Despite spending a chunk of the summer in Finland, sadly I have no political intelligence to share. It’s a modern, prosperous place despite having survived for much of its history by exporting trees. Indeed I think they still export more timber than anywhere else.
They’re still fir-st at timber.
Lol
And they’re all obsessed by coffee
And, despite the geopolitical tensions, challenging climate, and almost complete absence of scenery (other than trees), they keep coming out top on global happiness surveys
And they have wonderful names.
I used to work with a guy called Kari-Pekka-Makela which just rolls off the tongue like music
Off topic, an earlier than usual Sunday Rawnsley, as a distraction from incoming destruction:
..few of [the Shadow Cabinet] have any first-hand knowledge of what it is like to lead a department, manage multibillion pound budgets, draft legislation and persuade parliament to pass it, plan and deliver programmes while fire-fighting crises that flare up out of nowhere and managing the expectations of stakeholders, the media and public opinion. “Many of Keir’s team don’t have any idea what will hit them,” remarks one veteran of past Labour governments.
So Labour’s personnel need to be thinking about how to do government not after the election, but before the weight of its pressures is on their shoulders.
On polling day, Sir Keir and his team will have responsibility for nothing. The following day, they will be responsible for everything. They will take office knackered after a month or more of campaigning and will have had little or no sleep the night before the arrival of the new prime minister at Number 10.
A compelling study recently published by the Institute for Government…concludes: “Oppositions that prepare are better at governing, particularly in the crucial early years of a parliament.”
Some Labour frontbenchers who have excelled as opposition spokespeople will turn out to be flops when faced with the different demands of governing. Others who have not made much of a mark will prove to be more accomplished as ministers. Thrown into the deep end, some will swim, some will sink. To improve the chances of there being more doers than duds, former cabinet ministers and ex-permanent secretaries have been giving Labour frontbenchers private advice and coaching in how to be a successful minister.
In his early period at Number 10, Mr Blair used to complain to aides that he saw the civil service as “a big shiny Rolls-Royce that no one has taught me how to drive”. By appointing Sue Gray as his chief of staff, Sir Keir has placed at his right hand a Whitehall veteran who knows the machinery of government inside out. Team Starmer has reason to expect that it will receive a generally enthusiastic welcome from Whitehall. Not so much because it is stuffed with ideological sympathisers, but because Tories have used officials as whipping boys by denigrating the civil service as a useless “blob” while brutally purging many mandarins.
Labour is so accustomed to losing that a lot of its people will struggle to think about anything except the election until polling day. Success in government is more likely for the shrewder Labour people who will also be focused on the intense challenges that will confront them from the day after.
Who are these people who have excelled at opposition?
One reason I’m sceptical about these colossal Labour leads is that the party frequently seems a one-man band and that’s not likely to work to his advantage in an election campaign. Even Cabinet veterans like Cooper and Miliband are fairly low profile and I can’t even think who the current Shadow Foreign Secretary is.
Cameron had Osborne and Hague. Blair had Prescott, Brown, Mandelson and Cook. Thatcher had Whitelaw and Howe. Who does Starmer have?
With possible exception of Cameron (who is a special case in not being an MP), I cannot think of a single Cabinet minister who comes across as being as competent as their Labour shadow. I might have also gone for Hunt until recently, but he is now clearly determined to wreck the economy with unfunded tax cuts providing it helps keep the Tories in power.
True, although that’s a superficial comparison, as the jobs are apples and pears, as Rawnsley sets out in his piece today. Excellence in making speeches and issuing press releases is hard to match up with excellent in running government departments. Your conclusion simply reflects the abject dearth of the latter.
Does anyone know Labour well enough to predict any low profile shadows who might surprise on the upside in government ?
No, but my random picks would be Malhotra, Allin-Khan, Jarvis, Ashworth and Kendall.
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
But the problem with all the “right” things that need doing with healthcare, including the shift from cure to prevention, is that the payoffs, although potentially considerable, are years if not decades down the line. Which means there’s no benefit, other than in posterity, for the politicians that bring them about. It’s certainly not going to work as a plan for Streeting to make it to number ten.
It’s shouldn’t be a problem, though, since the interventions need not be massively expensive. And something like reducing dietary sodium would show results fairly quickly.
Developing policy that takes more than one parliament to see fruition is certainly not a strength of our system. Maybe it’s time for a change.
The UK had 3 active minehunters in the Middle East and the defence secretary is asked about one of them reversing into another, thereby reducing the number of active minehunters in the Middle East to 1.
Grant Shapps says "these things happen."
Same as killing 25000 innocents then.
They do indeed happen. I think the Chidders has been involved in a collision previously.
It's not exactly a big loss. When was the last time a ship hit a floating mine in the Gulf? 1991? The main reason for being there is Being There and MCMVs are what we have going spare at the moment so that's what we sent.
Sigh of relief at the Admiralty, I expect. In the spirit of never letting a good crisis go to waste they can write off one, or ideally both, vessels and redeploy the crews to picking up fag ends on Whale Island.
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
But the problem with all the “right” things that need doing with healthcare, including the shift from cure to prevention, is that the payoffs, although potentially considerable, are years if not decades down the line. Which means there’s no benefit, other than in posterity, for the politicians that bring them about. It’s certainly not going to work as a plan for Streeting to make it to number ten.
Ah, I have an Atlantic subscription, but this covers much the same ground and doesn't appear to be paywalled:
Worth noting that other parts of the world have also had a dramatic drop in heart disease deaths too, but not generally as much. In large part that is Statins and better blood pressure medication.
The UK had 3 active minehunters in the Middle East and the defence secretary is asked about one of them reversing into another, thereby reducing the number of active minehunters in the Middle East to 1.
Grant Shapps says "these things happen."
Same as killing 25000 innocents then.
What proportion of those 25,000 were Hamas fighters and therefore about as innocent as Vladimir Putin?
I suspect there’s a considerable difference in commitment between the ‘ordinary’ Hamas fighter and his (or her) leaders. I suspect there are differences between the leaders and those who are simply motivated to revenge their granny.
Edit: from the comments, also clickbait for those who are absolutely but utterlyu wrongly convinced by our Tories on PB and elsewhere that £1m per family isn't enough IHT allowance for the vast majority of families.
Off topic, an earlier than usual Sunday Rawnsley, as a distraction from incoming destruction:
..few of [the Shadow Cabinet] have any first-hand knowledge of what it is like to lead a department, manage multibillion pound budgets, draft legislation and persuade parliament to pass it, plan and deliver programmes while fire-fighting crises that flare up out of nowhere and managing the expectations of stakeholders, the media and public opinion. “Many of Keir’s team don’t have any idea what will hit them,” remarks one veteran of past Labour governments.
So Labour’s personnel need to be thinking about how to do government not after the election, but before the weight of its pressures is on their shoulders.
On polling day, Sir Keir and his team will have responsibility for nothing. The following day, they will be responsible for everything. They will take office knackered after a month or more of campaigning and will have had little or no sleep the night before the arrival of the new prime minister at Number 10.
A compelling study recently published by the Institute for Government…concludes: “Oppositions that prepare are better at governing, particularly in the crucial early years of a parliament.”
Some Labour frontbenchers who have excelled as opposition spokespeople will turn out to be flops when faced with the different demands of governing. Others who have not made much of a mark will prove to be more accomplished as ministers. Thrown into the deep end, some will swim, some will sink. To improve the chances of there being more doers than duds, former cabinet ministers and ex-permanent secretaries have been giving Labour frontbenchers private advice and coaching in how to be a successful minister.
In his early period at Number 10, Mr Blair used to complain to aides that he saw the civil service as “a big shiny Rolls-Royce that no one has taught me how to drive”. By appointing Sue Gray as his chief of staff, Sir Keir has placed at his right hand a Whitehall veteran who knows the machinery of government inside out. Team Starmer has reason to expect that it will receive a generally enthusiastic welcome from Whitehall. Not so much because it is stuffed with ideological sympathisers, but because Tories have used officials as whipping boys by denigrating the civil service as a useless “blob” while brutally purging many mandarins.
Labour is so accustomed to losing that a lot of its people will struggle to think about anything except the election until polling day. Success in government is more likely for the shrewder Labour people who will also be focused on the intense challenges that will confront them from the day after.
Who are these people who have excelled at opposition?
One reason I’m sceptical about these colossal Labour leads is that the party frequently seems a one-man band and that’s not likely to work to his advantage in an election campaign. Even Cabinet veterans like Cooper and Miliband are fairly low profile and I can’t even think who the current Shadow Foreign Secretary is.
Cameron had Osborne and Hague. Blair had Prescott, Brown, Mandelson and Cook. Thatcher had Whitelaw and Howe. Who does Starmer have?
I remember the same criticism being made of Labour's Shadow Cabinet in the run up to 1997. No one was thought to be a "big beast" then either. Indeed the criticism was that they were all wet behind their ears.
Starmers team contains some new faces, but also others such as Ed Miliband and Yvette Cooper with cabinet experience.
It's not as if they are replacing the A team either, the current cabinet is a shambolic collection of numpties chosen only for their professed loyalty.
That last sentence is unkind.
To shambolic collections of numpties chosen only for their professed loyalty.
I don't recall the same criticism in 1997 although I was very young at the time. In fact my recollection is that the likes of Brown and Mandelson were front and centre of the campaign.
Cook was a giant; and Dobson a very substantial figure
Despite spending a chunk of the summer in Finland, sadly I have no political intelligence to share. It’s a modern, prosperous place despite having survived for much of its history by exporting trees. Indeed I think they still export more timber than anywhere else.
They’re still fir-st at timber.
Lol
And they’re all obsessed by coffee
And, despite the geopolitical tensions, challenging climate, and almost complete absence of scenery (other than trees), they keep coming out top on global happiness surveys
And they have wonderful names.
I used to work with a guy called Kari-Pekka-Makela which just rolls off the tongue like music
Finnish is a non-indo-european language (being Uralic), that, although mutually unintelligible, shares with Hungarian some unusual features like vowel alliteration, lack of gender (not even a he and she, which Hungarian has), and rhythmic pattern of speech.
The UK had 3 active minehunters in the Middle East and the defence secretary is asked about one of them reversing into another, thereby reducing the number of active minehunters in the Middle East to 1.
Grant Shapps says "these things happen."
Same as killing 25000 innocents then.
What proportion of those 25,000 were Hamas fighters and therefore about as innocent as Vladimir Putin?
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
But the problem with all the “right” things that need doing with healthcare, including the shift from cure to prevention, is that the payoffs, although potentially considerable, are years if not decades down the line. Which means there’s no benefit, other than in posterity, for the politicians that bring them about. It’s certainly not going to work as a plan for Streeting to make it to number ten.
Prevention means tackling the transnational corporations that produce Industrially Manufactured Edible Products. The same corporations and industries that give millions in lobbying to our political system. If there's any justice in the world, the likes of Nestle/Kraft/PepsiCo/Unilever will be thought of in the same way as the tobacco corporations in years to come.
I think these sorts of articles (and the Telegraph versions, which tend to be more numerous and more ridiculous) are certified engagement fodder and clickbait. They know the political message is ludicrous but they also know opponents will reshare the links thousands of times.
I have a near allergic reaction to clicking on any Daily Mail link, it feels sort of dirty feeding the ad revenue so I avoid doing it. Likewise the Telegraph although that can be difficult as they do some good travel supplement content and one of the school mums works on their features section.
I also steer clear of clicking on too much Guardian news and opinion sections because it can get irritating.
Which unfortunately leaves the paywalled FT and Times and patronising BBC.
Off topic, an earlier than usual Sunday Rawnsley, as a distraction from incoming destruction:
..few of [the Shadow Cabinet] have any first-hand knowledge of what it is like to lead a department, manage multibillion pound budgets, draft legislation and persuade parliament to pass it, plan and deliver programmes while fire-fighting crises that flare up out of nowhere and managing the expectations of stakeholders, the media and public opinion. “Many of Keir’s team don’t have any idea what will hit them,” remarks one veteran of past Labour governments.
So Labour’s personnel need to be thinking about how to do government not after the election, but before the weight of its pressures is on their shoulders.
On polling day, Sir Keir and his team will have responsibility for nothing. The following day, they will be responsible for everything. They will take office knackered after a month or more of campaigning and will have had little or no sleep the night before the arrival of the new prime minister at Number 10.
A compelling study recently published by the Institute for Government…concludes: “Oppositions that prepare are better at governing, particularly in the crucial early years of a parliament.”
Some Labour frontbenchers who have excelled as opposition spokespeople will turn out to be flops when faced with the different demands of governing. Others who have not made much of a mark will prove to be more accomplished as ministers. Thrown into the deep end, some will swim, some will sink. To improve the chances of there being more doers than duds, former cabinet ministers and ex-permanent secretaries have been giving Labour frontbenchers private advice and coaching in how to be a successful minister.
In his early period at Number 10, Mr Blair used to complain to aides that he saw the civil service as “a big shiny Rolls-Royce that no one has taught me how to drive”. By appointing Sue Gray as his chief of staff, Sir Keir has placed at his right hand a Whitehall veteran who knows the machinery of government inside out. Team Starmer has reason to expect that it will receive a generally enthusiastic welcome from Whitehall. Not so much because it is stuffed with ideological sympathisers, but because Tories have used officials as whipping boys by denigrating the civil service as a useless “blob” while brutally purging many mandarins.
Labour is so accustomed to losing that a lot of its people will struggle to think about anything except the election until polling day. Success in government is more likely for the shrewder Labour people who will also be focused on the intense challenges that will confront them from the day after.
Who are these people who have excelled at opposition?
One reason I’m sceptical about these colossal Labour leads is that the party frequently seems a one-man band and that’s not likely to work to his advantage in an election campaign. Even Cabinet veterans like Cooper and Miliband are fairly low profile and I can’t even think who the current Shadow Foreign Secretary is.
Cameron had Osborne and Hague. Blair had Prescott, Brown, Mandelson and Cook. Thatcher had Whitelaw and Howe. Who does Starmer have?
Off topic, an earlier than usual Sunday Rawnsley, as a distraction from incoming destruction:
..few of [the Shadow Cabinet] have any first-hand knowledge of what it is like to lead a department, manage multibillion pound budgets, draft legislation and persuade parliament to pass it, plan and deliver programmes while fire-fighting crises that flare up out of nowhere and managing the expectations of stakeholders, the media and public opinion. “Many of Keir’s team don’t have any idea what will hit them,” remarks one veteran of past Labour governments.
So Labour’s personnel need to be thinking about how to do government not after the election, but before the weight of its pressures is on their shoulders.
On polling day, Sir Keir and his team will have responsibility for nothing. The following day, they will be responsible for everything. They will take office knackered after a month or more of campaigning and will have had little or no sleep the night before the arrival of the new prime minister at Number 10.
A compelling study recently published by the Institute for Government…concludes: “Oppositions that prepare are better at governing, particularly in the crucial early years of a parliament.”
Some Labour frontbenchers who have excelled as opposition spokespeople will turn out to be flops when faced with the different demands of governing. Others who have not made much of a mark will prove to be more accomplished as ministers. Thrown into the deep end, some will swim, some will sink. To improve the chances of there being more doers than duds, former cabinet ministers and ex-permanent secretaries have been giving Labour frontbenchers private advice and coaching in how to be a successful minister.
In his early period at Number 10, Mr Blair used to complain to aides that he saw the civil service as “a big shiny Rolls-Royce that no one has taught me how to drive”. By appointing Sue Gray as his chief of staff, Sir Keir has placed at his right hand a Whitehall veteran who knows the machinery of government inside out. Team Starmer has reason to expect that it will receive a generally enthusiastic welcome from Whitehall. Not so much because it is stuffed with ideological sympathisers, but because Tories have used officials as whipping boys by denigrating the civil service as a useless “blob” while brutally purging many mandarins.
Labour is so accustomed to losing that a lot of its people will struggle to think about anything except the election until polling day. Success in government is more likely for the shrewder Labour people who will also be focused on the intense challenges that will confront them from the day after.
Who are these people who have excelled at opposition?
One reason I’m sceptical about these colossal Labour leads is that the party frequently seems a one-man band and that’s not likely to work to his advantage in an election campaign. Even Cabinet veterans like Cooper and Miliband are fairly low profile and I can’t even think who the current Shadow Foreign Secretary is.
Cameron had Osborne and Hague. Blair had Prescott, Brown, Mandelson and Cook. Thatcher had Whitelaw and Howe. Who does Starmer have?
One person who has excelled is Cambridge man (and future PM) Wes Streeting.
Streeting has the ambition, for sure. But if they’re in government replacing a sitting PM, precedent suggests the successor is likely to be from one of the top three jobs - and with Cooper and Reeves likely to be filling two of them, and with Labour very conscious of its ongoing failure to choose a woman, it would pay to be green on those two, I’d have thought? Cooper might even not seem so dull after a few years of Starmer.
I think Streeting will bomb out at Health. He hasn't a clue about what to do, and no minister of Health has made it to number 10 since the NHS came into existence. It is a particularly poisoned chalice at present too.
Although to be fair, only one former Secretary of State for Health (or equivalent) ever has made it to the top. Just as only one former SoS for Education has. And no former Transport Secretary. This is despite the roles having attracted some high profile and energetic individuals.
Domestic roles trying to focus on the nuts and bolts of useful policy tend not to be the springboard for successful careers.
Which means a few will be jockeying for position come the first reshuffle.
Bets on when that happens? Barring some scandal involving a minister I’d go with about a year into the parliament. Starmer will want the ministers to have a decent go at running their departments before shuffling them around.
Cooper isn’t a bad shout as first female leader of she manages to survive the home office. May did, so it’s not impossible.
That was my line of thought, and having been red on Cooper I’ve backed her into the green.
To survive the Home Office you need to be a diligent, hard-working details person who doesn’t miss much and keeps all the plates spinning. May and Cooper are similar in those respects. Of course, you also need to be lucky.
Cooper has been marked down because she’s not a natural campaigner and is low on flair, which matters in opposition when the primary task is to get noticed. Whereas in government, steadiness and good judgement will count for more. Cooper works hard and does well with the detail of parliamentary work and she’s likely to bring the same skills into government. And, as I said above, following Starmer could even make her look relatively interesting.
Who can possibly forget the tremendous success that was her flagship policy: HIPS
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
But the problem with all the “right” things that need doing with healthcare, including the shift from cure to prevention, is that the payoffs, although potentially considerable, are years if not decades down the line. Which means there’s no benefit, other than in posterity, for the politicians that bring them about. It’s certainly not going to work as a plan for Streeting to make it to number ten.
Ah, I have an Atlantic subscription, but this covers much the same ground and doesn't appear to be paywalled:
Worth noting that other parts of the world have also had a dramatic drop in heart disease deaths too, but not generally as much. In large part that is Statins and better blood pressure medication.
Streeting seems quite interested in whatever Australia is up to ?
I think these sorts of articles (and the Telegraph versions, which tend to be more numerous and more ridiculous) are certified engagement fodder and clickbait. They know the political message is ludicrous but they also know opponents will reshare the links thousands of times.
I have a near allergic reaction to clicking on any Daily Mail link, it feels sort of dirty feeding the ad revenue so I avoid doing it. Likewise the Telegraph although that can be difficult as they do some good travel supplement content and one of the school mums works on their features section.
I also steer clear of clicking on too much Guardian news and opinion sections because it can get irritating.
Which unfortunately leaves the paywalled FT and Times and patronising BBC.
Just found something unexceptionable in the Graun ...
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
But the problem with all the “right” things that need doing with healthcare, including the shift from cure to prevention, is that the payoffs, although potentially considerable, are years if not decades down the line. Which means there’s no benefit, other than in posterity, for the politicians that bring them about. It’s certainly not going to work as a plan for Streeting to make it to number ten.
Ah, I have an Atlantic subscription, but this covers much the same ground and doesn't appear to be paywalled:
Worth noting that other parts of the world have also had a dramatic drop in heart disease deaths too, but not generally as much. In large part that is Statins and better blood pressure medication.
Streeting seems quite interested in whatever Australia is up to ?
I wonder if Labour might copy Australia’s successful policy with illegal immigrants arriving by sea
The UK had 3 active minehunters in the Middle East and the defence secretary is asked about one of them reversing into another, thereby reducing the number of active minehunters in the Middle East to 1.
Grant Shapps says "these things happen."
Same as killing 25000 innocents then.
What proportion of those 25,000 were Hamas fighters and therefore about as innocent as Vladimir Putin?
What proportion weren’t ?
AIUI at least half the casualties are children, and around half of the adults are women, so I'm guessing at least 75% weren't Hamas fighters. With so many women and kids killed too it would tend to imply that the targeting is less than precision so some of the adult males are probably not Hamas fighters either. And is a low level Hamas grunt really on the same level as Putin, in terms of guilt and responsibility? Not really. Whatever one's overall position on this vile conflict I would have thought that everyone could agree that the death toll among civilians has been utterly horrific and unacceptable. It seems so odd to me that there are people on here so eager to go in to bat for a foreign power on this.
Port Talbot accounts for 1.5% of the UKs carbon emissions.
It has to transition to EAF - that require far fewer workers- to hit our Net Zero targets.
Tata aren't being particularly sensitive about managing the transition or finding their employees other jobs but this was always going to happen.
From an avowed patriot who claims we need to spend more on defence, what an appallingly stupid and lackadaisical comment.
And there are many ways to hit our target - 45% of our carbon emissions target could be acheived by dressing agricultural fields with rock dust, with precisely no jobs or vital national security capabilities affected. If the Government cannot meet its Net Zero targets without abandoning any pretence of safeguarding national security they should piss off and let someone else try.
I see no reason our national security concerns can't be met with EAF steel.
Oh, that's a relief, I was concerned that we were the only G20 country giving up our virgin steel making capacity, but now you've offered that reassurance, fuck it, let's just have a whip round for saucepans again.
That's because you're too silly to see the security impacts and the circular nature of development.
Tata Steel in Port Albot produces 3.5 million tonnes of steel per year, mostly from imported iron.
The UK exports close to 9 million tonnes of slag that can be made into EAF steel per year, to be made into steel overseas instead.
Converting from BOF steel to EAF steel production improves the UK's security, by lessening our dependence upon imports, it doesn't worsen it.
The UK could nearly treble our domestic production of steel purely without imports. Actually since we're getting our iron via imports, we could increase our domestic-sourced production by six-fold if we chose - and you think that weakens our security?
The UK had 3 active minehunters in the Middle East and the defence secretary is asked about one of them reversing into another, thereby reducing the number of active minehunters in the Middle East to 1.
Grant Shapps says "these things happen."
Same as killing 25000 innocents then.
What proportion of those 25,000 were Hamas fighters and therefore about as innocent as Vladimir Putin?
What proportion weren’t ?
AIUI at least half the casualties are children, and around half of the adults are women, so I'm guessing at least 75% weren't Hamas fighters. With so many women and kids killed too it would tend to imply that the targeting is less than precision so some of the adult males are probably not Hamas fighters either. And is a low level Hamas grunt really on the same level as Putin, in terms of guilt and responsibility? Not really. Whatever one's overall position on this vile conflict I would have thought that everyone could agree that the death toll among civilians has been utterly horrific and unacceptable. It seems so odd to me that there are people on here so eager to go in to bat for a foreign power on this.
You need to be a little careful about the definition of “children”. I assume they mean “under 18”. The reality is that Hamas has a track record of giving guns to 14 and 15 year old men.
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
But the problem with all the “right” things that need doing with healthcare, including the shift from cure to prevention, is that the payoffs, although potentially considerable, are years if not decades down the line. Which means there’s no benefit, other than in posterity, for the politicians that bring them about. It’s certainly not going to work as a plan for Streeting to make it to number ten.
Ah, I have an Atlantic subscription, but this covers much the same ground and doesn't appear to be paywalled:
Worth noting that other parts of the world have also had a dramatic drop in heart disease deaths too, but not generally as much. In large part that is Statins and better blood pressure medication.
Streeting seems quite interested in whatever Australia is up to ?
I wonder if Labour might copy Australia’s successful policy with illegal immigrants arriving by sea
Starmer's political skill, if he has one, is to make everything think he might do what they'd secretly like him to do.
He won't, of course, but it will allow him to hoover up votes in the GE.
Despite spending a chunk of the summer in Finland, sadly I have no political intelligence to share. It’s a modern, prosperous place despite having survived for much of its history by exporting trees. Indeed I think they still export more timber than anywhere else.
They’re still fir-st at timber.
Lol
And they’re all obsessed by coffee
And, despite the geopolitical tensions, challenging climate, and almost complete absence of scenery (other than trees), they keep coming out top on global happiness surveys
And they have wonderful names.
I used to work with a guy called Kari-Pekka-Makela which just rolls off the tongue like music
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
But the problem with all the “right” things that need doing with healthcare, including the shift from cure to prevention, is that the payoffs, although potentially considerable, are years if not decades down the line. Which means there’s no benefit, other than in posterity, for the politicians that bring them about. It’s certainly not going to work as a plan for Streeting to make it to number ten.
Ah, I have an Atlantic subscription, but this covers much the same ground and doesn't appear to be paywalled:
Worth noting that other parts of the world have also had a dramatic drop in heart disease deaths too, but not generally as much. In large part that is Statins and better blood pressure medication.
Streeting seems quite interested in whatever Australia is up to ?
I wonder if Labour might copy Australia’s successful policy with illegal immigrants arriving by sea
Starmer's political skill, if he has one, is to make everything think he might do what they'd secretly like him to do.
He won't, of course, but it will allow him to hoover up votes in the GE.
This GE.
And consequently, within his first year as PM will lead to unpopularity figures that not even Sunak will sink to....
It is utterly bizarre and extremely worrying that so many senior Tories are now on the record as wanting Trump to be the next US President. They need to be asked much more searching questions about why this is.
The UK had 3 active minehunters in the Middle East and the defence secretary is asked about one of them reversing into another, thereby reducing the number of active minehunters in the Middle East to 1.
Grant Shapps says "these things happen."
Same as killing 25000 innocents then.
What proportion of those 25,000 were Hamas fighters and therefore about as innocent as Vladimir Putin?
What proportion weren’t ?
AIUI at least half the casualties are children, and around half of the adults are women, so I'm guessing at least 75% weren't Hamas fighters. With so many women and kids killed too it would tend to imply that the targeting is less than precision so some of the adult males are probably not Hamas fighters either. And is a low level Hamas grunt really on the same level as Putin, in terms of guilt and responsibility? Not really. Whatever one's overall position on this vile conflict I would have thought that everyone could agree that the death toll among civilians has been utterly horrific and unacceptable. It seems so odd to me that there are people on here so eager to go in to bat for a foreign power on this.
Those sums seem about right to me, and as Hamas was said to have 50 000 fighters in Gaza, presumably only something like 10% of them are dead. Even allowing for wounded, that leaves far more intact than for example the number of Russians who marched into Ukraine in 2022.
It is utterly bizarre and extremely worrying that so many senior Tories are now on the record as wanting Trump to be the next US President. They need to be asked much more searching questions about why this is.
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
But the problem with all the “right” things that need doing with healthcare, including the shift from cure to prevention, is that the payoffs, although potentially considerable, are years if not decades down the line. Which means there’s no benefit, other than in posterity, for the politicians that bring them about. It’s certainly not going to work as a plan for Streeting to make it to number ten.
Ah, I have an Atlantic subscription, but this covers much the same ground and doesn't appear to be paywalled:
Worth noting that other parts of the world have also had a dramatic drop in heart disease deaths too, but not generally as much. In large part that is Statins and better blood pressure medication.
Streeting seems quite interested in whatever Australia is up to ?
I wonder if Labour might copy Australia’s successful policy with illegal immigrants arriving by sea
Starmer's political skill, if he has one, is to make everything think he might do what they'd secretly like him to do.
He won't, of course, but it will allow him to hoover up votes in the GE.
This GE.
And consequently, within his first year as PM will lead to unpopularity figures that not even Sunak will sink to....
Not really - because I expect an announcement in the early days of a Labour Government that we need to do XYZ and so have little time for anything else in the near future...
It is utterly bizarre and extremely worrying that so many senior Tories are now on the record as wanting Trump to be the next US President. They need to be asked much more searching questions about why this is.
Coz he’s bantz?
Yep, I suspect that there is a very strong culture war element to it. Trump being President would annoy all the right people and if that puts vital UK security interests at risk, so be it. At least we'd own the libs!
Port Talbot accounts for 1.5% of the UKs carbon emissions.
It has to transition to EAF - that require far fewer workers- to hit our Net Zero targets.
Tata aren't being particularly sensitive about managing the transition or finding their employees other jobs but this was always going to happen.
From an avowed patriot who claims we need to spend more on defence, what an appallingly stupid and lackadaisical comment.
And there are many ways to hit our target - 45% of our carbon emissions target could be acheived by dressing agricultural fields with rock dust, with precisely no jobs or vital national security capabilities affected. If the Government cannot meet its Net Zero targets without abandoning any pretence of safeguarding national security they should piss off and let someone else try.
I see no reason our national security concerns can't be met with EAF steel.
Oh, that's a relief, I was concerned that we were the only G20 country giving up our virgin steel making capacity, but now you've offered that reassurance, fuck it, let's just have a whip round for saucepans again.
That's because you're too silly to see the security impacts and the circular nature of development.
Tata Steel in Port Albot produces 3.5 million tonnes of steel per year, mostly from imported iron.
The UK exports close to 9 million tonnes of slag that can be made into EAF steel per year, to be made into steel overseas instead.
Converting from BOF steel to EAF steel production improves the UK's security, by lessening our dependence upon imports, it doesn't worsen it.
The UK could nearly treble our domestic production of steel purely without imports. Actually since we're getting our iron via imports, we could increase our domestic-sourced production by six-fold if we chose - and you think that weakens our security?
But Port Albot creates a type of steel needed for some products where you really don't want to be reliant on a 3rd country..
It is utterly bizarre and extremely worrying that so many senior Tories are now on the record as wanting Trump to be the next US President. They need to be asked much more searching questions about why this is.
Coz he’s bantz?
Yep, I suspect that there is a very strong culture war element to it. Trump being President would annoy all the right people and if that puts vital UK security interests at risk, so be it. At least we'd own the libs!
Biden is no great friend of the UK; Trump at least seems to be somewhat fond of the Mother Country
There are of course many other wider arguments AGAINST Trump
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
But the problem with all the “right” things that need doing with healthcare, including the shift from cure to prevention, is that the payoffs, although potentially considerable, are years if not decades down the line. Which means there’s no benefit, other than in posterity, for the politicians that bring them about. It’s certainly not going to work as a plan for Streeting to make it to number ten.
Ah, I have an Atlantic subscription, but this covers much the same ground and doesn't appear to be paywalled:
Worth noting that other parts of the world have also had a dramatic drop in heart disease deaths too, but not generally as much. In large part that is Statins and better blood pressure medication.
Streeting seems quite interested in whatever Australia is up to ?
I wonder if Labour might copy Australia’s successful policy with illegal immigrants arriving by sea
Starmer's political skill, if he has one, is to make everything think he might do what they'd secretly like him to do.
He won't, of course, but it will allow him to hoover up votes in the GE.
This GE.
And consequently, within his first year as PM will lead to unpopularity figures that not even Sunak will sink to....
There is a danger of that, for sure. But there is an alternative, though: there are a number of relatively quick wins for Labour that are not available to the Tories - better relations with the EU, more housebuilding, higher borrowing, for example - that mean he will exceed the very low expectations that voters have. And, of course, at any point Starmer only needs to be more popular than his Tory alternative.
It is utterly bizarre and extremely worrying that so many senior Tories are now on the record as wanting Trump to be the next US President. They need to be asked much more searching questions about why this is.
Coz he’s bantz?
Yep, I suspect that there is a very strong culture war element to it. Trump being President would annoy all the right people and if that puts vital UK security interests at risk, so be it. At least we'd own the libs!
Biden is no great friend of the UK; Trump at least seems to be somewhat fond of the Mother Country
There are of course many other wider arguments AGAINST Trump
Someone who opposes Putin is always going to be a better friend to the UK than someone who doesn't.
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
Off topic, an earlier than usual Sunday Rawnsley, as a distraction from incoming destruction:
..few of [the Shadow Cabinet] have any first-hand knowledge of what it is like to lead a department, manage multibillion pound budgets, draft legislation and persuade parliament to pass it, plan and deliver programmes while fire-fighting crises that flare up out of nowhere and managing the expectations of stakeholders, the media and public opinion. “Many of Keir’s team don’t have any idea what will hit them,” remarks one veteran of past Labour governments.
So Labour’s personnel need to be thinking about how to do government not after the election, but before the weight of its pressures is on their shoulders.
On polling day, Sir Keir and his team will have responsibility for nothing. The following day, they will be responsible for everything. They will take office knackered after a month or more of campaigning and will have had little or no sleep the night before the arrival of the new prime minister at Number 10.
A compelling study recently published by the Institute for Government…concludes: “Oppositions that prepare are better at governing, particularly in the crucial early years of a parliament.”
Some Labour frontbenchers who have excelled as opposition spokespeople will turn out to be flops when faced with the different demands of governing. Others who have not made much of a mark will prove to be more accomplished as ministers. Thrown into the deep end, some will swim, some will sink. To improve the chances of there being more doers than duds, former cabinet ministers and ex-permanent secretaries have been giving Labour frontbenchers private advice and coaching in how to be a successful minister.
In his early period at Number 10, Mr Blair used to complain to aides that he saw the civil service as “a big shiny Rolls-Royce that no one has taught me how to drive”. By appointing Sue Gray as his chief of staff, Sir Keir has placed at his right hand a Whitehall veteran who knows the machinery of government inside out. Team Starmer has reason to expect that it will receive a generally enthusiastic welcome from Whitehall. Not so much because it is stuffed with ideological sympathisers, but because Tories have used officials as whipping boys by denigrating the civil service as a useless “blob” while brutally purging many mandarins.
Labour is so accustomed to losing that a lot of its people will struggle to think about anything except the election until polling day. Success in government is more likely for the shrewder Labour people who will also be focused on the intense challenges that will confront them from the day after.
A very similar theme to my plaintive post yesterday morning about how we get better government. The appointment of Sue Gray, for all that it was contentious, may well prove to be an important step if the shadow cabinet (a) take the time to listen and (b) are capable of comprehending what is being said.
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
In North Karelia, a Finnish region, a dramatic improvement in public health was achieved through the North Karelia Project. In the 1970s, the area had the highest rate of heart attacks globally, prompting the Finnish Minister of Health to initiate a targeted public health intervention. Dr. Pekka Puska, an enthusiastic young physician, led this effort, challenging the traditional public health focus on acute care. Instead, he applied Geoffrey Rose's principles that prevention at the population level is more effective than individual treatment. Puska's team facilitated a dietary overhaul, encouraging local products and smoking cessation, and engaged the entire community, from businesses to laypeople, in health-promoting changes.
### Main Changes That Improved Health Outcomes:
- **Dietary Transformation**: Local cuisine was modified to reduce butter, salt, and meat, while increasing vegetables and plant-based foods. This shift was supported by recipe modifications, promotion of local produce, and collaboration with food producers to create healthier versions of traditional products.
- **Smoking Reduction**: The project implemented smoke-free policies, provided cessation programs, and engaged the community in anti-smoking initiatives, which led to a significant drop in smoking rates.
- **Community Engagement**: Lay ambassadors and influential organizations were enlisted to promote health messages, and longevity parties were organized to advocate healthier choices.
- **Local Food Industry Reform**: Businesses, such as sausage makers and dairy producers, were lobbied to offer healthier versions of their goods, aligning with public health goals.
- **Education and Advocacy**: Puska’s team consistently educated the public on health matters through face-to-face interactions and used opinion leaders to influence community norms.
- **Environmental and Cultural Changes**: Adaptations were made to make healthier options more accessible and integrated into cultural practices, like fruit growing and including berries year-round in the diet.
- **Policy and Infrastructure**: Workplaces, public spaces, and city planning were all addressed to create an environment that supported healthy habits, such as non-smoking areas and better availability of healthy food options.
### Results:
The project resulted in an 80% reduction in male cardiovascular mortality, a drop in smoking rates from 52 to 31 percent, increases in life expectancy for men and women, and a culturally embedded change towards better health practices without the population feeling coerced. The success of the project demonstrates the power of a community-wide approach to public health.
We’ve been getting piles of university prospectuses through the mail in the last week as our son starts thinking about where he’d like to go.
Very disappointing experience. Not the content or look and feel, which is almost identical to prospectuses in the early 90s when I was looking save for the annoying motivational phrases on the front cover like “the rest of your life begins here”. No. The smell.
One of my fondest memories of those prospectuses, the reading of which is one of the exciting moments of the teen years, was the lovely fresh-baked aroma. Open the pages and inhale deeply and you were transported to printing’s answer to a French boulangerie on a weekday morning.
This lot were, with two exceptions, rank. The worst was Sussex university. Imagine the smell of an old forgotten tin of gloss paint kept in a damp musty garden shed. That’s what it smelled like. The rest had more or less chemical odour but all shared the mouldy stench of damp carpet fly-tipped down alleyway. Particularly disappointing in supposedly upmarket establishments like Bristol and Edinburgh.
I would have hoped for something evoking a warm university library or downstairs at Blackwells but failing that at least the citrus-verbena tang of the magazine rack at Smiths. But they couldn’t even manage that.
Newcastle was passable, with the faintest whiff paint on the nose. The only mildly pleasant smelling prospectus was Cardiff, which smelled of paper. Well done Cardiff university.
Durham, Manchester and Exeter still to arrive so I hope at least one of those Russell groupers can pull it out of the bag. Then there’s Aberystwyth from which I’m expecting great things.
They seem to be getting really unlucky in St. Petersberg, that’s at least three storage facilities that have ‘gone on fire’ in recent weeks.
The Ukrainians have also slammed three drones into a munitions factory in Tula that makes, er, air defence systems: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/27003
Russians exploiting the melting permafrost to cause UK government to lock the country back down again, and possibly decimate the human race much like old world disease the new world people not ready for 😟
i specifically need a poetically antique, quite valuable (but not insanely valuable) hand mirror, probably from the Middle East or Far East - so Persian, Indian, Nepalese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean? - that might have been on a ship that just might have sunk off west Cornwall in the 18th or 19th century
Presumably therefore on a boat transporting luxury/antique eastern goods to Northern Europe pre-Suez
Bravo, a good read of a header fashioned from rather unpromising material. It's moved the market by the looks of it. There's no 14 on Haavisto for grabs now on the exchange. More like 9.
My only quibble (and mere quibble it is) is the absence of any reference to Lasse Viren. This prompted me to look him up. Alive. 74. He went into Finnish politics after his running career and was an MP for 10 years. I bet few here knew that.
Hi everybody. Thanks for the comments. Same approach as before: please add your comments and questions, both positive and negative, and I'll address them later in the day (it helps if you include the tag @viewcode ). Seriously, don't hold back: it all feeds into the final version.
Off topic, an earlier than usual Sunday Rawnsley, as a distraction from incoming destruction:
..few of [the Shadow Cabinet] have any first-hand knowledge of what it is like to lead a department, manage multibillion pound budgets, draft legislation and persuade parliament to pass it, plan and deliver programmes while fire-fighting crises that flare up out of nowhere and managing the expectations of stakeholders, the media and public opinion. “Many of Keir’s team don’t have any idea what will hit them,” remarks one veteran of past Labour governments.
So Labour’s personnel need to be thinking about how to do government not after the election, but before the weight of its pressures is on their shoulders.
On polling day, Sir Keir and his team will have responsibility for nothing. The following day, they will be responsible for everything. They will take office knackered after a month or more of campaigning and will have had little or no sleep the night before the arrival of the new prime minister at Number 10.
A compelling study recently published by the Institute for Government…concludes: “Oppositions that prepare are better at governing, particularly in the crucial early years of a parliament.”
Some Labour frontbenchers who have excelled as opposition spokespeople will turn out to be flops when faced with the different demands of governing. Others who have not made much of a mark will prove to be more accomplished as ministers. Thrown into the deep end, some will swim, some will sink. To improve the chances of there being more doers than duds, former cabinet ministers and ex-permanent secretaries have been giving Labour frontbenchers private advice and coaching in how to be a successful minister.
In his early period at Number 10, Mr Blair used to complain to aides that he saw the civil service as “a big shiny Rolls-Royce that no one has taught me how to drive”. By appointing Sue Gray as his chief of staff, Sir Keir has placed at his right hand a Whitehall veteran who knows the machinery of government inside out. Team Starmer has reason to expect that it will receive a generally enthusiastic welcome from Whitehall. Not so much because it is stuffed with ideological sympathisers, but because Tories have used officials as whipping boys by denigrating the civil service as a useless “blob” while brutally purging many mandarins.
Labour is so accustomed to losing that a lot of its people will struggle to think about anything except the election until polling day. Success in government is more likely for the shrewder Labour people who will also be focused on the intense challenges that will confront them from the day after.
Who are these people who have excelled at opposition?
One reason I’m sceptical about these colossal Labour leads is that the party frequently seems a one-man band and that’s not likely to work to his advantage in an election campaign. Even Cabinet veterans like Cooper and Miliband are fairly low profile and I can’t even think who the current Shadow Foreign Secretary is.
Cameron had Osborne and Hague. Blair had Prescott, Brown, Mandelson and Cook. Thatcher had Whitelaw and Howe. Who does Starmer have?
One person who has excelled is Cambridge man (and future PM) Wes Streeting.
Streeting has the ambition, for sure. But if they’re in government replacing a sitting PM, precedent suggests the successor is likely to be from one of the top three jobs - and with Cooper and Reeves likely to be filling two of them, and with Labour very conscious of its ongoing failure to choose a woman, it would pay to be green on those two, I’d have thought? Cooper might even not seem so dull after a few years of Starmer.
I think Streeting will bomb out at Health. He hasn't a clue about what to do, and no minister of Health has made it to number 10 since the NHS came into existence. It is a particularly poisoned chalice at present too.
Although to be fair, only one former Secretary of State for Health (or equivalent) ever has made it to the top. Just as only one former SoS for Education has. And no former Transport Secretary. This is despite the roles having attracted some high profile and energetic individuals.
Domestic roles trying to focus on the nuts and bolts of useful policy tend not to be the springboard for successful careers.
Which means a few will be jockeying for position come the first reshuffle.
Bets on when that happens? Barring some scandal involving a minister I’d go with about a year into the parliament. Starmer will want the ministers to have a decent go at running their departments before shuffling them around.
Cooper isn’t a bad shout as first female leader of she manages to survive the home office. May did, so it’s not impossible.
That was my line of thought, and having been red on Cooper I’ve backed her into the green.
To survive the Home Office you need to be a diligent, hard-working details person who doesn’t miss much and keeps all the plates spinning. May and Cooper are similar in those respects. Of course, you also need to be lucky.
Cooper has been marked down because she’s not a natural campaigner and is low on flair, which matters in opposition when the primary task is to get noticed. Whereas in government, steadiness and good judgement will count for more. Cooper works hard and does well with the detail of parliamentary work and she’s likely to bring the same skills into government. And, as I said above, following Starmer could even make her look relatively interesting.
Always been sceptical of Cooper as she also had responsibility for the whole HIPS debacle when she was a minister last time round.
OK wow, this is where ChatGPT comes into its own, and does fat bukkake over sad old google
I pumped that exact request into ChatGPT4, after getting sod all from Google. (“Oh look a mirror from Boston made in 1890”)
ChatGPT4 in 7 seconds:
In the context of a ship that might have sunk off west Cornwall in the 18th or 19th century, carrying luxury and antique items from the Middle East or Far East to Northern Europe, several types of poetically antique and valuable hand mirrors come to mind. These items, while not insanely valuable, would have been considered luxury goods in their time and could have been part of such a cargo:
Persian Hand Mirrors: Persian mirrors from this period might have featured intricate inlays of ivory or precious woods, often with detailed miniature paintings on the back. The art might depict scenes from Persian mythology or poetry, such as stories from the "Shahnameh" (Book of Kings).
Indian Hand Mirrors: Indian hand mirrors, particularly from the Mughal era, would likely be ornate, with handles and frames made of brass or bronze. They might feature engravings or inlays of semi-precious stones, reflecting the rich artistic traditions of the subcontinent.
Nepalese Hand Mirrors: Mirrors from Nepal during this period could have been crafted with a mix of Hindu and Buddhist motifs, possibly incorporating silver and intricate carvings. They might also feature religious symbols, like the "Om" or images of deities.
Chinese Hand Mirrors: Chinese mirrors from the 18th or 19th centuries were often made of bronze and could be highly decorative. They might feature motifs such as dragons, phoenixes, or other symbols auspicious in Chinese culture. Some mirrors might also have been part of ladies' dressing sets in lacquerware.
Japanese Hand Mirrors: Japanese hand mirrors, or "kyōmei", were often made of polished bronze with beautifully detailed backs. These mirrors might depict scenes from Japanese folklore or nature motifs like cherry blossoms, cranes, or Mount Fuji.
Korean Hand Mirrors: Korean hand mirrors from this period were often simpler in design but still elegant. They might feature traditional symbols like the Korean phoenix or scenes from nature, often inlaid in mother-of-pearl.
These mirrors would have been considered valuable for their craftsmanship and the artistic heritage they represented. Their presence on a ship transporting luxury goods to Northern Europe pre-Suez Canal suggests a time when such items were highly sought after in the West, reflecting a fascination with Eastern cultures and their artistic expressions.
The UK had 3 active minehunters in the Middle East and the defence secretary is asked about one of them reversing into another, thereby reducing the number of active minehunters in the Middle East to 1.
Grant Shapps says "these things happen."
Same as killing 25000 innocents then.
What proportion of those 25,000 were Hamas fighters and therefore about as innocent as Vladimir Putin?
I think most of the babies were innocent what about you. Israel is claiming to have killed over 2000 Hamas fighters so about 90% weren't
Is that not enough for you.
History will not judge your support for genocide kindly.
Interesting, but in relatively small countries like Estonia's northern neighbour, a lot of people have personal connections with the candidates. Stubb, a Finlandsvensk ex PM (married to a Welsh wife incidentally) was not a noted success as a government head (he has also been a long serving MEP and foreign minister). As a Swedish Finn he struggles to avoid being more interested in foreign affairs than the daily lives of deep Finland. He is charismatic and foes connect with his obsessive sports, especially hockey. Nevertheless it was a risk for the political establishment to throw their support behind him, and I have felt for some time that his price could be brittle. Interesting that your model seems to pick this up.
Maybe @geoffw has some insight. Personally I have very little despite having a strong connection to Finland. My understanding is the role of President is basically above politics and deals most significantly with foreign affairs. The criticism I have heard of Stubb is that he is too interested in the EU and has spent too long being obsessed with EU integration so may struggle to reconcile this with 'national interest'. He went deranged on Twitter over Brexit for a while. For a long time he was obsessed with Finland joining NATO (which appears at the moment like the right call). He is certainly very capable as a bureaucrat/politician but he may not be a unifying figure being too much on one side of a debate. Then again I am not too sure about the candidates who he is up against, perhaps he is just the least worst option.
I don't have any special insight on the odds of the presidential candidates. The five main ones (Stubb, Haavisto, Halla-Aho, Rehn and Urpilainen) are very well known, having been prominent in TV and radio discussions for many years. Finns are very aware that the president's role is mainly to do with foreign relations and less so domestic policy, and that this is now a major issue with the Ukraine war and having joined NATO. Stubb arguably has the strongest credentials in this field. In earlier times Rehn's EU experience as a commissioner may have been helpful to him, but less so now I think. Halla-Aho's focus is a bit too much on domestic matters. In summary I would put Stubb at about evens as the leading candidate, the remaining odds shared equally by the other four). But DYOR as they say here
On Labour, if/when Starmer goes they won't go back to the likes of Cooper, Miliband or Burnham for their next leader. Streeting could obviously be a contender, though they will hope for a female. However, other, mostly much less well-known, names to watch over the next 5 years are: Bridget Phillipson; Darren Jones; Peter Kyle; Shabana Mahmood; Lou Haigh. All are (potentially) rising stars in my view.
In terms of preparation for government, I wouldn't underestimate the work Sue Gray is doing behind the scenes (as mentioned by David L).
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
I subscribe to the Atlantic. That is a great article.
A short snippet:
"Together, Puska and the clubs hatched the idea of holding afternoon “longevity parties,” where a member of Puska’s team would give a short talk encouraging them to replace butter with oil, meat with vegetables, cut salt, and stop smoking. They gave the women a recipe book that added vegetables to traditional North Karelian dishes and cooked and served them. North Karelian stew, for instance, typically had only three main ingredients—water, fatty pork, and salt—but the team replaced some of the pork with rutabagas, potatoes, and carrots. The women liked the new version of the dish, which they named “Puska’s stew.” By showing these women how to cook plant-based meals that tasted good, Puska had found a way to disseminate the health message better than any leaflet could."
The UK had 3 active minehunters in the Middle East and the defence secretary is asked about one of them reversing into another, thereby reducing the number of active minehunters in the Middle East to 1.
Grant Shapps says "these things happen."
Same as killing 25000 innocents then.
What proportion of those 25,000 were Hamas fighters and therefore about as innocent as Vladimir Putin?
What proportion weren’t ?
AIUI at least half the casualties are children, and around half of the adults are women, so I'm guessing at least 75% weren't Hamas fighters. With so many women and kids killed too it would tend to imply that the targeting is less than precision so some of the adult males are probably not Hamas fighters either. And is a low level Hamas grunt really on the same level as Putin, in terms of guilt and responsibility? Not really. Whatever one's overall position on this vile conflict I would have thought that everyone could agree that the death toll among civilians has been utterly horrific and unacceptable. It seems so odd to me that there are people on here so eager to go in to bat for a foreign power on this.
Ydoethur literally shooting himself in the foot with his how many were Hamas comment
The UK had 3 active minehunters in the Middle East and the defence secretary is asked about one of them reversing into another, thereby reducing the number of active minehunters in the Middle East to 1.
Grant Shapps says "these things happen."
Same as killing 25000 innocents then.
What proportion of those 25,000 were Hamas fighters and therefore about as innocent as Vladimir Putin?
You seem to be the expert, @ydoethur! You tell us!
Remember, Sam Altman told us ChatGPT5 is going to be way better than GPT4, especially at writing. It is expected this year
*nervous chuckle*
The Mistral-AI people have said their going to release a fully open-source GPT4-level (or above) model this year. Meta say they are currently training Llama3 as well. The 'Mixtral' model that came out of MistralAI just before Christmas is quite impressive already so it's going to be an interesting time.
It is utterly bizarre and extremely worrying that so many senior Tories are now on the record as wanting Trump to be the next US President. They need to be asked much more searching questions about why this is.
Coz he’s bantz?
Yep, I suspect that there is a very strong culture war element to it. Trump being President would annoy all the right people and if that puts vital UK security interests at risk, so be it. At least we'd own the libs!
Biden is no great friend of the UK; Trump at least seems to be somewhat fond of the Mother Country
There are of course many other wider arguments AGAINST Trump
Someone who opposes Putin is always going to be a better friend to the UK than someone who doesn't.
So Corbyn a better friend to the UK than Blair and Johnson by that account!
Russians exploiting the melting permafrost to cause UK government to lock the country back down again, and possibly decimate the human race much like old world disease the new world people not ready for 😟
I don't think Russia would want that. During covid the Russia-aligned politicians in the west were generally of the "business must go on, let the old people die" persuasion. Mostly you can predict what Putin will do if you model him as an oil price maximizer.
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
I subscribe to the Atlantic. That is a great article.
A short snippet:
"Together, Puska and the clubs hatched the idea of holding afternoon “longevity parties,” where a member of Puska’s team would give a short talk encouraging them to replace butter with oil, meat with vegetables, cut salt, and stop smoking. They gave the women a recipe book that added vegetables to traditional North Karelian dishes and cooked and served them. North Karelian stew, for instance, typically had only three main ingredients—water, fatty pork, and salt—but the team replaced some of the pork with rutabagas, potatoes, and carrots. The women liked the new version of the dish, which they named “Puska’s stew.” By showing these women how to cook plant-based meals that tasted good, Puska had found a way to disseminate the health message better than any leaflet could."
So much we could learn from this.
Nah, telling people that too much meat is bad for them means you're some sort of Vegan Nazi hippy tree hugger or something.
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
Italy and Greece don't eat "plant based" diets - seen how much lamb and feta features in Greek cuisine? -and there's nothing wrong with butter or meat provided you don't lay it on with a shovel, lace every meal with salt and ignore vegetables completely.
Remember, Sam Altman told us ChatGPT5 is going to be way better than GPT4, especially at writing. It is expected this year
*nervous chuckle*
The Mistral-AI people have said their going to release a fully open-source GPT4-level (or above) model this year. Meta say they are currently training Llama3 as well. The 'Mixtral' model that came out of MistralAI just before Christmas is quite impressive already so it's going to be an interesting time.
Yep. Good old capitalist competition is gonna drive this
Mistral and Meta are fast catchijng up with OpenAI and surely Google/DeepMind have something in store
And we may get models out of nowhere. Or out of China
I reckon we will see undeniable AGI by the end of the decade
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
But the problem with all the “right” things that need doing with healthcare, including the shift from cure to prevention, is that the payoffs, although potentially considerable, are years if not decades down the line. Which means there’s no benefit, other than in posterity, for the politicians that bring them about. It’s certainly not going to work as a plan for Streeting to make it to number ten.
I think medics tend to massively overreach.
Because, by definition, they see the worst healthcare cases in their surgeries who really struggle to control themselves they tend to turn their recommendations of nannying up to the max and want us to stop drinking, smoking, eating meat, eating dairy and doing anything fun or exciting whatsoever.
Of course, they themselves do not do this - the medics I knew at uni drunk like a fish - but this is for the "little people".
What’s the current price on Putin winning the Russian election? Maybe we should have a betting post on that one.
The only foreign elections I usually feel confident enough in being able to have a go predicting are the US and France. Both of course covered much more heavily in British media than the others, but also both with easier access to friends and colleagues on the inside. This time though I have absolutely no idea what is going to happen in America.
People like Putin tend to leave office by more sudden and unpredictable means than losing elections.
Through a brief window of opportunity, or a moment of streetwise illumination?
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
I subscribe to the Atlantic. That is a great article.
A short snippet:
"Together, Puska and the clubs hatched the idea of holding afternoon “longevity parties,” where a member of Puska’s team would give a short talk encouraging them to replace butter with oil, meat with vegetables, cut salt, and stop smoking. They gave the women a recipe book that added vegetables to traditional North Karelian dishes and cooked and served them. North Karelian stew, for instance, typically had only three main ingredients—water, fatty pork, and salt—but the team replaced some of the pork with rutabagas, potatoes, and carrots. The women liked the new version of the dish, which they named “Puska’s stew.” By showing these women how to cook plant-based meals that tasted good, Puska had found a way to disseminate the health message better than any leaflet could."
So much we could learn from this.
Nah, telling people that too much meat is bad for them means you're some sort of Vegan Nazi hippy tree hugger or something.
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
Italy and Greece don't eat "plant based" diets - seen how much lamb and feta features in Greek cuisine? -and there's nothing wrong with butter or meat provided you don't lay it on with a shovel, lace every meal with salt and ignore vegetables completely.
Totally unbalanced article.
But it worked. You don't like it, fair enough but it's proven science. Too much meat and dairy isn't good for your health. Note I say "too much", not "cut it out altogether ".
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
I subscribe to the Atlantic. That is a great article.
A short snippet:
"Together, Puska and the clubs hatched the idea of holding afternoon “longevity parties,” where a member of Puska’s team would give a short talk encouraging them to replace butter with oil, meat with vegetables, cut salt, and stop smoking. They gave the women a recipe book that added vegetables to traditional North Karelian dishes and cooked and served them. North Karelian stew, for instance, typically had only three main ingredients—water, fatty pork, and salt—but the team replaced some of the pork with rutabagas, potatoes, and carrots. The women liked the new version of the dish, which they named “Puska’s stew.” By showing these women how to cook plant-based meals that tasted good, Puska had found a way to disseminate the health message better than any leaflet could."
So much we could learn from this.
Puska and his team were like the missionaries going out into the countryside and villages with their medical evangelising. "Boots in the mud" is the expression often used
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
Pretty remarkable sustained public health education effort - but the Finns are pretty good at education. One thing we could fairly easily and profitably copy is the food regulation. It would be a much cheaper way of reducing heart disease than anything the NHS can do. .. Furthermore, the food industry reduced salt content in products and developed special mineral salts (with sodium replaced by potassium and magnesium). As a result, salt intake reduced in North Karelia from 13 to 9.5 g among men and from 10 to 7.4 g among women.4 This behavioral change had a significant beneficial impact on blood pressure because the mean systolic blood pressure in North Karelia decreased from 149 to 134 mm Hg and 153 to 127 mm Hg among men and women, respectively, from 1972 to 2012….
The best thing any government could do would be to educate the population away from ultra processed food. Nestle, PepsiCo and the gang would be unhappy, but we'd all be healthier.
Strangely, I agree with you. Processed food is the problem.
Pizza and fast food consumption has also increased again in the last 3 to 4 years due to apps like JustEat and Deliveroo delivering crap to your door.
And barely a week goes by without Dominos or PapaJohns shoving a leaflet for their shite through my door.
We’ve been getting piles of university prospectuses through the mail in the last week as our son starts thinking about where he’d like to go.
Very disappointing experience. Not the content or look and feel, which is almost identical to prospectuses in the early 90s when I was looking save for the annoying motivational phrases on the front cover like “the rest of your life begins here”. No. The smell.
One of my fondest memories of those prospectuses, the reading of which is one of the exciting moments of the teen years, was the lovely fresh-baked aroma. Open the pages and inhale deeply and you were transported to printing’s answer to a French boulangerie on a weekday morning.
This lot were, with two exceptions, rank. The worst was Sussex university. Imagine the smell of an old forgotten tin of gloss paint kept in a damp musty garden shed. That’s what it smelled like. The rest had more or less chemical odour but all shared the mouldy stench of damp carpet fly-tipped down alleyway. Particularly disappointing in supposedly upmarket establishments like Bristol and Edinburgh.
I would have hoped for something evoking a warm university library or downstairs at Blackwells but failing that at least the citrus-verbena tang of the magazine rack at Smiths. But they couldn’t even manage that.
Newcastle was passable, with the faintest whiff paint on the nose. The only mildly pleasant smelling prospectus was Cardiff, which smelled of paper. Well done Cardiff university.
Durham, Manchester and Exeter still to arrive so I hope at least one of those Russell groupers can pull it out of the bag. Then there’s Aberystwyth from which I’m expecting great things.
Interesting observation. Is the difference in smell because offset printing inks are oil based (I think the smell you refer to is probably linseed) while inkjet inks used in digital printing are alcohol based?
The UK had 3 active minehunters in the Middle East and the defence secretary is asked about one of them reversing into another, thereby reducing the number of active minehunters in the Middle East to 1.
Grant Shapps says "these things happen."
Same as killing 25000 innocents then.
They do indeed happen. I think the Chidders has been involved in a collision previously.
It's not exactly a big loss. When was the last time a ship hit a floating mine in the Gulf? 1991? The main reason for being there is Being There and MCMVs are what we have going spare at the moment so that's what we sent.
Sigh of relief at the Admiralty, I expect. In the spirit of never letting a good crisis go to waste they can write off one, or ideally both, vessels and redeploy the crews to picking up fag ends on Whale Island.
Can you explain what happened?
The video looks like one minesweeper reversed at full pelt straight into the side of the other. I heard something about strong winds and docking being hard but it was like an 80-year who's not with it whacking their Nissan Duke straight into another at Sainsburys.
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
Italy and Greece don't eat "plant based" diets - seen how much lamb and feta features in Greek cuisine? -and there's nothing wrong with butter or meat provided you don't lay it on with a shovel, lace every meal with salt and ignore vegetables completely.
Totally unbalanced article.
I've been trying to research some of the... research around fat, salt, etc and in particular why some of the 'best' nutrition advice seems to indicate that the whole of SE Asia should be dead by about age 15.
Even trying GPT4 (waves to Leon) just gets quite hand-wavy.
My own thought is (after watching more Korean/Japanese/etc cookery shows than I'd care to admit) is that you see a significant amount of veg dishes (including pickles, ferments etc) surrounding a relatively modest amount of meat. The traditional Greek and S.Italian food I've encountered has much the same set up.
But I can't find anything to nail it down, which is annoying. The broad "Eat real food, mostly veg, not too much" message is about as good as I've found.
Remember, Sam Altman told us ChatGPT5 is going to be way better than GPT4, especially at writing. It is expected this year
*nervous chuckle*
The Mistral-AI people have said their going to release a fully open-source GPT4-level (or above) model this year. Meta say they are currently training Llama3 as well. The 'Mixtral' model that came out of MistralAI just before Christmas is quite impressive already so it's going to be an interesting time.
Yep. Good old capitalist competition is gonna drive this
Mistral and Meta are fast catchijng up with OpenAI and surely Google/DeepMind have something in store
And we may get models out of nowhere. Or out of China
I reckon we will see undeniable AGI by the end of the decade
One of the current trends is less-is-more. I think GPT-4 has an estimated 600 billion parameters, making it the biggest model on the block. The biggest open source one you can find is Goliath, at 120b parameters.
But most A grade consumer hardware can only run models with 13 or, at the absolute top of the line, 30 billion parameters. The solution is rapidly becoming, instead of creating 13b parameters that are cut-down GPT-4s, with as much knowledge but only 2% of the detail, creating 13b parameter experts. 13b parameters isn't a lot when you're trying to create a model with the sum total of human knowledge, but 13b parameters *just* on particle physics (or on Japanese hentai novels, if that's your bag) is *a lot*. So you download the custom 13b model for the job you want to do, and you have GPT4 level knowledge on specific subjects/areas. And voila. You have a model that's as smart as the closed source models for the thing you want to achieve.
GPT4 et al are swiss army knives. Open source development is looking a lot more like creating specific tools to do specific jobs.
And with next gen hardware, everyone's gonna have access to 30b parameter models, which are good enough for most tasks.
The four siblings then naturally inherited the old-fashioned, three storey property.
But reluctantly they now have no choice but to sell it after being left with a seven-figure inheritance tax bill.
Under inheritance tax rules, an estate which has passed to children is exempt from tax for the first £500,000, but everything above that is usually subject to a 40 per cent levy, which if HMRC agree with the £9m valuation, would mean a bill of more than £3 million for the family.
The family could have minimised their inheritance tax bill if their parents had passed on their wealth before they had passed away, so that it was exempt using the seven-year rule.
But more interesting is that it is one of two Sandbanks stories so my guess would be that a student on the Sandbanks University journalism course has got an internship as a stringer for the Mail, and has sent them both stories. A professional would simply look at the by-lines to disprove this but Sunday is a day of rest.
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
But the problem with all the “right” things that need doing with healthcare, including the shift from cure to prevention, is that the payoffs, although potentially considerable, are years if not decades down the line. Which means there’s no benefit, other than in posterity, for the politicians that bring them about. It’s certainly not going to work as a plan for Streeting to make it to number ten.
Ah, I have an Atlantic subscription, but this covers much the same ground and doesn't appear to be paywalled:
Worth noting that other parts of the world have also had a dramatic drop in heart disease deaths too, but not generally as much. In large part that is Statins and better blood pressure medication.
Streeting seems quite interested in whatever Australia is up to ?
I wonder if Labour might copy Australia’s successful policy with illegal immigrants arriving by sea
Starmer's political skill, if he has one, is to make everything think he might do what they'd secretly like him to do.
He won't, of course, but it will allow him to hoover up votes in the GE.
This GE.
And consequently, within his first year as PM will lead to unpopularity figures that not even Sunak will sink to....
I expect Starmer will be down to c.30% inside 18-36 months with the Greens and nationalist parties doing very well.
The Tories will probably get to a similar level by cleaning up Reform and convince themselves as a consequence they're in with a shot at the next GE (they won't be).
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
Pretty remarkable sustained public health education effort - but the Finns are pretty good at education. One thing we could fairly easily and profitably copy is the food regulation. It would be a much cheaper way of reducing heart disease than anything the NHS can do. .. Furthermore, the food industry reduced salt content in products and developed special mineral salts (with sodium replaced by potassium and magnesium). As a result, salt intake reduced in North Karelia from 13 to 9.5 g among men and from 10 to 7.4 g among women.4 This behavioral change had a significant beneficial impact on blood pressure because the mean systolic blood pressure in North Karelia decreased from 149 to 134 mm Hg and 153 to 127 mm Hg among men and women, respectively, from 1972 to 2012….
The best thing any government could do would be to educate the population away from ultra processed food. Nestle, PepsiCo and the gang would be unhappy, but we'd all be healthier.
Strangely, I agree with you. Processed food is the problem.
Pizza and fast food consumption has also increased again in the last 3 to 4 years due to apps like JustEat and Deliveroo delivering crap to your door.
And barely a week goes by without Dominos or PapaJohns shoving a leaflet for their shite through my door.
All food is processed to a degree. It's the Industrially Manufactured Edible Products that we need to get rid of, but these are the products that make the most profit for the handful of corporations that make all the food on the planet.
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
Italy and Greece don't eat "plant based" diets - seen how much lamb and feta features in Greek cuisine? -and there's nothing wrong with butter or meat provided you don't lay it on with a shovel, lace every meal with salt and ignore vegetables completely.
Totally unbalanced article.
But it worked. You don't like it, fair enough but it's proven science. Too much meat and dairy isn't good for your health. Note I say "too much", not "cut it out altogether ".
I don't think the article is what happened or what worked.
I suspect they put a bit less butter and salt in now, and eat more veg, but still have the traditional dishes except in moderation- coupled with much less smoking.
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
I subscribe to the Atlantic. That is a great article.
A short snippet:
"Together, Puska and the clubs hatched the idea of holding afternoon “longevity parties,” where a member of Puska’s team would give a short talk encouraging them to replace butter with oil, meat with vegetables, cut salt, and stop smoking. They gave the women a recipe book that added vegetables to traditional North Karelian dishes and cooked and served them. North Karelian stew, for instance, typically had only three main ingredients—water, fatty pork, and salt—but the team replaced some of the pork with rutabagas, potatoes, and carrots. The women liked the new version of the dish, which they named “Puska’s stew.” By showing these women how to cook plant-based meals that tasted good, Puska had found a way to disseminate the health message better than any leaflet could."
We’ve been getting piles of university prospectuses through the mail in the last week as our son starts thinking about where he’d like to go.
Very disappointing experience. Not the content or look and feel, which is almost identical to prospectuses in the early 90s when I was looking save for the annoying motivational phrases on the front cover like “the rest of your life begins here”. No. The smell.
One of my fondest memories of those prospectuses, the reading of which is one of the exciting moments of the teen years, was the lovely fresh-baked aroma. Open the pages and inhale deeply and you were transported to printing’s answer to a French boulangerie on a weekday morning.
This lot were, with two exceptions, rank. The worst was Sussex university. Imagine the smell of an old forgotten tin of gloss paint kept in a damp musty garden shed. That’s what it smelled like. The rest had more or less chemical odour but all shared the mouldy stench of damp carpet fly-tipped down alleyway. Particularly disappointing in supposedly upmarket establishments like Bristol and Edinburgh.
I would have hoped for something evoking a warm university library or downstairs at Blackwells but failing that at least the citrus-verbena tang of the magazine rack at Smiths. But they couldn’t even manage that.
Newcastle was passable, with the faintest whiff paint on the nose. The only mildly pleasant smelling prospectus was Cardiff, which smelled of paper. Well done Cardiff university.
Durham, Manchester and Exeter still to arrive so I hope at least one of those Russell groupers can pull it out of the bag. Then there’s Aberystwyth from which I’m expecting great things.
It is utterly bizarre and extremely worrying that so many senior Tories are now on the record as wanting Trump to be the next US President. They need to be asked much more searching questions about why this is.
Coz he’s bantz?
Yep, I suspect that there is a very strong culture war element to it. Trump being President would annoy all the right people and if that puts vital UK security interests at risk, so be it. At least we'd own the libs!
They need owning.
"Libs" don't understand how repellant they are: pompous, arrogant, privileged and secure, self-entitled and self-serving all whilst sneering at anyone else who takes a different view as racist idiotic stupid bigots.
Remember, Sam Altman told us ChatGPT5 is going to be way better than GPT4, especially at writing. It is expected this year
*nervous chuckle*
The Mistral-AI people have said their going to release a fully open-source GPT4-level (or above) model this year. Meta say they are currently training Llama3 as well. The 'Mixtral' model that came out of MistralAI just before Christmas is quite impressive already so it's going to be an interesting time.
Yep. Good old capitalist competition is gonna drive this
Mistral and Meta are fast catchijng up with OpenAI and surely Google/DeepMind have something in store
And we may get models out of nowhere. Or out of China
I reckon we will see undeniable AGI by the end of the decade
One of the current trends is less-is-more. I think GPT-4 has an estimated 600 billion parameters, making it the biggest model on the block. The biggest open source one you can find is Goliath, at 120b parameters.
But most A grade consumer hardware can only run models with 13 or, at the absolute top of the line, 30 billion parameters. The solution is rapidly becoming, instead of creating 13b parameters that are cut-down GPT-4s, with as much knowledge but only 2% of the detail, creating 13b parameter experts. 13b parameters isn't a lot when you're trying to create a model with the sum total of human knowledge, but 13b parameters *just* on particle physics (or on Japanese hentai novels, if that's your bag) is *a lot*. So you download the custom 13b model for the job you want to do, and you have GPT4 level knowledge on specific subjects/areas. And voila. You have a model that's as smart as the closed source models for the thing you want to achieve.
GPT4 et al are swiss army knives. Open source development is looking a lot more like creating specific tools to do specific jobs.
And with next gen hardware, everyone's gonna have access to 30b parameter models, which are good enough for most tasks.
Where the feck is Apple Inc in all this?
Biggest company in the world, with gizmos screaming for effective AI (Siri is SO shit), and yet nothing
It's why I don't like IHT and would be open to a milder simple annual land/wealth tax.
Implement that & you’ll get the DM screaming about poor old people being forced out of their 8 bed mansions they’re living in all by themselves because they can’t afford the tax bill.
Not that we shouldn’t be doing exactly that - redistributing scarce land to those that can make best use of it is the entire point of a land tax after all - but the DM will scream about whatever you do. Best to ignore them as much as possible.
I think these sorts of articles (and the Telegraph versions, which tend to be more numerous and more ridiculous) are certified engagement fodder and clickbait. They know the political message is ludicrous but they also know opponents will reshare the links thousands of times.
I have a near allergic reaction to clicking on any Daily Mail link, it feels sort of dirty feeding the ad revenue so I avoid doing it. Likewise the Telegraph although that can be difficult as they do some good travel supplement content and one of the school mums works on their features section.
I also steer clear of clicking on too much Guardian news and opinion sections because it can get irritating.
Which unfortunately leaves the paywalled FT and Times and patronising BBC.
Good point re DM clickbait; I shall try to resist being baited.
Btw, your Morrisons 2010 English sparking tip is still paying dividends - our nearby Morries has a few bottles on extra offer at £17 last weekend. With sister-in-law's staff discount that worked out at £13.60 per bottle, so I stocked up for the summer. So, thanks!
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
But the problem with all the “right” things that need doing with healthcare, including the shift from cure to prevention, is that the payoffs, although potentially considerable, are years if not decades down the line. Which means there’s no benefit, other than in posterity, for the politicians that bring them about. It’s certainly not going to work as a plan for Streeting to make it to number ten.
Ah, I have an Atlantic subscription, but this covers much the same ground and doesn't appear to be paywalled:
Worth noting that other parts of the world have also had a dramatic drop in heart disease deaths too, but not generally as much. In large part that is Statins and better blood pressure medication.
Streeting seems quite interested in whatever Australia is up to ?
I wonder if Labour might copy Australia’s successful policy with illegal immigrants arriving by sea
Starmer's political skill, if he has one, is to make everything think he might do what they'd secretly like him to do.
He won't, of course, but it will allow him to hoover up votes in the GE.
This GE.
And consequently, within his first year as PM will lead to unpopularity figures that not even Sunak will sink to....
I expect Starmer will be down to c.30% inside 18-36 months with the Greens and nationalist parties doing very well.
The Tories will probably get to a similar level by cleaning up Reform and convince themselves as a consequence they're in with a shot at the next GE (they won't be).
for the Tories it depends on how many are left in Parliament following the election. If there's 200-250 they'll have enough candidates to put forward someone who's going to win over the middle ground voters. less than 200 and they'll end up with someone who wants to shore up the 'reform flank' and things will get worse (or at least not improve) before they get better.
I'd be surprised if we have a Tory party challenging for government before the mid 2030's
It's why I don't like IHT and would be open to a milder simple annual land/wealth tax.
Implement that & you’ll get the DM screaming about poor old people being forced out of their 8 bed mansions they’re living in all by themselves because they can’t afford the tax bill.
Not that we shouldn’t be doing exactly that - redistributing scarce land to those that can make best use of it is the entire point of a land tax after all - but the DM will scream about whatever you do. Best to ignore them as much as possible.
I'm not arguing for that. A 0.1% wealth tax on property and land would be affordable/financeable for most.
The UK had 3 active minehunters in the Middle East and the defence secretary is asked about one of them reversing into another, thereby reducing the number of active minehunters in the Middle East to 1.
Grant Shapps says "these things happen."
Same as killing 25000 innocents then.
They do indeed happen. I think the Chidders has been involved in a collision previously.
It's not exactly a big loss. When was the last time a ship hit a floating mine in the Gulf? 1991? The main reason for being there is Being There and MCMVs are what we have going spare at the moment so that's what we sent.
Sigh of relief at the Admiralty, I expect. In the spirit of never letting a good crisis go to waste they can write off one, or ideally both, vessels and redeploy the crews to picking up fag ends on Whale Island.
Can you explain what happened?
The video looks like one minesweeper reversed at full pelt straight into the side of the other. I heard something about strong winds and docking being hard but it was like an 80-year who's not with it whacking their Nissan Duke straight into another at Sainsburys.
What on earth were they doing?
No idea except on the Greybeard RN FB group some technical issue is theorised. This is a 40 year old ship and the RN Marine Engineering trade is about 40% under staffed so absolutely everything is contracted out. Sounds plausible.
Both hulls are GRP which I imagine would be very difficult (expensive) to get repaired and certified in Bahrain.
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
Italy and Greece don't eat "plant based" diets - seen how much lamb and feta features in Greek cuisine? -and there's nothing wrong with butter or meat provided you don't lay it on with a shovel, lace every meal with salt and ignore vegetables completely.
Totally unbalanced article.
But it worked. You don't like it, fair enough but it's proven science. Too much meat and dairy isn't good for your health. Note I say "too much", not "cut it out altogether ".
Yes but "too much" of anything is bad. That is literally what it means.
The other notable thing about Finland is it was the site of the most important public health intervention for a non infectious disease in the world, the North Karelia project.
In the early 1970s Finland had the world's highest rate of heart disease, with North Karelia being one of the worst areas.
The transformation has been remarkeable, this is a lay article on how it worked:
Pretty remarkable sustained public health education effort - but the Finns are pretty good at education. One thing we could fairly easily and profitably copy is the food regulation. It would be a much cheaper way of reducing heart disease than anything the NHS can do. .. Furthermore, the food industry reduced salt content in products and developed special mineral salts (with sodium replaced by potassium and magnesium). As a result, salt intake reduced in North Karelia from 13 to 9.5 g among men and from 10 to 7.4 g among women.4 This behavioral change had a significant beneficial impact on blood pressure because the mean systolic blood pressure in North Karelia decreased from 149 to 134 mm Hg and 153 to 127 mm Hg among men and women, respectively, from 1972 to 2012….
The best thing any government could do would be to educate the population away from ultra processed food. Nestle, PepsiCo and the gang would be unhappy, but we'd all be healthier.
Strangely, I agree with you. Processed food is the problem.
Pizza and fast food consumption has also increased again in the last 3 to 4 years due to apps like JustEat and Deliveroo delivering crap to your door.
And barely a week goes by without Dominos or PapaJohns shoving a leaflet for their shite through my door.
All food is processed to a degree. It's the Industrially Manufactured Edible Products that we need to get rid of, but these are the products that make the most profit for the handful of corporations that make all the food on the planet.
You cook real food with real ingredients, meat, fish, dairy and veg, and it's much better for you.
Go easy on the fats and salt. And do it in moderation.
If Apple can produce a chatty unnerfed GPT5 level bot to replace Siri - an actual human like voice you can chat naturally with, ask questions, gossip, seek advice, a bot that will know you personally, and tell you stories, and be your friend, and comfort you when you are down, and look at pictures and tell you genuinely funny jokes and be like a real friend…
THAT will also be transformative. If I was Tim Cook sitting on a trillion dollars I would absolutely make that my goal.. Put real humanlike AI every into every iPhone and iPad and blow all the opposition out of the water
Comments
Only been to Finland once.
Remember getting off the plane and it being -32°c. and it taking my breath away.
Then eating reindeer and chips and telling my daughter who was 5 at the time it wasn't Rudolph.
Then expecting my diet coke can to contain liquid derr. Than my daughters face when she met the real Santa.
Thourally happy 14hrs
I used to work with a guy called Kari-Pekka-Makela which just rolls off the tongue like music
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7444010/
It’s shouldn’t be a problem, though, since the interventions need not be massively expensive. And something like reducing dietary sodium would show results fairly quickly.
Developing policy that takes more than one parliament to see fruition is certainly not a strength of our system. Maybe it’s time for a change.
Brook, 24, was expected to be in England's XI for the opening Test in Hyderabad which starts on Thursday.
A statement from the England Cricket Board said selectors would confirm a replacement "in due course".
"The Brook family respectfully requests privacy during this time," the ECB added.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/68046659
Edit - He is missing the whole tour.
It's not exactly a big loss. When was the last time a ship hit a floating mine in the Gulf? 1991? The main reason for being there is Being There and MCMVs are what we have going spare at the moment so that's what we sent.
Sigh of relief at the Admiralty, I expect. In the spirit of never letting a good crisis go to waste they can write off one, or ideally both, vessels and redeploy the crews to picking up fag ends on Whale Island.
https://knowablemagazine.org/content/article/health-disease/2018/finlands-bold-push-change-heart-health-nation
Worth noting that other parts of the world have also had a dramatic drop in heart disease deaths too, but not generally as much. In large part that is Statins and better blood pressure medication.
Mind, nobody seems to have quite cottoned on to this climate change business, even if they are thinking in generations.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12978593/Heartbroken-family-forced-sell-9m-home-Sandbanks-pay-seven-figure-inheritance-tax-bill-owning-idyllic-property-80-years.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12978453/Family-Sandbanks-cottage-grandfather-bought-using-500-poker-winnings-1915-sitting-goldmine-value-5million-NO-intention-selling.html
Edit: from the comments, also clickbait for those who are absolutely but utterlyu wrongly convinced by our Tories on PB and elsewhere that £1m per family isn't enough IHT allowance for the vast majority of families.
Gas terminal explosion in St Petersburg: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68046347
If there's any justice in the world, the likes of Nestle/Kraft/PepsiCo/Unilever will be thought of in the same way as the tobacco corporations in years to come.
I have a near allergic reaction to clicking on any Daily Mail link, it feels sort of dirty feeding the ad revenue so I avoid doing it. Likewise the Telegraph although that can be difficult as they do some good travel supplement content and one of the school mums works on their features section.
I also steer clear of clicking on too much Guardian news and opinion sections because it can get irritating.
Which unfortunately leaves the paywalled FT and Times and patronising BBC.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/21/absolutely-amazing-1800-year-old-shattered-roman-arm-guard-is-reconstructed-from-100-pieces
Tata Steel in Port Albot produces 3.5 million tonnes of steel per year, mostly from imported iron.
The UK exports close to 9 million tonnes of slag that can be made into EAF steel per year, to be made into steel overseas instead.
Converting from BOF steel to EAF steel production improves the UK's security, by lessening our dependence upon imports, it doesn't worsen it.
The UK could nearly treble our domestic production of steel purely without imports. Actually since we're getting our iron via imports, we could increase our domestic-sourced production by six-fold if we chose - and you think that weakens our security?
He won't, of course, but it will allow him to hoover up votes in the GE.
This GE.
"He tasks me! He tasks me, and I shall him!"
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1748882502515667424
It is utterly bizarre and extremely worrying that so many senior Tories are now on the record as wanting Trump to be the next US President. They need to be asked much more searching questions about why this is.
I accept this is a long shot
There are of course many other wider arguments AGAINST Trump
In North Karelia, a Finnish region, a dramatic improvement in public health was achieved through the North Karelia Project. In the 1970s, the area had the highest rate of heart attacks globally, prompting the Finnish Minister of Health to initiate a targeted public health intervention. Dr. Pekka Puska, an enthusiastic young physician, led this effort, challenging the traditional public health focus on acute care. Instead, he applied Geoffrey Rose's principles that prevention at the population level is more effective than individual treatment. Puska's team facilitated a dietary overhaul, encouraging local products and smoking cessation, and engaged the entire community, from businesses to laypeople, in health-promoting changes.
### Main Changes That Improved Health Outcomes:
- **Dietary Transformation**: Local cuisine was modified to reduce butter, salt, and meat, while increasing vegetables and plant-based foods. This shift was supported by recipe modifications, promotion of local produce, and collaboration with food producers to create healthier versions of traditional products.
- **Smoking Reduction**: The project implemented smoke-free policies, provided cessation programs, and engaged the community in anti-smoking initiatives, which led to a significant drop in smoking rates.
- **Community Engagement**: Lay ambassadors and influential organizations were enlisted to promote health messages, and longevity parties were organized to advocate healthier choices.
- **Local Food Industry Reform**: Businesses, such as sausage makers and dairy producers, were lobbied to offer healthier versions of their goods, aligning with public health goals.
- **Education and Advocacy**: Puska’s team consistently educated the public on health matters through face-to-face interactions and used opinion leaders to influence community norms.
- **Environmental and Cultural Changes**: Adaptations were made to make healthier options more accessible and integrated into cultural practices, like fruit growing and including berries year-round in the diet.
- **Policy and Infrastructure**: Workplaces, public spaces, and city planning were all addressed to create an environment that supported healthy habits, such as non-smoking areas and better availability of healthy food options.
### Results:
The project resulted in an 80% reduction in male cardiovascular mortality, a drop in smoking rates from 52 to 31 percent, increases in life expectancy for men and women, and a culturally embedded change towards better health practices without the population feeling coerced. The success of the project demonstrates the power of a community-wide approach to public health.
Very disappointing experience. Not the content or look and feel, which is almost identical to prospectuses in the early 90s when I was looking save for the annoying motivational phrases on the front cover like “the rest of your life begins here”. No. The smell.
One of my fondest memories of those prospectuses, the reading of which is one of the exciting moments of the teen years, was the lovely fresh-baked aroma. Open the pages and inhale deeply and you were transported to printing’s answer to a French boulangerie on a weekday morning.
This lot were, with two exceptions, rank. The worst was Sussex university. Imagine the smell of an old forgotten tin of gloss paint kept in a damp musty garden shed. That’s what it smelled like. The rest had more or less chemical odour but all shared the mouldy stench of damp carpet fly-tipped down alleyway. Particularly disappointing in supposedly upmarket establishments like Bristol and Edinburgh.
I would have hoped for something evoking a warm university library or downstairs at Blackwells but failing that at least the citrus-verbena tang of the magazine rack at Smiths. But they couldn’t even manage that.
Newcastle was passable, with the faintest whiff paint on the nose. The only mildly pleasant smelling prospectus was Cardiff, which smelled of paper. Well done Cardiff university.
Durham, Manchester and Exeter still to arrive so I hope at least one of those Russell groupers can pull it out of the bag. Then there’s Aberystwyth from which I’m expecting great things.
PB is amazing for this kind of thing
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/21/arctic-zombie-viruses-in-siberia-could-spark-terrifying-new-pandemic-scientists-warn
Presumably therefore on a boat transporting luxury/antique eastern goods to Northern Europe pre-Suez
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/20/labour-republicans-democrats-trump-lammy-luntz/
My only quibble (and mere quibble it is) is the absence of any reference to Lasse Viren. This prompted me to look him up. Alive. 74. He went into Finnish politics after his running career and was an MP for 10 years. I bet few here knew that.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/166552167266?hash=item26c7486362:g:EzoAAOSwjVJlpams&amdata=enc:AQAIAAAA4JZ+GEOiR3cXVaIk1DXeR4MZ5flJxoSnko7Fl6D47ql6DjNCIH/MItjjefwmnYMUqtLHCW+aseF8GrAWVsBnxDhNVghEwp8QHY9w9A0Xby6P1o3HDZ3a8KhmwHKpasnTFngtm6Hf/h0OQ1RVEz6in2J2SCnY3rvbq6wQDllvQN2F6Sdq8HJGVg4OOe0kWfdInaUJFmaqqNM+pIhaucSLkcVCHOxtQ7LbQ51oKbfFKCLXReUwNVlABXqZVGXpS+my84/3d3uOOrpeqb/ZXbSumV3AyLcYdrPd/U9k8XQnUxlc|tkp:Bk9SR9jss7ilYw
or for £200:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/225235698843?_trkparms=amclksrc=ITM&aid=1110006&algo=HOMESPLICE.SIM&ao=1&asc=259357&meid=b70270fecdf54bfea592d85da01e19bb&pid=101195&rk=3&rkt=12&sd=166552167266&itm=225235698843&pmt=1&noa=0&pg=4429486&algv=SimplAMLv11WebTrimmedV3MskuWithLambda85KnnRecallV1V2V4ItemNrtInQueryAndCassiniVisualRankerAndBertRecallWithVMEV3CPCAutoWithCassiniEmbRecall&_trksid=p4429486.c101195.m1851&amdata=cksum:225235698843b70270fecdf54bfea592d85da01e19bb|enc:AQAIAAABgHD%2FO%2BVoFoPPIoZ2g0kOZxWd85mWuIHekSp3qag7zFfwObZeQoitzE%2FDCfcejfO%2BzOLmzZmy11RrgWpA56KM9DpasK%2BGtGYwCFvgaK6ijP5AqShEUhT8f2oX6hvndJ3G0oWH8DD1DlBWseQltpxcSDW2Uu52NrseaxeINpsrDP6vx7ny%2BkPKauMa3yeSanWiik3mr3HO%2FqMjiq0lZPp9nvpq3y%2FxZNaF4ySOkgR3p3RNUXshi4jBgli3ePtT0b2NlV8Pu80igVhD6xOfZiPF3%2BqQ87bCNwp6df0dCpg989Dhb985q91DMrPNPt6qhClZojbPQw3rn4t2TQ2pxomUvaX6efnfqsRVruPdQKxnAi6uFa4QA3w%2FxDI15K%2FMMOEnIr7vg605gsnE9iHQExdF494Var8ocWQ4INklZ3KU2qUfAkr8QjdtfGQxneZwj1fyU7hq4BK846iwX2BMYrSisCsFo%2FWEjKH41ttIl2asNVp4k87AiLB1vwXHlg20W0qX7w%3D%3D|ampid:PL_CLK|clp:4429486
I pumped that exact request into ChatGPT4, after getting sod all from Google. (“Oh look a mirror from Boston made in 1890”)
ChatGPT4 in 7 seconds:
In the context of a ship that might have sunk off west Cornwall in the 18th or 19th century, carrying luxury and antique items from the Middle East or Far East to Northern Europe, several types of poetically antique and valuable hand mirrors come to mind. These items, while not insanely valuable, would have been considered luxury goods in their time and could have been part of such a cargo:
Persian Hand Mirrors: Persian mirrors from this period might have featured intricate inlays of ivory or precious woods, often with detailed miniature paintings on the back. The art might depict scenes from Persian mythology or poetry, such as stories from the "Shahnameh" (Book of Kings).
Indian Hand Mirrors: Indian hand mirrors, particularly from the Mughal era, would likely be ornate, with handles and frames made of brass or bronze. They might feature engravings or inlays of semi-precious stones, reflecting the rich artistic traditions of the subcontinent.
Nepalese Hand Mirrors: Mirrors from Nepal during this period could have been crafted with a mix of Hindu and Buddhist motifs, possibly incorporating silver and intricate carvings. They might also feature religious symbols, like the "Om" or images of deities.
Chinese Hand Mirrors: Chinese mirrors from the 18th or 19th centuries were often made of bronze and could be highly decorative. They might feature motifs such as dragons, phoenixes, or other symbols auspicious in Chinese culture. Some mirrors might also have been part of ladies' dressing sets in lacquerware.
Japanese Hand Mirrors: Japanese hand mirrors, or "kyōmei", were often made of polished bronze with beautifully detailed backs. These mirrors might depict scenes from Japanese folklore or nature motifs like cherry blossoms, cranes, or Mount Fuji.
Korean Hand Mirrors: Korean hand mirrors from this period were often simpler in design but still elegant. They might feature traditional symbols like the Korean phoenix or scenes from nature, often inlaid in mother-of-pearl.
These mirrors would have been considered valuable for their craftsmanship and the artistic heritage they represented. Their presence on a ship transporting luxury goods to Northern Europe pre-Suez Canal suggests a time when such items were highly sought after in the West, reflecting a fascination with Eastern cultures and their artistic expressions.
Israel is claiming to have killed over 2000 Hamas fighters so about 90% weren't
Is that not enough for you.
History will not judge your support for genocide kindly.
*nervous chuckle*
In terms of preparation for government, I wouldn't underestimate the work Sue Gray is doing behind the scenes (as mentioned by David L).
A short snippet:
"Together, Puska and the clubs hatched the idea of holding afternoon “longevity parties,” where a member of Puska’s team would give a short talk encouraging them to replace butter with oil, meat with vegetables, cut salt, and stop smoking. They gave the women a recipe book that added vegetables to traditional North Karelian dishes and cooked and served them. North Karelian stew, for instance, typically had only three main ingredients—water, fatty pork, and salt—but the team replaced some of the pork with rutabagas, potatoes, and carrots. The women liked the new version of the dish, which they named “Puska’s stew.” By showing these women how to cook plant-based meals that tasted good, Puska had found a way to disseminate the health message better than any leaflet could."
So much we could learn from this.
Italy and Greece don't eat "plant based" diets - seen how much lamb and feta features in Greek cuisine? -and there's nothing wrong with butter or meat provided you don't lay it on with a shovel, lace every meal with salt and ignore vegetables completely.
Totally unbalanced article.
Mistral and Meta are fast catchijng up with OpenAI and surely Google/DeepMind have something in store
And we may get models out of nowhere. Or out of China
I reckon we will see undeniable AGI by the end of the decade
Because, by definition, they see the worst healthcare cases in their surgeries who really struggle to control themselves they tend to turn their recommendations of nannying up to the max and want us to stop drinking, smoking, eating meat, eating dairy and doing anything fun or exciting whatsoever.
Of course, they themselves do not do this - the medics I knew at uni drunk like a fish - but this is for the "little people".
Pizza and fast food consumption has also increased again in the last 3 to 4 years due to apps like JustEat and Deliveroo delivering crap to your door.
And barely a week goes by without Dominos or PapaJohns shoving a leaflet for their shite through my door.
It's why I don't like IHT and would be open to a milder simple annual land/wealth tax.
The video looks like one minesweeper reversed at full pelt straight into the side of the other. I heard something about strong winds and docking being hard but it was like an 80-year who's not with it whacking their Nissan Duke straight into another at Sainsburys.
What on earth were they doing?
Even trying GPT4 (waves to Leon) just gets quite hand-wavy.
My own thought is (after watching more Korean/Japanese/etc cookery shows than I'd care to admit) is that you see a significant amount of veg dishes (including pickles, ferments etc) surrounding a relatively modest amount of meat. The traditional Greek and S.Italian food I've encountered has much the same set up.
But I can't find anything to nail it down, which is annoying. The broad "Eat real food, mostly veg, not too much" message is about as good as I've found.
But most A grade consumer hardware can only run models with 13 or, at the absolute top of the line, 30 billion parameters. The solution is rapidly becoming, instead of creating 13b parameters that are cut-down GPT-4s, with as much knowledge but only 2% of the detail, creating 13b parameter experts. 13b parameters isn't a lot when you're trying to create a model with the sum total of human knowledge, but 13b parameters *just* on particle physics (or on Japanese hentai novels, if that's your bag) is *a lot*. So you download the custom 13b model for the job you want to do, and you have GPT4 level knowledge on specific subjects/areas. And voila. You have a model that's as smart as the closed source models for the thing you want to achieve.
GPT4 et al are swiss army knives. Open source development is looking a lot more like creating specific tools to do specific jobs.
And with next gen hardware, everyone's gonna have access to 30b parameter models, which are good enough for most tasks.
But reluctantly they now have no choice but to sell it after being left with a seven-figure inheritance tax bill.
Under inheritance tax rules, an estate which has passed to children is exempt from tax for the first £500,000, but everything above that is usually subject to a 40 per cent levy, which if HMRC agree with the £9m valuation, would mean a bill of more than £3 million for the family.
The family could have minimised their inheritance tax bill if their parents had passed on their wealth before they had passed away, so that it was exempt using the seven-year rule.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12978593/Heartbroken-family-forced-sell-9m-home-Sandbanks-pay-seven-figure-inheritance-tax-bill-owning-idyllic-property-80-years.html
But more interesting is that it is one of two Sandbanks stories so my guess would be that a student on the Sandbanks University journalism course has got an internship as a stringer for the Mail, and has sent them both stories. A professional would simply look at the by-lines to disprove this but Sunday is a day of rest.
The Tories will probably get to a similar level by cleaning up Reform and convince themselves as a consequence they're in with a shot at the next GE (they won't be).
I suspect they put a bit less butter and salt in now, and eat more veg, but still have the traditional dishes except in moderation- coupled with much less smoking.
Like I say, the article has an agenda.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12986973/rishi-sunak-prime-minister-tories-farce.html
I remember doing this for myself in the mid 70s.
"Libs" don't understand how repellant they are: pompous, arrogant, privileged and secure, self-entitled and self-serving all whilst sneering at anyone else who takes a different view as racist idiotic stupid bigots.
That really fucks people off.
Biggest company in the world, with gizmos screaming for effective AI (Siri is SO shit), and yet nothing
Or maybe they ARE brewing something
https://www.techopedia.com/apple-generative-ai
Not that we shouldn’t be doing exactly that - redistributing scarce land to those that can make best use of it is the entire point of a land tax after all - but the DM will scream about whatever you do. Best to ignore them as much as possible.
Btw, your Morrisons 2010 English sparking tip is still paying dividends - our nearby Morries has a few bottles on extra offer at £17 last weekend. With sister-in-law's staff discount that worked out at £13.60 per bottle, so I stocked up for the summer. So, thanks!
I'd be surprised if we have a Tory party challenging for government before the mid 2030's
Better than confiscating properties on death.
Both hulls are GRP which I imagine would be very difficult (expensive) to get repaired and certified in Bahrain.
Go easy on the fats and salt. And do it in moderation.
Simple.
THAT will also be transformative. If I was Tim Cook sitting on a trillion dollars I would absolutely make that my goal.. Put real humanlike AI every into every iPhone and iPad and blow all the opposition out of the water