Is Slow Horses the perfect TV drama? I think it might be, you know. It’s clever. It’s fun. It combines the action scenes of a spy thriller with the joy of seeing a marvellously greasy Gary Oldman contemplating washing his armpits with Fairy Liquid.
I think the comment about BBC is interesting...not only is this a great show, they don't mess about, this is the 3rd season in 18 months. BBC would still be talking about how we might get the 2nd season by 2025.
It is, quite simply, brilliant. Worth paying for Apple TV for.
I thought the ending to the first season was weak (which was a shame as the build up was great), but second season was great throughout. The show is worth watching just for Gary Oldman character put-down lines.
He is where I aspire to take my line management style.
Is Slow Horses the perfect TV drama? I think it might be, you know. It’s clever. It’s fun. It combines the action scenes of a spy thriller with the joy of seeing a marvellously greasy Gary Oldman contemplating washing his armpits with Fairy Liquid.
I think the comment about BBC is interesting...not only is this a great show, they don't mess about, this is the 3rd season in 18 months. BBC would still be talking about how we might get the 2nd season by 2025.
It is, quite simply, brilliant. Worth paying for Apple TV for.
I think we will soon see if OpenAI has developed AGI....as there won't be any human staff to do the development.
It’s remarkable isn’t it? What a fuck up by OpenAI
Also: why??? Can it really be true that they’re close to or have closed upon AGI? That would trigger weird and chaotic behaviour
Occam's razor he has lied to the board about something, it doesn't have to be super AGI, there is talk for instance he has been out trying to organise building a rival to Nvidia for chip manufacture.
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
Redistribution means moving resources from one group to another group. Currently, resources are going to the poor via welfare. Those resources are now going to to be redirected to richer people. They may have come from richer people paying taxes in the first place, but that was the status quo. So they are being redistributed from poor people (who currently receive them) to rich people.
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
Redistribution means moving resources from one group to another group. Currently, resources are going to the poor via welfare. Those resources are now going to to be redirected to richer people. They may have come from richer people paying taxes in the first place, but that was the status quo. So they are being redistributed from poor people (who currently receive them) to rich people.
It isn't redistribution because recipients of handouts didn't produce that money in the first place....
Is Slow Horses the perfect TV drama? I think it might be, you know. It’s clever. It’s fun. It combines the action scenes of a spy thriller with the joy of seeing a marvellously greasy Gary Oldman contemplating washing his armpits with Fairy Liquid.
I think the comment about BBC is interesting...not only is this a great show, they don't mess about, this is the 3rd season in 18 months. BBC would still be talking about how we might get the 2nd season by 2025.
It is, quite simply, brilliant. Worth paying for Apple TV for.
I thought the ending to the first season was weak (which was a shame as the build up was great), but second season was great throughout. The show is worth watching just for Gary Oldman character put-down lines.
He is where I aspire to take my line management style.
Here at Urquhart Ltd, I have also taken inspiration from him.....
"When Cartwright comes back, tie him to his desk by his bollocks. I want my people in here, doing nothing..."
There’s a heavy swell between the islands. I’m in this
Alone
Why, did the guy at the helm jump overboard ?
This reminds me of when Leon was alone on a Maldivian island, while being served a five course breakfast by his personal Sri Lankan chef.
Cackling squid boat guy dropped me at the wrong pier. So I had to get to my new digs. There are no roads on this island. So you can only go by water
I found a guy with a little speedboat. Only problem was that the solitary other passenger was a Khmer dude so drunk he kept slumping towards the water - where he would have drowned
An adventure. Now for gin
Well done, you've travelled to the far ends of the earth but have finally succeeded in finding someone more drunk than you.
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
Actually this is always a bit incorrect. The US tax system is highly redistributive of the riches taxes, the difference between a Sweden and US, is everybody in places like Sweden pay high taxes, historically in the US the middle to upper middle class had lower federal taxes (these days with all the local, state and federal taxes, US isn't low tax to anybody).
The the "dirty little secret" that the likes of Polly back in the day didn't really like to talk too much about when saying every week we need to be like Sweden, if you want a Swedish system, we all going to pay a lot more tax, not just the rich.
To be honest, I thought when I was writing it that this was probably a description of how things are perceived rather than how things are. Please treat the Sweden/USA bit as a rhetorical device! Correction accepted. Which is slightly ironic given that I started out as a point of pedantry.
I'm probably more with Mortimer than 148grss on the extent to which the government SHOULD redistribute wealth, though it's a very worthwhile argument to have and I'm interested in exploring both sides of it. But the hill I will die on is the semantic one of what redistribution actually means!
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
Redistribution means moving resources from one group to another group. Currently, resources are going to the poor via welfare. Those resources are now going to to be redirected to richer people. They may have come from richer people paying taxes in the first place, but that was the status quo. So they are being redistributed from poor people (who currently receive them) to rich people.
It isn't redistribution because recipients of handouts didn't produce that money in the first place....
No one "produces" money except the government - rich people have accumulated capital via multiple means, but that doesn't mean that those means are productive.
The island is another stunner however. Untouched jungle down to the sea
Last night a G&T cost me $2. On the beach. Cambodia is THE place right now
Surely that will be claimed back, and actually cost you nothing?
I might just take the hit myself. I haven’t spent a cent in a week. This was in a little backpacker town in Koh Rong - Kaoh Touch
I don’t want to bore on - heaven forfend - but Cambodia is in an incredible sweet spot now: travel wise. Phnom Penh is a brilliantly interesting Asian city with good food and bars and nightlife and history and vice - but without the insane traffic or expense of Bangkok, singapore, Hong Kong
You’ve got Angkor Wat - one of the top ten historical sites in the entire world - just down the road. You’ve got pristine jungle and untouched mountains in between
And you’ve got BEAUTIFUL islands with lovely hotels - or empty beaches with wooden shacks - ie like Thailand 30-40 years ago - just offshore. The people are fun and friendly and hedonistic. And they drink all day
And it’s all really cheap (outside the luxe hotels)
as a tropical destination I don’t think it has a rival anywhere in the world. Not even close
Vietnam is great but it doesn’t have Angkor. Thailand has been done. The Caribbean is lovely but it’s boring (Mexico apart but eek Mexico). Myanmar is too weird, the Philippines too dangerous and the food is awful. Indonesia is another world but hard to get to. Etc
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
I also fundamentally don't think that the government's job is to featherbed.
The moral difference between cutting taxation (which is in effect confiscation from the self sufficient, aspirational and productive) and cutting handouts (which should be a spur to creating more productive, self sufficient and aspirational individuals) needs to be made by a Tory government.
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
Redistribution means moving resources from one group to another group. Currently, resources are going to the poor via welfare. Those resources are now going to to be redirected to richer people. They may have come from richer people paying taxes in the first place, but that was the status quo. So they are being redistributed from poor people (who currently receive them) to rich people.
It isn't redistribution because recipients of handouts didn't produce that money in the first place....
No one "produces" money except the government - rich people have accumulated capital via multiple means, but that doesn't mean that those means are productive.
Oh god, have you been reading too many of that accounting professor's tweets?
May I ask an ignorant question about AI and its future. I was doing bits and pieces on the new AI thingy recently with someone who is a cutting edge enthusiast to see how it responded, including to stuff I was actually interested in.
My sense was that despite its amazing speed, it gave the strong sense of being a rapid but lazy student who had read the reviews but hadn't read the book or evaluated the argument.
So, for example, on law case X, it could summarise the issues but could not evaluate the weaknesses of the submissions on one particular side (even though they had been live streamed on the internet); on academic subject Y it had obviously read the major website and couldn't respond to a specific detailed question going beyond it.
This, I understand, is because if a source does not exist digitally then AI doesn't know it. This limitation is immense.
Most important modern books (there are millions) don't exist in that digital space SFAICS.
Will AI get beyond that limitation?
Chat GPT is a large language model, or LLM. Simplifying… LLMs can’t get beyond this limitation, no. That doesn’t mean LLMs aren’t potentially very useful, but they’re not really intelligent. It’s not even clear if they represent a significant step towards real general artificial intelligence. Of course, different AI systems probably will, at some point, go beyond that limitation.
The history of AI is the history of hype followed by disappointment, and also the history of discovering you can build computers to be very good at doing some things much better than people, but that doesn’t mean they do those things like people do them.
I think there is a strong future for LLMs in the Performative Bullshit jobs - the ones where people exist entirely to summarise others work in badly prepared powerpoint decks.
The LLMs can do the slide decks. And sit through the presentations. And give the presentations.
I work in digital health, including health AI. (Most of my past work in this area was on image analysis systems.) I’m seeing some interesting, practical uses for LLMs. Not the fantasies of the techno-utopian enthusiasts who don’t actually work in health (or sometimes don’t even work in computing), but just lots of solutions to help with practical problems. There’s real promise here (if you dig beneath the technobro bullshit).
When you say that, are you talking about how these things can augment our ability to design new medicines and such - which wouldn't be new, as such, as just a more powerful version of things we already have - or are you talking about how AI can be used as a suped up 111 and potentially do diagnostic work with symptoms typed in and medical records, etc? I've heard a desire to use AI in both, and I'm more sceptical of the latter than the former.
There are many different uses, and potential future uses, for AI, which will require many different sorts of AI system. AI is a very broad term. It’s like talking about drugs: drugs are important to healthcare, but aspirin, Ozempic and alcohol are all drugs, and all have very different uses in and implications for a health service. ChatGPT, the AI used to look at retinal images, and the AI that interprets an EEG are all very different. My first postdoc, we were building an AI system, but one that worked in a completely different way to, say, DALL·E.
The AI systems that people are excited about these days are generative AI, including large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. LLMs are not being used to design new drugs; that requires a different class of AI. LLMs are used for chatbots and so are touted as being useful for something like a souped up 111. Healthcare is high risk and there are challenges with anything patient-facing, of course.
I’ve just been in a lecture theatre where the guest speaker was someone who worked on 111. However, I wasn’t talking earlier about souping up 111, although there may be potential there, but about other uses around writing and using medical records, or situations where there is a clear structure defining good practice, so there’s less problem with the LLM going off the rails. You also have contexts where the LLM is assisting the healthcare practitioner, so they’re in control of any final output, reducing some of the problems you get if the LLM is acting unsupervised.
I think we will soon see if OpenAI has developed AGI....as there won't be any human staff to do the development.
It’s remarkable isn’t it? What a fuck up by OpenAI
Also: why??? Can it really be true that they’re close to or have closed upon AGI? That would trigger weird and chaotic behaviour
Occam's razor he has lied to the board about something, it doesn't have to be super AGI, there is talk for instance he has been out trying to organise building a rival to Nvidia for chip manufacture.
I don’t believe it’s just some commercial backstabbing. It’s all too weird
If you look at recent comments by OpenAI staff they are all quite strange. There’s an interview with the OpenAI alignment guy Ilya Sustkever (sp?) where he gets almost tearful. Sounds scared
If you had achieved something like AGI it would freak you out. Ilya S is known to be obsessed with alignment as AGI gets nearer
Here is the tweet statement by the guy who has just taken over from Altman
“Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of @OpenAI.
After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted. I had recently resigned from my role as CEO of Twitch due to the birth of my now 9 month old son. Spending time with him has been every bit as rewarding as I thought it would be, and I was happily avoiding full time employment.
I took this job because I believe that OpenAI is one of the most important companies currently in existence. When the board shared the situation and asked me to take the role, I did not make the decision lightly. Ultimately I felt that I had a duty to help if I could.”
Listen to that. “A duty to help if I could”. This guy is know to be an AGI doomster. Wants an AGI pause or slowdown as thinks it’s too dangerous
What does that imply?
It doesn’t sound like a corporate battle over shares or some guy trying to make extra bucks
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
I also fundamentally don't think that the government's job is to featherbed.
The moral difference between cutting taxation (which is in effect confiscation from the self sufficient, aspirational and productive) and cutting handouts (which should be a spur to creating more productive, self sufficient and aspirational individuals) needs to be made by a Tory government.
Are there no work houses, are there no prisons...
Yep, the liberal left big statists LOVE to squeeze the productive parts of the economy to help the unproductive.
I think the Tories are underestimating the possibility of RefUK settling in at around 15% in the polls and staying there until the election.
They have rebranded to Refuk: The Brexit Party just to remind voters who are grandparents in their mid 30s who actually delivered the glittering prize.
15% for Refuk:TBP would comprehensively gape the tories.
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
Redistribution means moving resources from one group to another group. Currently, resources are going to the poor via welfare. Those resources are now going to to be redirected to richer people. They may have come from richer people paying taxes in the first place, but that was the status quo. So they are being redistributed from poor people (who currently receive them) to rich people.
Sometimes I'm convinced this really is pedantsbickering.com
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
Redistribution means moving resources from one group to another group. Currently, resources are going to the poor via welfare. Those resources are now going to to be redirected to richer people. They may have come from richer people paying taxes in the first place, but that was the status quo. So they are being redistributed from poor people (who currently receive them) to rich people.
It isn't redistribution because recipients of handouts didn't produce that money in the first place....
No one "produces" money except the government - rich people have accumulated capital via multiple means, but that doesn't mean that those means are productive.
No, but lots of people have wealth, and lots of people produce it. "Money" is a red herring. Redistribution moves wealth from one group to another. If it wasn't happening one group would have it. That group would be, by definition, rich. If you are redistributing, you are almost certainly redistributing from the rich to poor. In theory you could have a redistributive system which redistributed from poor to rich. You could tax everyone £100, say, and give it all to the king. But almost all taxation systems - ours included - goes in total the other way. Almost all taxation systems are redistributive and redistributive from rich to poor. If you do less redistribution, it is the rich who win and the poor who lose. In Robin Hood, who 'redstributed' the wealth? It was Robin Hood, wasn't it? Who took from the rich and gave to the poor. It wasn't the Sheriff of Nottingham.
You haven't got anywhere to go with this 148grss! Devote your energies instead to the much more important and interesting argument of WHY we should or should not redistribute wealth from rich to poor.
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
Redistribution means moving resources from one group to another group. Currently, resources are going to the poor via welfare. Those resources are now going to to be redirected to richer people. They may have come from richer people paying taxes in the first place, but that was the status quo. So they are being redistributed from poor people (who currently receive them) to rich people.
It isn't redistribution because recipients of handouts didn't produce that money in the first place....
No one "produces" money except the government - rich people have accumulated capital via multiple means, but that doesn't mean that those means are productive.
Oh god, have you been reading too many of that accounting professor's tweets?
I don't consider myself particularly great at microeconomics, but MMT and general labour theory seem pretty self explanatory. Money is the expression of labour value - how much your labour is worth. In a capitalist system labour value is not rewarded based on productivity, it is based on how much profit can be extracted for it by capitalists. So much productive labour and socially positive labour is low paid - either because it is hard to extract a profit (looking at things like healthcare or teaching, for example) or because the labour is deemed unskilled and therefore you can pay them less and extract maximum profit from their labour (thinking about shelf stackers, farm workers or other manual labourers). This was extremely clear during the pandemic - the essential workers were actually many of those low paid workers who do work that is necessary for modern society to function. If their labour is so necessary one would assume it would be highly paid - but it isn't because whilst money is an expression of labour value, it is the system of capitalism that assigns what labour is valuable.
That's what I mean by saying that the accumulated capital of rich people doesn't necessarily equal productivity. So when you lower taxation on the rich and lower welfare on the poor, you reinforce what is already the redistributive system that is capitalism (which redistributes the labour value of the worker to the owner via profits) and take away the only safety net anyone has when that extractivist tendency is so high that the wage given to those workers doesn't cover the cost of living.
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
Redistribution means moving resources from one group to another group. Currently, resources are going to the poor via welfare. Those resources are now going to to be redirected to richer people. They may have come from richer people paying taxes in the first place, but that was the status quo. So they are being redistributed from poor people (who currently receive them) to rich people.
It isn't redistribution because recipients of handouts didn't produce that money in the first place....
Poor people should be grateful to the wealth creators and trickle down economics is on par with the tooth fairy, Labour been on the side of the poor and the Old testament
F1: slightly odd season. Profitable throughout, never been in the red, but apart from a handful of races almost all the weekends have been modestly green.
Did get shafted by a great Piastri bet failing due to the safety car in Silverstone, but benefited from unexpected Perez long shots earlier so probably evens out.
On topic - who knows? When the Tories do pop back into the 30s - probably briefly - it will likely either be a statistical outlier (and probably by a firm with house effects that benefits the Tories inter-elections), or be in response to some momentary political effect, whether a govt initiative, Labour screwing something up, or externally.
However, on other polling counters:
- it is nearly 2 years since the Tories last recorded a lead (6/12/21, Red&Wilt, following the initial breaking of Partygate, and hot on the heels of the Paterson vote); - it is 20 months since any poll did not have Labour in the lead (17-21/3/22, Kantar) - it is nearly 14 months since any poll did not have a double-digit Labour lead (22-26/9/22, Kantar), pre-Truss/Kwarteng 'budget').
No party since Blair's Labour, pre-Iraq, has recorded such consistent and enduring dominance in the polls as Labour is currently doing, based on that last stat. The last calendar year in which any one party recorded double-digit leads throughout was 1999.
I definitely would have guessed Cameron pre-expenses scandal.
The longest period the Tories managed of double-digit leads under Cameron was indeed in 2008, but only from late April through to late September, so just five months. In fact, Labour even managed to record a lead in a poll in January that year - something they wouldn't do again until September 2010.
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
I also fundamentally don't think that the government's job is to featherbed.
The moral difference between cutting taxation (which is in effect confiscation from the self sufficient, aspirational and productive) and cutting handouts (which should be a spur to creating more productive, self sufficient and aspirational individuals) needs to be made by a Tory government.
Are there no work houses, are there no prisons...
Yep, the liberal left big statists LOVE to squeeze the productive parts of the economy to help the unproductive.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
During covid, who was a more essential worker - a nurse, a shelf stacker, an Amazon delivery driver; or an investment banker?
As my other post describes - rewarded by capitalism with more money is not the same as productive.
On topic - who knows? When the Tories do pop back into the 30s - probably briefly - it will likely either be a statistical outlier (and probably by a firm with house effects that benefits the Tories inter-elections), or be in response to some momentary political effect, whether a govt initiative, Labour screwing something up, or externally.
However, on other polling counters:
- it is nearly 2 years since the Tories last recorded a lead (6/12/21, Red&Wilt, following the initial breaking of Partygate, and hot on the heels of the Paterson vote); - it is 20 months since any poll did not have Labour in the lead (17-21/3/22, Kantar) - it is nearly 14 months since any poll did not have a double-digit Labour lead (22-26/9/22, Kantar), pre-Truss/Kwarteng 'budget').
No party since Blair's Labour, pre-Iraq, has recorded such consistent and enduring dominance in the polls as Labour is currently doing, based on that last stat. The last calendar year in which any one party recorded double-digit leads throughout was 1999.
I suspect the Tories will get a permanent boost from the IHT abolition. So it affects virtually no one, but it triggers everyone. It is clever politics by the rejuvenated Rishi.
I very much doubt it, not least because it's so easy to play as Sunak changing the system to benefit his family to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds.
F1: slightly odd season. Profitable throughout, never been in the red, but apart from a handful of races almost all the weekends have been modestly green.
Did get shafted by a great Piastri bet failing due to the safety car in Silverstone, but benefited from unexpected Perez long shots earlier so probably evens out.
Mt Dancer, your tips have been great on the whole (made me a few hundred quid over the season).
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
Redistribution means moving resources from one group to another group. Currently, resources are going to the poor via welfare. Those resources are now going to to be redirected to richer people. They may have come from richer people paying taxes in the first place, but that was the status quo. So they are being redistributed from poor people (who currently receive them) to rich people.
It isn't redistribution because recipients of handouts didn't produce that money in the first place....
No one "produces" money except the government - rich people have accumulated capital via multiple means, but that doesn't mean that those means are productive.
No, but lots of people have wealth, and lots of people produce it. "Money" is a red herring. Redistribution moves wealth from one group to another. If it wasn't happening one group would have it. That group would be, by definition, rich. If you are redistributing, you are almost certainly redistributing from the rich to poor. In theory you could have a redistributive system which redistributed from poor to rich. You could tax everyone £100, say, and give it all to the king. But almost all taxation systems - ours included - goes in total the other way. Almost all taxation systems are redistributive and redistributive from rich to poor. If you do less redistribution, it is the rich who win and the poor who lose. In Robin Hood, who 'redstributed' the wealth? It was Robin Hood, wasn't it? Who took from the rich and gave to the poor. It wasn't the Sheriff of Nottingham.
You haven't got anywhere to go with this 148grss! Devote your energies instead to the much more important and interesting argument of WHY we should or should not redistribute wealth from rich to poor.
Okay, I guess I didn't explain the first step of redistribution of wealth I see in society - which I explain in my other post below - the redistribution of labour value to rich people via profits. Profits are, by definition, the excess value that owners / shareholders, whatever, can make from labour. Meaning that labourers are not given the full value of their work.
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
I also fundamentally don't think that the government's job is to featherbed.
The moral difference between cutting taxation (which is in effect confiscation from the self sufficient, aspirational and productive) and cutting handouts (which should be a spur to creating more productive, self sufficient and aspirational individuals) needs to be made by a Tory government.
Are there no work houses, are there no prisons...
Yep, the liberal left big statists LOVE to squeeze the productive parts of the economy to help the unproductive.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
Currently we have a very large segment of the British population that is unproductive. The retired. They’ve been doing pretty well under this government.
And we have another big segment of the population that is productive: people of working age. They’ve been shafted by this government.
Squeezing the productive parts of the economy to help the unproductive is precisely what this Tory administration has been doing since 2010.
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
Redistribution means moving resources from one group to another group. Currently, resources are going to the poor via welfare. Those resources are now going to to be redirected to richer people. They may have come from richer people paying taxes in the first place, but that was the status quo. So they are being redistributed from poor people (who currently receive them) to rich people.
It isn't redistribution because recipients of handouts didn't produce that money in the first place....
No one "produces" money except the government - rich people have accumulated capital via multiple means, but that doesn't mean that those means are productive.
No, but lots of people have wealth, and lots of people produce it. "Money" is a red herring. Redistribution moves wealth from one group to another. If it wasn't happening one group would have it. That group would be, by definition, rich. If you are redistributing, you are almost certainly redistributing from the rich to poor. In theory you could have a redistributive system which redistributed from poor to rich. You could tax everyone £100, say, and give it all to the king. But almost all taxation systems - ours included - goes in total the other way. Almost all taxation systems are redistributive and redistributive from rich to poor. If you do less redistribution, it is the rich who win and the poor who lose. In Robin Hood, who 'redstributed' the wealth? It was Robin Hood, wasn't it? Who took from the rich and gave to the poor. It wasn't the Sheriff of Nottingham.
You haven't got anywhere to go with this 148grss! Devote your energies instead to the much more important and interesting argument of WHY we should or should not redistribute wealth from rich to poor.
Okay, I guess I didn't explain the first step of redistribution of wealth I see in society - which I explain in my other post below - the redistribution of labour value to rich people via profits. Profits are, by definition, the excess value that owners / shareholders, whatever, can make from labour. Meaning that labourers are not given the full value of their work.
Do you consider what you do labour or are you part of a different class?
Let me just pop one in. It's common but wrong to conflate 'wealthy' and 'wealth creation'. These are not the same things at all. Many people (eg me) are wealthy far in excess of the wealth they create or have ever created. The opposite is true of many many more.
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
I also fundamentally don't think that the government's job is to featherbed.
The moral difference between cutting taxation (which is in effect confiscation from the self sufficient, aspirational and productive) and cutting handouts (which should be a spur to creating more productive, self sufficient and aspirational individuals) needs to be made by a Tory government.
Are there no work houses, are there no prisons...
Yep, the liberal left big statists LOVE to squeeze the productive parts of the economy to help the unproductive.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
During covid, who was a more essential worker - a nurse, a shelf stacker, an Amazon delivery driver; or an investment banker?
As my other post describes - rewarded by capitalism with more money is not the same as productive.
They were all essential. Where do you think the money to pay all that furlough and business support came from?
Let me just pop one in. It's common but wrong to conflate 'wealthy' and 'wealth creation'. These are not the same things at all. Many people (eg me) are wealthy far in excess of the wealth they create or have ever created. The opposite is true of many many more.
I think the Tories are underestimating the possibility of RefUK settling in at around 15% in the polls and staying there until the election.
I really struggle to see how RefUK actually gets to 15% when votes are cast. Even in Tamworth, a solidly Brexit area in a by-election where Tory votes who couldn't bring themselves to vote Labour had a RefUK candidate to opt for, they only narrowly kept their deposit.
I just don't see how that gets significantly better for RefUK in the context of a General Election rather than a by-election (which is a bit of a free hit for disgruntled Tory voters as the Government isn't at stake), and across areas that, on average, aren't as favourable to them as Tamworth.
I think the Tories are underestimating the possibility of RefUK settling in at around 15% in the polls and staying there until the election.
I really struggle to see how RefUK actually gets to 15% when votes are cast. Even in Tamworth, a solidly Brexit area in a by-election where Tory votes who couldn't bring themselves to vote Labour had a RefUK candidate to opt for, they only narrowly kept their deposit.
I just don't see how that gets significantly better for RefUK in the context of a General Election rather than a by-election (which is a bit of a free hit for disgruntled Tory voters as the Government isn't at stake), and across areas that, on average, aren't as favourable to them as Tamworth.
Do you remember the Cleggasm? I think within the context of a general election campaign, it’s possible for a smaller party, in the right circumstances, to get more attention and get a surge of support. I’m not saying that will happen with RefUK, but I think it’s possible for it to happen.
Let me just pop one in. It's common but wrong to conflate 'wealthy' and 'wealth creation'. These are not the same things at all. Many people (eg me) are wealthy far in excess of the wealth they create or have ever created. The opposite is true of many many more.
Is that why you feel guilty? And vote left?
No, because I always have been Left. From sentience really. Eg as an early teen I had a little piece in the Daily Express (the "Young Voice of Britain" slot) arguing against the grain of that 'newspaper' that the Politics of Envy was tons better than the Politics of Greed. Very sweet it was. My mum still has it.
But it's true that my time working in the City (esp in Investment banking) definitely reinforced that political slant rather than challenged it.
I think the Tories are underestimating the possibility of RefUK settling in at around 15% in the polls and staying there until the election.
I really struggle to see how RefUK actually gets to 15% when votes are cast. Even in Tamworth, a solidly Brexit area in a by-election where Tory votes who couldn't bring themselves to vote Labour had a RefUK candidate to opt for, they only narrowly kept their deposit.
I just don't see how that gets significantly better for RefUK in the context of a General Election rather than a by-election (which is a bit of a free hit for disgruntled Tory voters as the Government isn't at stake), and across areas that, on average, aren't as favourable to them as Tamworth.
I think that RefUK supporters are over-sampled in the polls but that doesn't necessarily imply that Tory voters are under-sampled. To put it another way, I expect RefUK to get a lot fewer votes than the polls suggest, but I don't think the Tories will benefit disproportionately.
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
Redistribution means moving resources from one group to another group. Currently, resources are going to the poor via welfare. Those resources are now going to to be redirected to richer people. They may have come from richer people paying taxes in the first place, but that was the status quo. So they are being redistributed from poor people (who currently receive them) to rich people.
It isn't redistribution because recipients of handouts didn't produce that money in the first place....
No one "produces" money except the government - rich people have accumulated capital via multiple means, but that doesn't mean that those means are productive.
No, but lots of people have wealth, and lots of people produce it. "Money" is a red herring. Redistribution moves wealth from one group to another. If it wasn't happening one group would have it. That group would be, by definition, rich. If you are redistributing, you are almost certainly redistributing from the rich to poor. In theory you could have a redistributive system which redistributed from poor to rich. You could tax everyone £100, say, and give it all to the king. But almost all taxation systems - ours included - goes in total the other way. Almost all taxation systems are redistributive and redistributive from rich to poor. If you do less redistribution, it is the rich who win and the poor who lose. In Robin Hood, who 'redstributed' the wealth? It was Robin Hood, wasn't it? Who took from the rich and gave to the poor. It wasn't the Sheriff of Nottingham.
You haven't got anywhere to go with this 148grss! Devote your energies instead to the much more important and interesting argument of WHY we should or should not redistribute wealth from rich to poor.
Okay, I guess I didn't explain the first step of redistribution of wealth I see in society - which I explain in my other post below - the redistribution of labour value to rich people via profits. Profits are, by definition, the excess value that owners / shareholders, whatever, can make from labour. Meaning that labourers are not given the full value of their work.
I see. [Minor barb, because I can't resist: this is one of the few arguments I've heard for paying footballers more. Though of course I agree footballers are wildly atypical of people who sell their labour!] That makes sense, but only if you assume that the person taking the profit doesn't add any value. I disagree with this. Identification of opportunity, risking of capital, and, you know, the sheer bloody faff of it all adds value. My view is that the value it adds is EXACTLY the value of the profit which is taken, kind of by definition. But we're moving onto interesting ground here!
(Unfortunately I'm leaving it here because I've got meetings all afternoon. But thank you - I disagree with you wildly about many things, but you are always interesting and manage the rare art of posting opinions I disagree wildly with in ways which provoke a discussion rather than a shouting match. And that creates wealth too, of a sort.)
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
Redistribution means moving resources from one group to another group. Currently, resources are going to the poor via welfare. Those resources are now going to to be redirected to richer people. They may have come from richer people paying taxes in the first place, but that was the status quo. So they are being redistributed from poor people (who currently receive them) to rich people.
It isn't redistribution because recipients of handouts didn't produce that money in the first place....
No one "produces" money except the government - rich people have accumulated capital via multiple means, but that doesn't mean that those means are productive.
No, but lots of people have wealth, and lots of people produce it. "Money" is a red herring. Redistribution moves wealth from one group to another. If it wasn't happening one group would have it. That group would be, by definition, rich. If you are redistributing, you are almost certainly redistributing from the rich to poor. In theory you could have a redistributive system which redistributed from poor to rich. You could tax everyone £100, say, and give it all to the king. But almost all taxation systems - ours included - goes in total the other way. Almost all taxation systems are redistributive and redistributive from rich to poor. If you do less redistribution, it is the rich who win and the poor who lose. In Robin Hood, who 'redstributed' the wealth? It was Robin Hood, wasn't it? Who took from the rich and gave to the poor. It wasn't the Sheriff of Nottingham.
You haven't got anywhere to go with this 148grss! Devote your energies instead to the much more important and interesting argument of WHY we should or should not redistribute wealth from rich to poor.
Okay, I guess I didn't explain the first step of redistribution of wealth I see in society - which I explain in my other post below - the redistribution of labour value to rich people via profits. Profits are, by definition, the excess value that owners / shareholders, whatever, can make from labour. Meaning that labourers are not given the full value of their work.
Do you consider what you do labour or are you part of a different class?
I do labour - I think it fits in a weird space as a semi-government semi-nonprofit structure (Higher Education). Like, at the end of the day my labour contributes towards allowing the (much inflated, in my view) salary of our institutions vice chancellor. I would say my class interests align more with the working class than the owner class. I find definitions of the middle-class or the PMC (professional-managerial-class) interesting, if difficult to sometimes parse. From my understanding the theorists behind the idea of a PMC essentially now argue that there are people in that class who are labourers with an interest closer to working class people, and then those who are still labourers but their interests align more with the capitalist class.
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
Redistribution means moving resources from one group to another group. Currently, resources are going to the poor via welfare. Those resources are now going to to be redirected to richer people. They may have come from richer people paying taxes in the first place, but that was the status quo. So they are being redistributed from poor people (who currently receive them) to rich people.
Sometimes I'm convinced this really is pedantsbickering.com
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
I also fundamentally don't think that the government's job is to featherbed.
The moral difference between cutting taxation (which is in effect confiscation from the self sufficient, aspirational and productive) and cutting handouts (which should be a spur to creating more productive, self sufficient and aspirational individuals) needs to be made by a Tory government.
Are there no work houses, are there no prisons...
Yep, the liberal left big statists LOVE to squeeze the productive parts of the economy to help the unproductive.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
During covid, who was a more essential worker - a nurse, a shelf stacker, an Amazon delivery driver; or an investment banker?
As my other post describes - rewarded by capitalism with more money is not the same as productive.
They were all essential. Where do you think the money to pay all that furlough and business support came from?
Government. Money is just an expression of labour value. Government just guarantees its value. As long as government can influence its labour market and controls its own currency, it can basically do what it wants. The former is much harder than the latter, especially in a global market - but it isn't impossible.
I think the Tories are underestimating the possibility of RefUK settling in at around 15% in the polls and staying there until the election.
I really struggle to see how RefUK actually gets to 15% when votes are cast. Even in Tamworth, a solidly Brexit area in a by-election where Tory votes who couldn't bring themselves to vote Labour had a RefUK candidate to opt for, they only narrowly kept their deposit.
I just don't see how that gets significantly better for RefUK in the context of a General Election rather than a by-election (which is a bit of a free hit for disgruntled Tory voters as the Government isn't at stake), and across areas that, on average, aren't as favourable to them as Tamworth.
Do you remember the Cleggasm? I think within the context of a general election campaign, it’s possible for a smaller party, in the right circumstances, to get more attention and get a surge of support. I’m not saying that will happen with RefUK, but I think it’s possible for it to happen.
The Cleggasm was a curious phenomenon. Was it simply because hardly anyone had heard of Nick Clegg until he suddenly appeared on the TV debates as a somewhat sensible-sounding novelty?
The island is another stunner however. Untouched jungle down to the sea
Last night a G&T cost me $2. On the beach. Cambodia is THE place right now
Surely that will be claimed back, and actually cost you nothing?
I might just take the hit myself. I haven’t spent a cent in a week. This was in a little backpacker town in Koh Rong - Kaoh Touch
I don’t want to bore on - heaven forfend - but Cambodia is in an incredible sweet spot now: travel wise. Phnom Penh is a brilliantly interesting Asian city with good food and bars and nightlife and history and vice - but without the insane traffic or expense of Bangkok, singapore, Hong Kong
You’ve got Angkor Wat - one of the top ten historical sites in the entire world - just down the road. You’ve got pristine jungle and untouched mountains in between
And you’ve got BEAUTIFUL islands with lovely hotels - or empty beaches with wooden shacks - ie like Thailand 30-40 years ago - just offshore. The people are fun and friendly and hedonistic. And they drink all day
And it’s all really cheap (outside the luxe hotels)
as a tropical destination I don’t think it has a rival anywhere in the world. Not even close
Vietnam is great but it doesn’t have Angkor. Thailand has been done. The Caribbean is lovely but it’s boring (Mexico apart but eek Mexico). Myanmar is too weird, the Philippines too dangerous and the food is awful. Indonesia is another world but hard to get to. Etc
I mean yes and Angkor is great but it's no Chartres. The architecture is pretty agricultural if you look at it. The colosseum is 1,000x more sophisticated and was built 1,000 years earlier. And the crowd at Angkor at sunset/sunrise is like the one on the final day at Glasto.
Plus of course much of it is unspoilt as I'm not sure the Halo Trust has reached all of the country (could be mistaken).
But yes well worth a visit and slightly more off the beaten track than other SEAsian countries as you say.
Let me just pop one in. It's common but wrong to conflate 'wealthy' and 'wealth creation'. These are not the same things at all. Many people (eg me) are wealthy far in excess of the wealth they create or have ever created. The opposite is true of many many more.
Is that why you feel guilty? And vote left?
No, because I always have been Left. From sentience really. Eg as an early teen I had a little piece in the Daily Express (the "Young Voice of Britain" slot) arguing against the grain of that 'newspaper' that the Politics of Envy was tons better than the Politics of Greed. Very sweet it was. My mum still has it.
But it's true that my time working in the City (esp in Investment banking) definitely reinforced that political slant rather than challenged it.
Very much my outlook too. I've been a Labour supporter all my life. Now that I am pretty well off I don't feel guilty about it in the slightest - I have worked hard and do good work for a successful business and am rewarded accordingly - but I continue to think that the broadest shoulders should bear the heaviest burden and I continue to think that it is the role of government to level up opportunities to offset society's glaring inequalities and injustices. Envy or guilt have nothing to do about it. It's simply a desire to see a modicum of fairness in an unfair world.
With the red tories increasing their attacks on the Green party, it shows how worried they are. I wonder why?
The Greens are the new Labour Party
The Greens are the workers party
The Green Party is not the establishment
The Green Party represents ordinary people
Rinse and repeat for Tories and Reform
Yebbut at the heart of the Green Party is, er, or should be Green policies. Which they are not.
Sayeth Ben Goldsmith, your party funder or ex party funder:
"The Green Party is simply a harder-left version of Labour. We don’t have any ‘green’ party in the sense of a party whose attention is focused on the protection and restoration of the natural world; a party for those of us for whom nature is the biggest issue. It’s a huge shame."
You support them because they are a harder-left version of Labour. Which is fine. But at least play it straight and stop with all the "green" bolleaux. Call it as it is.
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
Redistribution means moving resources from one group to another group. Currently, resources are going to the poor via welfare. Those resources are now going to to be redirected to richer people. They may have come from richer people paying taxes in the first place, but that was the status quo. So they are being redistributed from poor people (who currently receive them) to rich people.
It isn't redistribution because recipients of handouts didn't produce that money in the first place....
Many will have done. About 2.3m people on Universal Credit work. The vast majority of State Pension and Pension Credit recipients worked all their lives.
Boris Johnson asked if graphs presented at a meeting were a “mirage”, prompting “incredulity” from those attending, Sir Patrick said.
The former chief scientific adviser said the prime minister had to be “managed” in the meeting, and asked himself: “is it always like this?”
Sir Patrick wrote in one diary entry in September 2020: “Chief Constables have said current rules too complex and difficult to police. PM looking glum. Then suddenly - ‘Is the 144 whole thing a mirage? The curves just follow a natural pattern despite what you do’ Incredulity in the room [...]
“The whole meeting carefully manages the PM (is it always like this?) and he eventually approves the measures - really just reinforcing and enforcing what we should be doing anyway.
-----
This will get all the headlines for Boris, what a Bozo....but the graphs were wrong, repeatedly. It also shows a certain arrogance among the scientific advisers. Us wrong, never, what a ridiculous statement by these idiot politicians.
When we already know that Big Dom data boffin spotted they were wrong, told them and was ignored. The problem is there are clearly he is an outlier in government machine that understands data.
Boris Johnson asked if graphs presented at a meeting were a “mirage”, prompting “incredulity” from those attending, Sir Patrick said.
The former chief scientific adviser said the prime minister had to be “managed” in the meeting, and asked himself: “is it always like this?”
Sir Patrick wrote in one diary entry in September 2020: “Chief Constables have said current rules too complex and difficult to police. PM looking glum. Then suddenly - ‘Is the 144 whole thing a mirage? The curves just follow a natural pattern despite what you do’ Incredulity in the room [...]
“The whole meeting carefully manages the PM (is it always like this?) and he eventually approves the measures - really just reinforcing and enforcing what we should be doing anyway.
-----
This will get all the headlines for Boris, what a Bozo....but the graphs were wrong, repeatedly. It also shows a certain arrogance among the scientific advisers.
The graphs were often wrong, but they were less wrong than the random thoughts that flitted through Boris’s head.
I think at one point he wanted to make it legal to sell your children... Probably gives a flavour.
I was reading a historical novel where that was a plot point recently. A guy was criticised for selling a child to a slaver, but he pointed out if it was his own kid that was legal.
Boris Johnson asked if graphs presented at a meeting were a “mirage”, prompting “incredulity” from those attending, Sir Patrick said.
The former chief scientific adviser said the prime minister had to be “managed” in the meeting, and asked himself: “is it always like this?”
Sir Patrick wrote in one diary entry in September 2020: “Chief Constables have said current rules too complex and difficult to police. PM looking glum. Then suddenly - ‘Is the 144 whole thing a mirage? The curves just follow a natural pattern despite what you do’ Incredulity in the room [...]
“The whole meeting carefully manages the PM (is it always like this?) and he eventually approves the measures - really just reinforcing and enforcing what we should be doing anyway.
-----
This will get all the headlines for Boris, what a Bozo....but the graphs were wrong, repeatedly. It also shows a certain arrogance among the scientific advisers.
The graphs were often wrong, but they were less wrong than the random thoughts that flitted through Boris’s head.
That's my point. Boris doesn't understand data, should he be expected to understand mathematical modelling....the problem is nobody did in government (outside of Big Dom data guy), or nobody challenged the echo chamber of those producing them.
Some of the stuff that was produced was utter farcical. Some of us pointed out the clear flaws on here at the time.
One big point that I don't believe has really been covered yet, why was it so difficult to get the required data. They had to hire outside contractors to right complex parsers even to produce the daily case / death figures, that had to run for several hours just to pre-process the data.
This is the kind of concrete flaws that need addresses for the future.
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
I also fundamentally don't think that the government's job is to featherbed.
The moral difference between cutting taxation (which is in effect confiscation from the self sufficient, aspirational and productive) and cutting handouts (which should be a spur to creating more productive, self sufficient and aspirational individuals) needs to be made by a Tory government.
Are there no work houses, are there no prisons...
Yep, the liberal left big statists LOVE to squeeze the productive parts of the economy to help the unproductive.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
Currently we have a very large segment of the British population that is unproductive. The retired. They’ve been doing pretty well under this government.
And we have another big segment of the population that is productive: people of working age. They’ve been shafted by this government.
Squeezing the productive parts of the economy to help the unproductive is precisely what this Tory administration has been doing since 2010.
It has been a winning formula for them in fairness. Now they are panicking because it no longer is, and they have no path to winning others over.
Boris Johnson asked if graphs presented at a meeting were a “mirage”, prompting “incredulity” from those attending, Sir Patrick said.
The former chief scientific adviser said the prime minister had to be “managed” in the meeting, and asked himself: “is it always like this?”
Sir Patrick wrote in one diary entry in September 2020: “Chief Constables have said current rules too complex and difficult to police. PM looking glum. Then suddenly - ‘Is the 144 whole thing a mirage? The curves just follow a natural pattern despite what you do’ Incredulity in the room [...]
“The whole meeting carefully manages the PM (is it always like this?) and he eventually approves the measures - really just reinforcing and enforcing what we should be doing anyway.
-----
This will get all the headlines for Boris, what a Bozo....but the graphs were wrong, repeatedly. It also shows a certain arrogance among the scientific advisers.
The graphs were often wrong, but they were less wrong than the random thoughts that flitted through Boris’s head.
That might be correct, but I doubt anyone would survive the sort of scrutiny that's going on here without appearing silly, stupid or nasty. They're taking what people say in unofficial documents - their unfiltered thoughts - and using that as 'evidence' against BJ and others. Which is particularly bad if the people did not particularly like each other.
I certainly would not survive such scrutiny. I doubt anyone would. IMO it's also not very enlightening.
Boris Johnson asked if graphs presented at a meeting were a “mirage”, prompting “incredulity” from those attending, Sir Patrick said.
The former chief scientific adviser said the prime minister had to be “managed” in the meeting, and asked himself: “is it always like this?”
Sir Patrick wrote in one diary entry in September 2020: “Chief Constables have said current rules too complex and difficult to police. PM looking glum. Then suddenly - ‘Is the 144 whole thing a mirage? The curves just follow a natural pattern despite what you do’ Incredulity in the room [...]
“The whole meeting carefully manages the PM (is it always like this?) and he eventually approves the measures - really just reinforcing and enforcing what we should be doing anyway.
-----
This will get all the headlines for Boris, what a Bozo....but the graphs were wrong, repeatedly. It also shows a certain arrogance among the scientific advisers.
The graphs were often wrong, but they were less wrong than the random thoughts that flitted through Boris’s head.
That's my point. Boris doesn't understand data, should he be expected to understand mathematical modelling....the problem is nobody did in government (outside of Big Dom data guy), or nobody challenged the echo chamber of those producing them.
Some of the stuff that was produced was utter farcical. Some of us pointed out the clear flaws on here at the time.
There is a big difference in being a politician who simply ignores all data and expert advice, and one who, whilst a non-expert, weighs up the evidence and makes a judgement call.
For all Boris will have made mistakes, I don't believe he did the former entirely. I'm not one who thinks all the experts should have been ignored for being wrong all the time, and I reject the complaint from the time that the officials were running the show, and so would defend that the politicians may well have come to some different conclusions as they tried to balance all the factors, not simply public health factors.
The island is another stunner however. Untouched jungle down to the sea
Last night a G&T cost me $2. On the beach. Cambodia is THE place right now
Surely that will be claimed back, and actually cost you nothing?
I might just take the hit myself. I haven’t spent a cent in a week. This was in a little backpacker town in Koh Rong - Kaoh Touch
I don’t want to bore on - heaven forfend - but Cambodia is in an incredible sweet spot now: travel wise. Phnom Penh is a brilliantly interesting Asian city with good food and bars and nightlife and history and vice - but without the insane traffic or expense of Bangkok, singapore, Hong Kong
You’ve got Angkor Wat - one of the top ten historical sites in the entire world - just down the road. You’ve got pristine jungle and untouched mountains in between
And you’ve got BEAUTIFUL islands with lovely hotels - or empty beaches with wooden shacks - ie like Thailand 30-40 years ago - just offshore. The people are fun and friendly and hedonistic. And they drink all day
And it’s all really cheap (outside the luxe hotels)
as a tropical destination I don’t think it has a rival anywhere in the world. Not even close
Vietnam is great but it doesn’t have Angkor. Thailand has been done. The Caribbean is lovely but it’s boring (Mexico apart but eek Mexico). Myanmar is too weird, the Philippines too dangerous and the food is awful. Indonesia is another world but hard to get to. Etc
I mean yes and Angkor is great but it's no Chartres. The architecture is pretty agricultural if you look at it. The colosseum is 1,000x more sophisticated and was built 1,000 years earlier. And the crowd at Angkor at sunset/sunrise is like the one on the final day at Glasto.
Plus of course much of it is unspoilt as I'm not sure the Halo Trust has reached all of the country (could be mistaken).
But yes well worth a visit and slightly more off the beaten track than other SEAsian countries as you say.
Angkor is sublime. It is a vast temple complex of exquisite complexity that dwarfs anything made in Europe at the same time - in scale and technology and sometimes in artistry
And I’m guessing you were last in Cambodia before Covid. That’s probably the main point
Another interesting comment is that politicians hid behind "following the science"....but any attempt to deviate from that, the media just screamed and screamed and screamed why aren't you following the science, the SAGE minutes say we must do x now....
With the red tories increasing their attacks on the Green party, it shows how worried they are. I wonder why?
The Greens are the new Labour Party
The Greens are the workers party
The Green Party is not the establishment
The Green Party represents ordinary people
Rinse and repeat for Tories and Reform
Yebbut at the heart of the Green Party is, er, or should be Green policies. Which they are not.
Sayeth Ben Goldsmith, your party funder or ex party funder:
"The Green Party is simply a harder-left version of Labour. We don’t have any ‘green’ party in the sense of a party whose attention is focused on the protection and restoration of the natural world; a party for those of us for whom nature is the biggest issue. It’s a huge shame."
You support them because they are a harder-left version of Labour. Which is fine. But at least play it straight and stop with all the "green" bolleaux. Call it as it is.
The entire history of the Green party has involved a perennial tug of war between deep greens and social justice type greens.
Another interesting comment is that politicians hid behind "following the science"....but any attempt to deviate from that, the media just screamed and screamed and screamed why aren't you following the science, the SAGE minutes say we must do x now....
Yes, that was fairly infuriating (not helped by 'Indy Sage' muddying the waters, which was just irresponsible).
Another interesting comment is that politicians hid behind "following the science"....but any attempt to deviate from that, the media just screamed and screamed and screamed why aren't you following the science, the SAGE minutes say we must do x now....
Yes, that was fairly infuriating (not helped by 'Indy Sage' muddying the waters, which was just irresponsible).
The media boostering them as well. Particularly confusing that some people sat on SAGE, then appeared to leave those meeting and hop on a zoom call with Indy SAGE and moaned about decisions.
I think the Tories are underestimating the possibility of RefUK settling in at around 15% in the polls and staying there until the election.
They have rebranded to Refuk: The Brexit Party just to remind voters who are grandparents in their mid 30s who actually delivered the glittering prize.
15% for Refuk:TBP would comprehensively gape the tories.
Now that's just sad, as well as an admission their attempted rebrand fell compeltely flat on its face, even though they still polled ok.
Looks like they are going to do it. Cut benefits for poorest to fund tax cuts.
Just incredible.
Sunak has totally lost the plot.
Steve Webb @stevewebb1 · 56m Benefit cuts alert - DWP just issued a notice (see below) of an 'ad hoc' publication on benefit upratings on Wednesday - in years where they simply pay inflation, they don't do this. Looks like this will be their defensive doc, justifying using the more recent inflation figure.
This is not only class war and wealth redistribution - it is going to bad for growth. Why? Because poor people spend their money, so money circulates in the economy, and rich people don't, so it will sit in an account and not get spent.
A pedant notes: lowering taxes implies LESS wealth redistribution.
Another pedant notes: money doesn't just sit in an account. If I have £100 in the bank with Barclays, it's not just sat in cash in a box. Barclays lend it to other people, or invest it, to do things with.
Nope - it is redistributing wealth from the poor to the rich. Poor people pay taxes too - VAT as well as income tax. You may argue cutting taxes is not redistributive - you are not taking something you previously did - but I believe in a society and in a society we should fund minimal conditions for all people. If we are lowering the conditions for the poorest to the benefit of the richest - that is redistributive.
It isn't that the poor are "spend happy" it is that they have to spend money on food and living and such, so the money moves more.
Money that banks invest on behalf of their clients does not move as much as money spent by the poor - if I go to my corner shop and buy goods, that corner shop owner (as someone also relatively poor) will spent that money relatively soon to whoever they buy goods from, and the money will keep moving. If a portfolio management company is doing investments it will go into property, most likely, and then wait for that property price to just inflate over time. The money stays still.
Well I think the thought that 'investment' goes into property is a little simplistic. I think investment goes to a lot more places than that. And even money invested in property doesn't just sit there; it is an asset which allows other borrowing to be made. It no more 'just sits there' than the wealth I invest in a child's toy 'just sits there' once it is turned from cash to plastic tat. But it's a linguistic point I really take issue with here. Cutting benefits and taxes is not wealth redistribution; it is the opposite. If you have £100 and the government takes ten of those pounds and gives it to me, that is wealth redistribution. If the government then decides only to take £5 from you and give it to me, that is less wealth redistribution.
I fundamentally disagree. Again - I believe that society should provide a minimum standard of life. Government welfare exists to have that. If you reduce that minimum standard to allow rich people to have more money, that is redistributive - whether you like it or not. You are balancing the books of giving more to the rich by taking away from the poor.
That might be what society should do, but that is done BY redistribution. It isn't a question of whether I like it or not, it's a question of what redistribution means. If you want to be more Sweden and less USA, you do that by redistributing wealth. Sweden is more redistributive than the USA. No-one says the USA is a highly redistributive society because the rich have more than the poor, because that's the opposite of what redistribution means. This may seem a minor semantic point, but using words to mean what they mean and what people expect them to mean is important.
Redistribution means moving resources from one group to another group. Currently, resources are going to the poor via welfare. Those resources are now going to to be redirected to richer people. They may have come from richer people paying taxes in the first place, but that was the status quo. So they are being redistributed from poor people (who currently receive them) to rich people.
It isn't redistribution because recipients of handouts didn't produce that money in the first place....
No one "produces" money except the government - rich people have accumulated capital via multiple means, but that doesn't mean that those means are productive.
No, but lots of people have wealth, and lots of people produce it. "Money" is a red herring. Redistribution moves wealth from one group to another. If it wasn't happening one group would have it. That group would be, by definition, rich. If you are redistributing, you are almost certainly redistributing from the rich to poor. In theory you could have a redistributive system which redistributed from poor to rich. You could tax everyone £100, say, and give it all to the king. But almost all taxation systems - ours included - goes in total the other way. Almost all taxation systems are redistributive and redistributive from rich to poor. If you do less redistribution, it is the rich who win and the poor who lose. In Robin Hood, who 'redstributed' the wealth? It was Robin Hood, wasn't it? Who took from the rich and gave to the poor. It wasn't the Sheriff of Nottingham.
You haven't got anywhere to go with this 148grss! Devote your energies instead to the much more important and interesting argument of WHY we should or should not redistribute wealth from rich to poor.
Okay, I guess I didn't explain the first step of redistribution of wealth I see in society - which I explain in my other post below - the redistribution of labour value to rich people via profits. Profits are, by definition, the excess value that owners / shareholders, whatever, can make from labour. Meaning that labourers are not given the full value of their work.
That would imply that investment (ie putting up capital) has no economic value. In effect, businesses can be run without investment.
Another interesting comment is that politicians hid behind "following the science"....but any attempt to deviate from that, the media just screamed and screamed and screamed why aren't you following the science, the SAGE minutes say we must do x now....
Yes, that was fairly infuriating (not helped by 'Indy Sage' muddying the waters, which was just irresponsible).
The media boostering them as well. Particularly confusing that some people sat on SAGE, then appeared to leave those meeting and hop on a zoom call with Indy SAGE and moaned about decisions.
Does not seem like it should have been allowed, and I felt they got off very easy in the media with the name issue - I can see no purpose behind the close similarity other than to confuse people, which given the importance placed on SAGE at the time was genuinely dangerous, and spoke very poorly of those involved.
They didn't just want to offer independent, alternative viewpoints, they wanted to fool people or undermine the messaging from actual SAGE, which is a nefarious motivation.
Let me just pop one in. It's common but wrong to conflate 'wealthy' and 'wealth creation'. These are not the same things at all. Many people (eg me) are wealthy far in excess of the wealth they create or have ever created. The opposite is true of many many more.
Is that why you feel guilty? And vote left?
No, because I always have been Left. From sentience really. Eg as an early teen I had a little piece in the Daily Express (the "Young Voice of Britain" slot) arguing against the grain of that 'newspaper' that the Politics of Envy was tons better than the Politics of Greed. Very sweet it was. My mum still has it.
But it's true that my time working in the City (esp in Investment banking) definitely reinforced that political slant rather than challenged it.
Very much my outlook too. I've been a Labour supporter all my life. Now that I am pretty well off I don't feel guilty about it in the slightest - I have worked hard and do good work for a successful business and am rewarded accordingly - but I continue to think that the broadest shoulders should bear the heaviest burden and I continue to think that it is the role of government to level up opportunities to offset society's glaring inequalities and injustices. Envy or guilt have nothing to do about it. It's simply a desire to see a modicum of fairness in an unfair world.
I do have a touch of guilt (the money in trading was just stupid) but otherwise, yes same. In a nutshell, how I see it, designing a replacement for capitalism is way above my paygrade, I've seen plenty of devastating critiques but no convincing worked-up alternative economic models that pass a smell test of will they work in practice? So assuming we're stuck with this core MO that screws the many for the benefit of the few, which it sadly and undeniably does, what I want government doing is working hard against the grain of that, always looking to reduce the inequalities that the system left to its own devices so assiduously fosters.
Another interesting comment is that politicians hid behind "following the science"....but any attempt to deviate from that, the media just screamed and screamed and screamed why aren't you following the science, the SAGE minutes say we must do x now....
Yes, that was fairly infuriating (not helped by 'Indy Sage' muddying the waters, which was just irresponsible).
The media boostering them as well. Particularly confusing that some people sat on SAGE, then appeared to leave those meeting and hop on a zoom call with Indy SAGE and moaned about decisions.
Does not seem like it should have been allowed, and I felt they got off very easy in the media with the name issue - I can see no purpose behind the close similarity other than to confuse people, which given the importance placed on SAGE at the time was genuinely dangerous, and spoke very poorly of those involved.
They didn't just want to offer independent, alternative viewpoints, they wanted to fool people or undermine the messaging from actual SAGE, which is a nefarious motivation.
The media just saw it as a useful stick to beat the government with.
Boris Johnson asked if graphs presented at a meeting were a “mirage”, prompting “incredulity” from those attending, Sir Patrick said.
The former chief scientific adviser said the prime minister had to be “managed” in the meeting, and asked himself: “is it always like this?”
Sir Patrick wrote in one diary entry in September 2020: “Chief Constables have said current rules too complex and difficult to police. PM looking glum. Then suddenly - ‘Is the 144 whole thing a mirage? The curves just follow a natural pattern despite what you do’ Incredulity in the room [...]
“The whole meeting carefully manages the PM (is it always like this?) and he eventually approves the measures - really just reinforcing and enforcing what we should be doing anyway.
-----
This will get all the headlines for Boris, what a Bozo....but the graphs were wrong, repeatedly. It also shows a certain arrogance among the scientific advisers.
The graphs were often wrong, but they were less wrong than the random thoughts that flitted through Boris’s head.
That's my point. Boris doesn't understand data, should he be expected to understand mathematical modelling....the problem is nobody did in government (outside of Big Dom data guy), or nobody challenged the echo chamber of those producing them.
Some of the stuff that was produced was utter farcical. Some of us pointed out the clear flaws on here at the time.
One big point that I don't believe has really been covered yet, why was it so difficult to get the required data. They had to hire outside contractors to right complex parsers even to produce the daily case / death figures, that had to run for several hours just to pre-process the data.
This is the kind of concrete flaws that need addresses for the future.
Cummings was very keen on data, which is admirable. Not much about Cummings is admirable, but that is. I remember talking to Big Dom’s data guy in early March (I think… maybe late Feb) about having an internal dashboard with key data, but I don’t think that ever happened quite in that form. Vallance has talked today about only 10% of civil servants having a STEM background and I would agree that’s an important issue. But government did have Vallance and Whitty and various other government scientists and external advice (SAGE and more). The science was heard and did impact on policy.
I don’t see the Inquiry hearings as supporting your claim of an echo chamber. We’ve heard about all sorts of disagreements. Today we’ve heard about disagreements between Vallance and Whitty, for example.
If you do understand data, then you understand the difficulties in producing data. No-one who’s worked as a health data science is surprised at the challenge in getting accurate and timely data out of complex systems. You could do something about that, but it would require major investment in systems. Sadly, I see zero appetite for investment in pandemic preparedness in the current government.
Let me just pop one in. It's common but wrong to conflate 'wealthy' and 'wealth creation'. These are not the same things at all. Many people (eg me) are wealthy far in excess of the wealth they create or have ever created. The opposite is true of many many more.
Is that why you feel guilty? And vote left?
No, because I always have been Left. From sentience really. Eg as an early teen I had a little piece in the Daily Express (the "Young Voice of Britain" slot) arguing against the grain of that 'newspaper' that the Politics of Envy was tons better than the Politics of Greed. Very sweet it was. My mum still has it.
But it's true that my time working in the City (esp in Investment banking) definitely reinforced that political slant rather than challenged it.
Very much my outlook too. I've been a Labour supporter all my life. Now that I am pretty well off I don't feel guilty about it in the slightest - I have worked hard and do good work for a successful business and am rewarded accordingly - but I continue to think that the broadest shoulders should bear the heaviest burden and I continue to think that it is the role of government to level up opportunities to offset society's glaring inequalities and injustices. Envy or guilt have nothing to do about it. It's simply a desire to see a modicum of fairness in an unfair world.
I do have a touch of guilt (the money in trading was just stupid) but otherwise, yes same. In a nutshell, how I see it, designing a replacement for capitalism is way above my paygrade, I've seen plenty of devastating critiques but no convincing worked-up alternative economic models that pass a smell test of will they work in practice? So assuming we're stuck with this core MO that screws the many for the benefit of the few, which it sadly and undeniably does, what I want government doing is working hard against the grain of that, always looking to reduce the inequalities that the system left to its own devices so assiduously fosters.
The difference between you and me is that I think that the capitalist system that has developed over the past two centuries has been a positive good for humanity.
Even Marx saw capitalism as being more an antihero than a villain. It created abundance, and broke down feudalism and slavery.
The devastating critiques contrast humdrum reality with an unattainable Utopia (in all likelihood, a dystopia).
Boris Johnson asked if graphs presented at a meeting were a “mirage”, prompting “incredulity” from those attending, Sir Patrick said.
The former chief scientific adviser said the prime minister had to be “managed” in the meeting, and asked himself: “is it always like this?”
Sir Patrick wrote in one diary entry in September 2020: “Chief Constables have said current rules too complex and difficult to police. PM looking glum. Then suddenly - ‘Is the 144 whole thing a mirage? The curves just follow a natural pattern despite what you do’ Incredulity in the room [...]
“The whole meeting carefully manages the PM (is it always like this?) and he eventually approves the measures - really just reinforcing and enforcing what we should be doing anyway.
-----
This will get all the headlines for Boris, what a Bozo....but the graphs were wrong, repeatedly. It also shows a certain arrogance among the scientific advisers.
The graphs were often wrong, but they were less wrong than the random thoughts that flitted through Boris’s head.
That's my point. Boris doesn't understand data, should he be expected to understand mathematical modelling....the problem is nobody did in government (outside of Big Dom data guy), or nobody challenged the echo chamber of those producing them.
Some of the stuff that was produced was utter farcical. Some of us pointed out the clear flaws on here at the time.
One big point that I don't believe has really been covered yet, why was it so difficult to get the required data. They had to hire outside contractors to right complex parsers even to produce the daily case / death figures, that had to run for several hours just to pre-process the data.
This is the kind of concrete flaws that need addresses for the future.
Cummings was very keen on data, which is admirable. Not much about Cummings is admirable, but that is. I remember talking to Big Dom’s data guy in early March (I think… maybe late Feb) about having an internal dashboard with key data, but I don’t think that ever happened quite in that form. Vallance has talked today about only 10% of civil servants having a STEM background and I would agree that’s an important issue. But government did have Vallance and Whitty and various other government scientists and external advice (SAGE and more). The science was heard and did impact on policy.
I don’t see the Inquiry hearings as supporting your claim of an echo chamber. We’ve heard about all sorts of disagreements. Today we’ve heard about disagreements between Vallance and Whitty, for example.
If you do understand data, then you understand the difficulties in producing data. No-one who’s worked as a health data science is surprised at the challenge in getting accurate and timely data out of complex systems. You could do something about that, but it would require major investment in systems. Sadly, I see zero appetite for investment in pandemic preparedness in the current government.
There was a echo chamber on the models. Nobody seems to ever say, I am not sure they are right. And when they had multiple models, it always skewed to believe the worst of them. when even the most optimistic ones overstated things.
Rather the disagreement is what to do in response to them.
Boris Johnson asked if graphs presented at a meeting were a “mirage”, prompting “incredulity” from those attending, Sir Patrick said.
The former chief scientific adviser said the prime minister had to be “managed” in the meeting, and asked himself: “is it always like this?”
Sir Patrick wrote in one diary entry in September 2020: “Chief Constables have said current rules too complex and difficult to police. PM looking glum. Then suddenly - ‘Is the 144 whole thing a mirage? The curves just follow a natural pattern despite what you do’ Incredulity in the room [...]
“The whole meeting carefully manages the PM (is it always like this?) and he eventually approves the measures - really just reinforcing and enforcing what we should be doing anyway.
-----
This will get all the headlines for Boris, what a Bozo....but the graphs were wrong, repeatedly. It also shows a certain arrogance among the scientific advisers.
The graphs were often wrong, but they were less wrong than the random thoughts that flitted through Boris’s head.
That's my point. Boris doesn't understand data, should he be expected to understand mathematical modelling....the problem is nobody did in government (outside of Big Dom data guy), or nobody challenged the echo chamber of those producing them.
Some of the stuff that was produced was utter farcical. Some of us pointed out the clear flaws on here at the time.
One big point that I don't believe has really been covered yet, why was it so difficult to get the required data. They had to hire outside contractors to right complex parsers even to produce the daily case / death figures, that had to run for several hours just to pre-process the data.
This is the kind of concrete flaws that need addresses for the future.
Cummings was very keen on data, which is admirable. Not much about Cummings is admirable, but that is. I remember talking to Big Dom’s data guy in early March (I think… maybe late Feb) about having an internal dashboard with key data, but I don’t think that ever happened quite in that form. Vallance has talked today about only 10% of civil servants having a STEM background and I would agree that’s an important issue. But government did have Vallance and Whitty and various other government scientists and external advice (SAGE and more). The science was heard and did impact on policy.
I don’t see the Inquiry hearings as supporting your claim of an echo chamber. We’ve heard about all sorts of disagreements. Today we’ve heard about disagreements between Vallance and Whitty, for example.
If you do understand data, then you understand the difficulties in producing data. No-one who’s worked as a health data science is surprised at the challenge in getting accurate and timely data out of complex systems. You could do something about that
Boris Johnson asked if graphs presented at a meeting were a “mirage”, prompting “incredulity” from those attending, Sir Patrick said.
The former chief scientific adviser said the prime minister had to be “managed” in the meeting, and asked himself: “is it always like this?”
Sir Patrick wrote in one diary entry in September 2020: “Chief Constables have said current rules too complex and difficult to police. PM looking glum. Then suddenly - ‘Is the 144 whole thing a mirage? The curves just follow a natural pattern despite what you do’ Incredulity in the room [...]
“The whole meeting carefully manages the PM (is it always like this?) and he eventually approves the measures - really just reinforcing and enforcing what we should be doing anyway.
-----
This will get all the headlines for Boris, what a Bozo....but the graphs were wrong, repeatedly. It also shows a certain arrogance among the scientific advisers.
The graphs were often wrong, but they were less wrong than the random thoughts that flitted through Boris’s head.
That might be correct, but I doubt anyone would survive the sort of scrutiny that's going on here without appearing silly, stupid or nasty. They're taking what people say in unofficial documents - their unfiltered thoughts - and using that as 'evidence' against BJ and others. Which is particularly bad if the people did not particularly like each other.
I certainly would not survive such scrutiny. I doubt anyone would. IMO it's also not very enlightening.
I think a lot of the media coverage is focused on the personalities and rude things said by or about them. However, that’s not the meat of the Inquiry. Watch the hearings, read the evidence submission, and I think it’s pretty enlightening at understanding what happened and the challenges that arise in these extreme circumstances.
That said, it’s a judge-led Inquiry, not a scientific one. There are questions around the best approaches to handling a pandemic that, I think, are better tackled in the academic literature.
Boris Johnson asked if graphs presented at a meeting were a “mirage”, prompting “incredulity” from those attending, Sir Patrick said.
The former chief scientific adviser said the prime minister had to be “managed” in the meeting, and asked himself: “is it always like this?”
Sir Patrick wrote in one diary entry in September 2020: “Chief Constables have said current rules too complex and difficult to police. PM looking glum. Then suddenly - ‘Is the 144 whole thing a mirage? The curves just follow a natural pattern despite what you do’ Incredulity in the room [...]
“The whole meeting carefully manages the PM (is it always like this?) and he eventually approves the measures - really just reinforcing and enforcing what we should be doing anyway.
-----
This will get all the headlines for Boris, what a Bozo....but the graphs were wrong, repeatedly. It also shows a certain arrogance among the scientific advisers.
The graphs were often wrong, but they were less wrong than the random thoughts that flitted through Boris’s head.
That's my point. Boris doesn't understand data, should he be expected to understand mathematical modelling....the problem is nobody did in government (outside of Big Dom data guy), or nobody challenged the echo chamber of those producing them.
Some of the stuff that was produced was utter farcical. Some of us pointed out the clear flaws on here at the time.
One big point that I don't believe has really been covered yet, why was it so difficult to get the required data. They had to hire outside contractors to right complex parsers even to produce the daily case / death figures, that had to run for several hours just to pre-process the data.
This is the kind of concrete flaws that need addresses for the future.
Asking the question is fine.
For example, it is beginning to come out that the “Save Life” stuff for the comic concrete problems in building was bullshit.
When repeatedly asked by officials, someone invented a formula for calculating how long the building would be safe for. But the premise that you could predict the failure, even vaguely accurately, seems to be wrong.
See DTD683…
So, in that case, all the elaborate plans, graphs etc. from the experts were quite probably a “mirage”
These extracts don't help the Bring Back Boris crew.
Sounds like most of the media coverage as well....Prof Peston of course was top notch.
Other five letter descriptors are available.
At times I wondered why The BBC and the broadsheets employed science correspondents, because they rarely took part in the press briefings. Peston, Rigby and others didn't do themselves any favours by turning up.
Another interesting comment is that politicians hid behind "following the science"....but any attempt to deviate from that, the media just screamed and screamed and screamed why aren't you following the science, the SAGE minutes say we must do x now....
Yes, that was fairly infuriating (not helped by 'Indy Sage' muddying the waters, which was just irresponsible).
The media boostering them as well. Particularly confusing that some people sat on SAGE, then appeared to leave those meeting and hop on a zoom call with Indy SAGE and moaned about decisions.
IIRC, I think that was discussed a bit in the 18 October morning session of the Inquiry, if you want to go watch that video.
With the red tories increasing their attacks on the Green party, it shows how worried they are. I wonder why?
The Greens are the new Labour Party
The Greens are the workers party
The Green Party is not the establishment
The Green Party represents ordinary people
Rinse and repeat for Tories and Reform
Yebbut at the heart of the Green Party is, er, or should be Green policies. Which they are not.
Sayeth Ben Goldsmith, your party funder or ex party funder:
"The Green Party is simply a harder-left version of Labour. We don’t have any ‘green’ party in the sense of a party whose attention is focused on the protection and restoration of the natural world; a party for those of us for whom nature is the biggest issue. It’s a huge shame."
You support them because they are a harder-left version of Labour. Which is fine. But at least play it straight and stop with all the "green" bolleaux. Call it as it is.
I agree with Ben.
The Green Party needs a huge kick up the backside. Eject all the Trots and focus on environmentalism.
Boris Johnson asked if graphs presented at a meeting were a “mirage”, prompting “incredulity” from those attending, Sir Patrick said.
The former chief scientific adviser said the prime minister had to be “managed” in the meeting, and asked himself: “is it always like this?”
Sir Patrick wrote in one diary entry in September 2020: “Chief Constables have said current rules too complex and difficult to police. PM looking glum. Then suddenly - ‘Is the 144 whole thing a mirage? The curves just follow a natural pattern despite what you do’ Incredulity in the room [...]
“The whole meeting carefully manages the PM (is it always like this?) and he eventually approves the measures - really just reinforcing and enforcing what we should be doing anyway.
-----
This will get all the headlines for Boris, what a Bozo....but the graphs were wrong, repeatedly. It also shows a certain arrogance among the scientific advisers.
The graphs were often wrong, but they were less wrong than the random thoughts that flitted through Boris’s head.
That's my point. Boris doesn't understand data, should he be expected to understand mathematical modelling....the problem is nobody did in government (outside of Big Dom data guy), or nobody challenged the echo chamber of those producing them.
Some of the stuff that was produced was utter farcical. Some of us pointed out the clear flaws on here at the time.
One big point that I don't believe has really been covered yet, why was it so difficult to get the required data. They had to hire outside contractors to right complex parsers even to produce the daily case / death figures, that had to run for several hours just to pre-process the data.
This is the kind of concrete flaws that need addresses for the future.
Cummings was very keen on data, which is admirable. Not much about Cummings is admirable, but that is. I remember talking to Big Dom’s data guy in early March (I think… maybe late Feb) about having an internal dashboard with key data, but I don’t think that ever happened quite in that form. Vallance has talked today about only 10% of civil servants having a STEM background and I would agree that’s an important issue. But government did have Vallance and Whitty and various other government scientists and external advice (SAGE and more). The science was heard and did impact on policy.
I don’t see the Inquiry hearings as supporting your claim of an echo chamber. We’ve heard about all sorts of disagreements. Today we’ve heard about disagreements between Vallance and Whitty, for example.
If you do understand data, then you understand the difficulties in producing data. No-one who’s worked as a health data science is surprised at the challenge in getting accurate and timely data out of complex systems. You could do something about that, but it would require major investment in systems. Sadly, I see zero appetite for investment in pandemic preparedness in the current government.
The concept of "key data" is horrendously difficult, not just in defining it but obtaining it in good time. The data you need at a given moment depends on the decision you need to make, and that will change from day-to-day. As it is difficult to do that, people retreat to displaying what they can or displaying what they think is important. I contend that there are several cases in the last fifty years when choosing the wrong metric has led to bad outcomes.
These extracts don't help the Bring Back Boris crew.
Sounds like most of the media coverage as well....Prof Peston of course was top notch.
Other five letter descriptors are available.
At times I wondered why The BBC and the broadsheets employed science correspondents, because they rarely took part in the press briefings. Peston, Rigby and others didn't do themselves any favours by turning up.
You would hope the media companies would hold their own inquiries into their failings (as they failed massively), but instead they just laugh at dumb things Boris said and spend hours and hours covering what hurty WhatsApp messages people sent in private.
He has talked of abandoning the Argentine currency and dollarisation as a means of stopping runaway inflation, currently 140%. There is no doubt that the fiscal and monetary policies of Argentina have been disastrous. It will be interesting to see how he does.
The BBC aren’t the only organisation to call him far right. He was a member of Avanza Libertad, which also included neo-Nazis.
He wants to ban abortion, liberalise gun laws, and allow a free trade in human organs. He says climate change has been invented by “neo-Marxists”, goes on about “cultural Marxism” and wants to ban sex education in schools. He wants to remove trade union rights. He’s anti-immigration. His rhetoric is about attacking the political elite. He is friends not just with Trump, but with the likes of Vox in Spain and Bolosonaro in Brazil. He also says he has conversations with God and can communicate with dogs through a mystic, although that’s not a specifically far right position.
Nah, from what I have seen more than half of the masses of dog owners in our village think that they should be talking to their dog as if it is a child and understands more than the tone of what they are saying.
He believes his favourite dog was reincarnated from a lion he met when he was a gladiator in ancient Rome.
In terms of other far right policies, he toyed with the idea of letting people sell their children, but had to walk back those remarks. He wants to transfer the penitentiary system to military control. He called the Pope an “envoy of Satan”, but later apologised for that.
Oh, and the final damning proof of his idiocy is that he’s a big fan of Bitcoin.
“The largest religious complex in the world” (Wiki)
And
“The artistic legacy of Angkor Wat and other Khmer monuments in the Angkor region led directly to France adopting Cambodia as a protectorate on 11 August 1863 and invading Siam to take control of the ruins.”
(wiki)
In terms of striking human constructions I’d put it up there with the very greatest. It was overrun with tourists pre Covid which has maybe led some to underrate it (due to a bad experience). I’ve been lucky enough to see it almost alone - back in the noughties
20 years ago if if you got up early or lingered late you had it to yourself
Right. Official global top ten of pre industrial sites in indisputable order
1. Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler 2. Angkor Wat 3. Pantheon 4. Temples of Luxor and Karnak 5. Teotihuacan 6. Hagia Sophia 7. Taj Mahal 8. Stonehenge 9. Agrigento 10. The monastery of Solovetsky
Bubbling under
Borobodur Pyramids of Giza Great Wall of China Chichen itza and palenque Chambord The Renaissance ensemble of Florence El Escorial The walled city of Jerusalem Macchu piccu Abu simbel Krak des chevaliers The forbidden city The temples of Kyoto Lhasa The entirety of Kathmandu My flat
That’s it. That’s the list. There is no argument. The only argument is where you put the great gothic cathedrals of Europe. Taken as a whole they would be in number 2 or 3
Individually I’m not sure any of them make the top 10
With the red tories increasing their attacks on the Green party, it shows how worried they are. I wonder why?
The Greens are the new Labour Party
The Greens are the workers party
The Green Party is not the establishment
The Green Party represents ordinary people
Rinse and repeat for Tories and Reform
Yebbut at the heart of the Green Party is, er, or should be Green policies. Which they are not.
Sayeth Ben Goldsmith, your party funder or ex party funder:
"The Green Party is simply a harder-left version of Labour. We don’t have any ‘green’ party in the sense of a party whose attention is focused on the protection and restoration of the natural world; a party for those of us for whom nature is the biggest issue. It’s a huge shame."
You support them because they are a harder-left version of Labour. Which is fine. But at least play it straight and stop with all the "green" bolleaux. Call it as it is.
I agree with Ben.
The Green Party needs a huge kick up the backside. Eject all the Trots and focus on environmentalism.
Eject all the Trots and where are they going to go? Maybe they could take over the Conservative Party, that would be fun.
With the red tories increasing their attacks on the Green party, it shows how worried they are. I wonder why?
The Greens are the new Labour Party
The Greens are the workers party
The Green Party is not the establishment
The Green Party represents ordinary people
Rinse and repeat for Tories and Reform
Yebbut at the heart of the Green Party is, er, or should be Green policies. Which they are not.
Sayeth Ben Goldsmith, your party funder or ex party funder:
"The Green Party is simply a harder-left version of Labour. We don’t have any ‘green’ party in the sense of a party whose attention is focused on the protection and restoration of the natural world; a party for those of us for whom nature is the biggest issue. It’s a huge shame."
You support them because they are a harder-left version of Labour. Which is fine. But at least play it straight and stop with all the "green" bolleaux. Call it as it is.
I support them partly because of their Green credentials but also because they are the only Party offering anything different to the Neo Liberalism that has been in place for 44 year and that have got us to this shitty position.
He has talked of abandoning the Argentine currency and dollarisation as a means of stopping runaway inflation, currently 140%. There is no doubt that the fiscal and monetary policies of Argentina have been disastrous. It will be interesting to see how he does.
The BBC aren’t the only organisation to call him far right. He was a member of Avanza Libertad, which also included neo-Nazis.
He wants to ban abortion, liberalise gun laws, and allow a free trade in human organs. He says climate change has been invented by “neo-Marxists”, goes on about “cultural Marxism” and wants to ban sex education in schools. He wants to remove trade union rights. He’s anti-immigration. His rhetoric is about attacking the political elite. He is friends not just with Trump, but with the likes of Vox in Spain and Bolsonaro in Brazil. He also says he has conversations with God and can communicate with dogs through a mystic, although that’s not a specifically far right position.
My wife has a friend in Argentina (she always says she Australian anyway when asked - they don't know). Sounds like she'll be permanently returning to the UK soon.
With the red tories increasing their attacks on the Green party, it shows how worried they are. I wonder why?
The Greens are the new Labour Party
The Greens are the workers party
The Green Party is not the establishment
The Green Party represents ordinary people
Rinse and repeat for Tories and Reform
Yebbut at the heart of the Green Party is, er, or should be Green policies. Which they are not.
Sayeth Ben Goldsmith, your party funder or ex party funder:
"The Green Party is simply a harder-left version of Labour. We don’t have any ‘green’ party in the sense of a party whose attention is focused on the protection and restoration of the natural world; a party for those of us for whom nature is the biggest issue. It’s a huge shame."
You support them because they are a harder-left version of Labour. Which is fine. But at least play it straight and stop with all the "green" bolleaux. Call it as it is.
I agree with Ben.
The Green Party needs a huge kick up the backside. Eject all the Trots and focus on environmentalism.
Eject all the Trots and where are they going to go? Maybe they could take over the Conservative Party, that would be fun.
Nah, the former Revolutionary Communists have that one, via Spiked Online.
With the red tories increasing their attacks on the Green party, it shows how worried they are. I wonder why?
The Greens are the new Labour Party
The Greens are the workers party
The Green Party is not the establishment
The Green Party represents ordinary people
Rinse and repeat for Tories and Reform
Yebbut at the heart of the Green Party is, er, or should be Green policies. Which they are not.
Sayeth Ben Goldsmith, your party funder or ex party funder:
"The Green Party is simply a harder-left version of Labour. We don’t have any ‘green’ party in the sense of a party whose attention is focused on the protection and restoration of the natural world; a party for those of us for whom nature is the biggest issue. It’s a huge shame."
You support them because they are a harder-left version of Labour. Which is fine. But at least play it straight and stop with all the "green" bolleaux. Call it as it is.
I agree with Ben.
The Green Party needs a huge kick up the backside. Eject all the Trots and focus on environmentalism.
As a member of the Green Party - it won't happen. Why? Because the kind of change needed to deal with climate change is incompatible with modern capitalism. Companies cannot treat emissions and pollution like an externality, but they do because governments let them and it increases profit. "Unused" land which have thriving, if small, ecosystems should not be considered an economic waste - but they are. (I note how after Bolsenaro started his mad hacking at regulations protecting the Amazon, most people discussed how good this was going to be for the Brazilian economy and investors, and not how devastating it would be towards future human life on this planet). We cannot have an economic system that is not just aiming at profit, but continual exponential growth of profit, when we have finite resources.
And then we get to the impacts of climate change - something disproportionately caused by the richest in the world that will disproportionately harm the poorest in the world. If we truly want to prepare the world for what is to come without millions or even billions dying - we will need to focus more spending on Africa and India, and the poorest in our country.
That is why environmentalism and the Green party has to be inherently left wing - because conservationism (the conservative idea of environmentalism - of just keeping the environment the same in what they believe is "normal") will not do anything to prevent or deal with the horrors we are facing.
With the red tories increasing their attacks on the Green party, it shows how worried they are. I wonder why?
The Greens are the new Labour Party
The Greens are the workers party
The Green Party is not the establishment
The Green Party represents ordinary people
Rinse and repeat for Tories and Reform
Yebbut at the heart of the Green Party is, er, or should be Green policies. Which they are not.
Sayeth Ben Goldsmith, your party funder or ex party funder:
"The Green Party is simply a harder-left version of Labour. We don’t have any ‘green’ party in the sense of a party whose attention is focused on the protection and restoration of the natural world; a party for those of us for whom nature is the biggest issue. It’s a huge shame."
You support them because they are a harder-left version of Labour. Which is fine. But at least play it straight and stop with all the "green" bolleaux. Call it as it is.
I agree with Ben.
The Green Party needs a huge kick up the backside. Eject all the Trots and focus on environmentalism.
Eject all the Trots and where are they going to go? Maybe they could take over the Conservative Party, that would be fun.
Nah, the former Revolutionary Communists have that one, via Spiked Online.
Spiked these days are about as revolutionary as Romesh Ranganathan or Michael McIntyre's comedy.
With the red tories increasing their attacks on the Green party, it shows how worried they are. I wonder why?
The Greens are the new Labour Party
The Greens are the workers party
The Green Party is not the establishment
The Green Party represents ordinary people
Rinse and repeat for Tories and Reform
Yebbut at the heart of the Green Party is, er, or should be Green policies. Which they are not.
Sayeth Ben Goldsmith, your party funder or ex party funder:
"The Green Party is simply a harder-left version of Labour. We don’t have any ‘green’ party in the sense of a party whose attention is focused on the protection and restoration of the natural world; a party for those of us for whom nature is the biggest issue. It’s a huge shame."
You support them because they are a harder-left version of Labour. Which is fine. But at least play it straight and stop with all the "green" bolleaux. Call it as it is.
I agree with Ben.
The Green Party needs a huge kick up the backside. Eject all the Trots and focus on environmentalism.
Eject all the Trots and where are they going to go? Maybe they could take over the Conservative Party, that would be fun.
Nah, the former Revolutionary Communists have that one, via Spiked Online.
Spiked these days are about as revolutionary as Romesh Ranganathan or Michael McIntyre's comedy.
No, they still have the RCP mentality, hence the Brexitism and Putin apologism, just the party line has changed.
“The largest religious complex in the world” (Wiki)
And
“The artistic legacy of Angkor Wat and other Khmer monuments in the Angkor region led directly to France adopting Cambodia as a protectorate on 11 August 1863 and invading Siam to take control of the ruins.”
(wiki)
In terms of striking human constructions I’d put it up there with the very greatest. It was overrun with tourists pre Covid which has maybe led some to underrate it (due to a bad experience). I’ve been lucky enough to see it almost alone - back in the noughties
20 years ago if if you got up early or lingered late you had it to yourself
Right. Official global top ten of pre industrial sites in indisputable order
1. Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler 2. Angkor Wat 3. Pantheon 4. Temples of Luxor and Karnak 5. Teotihuacan 6. Hagia Sophia 7. Taj Mahal 8. Stonehenge 9. Agrigento 10. The monastery of Solovetsky
Bubbling under
Borobodur Pyramids of Giza Great Wall of China Chichen itza and palenque Chambord The Renaissance ensemble of Florence El Escorial The walled city of Jerusalem Macchu piccu Abu simbel Krak des chevaliers The forbidden city The temples of Kyoto Lhasa The entirety of Kathmandu My flat
That’s it. That’s the list. There is no argument. The only argument is where you put the great gothic cathedrals of Europe. Taken as a whole they would be in number 2 or 3
Individually I’m not sure any of them make the top 10
Stonehenge? Nah. Top 50 maybe; its profile is largely down to it happening to be in the land that was Top Nation for 100 years or so.
You must have a gothic catherdral in the top 10, probably a couple. Choose one at least from: Notre Dame, Westminster Abbey, Lincoln, Chartres or Reims. I choose Lincoln.
The Alhambra also needs to be in the top 10. The Colosseum and the Pantheon, too while we're at it.
With the red tories increasing their attacks on the Green party, it shows how worried they are. I wonder why?
The Greens are the new Labour Party
The Greens are the workers party
The Green Party is not the establishment
The Green Party represents ordinary people
Rinse and repeat for Tories and Reform
Yebbut at the heart of the Green Party is, er, or should be Green policies. Which they are not.
Sayeth Ben Goldsmith, your party funder or ex party funder:
"The Green Party is simply a harder-left version of Labour. We don’t have any ‘green’ party in the sense of a party whose attention is focused on the protection and restoration of the natural world; a party for those of us for whom nature is the biggest issue. It’s a huge shame."
You support them because they are a harder-left version of Labour. Which is fine. But at least play it straight and stop with all the "green" bolleaux. Call it as it is.
I agree with Ben.
The Green Party needs a huge kick up the backside. Eject all the Trots and focus on environmentalism.
As a member of the Green Party - it won't happen. Why? Because the kind of change needed to deal with climate change is incompatible with modern capitalism. Companies cannot treat emissions and pollution like an externality, but they do because governments let them and it increases profit. "Unused" land which have thriving, if small, ecosystems should not be considered an economic waste - but they are. (I note how after Bolsenaro started his mad hacking at regulations protecting the Amazon, most people discussed how good this was going to be for the Brazilian economy and investors, and not how devastating it would be towards future human life on this planet). We cannot have an economic system that is not just aiming at profit, but continual exponential growth of profit, when we have finite resources.
And then we get to the impacts of climate change - something disproportionately caused by the richest in the world that will disproportionately harm the poorest in the world. If we truly want to prepare the world for what is to come without millions or even billions dying - we will need to focus more spending on Africa and India, and the poorest in our country.
That is why environmentalism and the Green party has to be inherently left wing - because conservationism (the conservative idea of environmentalism - of just keeping the environment the same in what they believe is "normal") will not do anything to prevent or deal with the horrors we are facing.
You are not aware that the markets were consistently against Bolsenaro and his bullshit - which was part of his ranting?
Comments
"When Cartwright comes back, tie him to his desk by his bollocks. I want my people in here, doing nothing..."
Within a fortnight
Unless they only cut taxes for the 4% in which case not till next year
I'm probably more with Mortimer than 148grss on the extent to which the government SHOULD redistribute wealth, though it's a very worthwhile argument to have and I'm interested in exploring both sides of it. But the hill I will die on is the semantic one of what redistribution actually means!
I don’t want to bore on - heaven forfend - but Cambodia is in an incredible sweet spot now: travel wise. Phnom Penh is a brilliantly interesting Asian city with good food and bars and nightlife and history and vice - but without the insane traffic or expense of Bangkok, singapore, Hong Kong
You’ve got Angkor Wat - one of the top ten historical sites in the entire world - just down the road. You’ve got pristine jungle and untouched mountains in between
And you’ve got BEAUTIFUL islands with lovely hotels - or empty beaches with wooden shacks - ie like Thailand 30-40 years ago - just offshore. The people are fun and friendly and hedonistic. And they drink all day
And it’s all really cheap (outside the luxe hotels)
as a tropical destination I don’t think it has a rival anywhere in the world. Not even close
Vietnam is great but it doesn’t have Angkor. Thailand has been done. The Caribbean is lovely but it’s boring (Mexico apart but eek Mexico). Myanmar is too weird, the Philippines too dangerous and the food is awful. Indonesia is another world but hard to get to. Etc
The AI systems that people are excited about these days are generative AI, including large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT. LLMs are not being used to design new drugs; that requires a different class of AI. LLMs are used for chatbots and so are touted as being useful for something like a souped up 111. Healthcare is high risk and there are challenges with anything patient-facing, of course.
I’ve just been in a lecture theatre where the guest speaker was someone who worked on 111. However, I wasn’t talking earlier about souping up 111, although there may be potential there, but about other uses around writing and using medical records, or situations where there is a clear structure defining good practice, so there’s less problem with the LLM going off the rails. You also have contexts where the LLM is assisting the healthcare practitioner, so they’re in control of any final output, reducing some of the problems you get if the LLM is acting unsupervised.
If you look at recent comments by OpenAI staff they are all quite strange. There’s an interview with the OpenAI alignment guy Ilya Sustkever (sp?) where he gets almost tearful. Sounds scared
If you had achieved something like AGI it would freak you out. Ilya S is known to be obsessed with alignment as AGI gets nearer
Here is the tweet statement by the guy who has just taken over from Altman
“Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of @OpenAI.
After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted. I had recently resigned from my role as CEO of Twitch due to the birth of my now 9 month old son. Spending time with him has been every bit as rewarding as I thought it would be, and I was happily avoiding full time employment.
I took this job because I believe that OpenAI is one of the most important companies currently in existence. When the board shared the situation and asked me to take the role, I did not make the decision lightly. Ultimately I felt that I had a duty to help if I could.”
Listen to that. “A duty to help if I could”. This guy is know to be an AGI doomster. Wants an AGI pause or slowdown as thinks it’s too dangerous
What does that imply?
It doesn’t sound like a corporate battle over shares or some guy trying to make extra bucks
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
15% for Refuk:TBP would comprehensively gape the tories.
In theory you could have a redistributive system which redistributed from poor to rich. You could tax everyone £100, say, and give it all to the king. But almost all taxation systems - ours included - goes in total the other way. Almost all taxation systems are redistributive and redistributive from rich to poor. If you do less redistribution, it is the rich who win and the poor who lose.
In Robin Hood, who 'redstributed' the wealth? It was Robin Hood, wasn't it? Who took from the rich and gave to the poor. It wasn't the Sheriff of Nottingham.
You haven't got anywhere to go with this 148grss! Devote your energies instead to the much more important and interesting argument of WHY we should or should not redistribute wealth from rich to poor.
That's what I mean by saying that the accumulated capital of rich people doesn't necessarily equal productivity. So when you lower taxation on the rich and lower welfare on the poor, you reinforce what is already the redistributive system that is capitalism (which redistributes the labour value of the worker to the owner via profits) and take away the only safety net anyone has when that extractivist tendency is so high that the wage given to those workers doesn't cover the cost of living.
Did get shafted by a great Piastri bet failing due to the safety car in Silverstone, but benefited from unexpected Perez long shots earlier so probably evens out.
As my other post describes - rewarded by capitalism with more money is not the same as productive.
Thanks
And we have another big segment of the population that is productive: people of working age. They’ve been shafted by this government.
Squeezing the productive parts of the economy to help the unproductive is precisely what this Tory administration has been doing since 2010.
The Greens are the new Labour Party
The Greens are the workers party
The Green Party is not the establishment
The Green Party represents ordinary people
Rinse and repeat for Tories and Reform
https://x.com/asslatam/status/1726408902114173169?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
I just don't see how that gets significantly better for RefUK in the context of a General Election rather than a by-election (which is a bit of a free hit for disgruntled Tory voters as the Government isn't at stake), and across areas that, on average, aren't as favourable to them as Tamworth.
But it's true that my time working in the City (esp in Investment banking) definitely reinforced that political slant rather than challenged it.
[Minor barb, because I can't resist: this is one of the few arguments I've heard for paying footballers more. Though of course I agree footballers are wildly atypical of people who sell their labour!]
That makes sense, but only if you assume that the person taking the profit doesn't add any value. I disagree with this. Identification of opportunity, risking of capital, and, you know, the sheer bloody faff of it all adds value.
My view is that the value it adds is EXACTLY the value of the profit which is taken, kind of by definition.
But we're moving onto interesting ground here!
(Unfortunately I'm leaving it here because I've got meetings all afternoon. But thank you - I disagree with you wildly about many things, but you are always interesting and manage the rare art of posting opinions I disagree wildly with in ways which provoke a discussion rather than a shouting match. And that creates wealth too, of a sort.)
Plus of course much of it is unspoilt as I'm not sure the Halo Trust has reached all of the country (could be mistaken).
But yes well worth a visit and slightly more off the beaten track than other SEAsian countries as you say.
Sayeth Ben Goldsmith, your party funder or ex party funder:
"The Green Party is simply a harder-left version of Labour. We don’t have any ‘green’ party in the sense of a party whose attention is focused on the protection and restoration of the natural world; a party for those of us for whom nature is the biggest issue. It’s a huge shame."
https://twitter.com/BenGoldsmith/status/1697689219915735281
You support them because they are a harder-left version of Labour. Which is fine. But at least play it straight and stop with all the "green" bolleaux. Call it as it is.
The former chief scientific adviser said the prime minister had to be “managed” in the meeting, and asked himself: “is it always like this?”
Sir Patrick wrote in one diary entry in September 2020: “Chief Constables have said current rules too complex and difficult to police. PM looking glum. Then suddenly - ‘Is the 144 whole thing a mirage? The curves just follow a natural pattern despite what you do’ Incredulity in the room [...]
“The whole meeting carefully manages the PM (is it always like this?) and he eventually approves the measures - really just reinforcing and enforcing what we should be doing anyway.
-----
This will get all the headlines for Boris, what a Bozo....but the graphs were wrong, repeatedly. It also shows a certain arrogance among the scientific advisers. Us wrong, never, what a ridiculous statement by these idiot politicians.
When we already know that Big Dom data boffin spotted they were wrong, told them and was ignored. The problem is there are clearly he is an outlier in government machine that understands data.
Some of the stuff that was produced was utter farcical. Some of us pointed out the clear flaws on here at the time.
One big point that I don't believe has really been covered yet, why was it so difficult to get the required data. They had to hire outside contractors to right complex parsers even to produce the daily case / death figures, that had to run for several hours just to pre-process the data.
This is the kind of concrete flaws that need addresses for the future.
No doubt he will be serenely unperturbed.
I certainly would not survive such scrutiny. I doubt anyone would. IMO it's also not very enlightening.
For all Boris will have made mistakes, I don't believe he did the former entirely. I'm not one who thinks all the experts should have been ignored for being wrong all the time, and I reject the complaint from the time that the officials were running the show, and so would defend that the politicians may well have come to some different conclusions as they tried to balance all the factors, not simply public health factors.
That is their job after all.
And I’m guessing you were last in Cambodia before Covid. That’s probably the main point
These extracts don't help the Bring Back Boris crew.
Goldsmith presumably is a deep green.
That is simply incorrect.
Normally I seem to have more peaks and troughs but aside from a few strokes of luck, good and ill, this has been a strangely consistent season.
They didn't just want to offer independent, alternative viewpoints, they wanted to fool people or undermine the messaging from actual SAGE, which is a nefarious motivation.
I don’t see the Inquiry hearings as supporting your claim of an echo chamber. We’ve heard about all sorts of disagreements. Today we’ve heard about disagreements between Vallance and Whitty, for example.
If you do understand data, then you understand the difficulties in producing data. No-one who’s worked as a health data science is surprised at the challenge in getting accurate and timely data out of complex systems. You could do something about that, but it would require major investment in systems. Sadly, I see zero appetite for investment in pandemic preparedness in the current government.
Even Marx saw capitalism as being more an antihero than a villain. It created abundance, and broke down feudalism and slavery.
The devastating critiques contrast humdrum reality with an unattainable Utopia (in all likelihood, a dystopia).
Rather the disagreement is what to do in response to them.
I don’t see the Inquiry hearings as supporting your claim of an echo chamber. We’ve heard about all sorts of disagreements. Today we’ve heard about disagreements between Vallance and Whitty, for example.
If you do understand data, then you understand the difficulties in producing data. No-one who’s worked as a health data science is surprised at the challenge in getting accurate and timely data out of complex systems. You could do something about that I think a lot of the media coverage is focused on the personalities and rude things said by or about them. However, that’s not the meat of the Inquiry. Watch the hearings, read the evidence submission, and I think it’s pretty enlightening at understanding what happened and the challenges that arise in these extreme circumstances.
That said, it’s a judge-led Inquiry, not a scientific one. There are questions around the best approaches to handling a pandemic that, I think, are better tackled in the academic literature.
For example, it is beginning to come out that the “Save Life” stuff for the comic concrete problems in building was bullshit.
When repeatedly asked by officials, someone invented a formula for calculating how long the building would be safe for. But the premise that you could predict the failure, even vaguely accurately, seems to be wrong.
See DTD683…
So, in that case, all the elaborate plans, graphs etc. from the experts were quite probably a “mirage”
At times I wondered why The BBC and the broadsheets employed science correspondents, because they rarely took part in the press briefings. Peston, Rigby and others didn't do themselves any favours by turning up.
The Green Party needs a huge kick up the backside. Eject all the Trots and focus on environmentalism.
“The largest religious complex in the world” (Wiki)
And
“The artistic legacy of Angkor Wat and other Khmer monuments in the Angkor region led directly to France adopting Cambodia as a protectorate on 11 August 1863 and invading Siam to take control of the ruins.”
(wiki)
In terms of striking human constructions I’d put it up there with the very greatest. It was overrun with tourists pre Covid which has maybe led some to underrate it (due to a bad experience). I’ve been lucky enough to see it almost alone - back in the noughties
20 years ago if if you got up early or lingered late you had it to yourself
Right. Official global top ten of pre industrial sites in indisputable order
1. Gobekli Tepe and the Tas Tepeler
2. Angkor Wat
3. Pantheon
4. Temples of Luxor and Karnak
5. Teotihuacan
6. Hagia Sophia
7. Taj Mahal
8. Stonehenge
9. Agrigento
10. The monastery of Solovetsky
Bubbling under
Borobodur
Pyramids of Giza
Great Wall of China
Chichen itza and palenque
Chambord
The Renaissance ensemble of Florence
El Escorial
The walled city of Jerusalem
Macchu piccu
Abu simbel
Krak des chevaliers
The forbidden city
The temples of Kyoto
Lhasa
The entirety of Kathmandu
My flat
That’s it. That’s the list. There is no argument. The only argument is where you put the great gothic cathedrals of Europe. Taken as a whole they would be in number 2 or 3
Individually I’m not sure any of them make the top 10
And then we get to the impacts of climate change - something disproportionately caused by the richest in the world that will disproportionately harm the poorest in the world. If we truly want to prepare the world for what is to come without millions or even billions dying - we will need to focus more spending on Africa and India, and the poorest in our country.
That is why environmentalism and the Green party has to be inherently left wing - because conservationism (the conservative idea of environmentalism - of just keeping the environment the same in what they believe is "normal") will not do anything to prevent or deal with the horrors we are facing.
You must have a gothic catherdral in the top 10, probably a couple. Choose one at least from: Notre Dame, Westminster Abbey, Lincoln, Chartres or Reims. I choose Lincoln.
The Alhambra also needs to be in the top 10.
The Colosseum and the Pantheon, too while we're at it.
So my top 10 is now 15 or so.
Also Lascaux, at least top 20.