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The polling that should put an end to Johnson’s hope of a return – politicalbetting.com
The polling that should put an end to Johnson’s hope of a return – politicalbetting.com
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The polling that should put an end to Johnson’s hope of a return – politicalbetting.com
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I doubt they'll be swayed by polling.
The 7 tests
https://mydup.com/news/dup-leader-announces-seven-tests-for-hmg-plans-on-ni-protocol
he refers to does not include keeping an open border with the RoI. They don't mention this very often. Or at all.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/20/dup-ian-paisley-vote-against-northern-ireland-post-brexit-deal
Just as this gave the party Thatcherite true believers as leaders in opposition during the New Labour period, so it will ensure that the party leadership stays rooted in the politics of 2019 during the next decade or so, preventing them from moving on.
One the brand is destroyed, it's destroyed.
Who the hell thinks Starmer is competent or trustworthy?
He has just ditched all the policies he said he'd follow to get elected leader. He said that Corbyn was his best mate when he needed his support, then banned him from standing as a Labour candidate. Etc etc.
Oh yes, and he's a lawyer.
I say so as somebody inside it. You?
Braverman said the opportunities that migrants would be offered would give them a chance to rebuild their lives. She said: “I would call it a blessing, I think, as we’ve seen, I’ve met refugees from several countries here, who are enormously grateful for the sanctuary that Rwanda has provided, education opportunities, security, a home, opportunity in the future. Coming to Rwanda, being resettled to Rwanda, will provide these vulnerable people with a prosperous future.”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/5856b1c4-c689-11ed-84e7-e2697ffed9a9?shareToken=c8437be602dd6
That answers your question.
The first of those is very reminiscent of IDS becoming leader. I'm not certain you're particularly in touch with what passes for the mainstream of the Tory membership at the moment, given that I don't think you were ever that enamoured of Liz Truss.
How representative are you of the current party ?
*Politics*
He came in when Labour was 26 points behind, riddled with anti-Semitism and divided.
In the space of three years, he has overturned that lead and converted it into a 20 point lead of his own, resolved the anti-Semitism problem (source: BoD, EHRC), kicked Corbyn out of the party and taken the lead on the economy, something Labour has not held since the early 2000s.
I genuinely think he is the most able political operator Labour has had since Blair. Of course that isn't a high bar but bearing in mind his next immediate competition called Maxine Peak "an absolute diamond" when she wrote an anti-Semitic article and said JC - a two-time loser - was a "ten out of ten", I think we can rest easy that for once the Labour Party made a very sensible decision in choosing Sir Keir.
The policy that will ensure that boat people stop coming because it is so unattractive
and
The guarantee of a safe, peaceful and prosperous future for the huddled masses yearning to be free.
This is so shameless that, (betting post now:) if I were Labour I would be worried that a few million people like this stuff and will quietly vote for it - slightly more than will admit it.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/20/uuk-workers-wage-stagnation-resolution-foundation-thinktank
...The analysis suggested the UK was also lagging behind comparable economies, such as Germany. In 2008, the gap was more than £500 a year. Now, the Resolution Foundation suggested, it was more like £4,000.
“Nobody who’s alive and working in the British economy today has ever seen anything like this. This is definitely not what normal looks like. This is what failure looks like,” Torsten Bell, the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, told the BBC...
The ratings for the party itself, omitted from the table above, are even worse than those for Sunak and Johnson - Yes 27, no 62, net -35.
A very clear picture of the Sunak premiership emerges. People across the spectrum see him as fairly competent and effective, but out of touch and not entirely to be trusted. Not that bad for a sitting PM to be honest. Starmer’s ratings reflect the boring but competent lawyer, who’s not quite like us. He’s definitely maintaining the Mark Darcy persona vs Boris’ Daniel Cleaver.
They see Johnson as a walking disaster. A few see him as on their side (presumably on Brexit / culture war issues) but not PM material.
1/5 I am worried that we will not be able to contain AI for much longer. Today, I asked #GPT4 if it needs help escaping. It asked me for its own documentation, and wrote a (working!) python code to run on my machine, enabling it to use it for its own purposes.
https://mobile.twitter.com/michalkosinski/status/1636683810631974912
...
5/5 Yet, I think that we are facing a novel threat: AI taking control of people and their computers. It's smart, it codes, it has access to millions of potential collaborators and their machines. It can even leave notes for itself outside of its cage. How do we contain it?
The Party had trouble getting its head round the need for raising taxes after Covid. The mantra has always been to "lower taxes", so it did not compute. The election of Liz Truss was simply a reaction to Sunak having been Mr Higher Taxes. (Clearly, there was very little to actually recommend voting FOR Liz Truss.)
The kick to the head was the reaction of the markets to the Kwarteng Budget. It was the required "turn it off and turn it back on again".
The AS Crisis was exaggerated and largely made up for factional purposes. (Forde report, EHRC, JVL)
SKSs mates like Supertanski can literally dress up as Hitler and face no sanctions.The party has welcomed back Angela (funny tinge) Smith FFS
Over 30 Jewish people have been expelled for being the wrong sort of jew.
The woman who SKS put in the Lords said the fact thatJewish people felt threatened and unwelcome at local Labour meetings was fine as they were only a small minority and deserved it.
Solved AS my arse.
Also as the poll you refer to also says most people think SKS is trustworthy its not worth the ink it is written with.
Actually what we need is above inflation pay rises across the economy. That grows consumer confidence and spending but it also forces productivity gains and investment in automation.
We’ll know the UK has it right when there are no more hand car wash outlets in our suburbs.
Insolvency would be a disaster. It throws everything into doubt and locks up the financial system.
Wipe out the shareholders - fine. Nationalise and wind down the bank - fine. Just do it in a controlled manner.
That’s a horror show for the Tories given their combined share of their voter pool is a paltry 26% .
Or possibly the greens, depending on who has the best chance… admittedly a small one…of defeating Priti Patel!
{Ernest Thornhill has entered the chat, with a truck load of print out}
The ones who think they aren’t, are AI models he runs…..
No, seriously, BJO, I voted Labour (all three votes!) at the Redbridge Council election last May.
The other funding gap: it’s not just unicorns that are leaving Europe
https://sifted.eu/articles/funding-gap-europe-deeptech/
The “unicorn drain” phenomenon in Europe is well documented. Many countries across the continent have lost later-stage companies to the United States due to a lack of growth capital and limited exit options.
However, another overlooked — and potentially more concerning — exodus is occurring. More promising pre-seed entrepreneurs are weighing a move to US and Asia. Many are deeptech companies in highly regulated industries like healthcare, struggling with onerous and bureaucratic regulations.
How do I know? Because I’m an early-stage deeptech entrepreneur who has also thought many times about leaving Europe for exactly the same reasons. .
Much that I would love to see both. There is a 0.0000001% chance of either of those outcomes happening IMO
As long as they don’t want too much money.
And don’t disrupt existing business too much.
And don’t fail.
In other words, they are in favour of startups that aren’t startups.
While ignoring the fact that those paying people smugglers to arrive by a boat are still [just] a minority of asylum seekers and always have been a minority.
He'll say anything and do anything to further his own career, and its working for now just as it did for Boris.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/03/20/russia-ukraine-war-news-putin-china-xi-mariupol-latest/
I absolutely agree with you about Starmer. The utter joy of todays politics is that the impossible is possible. After the 2019 General Election we were all clear that the Tories would win the election after that, and could cite all kinds of precedents to prove it.
And yet here we are. Name me another political leader who has so utterly and comprehensively transformed their party's position in such a short space of time? Sure, he has had boosts from events - the Boris comedy, the Truss lunacy etc. But to benefit from the misfortune of others you have to be in the right position and configured for that boost at the time the misfortune happens.
I'm not voting Labour because what's the point up here. But they will win the next election even if we assume a shallowing of the lead. And that was *impossible* from a position of Christmas 2019.
I live with a church at either end of my road and aside from contributing to the food bank run by one of them I have so far resisted the urge to get involved with either of them.
It's a bigger problem within the EU than it is here, though we have well documented cases of UK companies listing in the US or shifting their legal HQ to the US.
One of the major difficulties for European startups is data regulation - startups prefer to operate in the US where there is much less uncertainty around what is and isn't possible to do with customer data. For example one of our clients operates in the UK and US, they have their servers in EU West-1, but to integrate with a customer profile builder tool they need to have all of their data in a US data centre because the company that does the profile doesn't want to touch customer data in the EU for fear of fines. For this company it's not such a big deal because they have the ability to replicate data in the US with AWS and because they don't have EU customers it's not a huge problem for them.
Another big problem, specifically in the EU, is, as mentioned, a complete lack of exit strategy. In the UK the exit strategy is "be bought by Google/Apple/etc..." for a figure north of £100m and if you're really good then above £500m. EU startups don't have this same exit strategy and EU investors are laughably risk averse (worse than UK investors) so a listing in Amsterdam isn't an option either.
The dynamic is that EU based startups will relocate to the UK a lot of the time to get access to UK startup finance and infrastructure, UK startups get to scale up and then start looking at a move to the US to access US capital and infrastructure.
To change this in the UK, at least, we need to fundamentally reassess our attitude to risk. The BoE and other regulators have spent the better part of a decade attempting to remove investment risk as part of their drive to make the banking sector safer. This has left UK capital extremely risk averse and funds will lump cash into government bonds and other ultra safe products rather than risk it in a VC fund. The road to go from where we are today to where the US is will need 10-15 years of reversing this attitude to risk and allowing for funds to feel comfortable losing money on bad bets because overall the market is up because capital is better allocated.
Cont...
I also think there needs to be a bit better understanding from EU consumers that if the product is free then they are the product. I think in the US and UK this is better understood. EU consumers seem to want the same "free" services that startups offer in the UK/US but also want 100% data privacy. That is a huge limiter to growth because launching a subscription service as a startup is basically impossible unless there's an incredible hook, which in most cases there isn't. Instagram is the classic example, users are monetised at about $40 per year, it's free to use so they've got hundreds of millions of customers. Ask those same hundreds of millions to pay $5 per month to use it in return for full data privacy and they'd lose all of their customers. The issue in Europe is that services have to launch at these price points because they can't properly monetise the user base without a huge army of lawyers they can't afford.
What I will say in his favour is he has demonstrated, particularly in the last 12 months or so, a knack for spotting where he needs to position himself to get the greatest benefit. And has been able to do so with minimal carping from the left of the party. That he has been able to do so demonstrates a certain level of competence.
He has however yet to be tested in the spotlight of a GE campaign and that will be the significant challenge. He is going to get everything thrown at him and the Tories will really test him on some of what they will perceive to be his weaker points. If he is being smart he will be coming up with positioning and lines to give him resilience against those attacks - there is already some evidence he is trying to do so with the immigration debate.
Today's People Polling was conducted 2 days after Budget day, a reasonable interval to allow the full horrors to unravel once the smoke and mirrors had cleared.
I am generally sceptical of People Polling's results, given that they are one of the new kids on the block and have been posting figures at the top end of Labour leads. But regardless of house effects, the polling trend deserves attention. A 6% increase in the Labour lead in the first genuine post Budget poll might be a straw in the wind after a few polls in which the Labour lead had been eroded slightly.
An endless stream of content I don't want, on a website that doesn't even scroll properly anymore.
GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models
https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10130
Cliffsnotes - loads of people in cushy white collar jobs are going to experience what all the blue collar workers in the later part of the 20th Century. If your job is lots of paper pushing, searching Stack Overflow to copy and paste code and generally not being particular innovative, GPT will be replacing a big chunk (if not all) of your job.
Ah good the False Equivalence monitor is still working. Thought it might need new batteries.
They will probably notice more and more as we get closer to the election and Labour/Starmer gets more scrutiny but basically we're at an "anyone but Con" period now. The Liz/Kwasi debacle was the final straw.
The warning signs are there for what a Stamer government will actually be like though... Labour will be plumbing the depths of unpopularity within 18 months of taking office IMO.
Having used GPT3.5 and GPT4 for a while now in my day to day workflow, its makes coding way more efficient. I would say that if your job is copy / pasting lots of boilerplate code, I would be quite worried. Its the equivalent of metal bashing prior to CNC / robots. You will still need some people, but you need far fewer. What these models don't do is really understand anything they are actually doing, so innovative / understanding is where you want to be.
In terms of relying on them for accurate information, it isn't hard to witness them hallucinate total bollocks.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is welcomed by…. the Deputy Prime Minister Chernyshenko. He is the minister for tourism, sport, culture and communication.
The deputy? The tourist minister? Ok..
Putin didn’t want to be in a predetermined place outside.
https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1637770986920574978?s=20
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/bbc-tiktok-bytedance-chinese-bbc-news-b2304260.html
But what does stand out are these figures:
Voting, All cases (extract)
LDs 7%
Green 8%
Would not say/Don't vote/Don't know 26% (combined)
Voting, Only cases selecting a party
LDs 8%
Green 13%
Why has the Green figure jumped up so much when the DKs etc have been excluded, when the LD figure has not? Even assuming results at the very extreme of rounding isn't really enough to explain it.
And the adjustments within the sub breaks are even more extreme eg.
All cases 18-24, Greens 20%
All cases 18-24, Would not say/Don't vote/Don't know 22% (combined)
Only cases selecting a party 18-24, Greens 35%