly controlling immigration? All they have done is made my nanny, cleaner and plumber supply more restricted, meant I have to queue an hour longer when going skiing in Klosters and to our summer villa in Tuscany and reduced the number of corporate deals across the EU my firm deals with.
How dare they!!!
Yes, indeed, but if Brexit is fucking up London then it is fucking up UK PLC
London rejected Brexit even in 2016, in part it was 2 fingers to London from the English provinces and Wales, not just to Brussels.
Most Leavers wanted Levelling up and reduced immigration and regained sovereignty, not an even stronger globalist London disconnected from the rest of the country
But we aren't getting reduced immigration. We imported half a million people last year, and Labour will do the same
Meanwhile the dinghy people keep coming
I can understand why many Leavers, rich or poor, are now looking at the state of things and wondering: What was Brexit all FOR?
Personally, I can see the arguments from democracy and sovereignty, but I get why many don't
Apart from controlling immigration from Europe there was nothing of importance we wanted to do that we couldn't have done as EU members. Although there were a couple of big forbidden things we didn't want to do - (i) old style clause 4 socialism and (ii) deregulated cowboy capitalism. Both of these adventures would have been impossible, so required Brexit.
Course if Labour offered (i) or the Tories (ii) in a general election they'd get their arses handed to them because there's no appetite for either vision. The upshot is a bit Donald Rumsfeld: By leaving the EU we can now do things we don't want to do, but we won't since we don't want to, and in return for this privilege it's become harder, in some cases impossible, to do lots of things we do want to do
Democracy in action or just a bit stupid?
Perhaps both?
I can see a pretty convincing argument that Brexit was the right decision taken at the wrong time. You couldn't choose a worse time to seriously upset your trading arrangments than: just before a global plague, a European war, and a worldwide slowdown (or even a slump). So the democratic motivation was justified but it was done at a stupidly bad time
However - I hate to bang on - all this is overshadowed by AI
Over the next five-ten-twenty years this tech is going to utterly transform the world economy, in ways good and bad, and in ways we cannot imagine:
"If you’re looking for historical analogues, this would be like the printing press, the steam drill, and the light bulb having a baby, and that baby having access to the entire corpus of human knowledge and understanding"
In that enormous context, maybe Brexit does not really matter at all
AI/VR is fascinating but how does it map to the big global issues? It's easy in our gilded bubble to forget what these are. So a reminder of the top 5:
Abject poverty Oppression of women Political repression Pollution War
If it doesn't help eradicate these things it's no gamechanger imo.
Category error
This is your narrow mind at work again
What were the biggest issues in the late Victorian world? Probably quite similar to the five you name now, minus pollution
How did the advent of electricity affect poverty, the oppression of women, or "war"? See: it's a silly question. You're not thinking about it right
Fair cop. Where 'narrow' = elevated and startlingly original.
But seriously, all joshing aside, in this case I'm doing Applied rather than Pure. Both of these MOs are necessary in order to harness revolutionary tech for the greater good.
And re "how did electricity impact on things like poverty and female emancipation?"
No, the question doesn't seem 'silly' phrased like that. Quite the opposite. It looks all the more interesting. I'd welcome your views after you've given it some thought.
Please tag me - I'll check in later and take a look.
Electricity freed women from substantial amounts of domestic drudgery, creating the space to pursue careers outside the home in a modern industrial economy.
The washing machine has to be one of the most positively influential applications of new tech ever. Hopefully there'll be many equivalents arising from AI/VR.
But many people and many parts of the world are excluded from technological advancement. This is one reason why so much poverty and inequality persists imo.
Will this next leap forward be an exception to this or will it be same old same old? - excitement in the gilded bubble, shrug of the shoulders outside.
It's all fun and games till the washing machine becomes essentially sentient.
I'm sort of imagining something like the uber cheery toaster from Red Dwarf.
Not familiar but sounds rather annoying. I don't appreciate chat with my toast.
Why? Football is about winning, not being the most sexy footballing side. Brazil looked tired and I doubt they would have got past France anyway.
What's all this "France" business?
They have a massive quarter to get through first.
I’m resigned to our fate.
Well I'm not. 50/50 game. If we play well and get the breaks we're going through. Then a VERY winnable semi, and after that ... well let's just say a prospect even more exciting (!) than GPTr2d2 awaits.
Loving your optimism but I’ve watched England sports teams too long…
We've just won the 20/20 WC and the latest data for football is semi then final. I think you're doing that "don't tempt fate' thing. Irrational but deeply understandable so I'll play along - France will kill us!
In all the years I’ve watched the sports I follow (cricket, football, rugby), England have won three World Cup tournaments (four if you include the previous T20 win, which I don’t think was a World Cup). I think this England tea is good, but we are playing the World Cup winners from 2018, with probably the worlds best player, and I rate our chances no higher than 10-15%.
For the tournament? That looks about right. I'd go a bit higher but not much.
Man U fans remember so many games when Van Gaal was in charge where there was lots of pretty football but no penetration. It looks the same for the Dutch, sadly.
Man U fans remember so many games when Van Gaal was in charge where there was lots of pretty football but no penetration. It looks the same for the Dutch, sadly.
Federal prosecutors will urge a judge in a closed-door hearing to hold Donald Trump’s legal team in contempt of court for failing to fully turn over all classified documents in the former president’s possession, a person familiar with the matter said
This whole documents issue just seems so bloody needless of Trump - why he considered the documents his after being told that is not how it works, and why he seems to have deliberately kept withholding them is so weird.
Claremont Institute Fellow: "even if conducted legitimately, elections no longer reflect the will of the people" therefore the right should stop participating in "the technocratic accumulation of votes" https://twitter.com/UrbanAchievr/status/1601240384054886400
'Sir: On the day after the Brexit vote, I met my daughter (a City lawyer) who was absolutely incandescent at my decision. She did not mince her words. Nearly seven years on she was right and I was wrong. There is no defence to Brexit.'
Right about what? If the question was Brexit will make the country better off in 7 years time, then fine, it’s not. But that wasn’t the question was it? Brexit was about more than just GDP. It was about opting out of the European super state. It was about free trade with the whole world, not just the cartel on our doorstep.
Oh my god, you still believe all of that? Wow, just wow.
Which bit? Opting out of ever closer union? Trading more widely with the world? I missed the adverts which said Brexit is purely about GDP.
BTW I voted remain. But I understand why others voted for Brexit, and I found it an agonising choice. Never had so much mental wrangling over a vote.
The very concept “trading more widely with the world” betrays a fundamental error of logic.
If you are still swallowing that canard, I pity you.
Yes of course it makes more sense to trade freely with Europe. I could be forgiven for thinking we had a free trade agreement in place…
Eh?
Trade with Europe has fallen, and trade beyond Europe doesn’t look very healthy either.
Britain’s economic position was as a highly amenable entrepôt inside Europe, and thus the default choice of traders and investors around the world.
Although I agree that this was insufficient in spreading wealth around the country, the blame for that lies inside Westminster and Treasury.
Brexit killed the golden goose. It is truly difficult to think of viable alternative economic models.
The UK is a big economy in its own right, and the balance of trade in the single market was not in its favour. Thinking that it can prosper as merely a European entrepôt is more of a dead duck than a golden goose.
It was a big economy. Slightly smaller nowadays, relatively speaking.
As for the balance of trade, the sort of argument you are implying died out about two hundred years ago.
The entrepôt was not everything, but it paid for much of the rest of the stuff. Just one example, Hunt had to pay for the budget by kicking out social care funding until after the next election, which his government is very likely to lose.
Well, absolutely. Brexit means we can no longer afford the things we used to. That’s true for government and consumers.
Some will say it is worth it for the extra sovereignty.
Talk of the balance of payments/trade may not be the toast of pubs, but the concept is still as vital as it ever was.
What does vital mean here?
Standard dictionary definition. If a nation spends more than it earns on a consistent basis, it is heading for bankruptcy whether there is lots of 'trade' going on or not. Indeed the volume of trade, if it is uneven, merely hastens the process.
No, it’s not headed for bankruptcy.
You have a static model in your head, in which a fixed slice of pie gets traded around the world.
You miss the effects of endogenous innovation and wealth creation. In other words, Britain keeps making new pies and indeed new types of pie.
I happen to agree that Britain’s goods deficit was too large, but my main issue is/was that it reflected a lack of productivity in the traditional manufacturing regions.
Finally, Britain’s trade deficit seems to have increased significantly since leaving the single market.
No, it is not 'headed' for bankruptcy, it is 'heading' for bankruptcy. Nothing you have said remotely argues otherwise.
As many have said before, and you have surely understood without too much difficulty, Brexit has just given us more tools in the toolbox. Tools don't build things on their own, competent users of those tools build things. Brexit wasn't a vote to eliminate useless Governments and their even more useless administrators - if it was, it would have been 99% in favour not 52%.
Deterioration in trade balance looks roughly the same here and across the channel.
On exports, again not much to see, except a notable outperformance for the UK post 2016 due to a weaker pound:
Seems to involve 'the last A4 powered train to Aberdeen'.
That's good, and the film seems to be in the middle of the days when the boffins invented colour and were going around painting everything in various shades. Colour was surely the most influential invention of the twentieth century!
Why? Football is about winning, not being the most sexy footballing side. Brazil looked tired and I doubt they would have got past France anyway.
What's all this "France" business?
They have a massive quarter to get through first.
I’m resigned to our fate.
Well I'm not. 50/50 game. If we play well and get the breaks we're going through. Then a VERY winnable semi, and after that ... well let's just say a prospect even more exciting (!) than GPTr2d2 awaits.
Loving your optimism but I’ve watched England sports teams too long…
We've just won the 20/20 WC and the latest data for football is semi then final. I think you're doing that "don't tempt fate' thing. Irrational but deeply understandable so I'll play along - France will kill us!
In all the years I’ve watched the sports I follow (cricket, football, rugby), England have won three World Cup tournaments (four if you include the previous T20 win, which I don’t think was a World Cup). I think this England tea is good, but we are playing the World Cup winners from 2018, with probably the worlds best player, and I rate our chances no higher than 10-15%.
For the tournament? That looks about right. I'd go a bit higher but not much.
Claremont Institute Fellow: "even if conducted legitimately, elections no longer reflect the will of the people" therefore the right should stop participating in "the technocratic accumulation of votes" https://twitter.com/UrbanAchievr/status/1601240384054886400
That's the thing about this - sometimes he seems loopy enough to believe what he is saying (and that may save him from prosecution where intending unlawfulness is required), but other times it is clear he knows he is making false, dangerous claims, but unlike other politcians he has no scruples about burning down the whole system so long as he wins. Rules are for other people.
Claremont Institute Fellow: "even if conducted legitimately, elections no longer reflect the will of the people" therefore the right should stop participating in "the technocratic accumulation of votes" https://twitter.com/UrbanAchievr/status/1601240384054886400
'Sir: On the day after the Brexit vote, I met my daughter (a City lawyer) who was absolutely incandescent at my decision. She did not mince her words. Nearly seven years on she was right and I was wrong. There is no defence to Brexit.'
Right about what? If the question was Brexit will make the country better off in 7 years time, then fine, it’s not. But that wasn’t the question was it? Brexit was about more than just GDP. It was about opting out of the European super state. It was about free trade with the whole world, not just the cartel on our doorstep.
Oh my god, you still believe all of that? Wow, just wow.
Which bit? Opting out of ever closer union? Trading more widely with the world? I missed the adverts which said Brexit is purely about GDP.
BTW I voted remain. But I understand why others voted for Brexit, and I found it an agonising choice. Never had so much mental wrangling over a vote.
The very concept “trading more widely with the world” betrays a fundamental error of logic.
If you are still swallowing that canard, I pity you.
Yes of course it makes more sense to trade freely with Europe. I could be forgiven for thinking we had a free trade agreement in place…
Eh?
Trade with Europe has fallen, and trade beyond Europe doesn’t look very healthy either.
Britain’s economic position was as a highly amenable entrepôt inside Europe, and thus the default choice of traders and investors around the world.
Although I agree that this was insufficient in spreading wealth around the country, the blame for that lies inside Westminster and Treasury.
Brexit killed the golden goose. It is truly difficult to think of viable alternative economic models.
The UK is a big economy in its own right, and the balance of trade in the single market was not in its favour. Thinking that it can prosper as merely a European entrepôt is more of a dead duck than a golden goose.
It astounds me that so many are reluctant to recognise that we were getting closer and closer to insolvency whilst our standard of living declined in the SM. That was mainly our own fault but the idea that continuing on the same course was either viable or sane really is delusional. I completely accept that the necessary changes could have been done within the EU but disruption and poor relative performance was inevitable.
The idea that Britain’s “standard of living declined in the SM” is…
…unique.
We were living well beyond our means with a standard of living we were not earning and falling into debt. Those are the facts. We went from having a significant surplus on foreign investment to an almost unsustainable deficit because so many assets were sold to cover the deficits. If you think that was success you really are delusional.
Brexit has made us collectively poorer by causing big falls in trade and investment. The means we were living beyond have reduced further. How does that help?
I really don't understand your logic.
We need to reduce consumption. That involves reducing income in real terms. We need to reduce our currency value because we were not competitive at the previous exchange rate. We need to decrease borrowing by our government. The pressure from the markets is ensuring that. These are small steps in the right direction to a sustainable economy. They hurt because we are bringing ourselves closer to our real earnings. We have got used to living beyond those means over more than 20 years.
As I have said we could have taken steps in these directions within the EU but it was frankly too comfortable and we were destined to proceed down the same route. Our imports from the EU have fallen sharply. Some of that has been offset by increased imports from elsewhere but a lot of this has been fuel related.
What is clear is that the comparator is not between where we were in the SM and where we are now. What we had was not sustainable. Things had to change. And they still need to.
But the direct effect of leaving the Single Market is to bring those earnings down. I still don't understand how that helps get into balance if we are living beyond our means. There are two ways get into balance: increase our earnings or reduce our spending. The second will be forced on us at some point whether we are in the Single Market or not, as Greece also discovered. Brexit just means it happens with more pain.
Your assumption is that the SM was increasing income. That was not necessarily so. Firstly, we were importing £80bn of goods that were not being made here every year. That was draining cash and spending power from the UK. Secondly, the elastic supply of labour did mean that employers were open to employing more people (reducing unemployment) but we were very poor at investing in capital goods or training. There is now more pressure to do those things but an economy based on highly elastic supplies of labour is obviously suffering from the change of mindset, despite high levels of immigration.
The fundamental point remains we needed to change.
That actually wasn't my assumption. My assertion, backed up by a raft of evidence, is that being out of the Single Market makes us poorer compared with being in. It's also intuitive. If you increase costs of trade it results in less of it. It also makes the UK a less interesting place to invest in. This is showing in business investment stats, which weren't great before but have become woeful since the Brexit vote.
You don't have high wage economies unless you have people buying the stuff you produce, and you are making it in the first place. Ultimately we will be living within our means.
This applies equally to Scotland if it chooses to be independent. Not the choice I would make for various reasons, but it is a valid choice. Nevertheless an independent Scotland will be a very austere place. It would be living within its means.
This brings me to a different point about living within our means. I don't wholly agree that austerity is an unavoidable way to get into a balance, which I think you are arguing. Greece is an extreme example where we can think there was a better way to do it. The Osborne austerity, which I thought at the time to be necessary, I now think to have been a mistake. A slightly inflationary policy would have least kept the gap between spending and earning steady while not depressing both economy and living standard and might have actually reduced the gap.
So to return the assumption I didn't make, if Osborne hadn't gone for austerity, our earning under the SM would have increased, but it had nothing to do with membership. You may however disagree with me that the alternative to austerity would have been better.
Claremont Institute Fellow: "even if conducted legitimately, elections no longer reflect the will of the people" therefore the right should stop participating in "the technocratic accumulation of votes" https://twitter.com/UrbanAchievr/status/1601240384054886400
Why? Football is about winning, not being the most sexy footballing side. Brazil looked tired and I doubt they would have got past France anyway.
What's all this "France" business?
They have a massive quarter to get through first.
I’m resigned to our fate.
Well I'm not. 50/50 game. If we play well and get the breaks we're going through. Then a VERY winnable semi, and after that ... well let's just say a prospect even more exciting (!) than GPTr2d2 awaits.
Loving your optimism but I’ve watched England sports teams too long…
We've just won the 20/20 WC and the latest data for football is semi then final. I think you're doing that "don't tempt fate' thing. Irrational but deeply understandable so I'll play along - France will kill us!
In all the years I’ve watched the sports I follow (cricket, football, rugby), England have won three World Cup tournaments (four if you include the previous T20 win, which I don’t think was a World Cup). I think this England tea is good, but we are playing the World Cup winners from 2018, with probably the worlds best player, and I rate our chances no higher than 10-15%.
For the tournament? That looks about right. I'd go a bit higher but not much.
Nope, for tomorrow. I yearn to be surprised.
Oh that's a real outlier assessment. Market gives us a 40% chance. You should be lumping on France!
Comments
As many have said before, and you have surely understood without too much difficulty, Brexit has just given us more tools in the toolbox. Tools don't build things on their own, competent users of those tools build things. Brexit wasn't a vote to eliminate useless Governments and their even more useless administrators - if it was, it would have been 99% in favour not 52%.
The upshot is, baring anything unexpected, the U.K. is over the pandemic. We just need to recover from it, with may take decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_Madness_pools?wprov=sfla1
As I have said we could have taken steps in these directions within the EU but it was frankly too comfortable and we were destined to proceed down the same route. Our imports from the EU have fallen sharply. Some of that has been offset by increased imports from elsewhere but a lot of this has been fuel related.
What is clear is that the comparator is not between where we were in the SM and where we are now. What we had was not sustainable. Things had to change. And they still need to.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4242051#Comment_4242051
They are young. They will probably peak in 2026
Also explains the Brexit vote.
"It has become extremely common in popular culture to predict the outcomes of each game, even among non-sports fans; it is estimated that tens of millions of Americans participate in a bracket pool contest every year.
Mainstream media outlets such as ESPN, CBS Sports and Fox Sports host tournaments online where contestants can enter for free. Employers have also noticed a change in the behavior of employees during this time: they have seen an increase in the number of sick days used, extended lunch breaks and even the rescheduling of conference calls to allow for more tournament watching.Many handicappers and pundits also offer advice for winning their own bracket."
https://youtu.be/LRq_SAuQDec
I am afraid to say I don’t do the same for you. I can’t remember anything you say 3 seconds after I read it
Electricity accelerated economic development and reduced abject poverty
Wealth begat civil society and reduced oppression of women
And political repression
Pollution is worse, although London was famously smelly (the great stink)
Peaceful democracies typically don’t go to war with each other
So electricity has helped each of those. May be not globally but the Uk is in almost every way better than in the Victorian era
As per local media and Telegram channels, he fell from the balcony when police raided his flat.
UX designer Ignat Goldman tweeted that the deceased had publicly opposed the war in Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/mbk_center/status/1601249663977299970
Seems to involve 'the last A4 powered train to Aberdeen'.
The fundamental point remains we needed to change.
Claremont Institute Fellow: "even if conducted legitimately, elections no longer reflect the will of the people" therefore the right should stop participating in "the technocratic accumulation of votes"
https://twitter.com/UrbanAchievr/status/1601240384054886400
The institute is not a fringe organisation on the right; it is part of the Trump establishment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claremont_Institute
Messi has the look of Destiny
Argentina to win the Cup?
The Senate election in 2024 is now going to be a messy brawl.
Sinema party switch jumpstarts Arizona's 2024 Senate battle
The last critical Arizona Senate race ended a month ago, and the next one is already kicking off — with pressure on Democrats to dodge a political disaster.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/09/sinema-party-arizona-senate-2024-00073301
I fear it was the latter. After all, net immigration is running at similar levels to before, just with a different national mix and more paperwork.
Most incompetent coup.
Makes Donald Fucking Trumps little effort look like 7 Days In May.
We look ahead to another lost decade.
England v Argentina
or
France v Argentina
Would make for an epic and excellent Final
Anything else will be a grave disappointment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brave_Little_Toaster_(novel)
Tragic
Currently planning a Straffordite restoration of Absolute Monarchy.
Deterioration in trade balance looks roughly the same here and across the channel.
On exports, again not much to see, except a notable outperformance for the UK post 2016 due to a weaker pound:
https://youtu.be/_S2G8jhhUHg?t=709
That's the thing about this - sometimes he seems loopy enough to believe what he is saying (and that may save him from prosecution where intending unlawfulness is required), but other times it is clear he knows he is making false, dangerous claims, but unlike other politcians he has no scruples about burning down the whole system so long as he wins. Rules are for other people.
This is the pale, pure-European elite from Buenos Aires. About 5% of the population
You don't have high wage economies unless you have people buying the stuff you produce, and you are making it in the first place. Ultimately we will be living within our means.
This applies equally to Scotland if it chooses to be independent. Not the choice I would make for various reasons, but it is a valid choice. Nevertheless an independent Scotland will be a very austere place. It would be living within its means.
This brings me to a different point about living within our means. I don't wholly agree that austerity is an unavoidable way to get into a balance, which I think you are arguing. Greece is an extreme example where we can think there was a better way to do it. The Osborne austerity, which I thought at the time to be necessary, I now think to have been a mistake. A slightly inflationary policy would have least kept the gap between spending and earning steady while not depressing both economy and living standard and might have actually reduced the gap.
So to return the assumption I didn't make, if Osborne hadn't gone for austerity, our earning under the SM would have increased, but it had nothing to do with membership. You may however disagree with me that the alternative to austerity would have been better.
I don't - I'm not bothered, the most bothered I've been is now when I've come on here to respond to a post by saying I'm not bothered.
You can tell those who really loathe her because they call her Me-ghan.
Extra time we get.
PUNCH IM!!!
LOL