Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
More of the same vapid, ineffective centre-leftism that he is currently presiding over, I expect....
That news about Hairy Biker Dave myers is quite discombobulating. I thought he was now recovering?
Ah, sad. Sad. One of the most likeable tv personae
Pfffff
Their current (now last obvs) tour of the west had a valedictory feel to it, even more piquant now. He looked incredibly frail but still bubbling with enthusiasm.
Eeesh. I haven't seen it yet and now I'm not sure I want to (I was saving it for a rainy day, I like their shows quite a lot)
Now if I watch, it will be knowing that he died soon after - and was presumably dying as they made it? - which is not what I want from escapist TV. And they did brilliant escapist TV: meaningless but funny and diverting, and with some interesting travel, recipes and anecdotes on the way
I particularly remember one scene where they did a roadtrip down Route 66 and they were fed what was obviously the most hideous meal in history - rural American cuisine with all its carbs and tinned gunk and corn syrup weirdness - and Myers carried it off brilliantly, he was absolutely polite but with the tiniest raised eyebrow, and faintly sardonic voice, he let the viewer know how bad it was. Superbly done - and, again, not easy to do
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
More of the same vapid, ineffective centre-leftism that he is currently presiding over, I expect....
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
SKS is 0/10 on his Leadership Pledges and ?/5 on his latest missions
? as they are open to interpretation and cant be achieved until after the GE
Good grief, you're like the man in Pompeii as Vesuvius goes off: "Never mind that volcano, I demand action on the potholes!"
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
It seems fairly sensible to have at least a plan of what population looks like in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure.
It is sensible to know what the population will be in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure, but that’s different from having a target. I’m a liberal. I’m sceptical of state-led targets. They are appropriate in many situations, but I think you have to make a case for them instead of just rushing to presume the government should be telling people how many kids to have.
I’m posting this simply to illustrate that many of us travel all over the world, including in business, without the need of clogging up this political betting website with irrevelant travelogues.
Hypocrisy and irony? No because of the intent …
Have a nice day everyone and let’s hope GG does not win tonight. Whatever one’s persuasion he is simply an awful little man.
You need to work on your angles. Put your glass of bubbles in the front of the photo, to give it life and scale, and you've posted too many photos of the same scene
But a modestly promising start
Way too generous a review.
"1 star I would give this travel update 0 stars if I could! If I wanted to see boring pictures of a fridge I would just go into my kitchen and take some on my phone, and they would be more interesting than this rubbish. Also - no attempt to pretend that you are leading a great life to hide the emptiness in your soul"
I was trying to be nice, @Heathener is obviously doing her best. Yes these are spirit-crushingly generic shots apparently made on a Nokia 2 but nonetheless she is trying
Tho one must wonder how a woman who is so poor she has to boil water first thing in the day then keep it in a thermos to save 0.002p, can nevertheless afford to fly business class, even if the lounge looks like the resto in a slightly upmarket Marriot hotel in Ohio
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
A reason to celebrate.
If only the rest of the world would follow the shining example set by the good people of South Korea, the planet would be substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years.
Your attitude is pretty short-sighted.
The total opposite. The long-term prospects for the planet, its flora and fauna are best served by having a heck of a lot fewer humans buggering things up.
If humans die out then I don't see much hope of life on earth surviving the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years.
Plenty of time for some other species to evolve advanced intelligence, then develop spaceflight and stellar engineering. Probably cockroaches. Super-intelligent, giant cockroaches.
Possibly.
Still, I care most about my immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me, humans in general, animals that show some signs of awareness, and so on through animals that I actively dislike (mosquitoes), then plants I don't have much feeling for, bacteria, the mould growing on my bathroom ceiling, stuff that I wouldn't offer any humans to die or suffer for.
SandyRentool seems to care about 1) SandyRentool (otherwise why is they still around?) 2) other lifeforms, and only 3) other human beings. Just seems an extremely selfish attitude to me.
You were talking about “the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years”. I don’t think that’s going to affect your “immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me”, or indeed even “humans in general” (we will have long evolved into a different species by then).
We will all have died off long before the sun becomes a red giant. The Sun will start heating up, from its current temp, long before then.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
More of the same vapid, ineffective centre-leftism that he is currently presiding over, I expect....
He's not centre-left, he's failed neoliberal right.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Below replacement birthrates just imply a declining population, which is not the end of the world. There’s no reason to think the trend would continue until literal extinction.
Developed countries that allow their populations to decline might well end up in a better position than those that use immigration to change their demographics.
There are a few ways in which the cultural changes might become quite locked in, and hard to shift. China is experiencing this with things like housing built on an assumption of single-child families, and the almost complete absence of any families with more children creating a cultural norm of very small families.
I think there's a similar, less extreme, effect in the West. The combination of a proportion of women who have no children - either by choice or circumstance - and the rarity of families with more than two children, makes it very hard to get the birth rate above replacement level.
To have a family with more than two children a woman would have to start relatively early, and then want to continue. And the longer a woman puts their career on hold the harder it is to afford the third child too.
It's very easy to see "stop at two", becoming a cultural norm - I think it already has to a large extent - and then that's pretty much the end of any hope of keeping the birth rate above the replacement level.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
More of the same vapid, ineffective centre-leftism that he is currently presiding over, I expect....
He's not centre-left, he's failed neoliberal right.
Nope. Petty interfering in people's lives and businesses smacks entirely of vapid new-labourism.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
I’m posting this simply to illustrate that many of us travel all over the world, including in business, without the need of clogging up this political betting website with irrevelant travelogues.
Hypocrisy and irony? No because of the intent …
Have a nice day everyone and let’s hope GG does not win tonight. Whatever one’s persuasion he is simply an awful little man.
You need to work on your angles. Put your glass of bubbles in the front of the photo, to give it life and scale, and you've posted too many photos of the same scene
But a modestly promising start
Way too generous a review.
"1 star I would give this travel update 0 stars if I could! If I wanted to see boring pictures of a fridge I would just go into my kitchen and take some on my phone, and they would be more interesting than this rubbish. Also - no attempt to pretend that you are leading a great life to hide the emptiness in your soul"
Airport lounges only seem nice because they've engineered the rest of the airport to be as dehumanising and extractive as possible. They're designed for the kind of person who reads the Daily Mail and gets excited by the prospect of a "free" glass of cheap champagne and a small pot of Pringles. Leon, in other words.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Yes. A Conservative government isn't for anything at the moment. That said, I couldn't tell you what a Starmer government would be for either.
I mean, I could roughly figure it out but I'd be guessing and there wouldn't be much depth to it.
Balancing the books and cutting tax isn't enough of an answer.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
I think it's fair to say that there's usually been an implicit acceptance that 'more is better', at least in the modern era.
Exceptions - the Inclosure Acts, Highland Clearances, Corn Laws (and the Great Famine) - have all been disasters. The 1946-7 plans for a potential siege economy as an alternative to the Anglo-American loan might have been worse still.
If we are to get ahead of the curve, and work out how to successfully live with a decreased population, then we probably do need to put some deliberate thought into it...
That's a little bit back-to-front. The exceptions to population growth have been because of disasters, in general. Almost by definition, in fact. The declining population now is pretty much the sole exception in human history where populations have chosen to have fewer than 2 children (growing to adulthood), not least because it's the first to be practically able to.
But yes, we do need to think about the consequences, for society, for the economy and for security.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
It seems fairly sensible to have at least a plan of what population looks like in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure.
It is sensible to know what the population will be in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure, but that’s different from having a target. I’m a liberal. I’m sceptical of state-led targets. They are appropriate in many situations, but I think you have to make a case for them instead of just rushing to presume the government should be telling people how many kids to have.
Sure but if your forecast comes out as you have big demographic timebombs ahead (whether too many, too few or the wrong age pyramids), why not plan to adjust a bit?
A lot of the UKs woes are because we haven't properly had this conversation beyond some people saying its too many and therefore we don't have the right number of houses nor the related infrastructure for the people who are here and the people we need.
If we had been honest about it 10-20 years ago, we could have planned for the obvious issues around the demographic pyramid, understood that immigration was going to happen regardless of it being too many in some eyes and built more appropriately.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
A planned population can lead to much improved services. When we plan infrastructure, we plan for three or four decades ahead. How can your water company provide enough water and sewage services if they've no idea how many people they will be serving? How can we ensure there are enough houses, schools, hospitals et al if we've no idea how many people will be here?
Infrastructure takes years, or even decades to build. At the moment it's lagging because no-one can properly plan anything.
Quite - if we go laissez-faire on population, but try and plan everything else, we get a fuckup
Quite simply, at the moment we are trying to run a country with a developing world style population increase, but with a no/low infrastructural development policy.
You can plan on forecasts. You don’t need to have targets. The lack of investment in infrastructure versus an increasing population is not because the UK doesn’t have a target population: it’s because we have a Conservative government that brought in austerity and then lied about immigration.
It you want targets for everything, you end up with a 5-year plan for tractor production, and we know where that ended.
I’m posting this simply to illustrate that many of us travel all over the world, including in business, without the need of clogging up this political betting website with irrevelant travelogues.
Hypocrisy and irony? No because of the intent …
Have a nice day everyone and let’s hope GG does not win tonight. Whatever one’s persuasion he is simply an awful little man.
You need to work on your angles. Put your glass of bubbles in the front of the photo, to give it life and scale, and you've posted too many photos of the same scene
But a modestly promising start
Way too generous a review.
"1 star I would give this travel update 0 stars if I could! If I wanted to see boring pictures of a fridge I would just go into my kitchen and take some on my phone, and they would be more interesting than this rubbish. Also - no attempt to pretend that you are leading a great life to hide the emptiness in your soul"
Airport lounges only seem nice because they've engineered the rest of the airport to be as dehumanising and extractive as possible. They're designed for the kind of person who reads the Daily Mail and gets excited by the prospect of a "free" glass of cheap champagne and a small pot of Pringles. Leon, in other words.
They vary inordinately.
The newly refurbed Edinburgh BA lounge is excellent, for example. Near the BA gates, 16 year old Lagavulin, decent food etc.
That alone is worth the hassle of getting out to the airport, rather than getting on a train from Waverley.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
A planned population can lead to much improved services. When we plan infrastructure, we plan for three or four decades ahead. How can your water company provide enough water and sewage services if they've no idea how many people they will be serving? How can we ensure there are enough houses, schools, hospitals et al if we've no idea how many people will be here?
Infrastructure takes years, or even decades to build. At the moment it's lagging because no-one can properly plan anything.
That is forecasting not setting a target. You can do everything mentioned here without trying to controll what the population "should be" in 30 years.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
One of the many problems.
The others being:
- terrible policy - not being good at politics
Honestly, I do not know why he is still in place....
I’m posting this simply to illustrate that many of us travel all over the world, including in business, without the need of clogging up this political betting website with irrevelant travelogues.
Hypocrisy and irony? No because of the intent …
Have a nice day everyone and let’s hope GG does not win tonight. Whatever one’s persuasion he is simply an awful little man.
You need to work on your angles. Put your glass of bubbles in the front of the photo, to give it life and scale, and you've posted too many photos of the same scene
But a modestly promising start
Way too generous a review.
"1 star I would give this travel update 0 stars if I could! If I wanted to see boring pictures of a fridge I would just go into my kitchen and take some on my phone, and they would be more interesting than this rubbish. Also - no attempt to pretend that you are leading a great life to hide the emptiness in your soul"
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
A reason to celebrate.
If only the rest of the world would follow the shining example set by the good people of South Korea, the planet would be substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years.
Your attitude is pretty short-sighted.
The total opposite. The long-term prospects for the planet, its flora and fauna are best served by having a heck of a lot fewer humans buggering things up.
If humans die out then I don't see much hope of life on earth surviving the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years.
Plenty of time for some other species to evolve advanced intelligence, then develop spaceflight and stellar engineering. Probably cockroaches. Super-intelligent, giant cockroaches.
Possibly.
Still, I care most about my immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me, humans in general, animals that show some signs of awareness, and so on through animals that I actively dislike (mosquitoes), then plants I don't have much feeling for, bacteria, the mould growing on my bathroom ceiling, stuff that I wouldn't offer any humans to die or suffer for.
SandyRentool seems to care about 1) SandyRentool (otherwise why is they still around?) 2) other lifeforms, and only 3) other human beings. Just seems an extremely selfish attitude to me.
Your stance makes no sense though. Reducing the human population through lower birth rates doesn't mean killing off any of today's living human beings. None of the list of who you care about will be affected by that.
Huh? What do you think my 'stance' is?
I don't think the "planet being substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years" is a good thing for the billions of humans who are going to be around for the next couple of hundred years. I'm all in favour of the human population stabilising and slowly reducing. But a very rapid reduction would be pretty bad news for most humans in the short/medium term.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
One of the many problems.
The others being:
- terrible policy - not being good at politics
Honestly, I do not know why he is still in place....
Replaced by whom?
There would need to be an immediate general election if he went - with likely no honeymoon period for his successor.
Plus, he still has a doozy of a proppa Tory Budget to see delivered.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
School twat from a school full of twats, too.
I'd disagree with that. I've literally never met at Old Wykehamist who wasn't very very nice in person, and also trustworthy.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
A reason to celebrate.
If only the rest of the world would follow the shining example set by the good people of South Korea, the planet would be substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years.
Your attitude is pretty short-sighted.
The total opposite. The long-term prospects for the planet, its flora and fauna are best served by having a heck of a lot fewer humans buggering things up.
If humans die out then I don't see much hope of life on earth surviving the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years.
Plenty of time for some other species to evolve advanced intelligence, then develop spaceflight and stellar engineering. Probably cockroaches. Super-intelligent, giant cockroaches.
Possibly.
Still, I care most about my immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me, humans in general, animals that show some signs of awareness, and so on through animals that I actively dislike (mosquitoes), then plants I don't have much feeling for, bacteria, the mould growing on my bathroom ceiling, stuff that I wouldn't offer any humans to die or suffer for.
SandyRentool seems to care about 1) SandyRentool (otherwise why is they still around?) 2) other lifeforms, and only 3) other human beings. Just seems an extremely selfish attitude to me.
Your stance makes no sense though. Reducing the human population through lower birth rates doesn't mean killing off any of today's living human beings. None of the list of who you care about will be affected by that.
Huh? What do you think my 'stance' is?
I don't think the "planet being substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years" is a good thing for the billions of humans who are going to be around for the next couple of hundred years. I'm all in favour of the human population stabilising and slowly reducing. But a very rapid reduction would be pretty bad news for most humans in the short/medium term.
So your environmental 'concern' translates as concern for humans? You know - the species that is trashing the planet.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
School twat from a school full of twats, too.
I'd disagree with that. I've literally never met at Old Wykehamist who wasn't very very nice in person, and also trustworthy.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
One of the many problems.
The others being:
- terrible policy - not being good at politics
Honestly, I do not know why he is still in place....
Replaced by whom?
There would need to be an immediate general election if he went - with likely no honeymoon period for his successor.
Plus, he still has a doozy of a proppa Tory Budget to see delivered.
LOL. Like that last few which have inordinately increased the taxes of swathes of the Tory voting base?
My money is on Badenoch vs Mordaunt when the May local election rout happens.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
A reason to celebrate.
If only the rest of the world would follow the shining example set by the good people of South Korea, the planet would be substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years.
Your attitude is pretty short-sighted.
The total opposite. The long-term prospects for the planet, its flora and fauna are best served by having a heck of a lot fewer humans buggering things up.
If humans die out then I don't see much hope of life on earth surviving the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years.
Plenty of time for some other species to evolve advanced intelligence, then develop spaceflight and stellar engineering. Probably cockroaches. Super-intelligent, giant cockroaches.
Possibly.
Still, I care most about my immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me, humans in general, animals that show some signs of awareness, and so on through animals that I actively dislike (mosquitoes), then plants I don't have much feeling for, bacteria, the mould growing on my bathroom ceiling, stuff that I wouldn't offer any humans to die or suffer for.
SandyRentool seems to care about 1) SandyRentool (otherwise why is they still around?) 2) other lifeforms, and only 3) other human beings. Just seems an extremely selfish attitude to me.
You were talking about “the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years”. I don’t think that’s going to affect your “immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me”, or indeed even “humans in general” (we will have long evolved into a different species by then).
Maybe the sun dying was a tongue-in-cheek remark that had nothing whatsoever to do with the other post? ok never mind.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
One of the many problems.
The others being:
- terrible policy - not being good at politics
Honestly, I do not know why he is still in place....
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
School twat from a school full of twats, too.
I'd disagree with that. I've literally never met at Old Wykehamist who wasn't very very nice in person, and also trustworthy.
You did not follow Roger's link earlier in the thread to The Political Butterfly Effect (14 minutes) or did not realise (spoiler) Nick Boles is a Wykehamist with an Oxford PPE and a scholarship to study in America:-
Jim Waterson investigates the circumstances surrounding the loss of a handwritten note from Boris Johnson [that] caused his 2016 Conservative leadership campaign to collapse - and led to Theresa May becoming the prime minister tasked with negotiating Brexit. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0012qgc
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
One of the many problems.
The others being:
- terrible policy - not being good at politics
Honestly, I do not know why he is still in place....
Replaced by whom?
There would need to be an immediate general election if he went - with likely no honeymoon period for his successor.
Plus, he still has a doozy of a proppa Tory Budget to see delivered.
LOL. Like that last few which have inordinately increased the taxes of swathes of the Tory voting base?
My money is on Badenoch vs Mordaunt when the May local election rout happens.
Mordaunt probably wins that.
She couldn't pin a tail on a donkey. Unless it had a LGBT+++ flag to guide her.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
A reason to celebrate.
If only the rest of the world would follow the shining example set by the good people of South Korea, the planet would be substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years.
Your attitude is pretty short-sighted.
The total opposite. The long-term prospects for the planet, its flora and fauna are best served by having a heck of a lot fewer humans buggering things up.
If humans die out then I don't see much hope of life on earth surviving the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years.
Plenty of time for some other species to evolve advanced intelligence, then develop spaceflight and stellar engineering. Probably cockroaches. Super-intelligent, giant cockroaches.
Possibly.
Still, I care most about my immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me, humans in general, animals that show some signs of awareness, and so on through animals that I actively dislike (mosquitoes), then plants I don't have much feeling for, bacteria, the mould growing on my bathroom ceiling, stuff that I wouldn't offer any humans to die or suffer for.
SandyRentool seems to care about 1) SandyRentool (otherwise why is they still around?) 2) other lifeforms, and only 3) other human beings. Just seems an extremely selfish attitude to me.
Your stance makes no sense though. Reducing the human population through lower birth rates doesn't mean killing off any of today's living human beings. None of the list of who you care about will be affected by that.
Huh? What do you think my 'stance' is?
I don't think the "planet being substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years" is a good thing for the billions of humans who are going to be around for the next couple of hundred years. I'm all in favour of the human population stabilising and slowly reducing. But a very rapid reduction would be pretty bad news for most humans in the short/medium term.
So your environmental 'concern' translates as concern for humans? You know - the species that is trashing the planet.
My environmental 'concern'? I don't think I mentioned it, did I?
Yes, my first concern about the environment is how it affects humans, not how it affects bacteria. I pretty much only care about the bacteria as far as they are needed for humans and other more complex life forms. And not just bacteria.
For example I am in favour of the complete eradication - the deliberate human caused extinction - of the parasitic worm that causes Guinea worm disease.
I wouldn't have thought this was a particularly controversial attitude tbh.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
A reason to celebrate.
If only the rest of the world would follow the shining example set by the good people of South Korea, the planet would be substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years.
Your attitude is pretty short-sighted.
The total opposite. The long-term prospects for the planet, its flora and fauna are best served by having a heck of a lot fewer humans buggering things up.
If humans die out then I don't see much hope of life on earth surviving the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years.
Plenty of time for some other species to evolve advanced intelligence, then develop spaceflight and stellar engineering. Probably cockroaches. Super-intelligent, giant cockroaches.
Possibly.
Still, I care most about my immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me, humans in general, animals that show some signs of awareness, and so on through animals that I actively dislike (mosquitoes), then plants I don't have much feeling for, bacteria, the mould growing on my bathroom ceiling, stuff that I wouldn't offer any humans to die or suffer for.
SandyRentool seems to care about 1) SandyRentool (otherwise why is they still around?) 2) other lifeforms, and only 3) other human beings. Just seems an extremely selfish attitude to me.
Your stance makes no sense though. Reducing the human population through lower birth rates doesn't mean killing off any of today's living human beings. None of the list of who you care about will be affected by that.
Huh? What do you think my 'stance' is?
I don't think the "planet being substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years" is a good thing for the billions of humans who are going to be around for the next couple of hundred years. I'm all in favour of the human population stabilising and slowly reducing. But a very rapid reduction would be pretty bad news for most humans in the short/medium term.
So your environmental 'concern' translates as concern for humans? You know - the species that is trashing the planet.
The biggest trashing of the planet was the wholesale production of oxygen by new lifeforms. Infecting the atmosphere with a massive amount of a fire causing chemical caused wholesale extinction of previous life.
Not for nothing, has it been described as the Oxygen Holocaust.
That news about Hairy Biker Dave myers is quite discombobulating. I thought he was now recovering?
Ah, sad. Sad. One of the most likeable tv personae
Pfffff
Their current (now last obvs) tour of the west had a valedictory feel to it, even more piquant now. He looked incredibly frail but still bubbling with enthusiasm.
Eeesh. I haven't seen it yet and now I'm not sure I want to (I was saving it for a rainy day, I like their shows quite a lot)
Now if I watch, it will be knowing that he died soon after - and was presumably dying as they made it? - which is not what I want from escapist TV. And they did brilliant escapist TV: meaningless but funny and diverting, and with some interesting travel, recipes and anecdotes on the way
I particularly remember one scene where they did a roadtrip down Route 66 and they were fed what was obviously the most hideous meal in history - rural American cuisine with all its carbs and tinned gunk and corn syrup weirdness - and Myers carried it off brilliantly, he was absolutely polite but with the tiniest raised eyebrow, and faintly sardonic voice, he let the viewer know how bad it was. Superbly done - and, again, not easy to do
Yes they both had fascinating backstories which, cleverly, they would only let you glimpse from time to time. eg the serious knowledge of modern art and architecture. They never lectured, it just emerged, now and again
Apparently Myers the Make-up was responsible for the white stripe across Adam Ant's face! (or so TwiX says)
I've plotted TFR vs gdp (PPP)* per head and the graph is as you'd expect, Niger leading the way with TFR at a very low income and on the other side the likes of South Korea.
High TFR, high ppp per head:
Israel, Ireland, Guyana (Much higher ppp than actual gdp), Saudi Arabia.
Low(ish) gdp per head, low birthrate:
Ukraine, China, Bosnia.
* Wiki foonote
Footnotes There is no explicit "GDP (PPP) per capita" World estimate provided by the IMF. For this figure, the GDP (PPP) world value[6] has been divided by the global population according to the IMF.[12]
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
It seems fairly sensible to have at least a plan of what population looks like in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure.
It is sensible to know what the population will be in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure, but that’s different from having a target. I’m a liberal. I’m sceptical of state-led targets. They are appropriate in many situations, but I think you have to make a case for them instead of just rushing to presume the government should be telling people how many kids to have.
Sure but if your forecast comes out as you have big demographic timebombs ahead (whether too many, too few or the wrong age pyramids), why not plan to adjust a bit?
A lot of the UKs woes are because we haven't properly had this conversation beyond some people saying its too many and therefore we don't have the right number of houses nor the related infrastructure for the people who are here and the people we need.
If we had been honest about it 10-20 years ago, we could have planned for the obvious issues around the demographic pyramid, understood that immigration was going to happen regardless of it being too many in some eyes and built more appropriately.
You should adjust to forecasts, but preferably in a way that maximises happiness and liberty. And can’t we come up with better solutions?
There’s a demographic timebomb: people are living longer, so there aren’t enough working age people to support them. The proposed solution is to increase the number of working age people. That works in the short term, but then in 30-40 years, we’ll have even more old people! It’s a population Ponzi scheme.
What about thinking how we can increase the amount of lifespan when we can be productive, by focusing on preventative health and redirecting medical research efforts to health conditions that disable people in old age (e.g., dementia, back pain)? (Consider how Japan has put a lot of investment into robots.)
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
One of the many problems.
The others being:
- terrible policy - not being good at politics
Honestly, I do not know why he is still in place....
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
School twat from a school full of twats, too.
I'd disagree with that. I've literally never met at Old Wykehamist who wasn't very very nice in person, and also trustworthy.
I’m posting this simply to illustrate that many of us travel all over the world, including in business, without the need of clogging up this political betting website with irrevelant travelogues.
Hypocrisy and irony? No because of the intent …
Have a nice day everyone and let’s hope GG does not win tonight. Whatever one’s persuasion he is simply an awful little man.
You need to work on your angles. Put your glass of bubbles in the front of the photo, to give it life and scale, and you've posted too many photos of the same scene
But a modestly promising start
Way too generous a review.
"1 star I would give this travel update 0 stars if I could! If I wanted to see boring pictures of a fridge I would just go into my kitchen and take some on my phone, and they would be more interesting than this rubbish. Also - no attempt to pretend that you are leading a great life to hide the emptiness in your soul"
Airport lounges only seem nice because they've engineered the rest of the airport to be as dehumanising and extractive as possible. They're designed for the kind of person who reads the Daily Mail and gets excited by the prospect of a "free" glass of cheap champagne and a small pot of Pringles. Leon, in other words.
Actually, speaking as someone who goes to airport lounges for a living, they really are NOT nice, in general
The only good thing about them is the free booze, and maybe the odd snack (in general the food is cheap crap), and also the chance to escape hoi polloi if the airport is crowded (but often lounges get crowded, too)
I have only encountered four or five lounges in my life where you think Wow, this is actually lovely
The Concorde Lounge as was in LHR (but it is in decline)
Singapore Airlines at Changi
Cathay at HK
Virgin 1st Class at LHR (but it was a while back - they had free and excellent sashimi!)
Emirates in the Emirates
Air France at CDG yesterday was pretty good, but nothing incredible
Some airport lounges are amusing because they are SO bad and you would literally prefer to be in the Spoons at Gatwick
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
One of the many problems.
The others being:
- terrible policy - not being good at politics
Honestly, I do not know why he is still in place....
Replaced by whom?
There would need to be an immediate general election if he went - with likely no honeymoon period for his successor.
Plus, he still has a doozy of a proppa Tory Budget to see delivered.
LOL. Like that last few which have inordinately increased the taxes of swathes of the Tory voting base?
My money is on Badenoch vs Mordaunt when the May local election rout happens.
Mordaunt probably wins that.
She couldn't pin a tail on a donkey. Unless it had a LGBT+++ flag to guide her.
I think that aspect is overstated. I don't particularly rate her, and think there is a bit of a female version of Boris about her, but her speech in the commons (where the woke thing came from) may largely have been attention-seeking egotism.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
One of the many problems.
The others being:
- terrible policy - not being good at politics
Honestly, I do not know why he is still in place....
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
A reason to celebrate.
If only the rest of the world would follow the shining example set by the good people of South Korea, the planet would be substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years.
Your attitude is pretty short-sighted.
The total opposite. The long-term prospects for the planet, its flora and fauna are best served by having a heck of a lot fewer humans buggering things up.
If humans die out then I don't see much hope of life on earth surviving the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years.
Plenty of time for some other species to evolve advanced intelligence, then develop spaceflight and stellar engineering. Probably cockroaches. Super-intelligent, giant cockroaches.
Possibly.
Still, I care most about my immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me, humans in general, animals that show some signs of awareness, and so on through animals that I actively dislike (mosquitoes), then plants I don't have much feeling for, bacteria, the mould growing on my bathroom ceiling, stuff that I wouldn't offer any humans to die or suffer for.
SandyRentool seems to care about 1) SandyRentool (otherwise why is they still around?) 2) other lifeforms, and only 3) other human beings. Just seems an extremely selfish attitude to me.
Your stance makes no sense though. Reducing the human population through lower birth rates doesn't mean killing off any of today's living human beings. None of the list of who you care about will be affected by that.
Huh? What do you think my 'stance' is?
I don't think the "planet being substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years" is a good thing for the billions of humans who are going to be around for the next couple of hundred years. I'm all in favour of the human population stabilising and slowly reducing. But a very rapid reduction would be pretty bad news for most humans in the short/medium term.
I’ve not seen any evidence that a “very rapid reduction” is particularly likely. There’s a low fertility rate in South Korea, but South Korea is just one part of the world.
That news about Hairy Biker Dave myers is quite discombobulating. I thought he was now recovering?
Ah, sad. Sad. One of the most likeable tv personae
Pfffff
Their current (now last obvs) tour of the west had a valedictory feel to it, even more piquant now. He looked incredibly frail but still bubbling with enthusiasm.
Eeesh. I haven't seen it yet and now I'm not sure I want to (I was saving it for a rainy day, I like their shows quite a lot)
Now if I watch, it will be knowing that he died soon after - and was presumably dying as they made it? - which is not what I want from escapist TV. And they did brilliant escapist TV: meaningless but funny and diverting, and with some interesting travel, recipes and anecdotes on the way
I particularly remember one scene where they did a roadtrip down Route 66 and they were fed what was obviously the most hideous meal in history - rural American cuisine with all its carbs and tinned gunk and corn syrup weirdness - and Myers carried it off brilliantly, he was absolutely polite but with the tiniest raised eyebrow, and faintly sardonic voice, he let the viewer know how bad it was. Superbly done - and, again, not easy to do
Yes they both had fascinating backstories which, cleverly, they would only let you glimpse from time to time. eg the serious knowledge of modern art and architecture. They never lectured, it just emerged, now and again
Apparently Myers the Make-up was responsible for the white stripe across Adam Ant's face! (or so TwiX says)
Ridicule is nothing to be scared of.
Presumably he must also be responsible for a generation of teenage girls finding out Tippex was hard to remove from their skin !!!!
Can someone exaplain how "Labour" - who I agree are in principle value - can possibly win in Rochdale when Ali has been disowned?
There is no clarification in the Betfair rules about it one way or the other.
Is he technically "Labour" cause it says so on the ballot?
I think the situation is clear. He is Labour on the ballot, and this is a process governed by statute law, with time limits and closure dates for the declaring of candidates and their parties. (A change in law a few decades ago allowed party labels as well as the name.
The bloke is legally and lawfully the Labour candidate. The external extra-legal Labour party rumpus makes no difference as it is of no legal effect. If he wins Betfair pays up.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
One of the many problems.
The others being:
- terrible policy - not being good at politics
Honestly, I do not know why he is still in place....
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
A reason to celebrate.
If only the rest of the world would follow the shining example set by the good people of South Korea, the planet would be substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years.
Your attitude is pretty short-sighted.
The total opposite. The long-term prospects for the planet, its flora and fauna are best served by having a heck of a lot fewer humans buggering things up.
If humans die out then I don't see much hope of life on earth surviving the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years.
Plenty of time for some other species to evolve advanced intelligence, then develop spaceflight and stellar engineering. Probably cockroaches. Super-intelligent, giant cockroaches.
Possibly.
Still, I care most about my immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me, humans in general, animals that show some signs of awareness, and so on through animals that I actively dislike (mosquitoes), then plants I don't have much feeling for, bacteria, the mould growing on my bathroom ceiling, stuff that I wouldn't offer any humans to die or suffer for.
SandyRentool seems to care about 1) SandyRentool (otherwise why is they still around?) 2) other lifeforms, and only 3) other human beings. Just seems an extremely selfish attitude to me.
You were talking about “the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years”. I don’t think that’s going to affect your “immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me”, or indeed even “humans in general” (we will have long evolved into a different species by then).
Maybe the sun dying was a tongue-in-cheek remark that had nothing whatsoever to do with the other post? ok never mind.
And you thought my reply about super-intelligent, giant cockroaches was to be taken seriously???
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
One of the many problems.
The others being:
- terrible policy - not being good at politics
Honestly, I do not know why he is still in place....
Have you looked at the alternatives? Jeez.
Yep! I'd take Mrs May over Sunak....
She might do better, but only marginally surely? And she might not. I can't see that yet another change of leader is a good idea.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
It seems fairly sensible to have at least a plan of what population looks like in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure.
It is sensible to know what the population will be in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure, but that’s different from having a target. I’m a liberal. I’m sceptical of state-led targets. They are appropriate in many situations, but I think you have to make a case for them instead of just rushing to presume the government should be telling people how many kids to have.
Sure but if your forecast comes out as you have big demographic timebombs ahead (whether too many, too few or the wrong age pyramids), why not plan to adjust a bit?
A lot of the UKs woes are because we haven't properly had this conversation beyond some people saying its too many and therefore we don't have the right number of houses nor the related infrastructure for the people who are here and the people we need.
If we had been honest about it 10-20 years ago, we could have planned for the obvious issues around the demographic pyramid, understood that immigration was going to happen regardless of it being too many in some eyes and built more appropriately.
You should adjust to forecasts, but preferably in a way that maximises happiness and liberty. And can’t we come up with better solutions?
There’s a demographic timebomb: people are living longer, so there aren’t enough working age people to support them. The proposed solution is to increase the number of working age people. That works in the short term, but then in 30-40 years, we’ll have even more old people! It’s a population Ponzi scheme.
What about thinking how we can increase the amount of lifespan when we can be productive, by focusing on preventative health and redirecting medical research efforts to health conditions that disable people in old age (e.g., dementia, back pain)? (Consider how Japan has put a lot of investment into robots.)
What happens when we get a cure for dementia?
Vast amounts are being invested obviating/eliminating the effects of old age. This own't lead to immortality overnight, but if your brain doesn't turn to much, your body doesn't pack up....
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
A reason to celebrate.
If only the rest of the world would follow the shining example set by the good people of South Korea, the planet would be substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years.
Your attitude is pretty short-sighted.
The total opposite. The long-term prospects for the planet, its flora and fauna are best served by having a heck of a lot fewer humans buggering things up.
If humans die out then I don't see much hope of life on earth surviving the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years.
Plenty of time for some other species to evolve advanced intelligence, then develop spaceflight and stellar engineering. Probably cockroaches. Super-intelligent, giant cockroaches.
Possibly.
Still, I care most about my immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me, humans in general, animals that show some signs of awareness, and so on through animals that I actively dislike (mosquitoes), then plants I don't have much feeling for, bacteria, the mould growing on my bathroom ceiling, stuff that I wouldn't offer any humans to die or suffer for.
SandyRentool seems to care about 1) SandyRentool (otherwise why is they still around?) 2) other lifeforms, and only 3) other human beings. Just seems an extremely selfish attitude to me.
Your stance makes no sense though. Reducing the human population through lower birth rates doesn't mean killing off any of today's living human beings. None of the list of who you care about will be affected by that.
Huh? What do you think my 'stance' is?
I don't think the "planet being substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years" is a good thing for the billions of humans who are going to be around for the next couple of hundred years. I'm all in favour of the human population stabilising and slowly reducing. But a very rapid reduction would be pretty bad news for most humans in the short/medium term.
So your environmental 'concern' translates as concern for humans? You know - the species that is trashing the planet.
Without the humans, who or what gets to look round and appreciate the joint? The cockroaches aren't going to write down Maxwell's equations or appreciate the bird song on a spring morning.
What's the point in having a 'pristine' Earth just sitting there is space waiting to be evaporated?
We could certainly make do with a few less humans, but a total wipe out would be unfortunate.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
It seems fairly sensible to have at least a plan of what population looks like in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure.
It is sensible to know what the population will be in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure, but that’s different from having a target. I’m a liberal. I’m sceptical of state-led targets. They are appropriate in many situations, but I think you have to make a case for them instead of just rushing to presume the government should be telling people how many kids to have.
Sure but if your forecast comes out as you have big demographic timebombs ahead (whether too many, too few or the wrong age pyramids), why not plan to adjust a bit?
A lot of the UKs woes are because we haven't properly had this conversation beyond some people saying its too many and therefore we don't have the right number of houses nor the related infrastructure for the people who are here and the people we need.
If we had been honest about it 10-20 years ago, we could have planned for the obvious issues around the demographic pyramid, understood that immigration was going to happen regardless of it being too many in some eyes and built more appropriately.
You should adjust to forecasts, but preferably in a way that maximises happiness and liberty. And can’t we come up with better solutions?
There’s a demographic timebomb: people are living longer, so there aren’t enough working age people to support them. The proposed solution is to increase the number of working age people. That works in the short term, but then in 30-40 years, we’ll have even more old people! It’s a population Ponzi scheme.
What about thinking how we can increase the amount of lifespan when we can be productive, by focusing on preventative health and redirecting medical research efforts to health conditions that disable people in old age (e.g., dementia, back pain)? (Consider how Japan has put a lot of investment into robots.)
What happens when we get a cure for dementia?
Vast amounts are being invested obviating/eliminating the effects of old age. This own't lead to immortality overnight, but if your brain doesn't turn to much, your body doesn't pack up....
Malmesbury Jr CIVth commented:
"I think it's outrageous the pension age being raised to 120, gone are the good old days when you could expect a comfortable retirement at 110."
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
It seems fairly sensible to have at least a plan of what population looks like in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure.
It is sensible to know what the population will be in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure, but that’s different from having a target. I’m a liberal. I’m sceptical of state-led targets. They are appropriate in many situations, but I think you have to make a case for them instead of just rushing to presume the government should be telling people how many kids to have.
I think what's being talked about is interventions, rather than targets. (eg at different end of the scale, immigration policies - pro or anti - or making life less difficult for working mothers) That doesn't require you to abandon liberal principles.
If policy making isn't as chaotic as it now is, you can then make useful predictions about future population.
One of the worst airport lounges I have been to was Kenya Air at Nairobi
The airport was crowded, smelly and hideous so I headed to the lounge with great vigour, only to discover that the "lounge" was the size of a garden shed, and it was even more smelly crowded and hideous than the airport. and the only "free stuff" was a machine pumping out cold drinks and people were actually FIGHTING over the chance to use it
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
A reason to celebrate.
If only the rest of the world would follow the shining example set by the good people of South Korea, the planet would be substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years.
Your attitude is pretty short-sighted.
The total opposite. The long-term prospects for the planet, its flora and fauna are best served by having a heck of a lot fewer humans buggering things up.
If humans die out then I don't see much hope of life on earth surviving the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years.
Plenty of time for some other species to evolve advanced intelligence, then develop spaceflight and stellar engineering. Probably cockroaches. Super-intelligent, giant cockroaches.
Possibly.
Still, I care most about my immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me, humans in general, animals that show some signs of awareness, and so on through animals that I actively dislike (mosquitoes), then plants I don't have much feeling for, bacteria, the mould growing on my bathroom ceiling, stuff that I wouldn't offer any humans to die or suffer for.
SandyRentool seems to care about 1) SandyRentool (otherwise why is they still around?) 2) other lifeforms, and only 3) other human beings. Just seems an extremely selfish attitude to me.
Your stance makes no sense though. Reducing the human population through lower birth rates doesn't mean killing off any of today's living human beings. None of the list of who you care about will be affected by that.
Huh? What do you think my 'stance' is?
I don't think the "planet being substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years" is a good thing for the billions of humans who are going to be around for the next couple of hundred years. I'm all in favour of the human population stabilising and slowly reducing. But a very rapid reduction would be pretty bad news for most humans in the short/medium term.
I’ve not seen any evidence that a “very rapid reduction” is particularly likely. There’s a low fertility rate in South Korea, but South Korea is just one part of the world.
Change can happen fast. Seventy years ago S Korea was the poorest country in the world. 20 years ago it didn't have a demographic problem.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
A reason to celebrate.
If only the rest of the world would follow the shining example set by the good people of South Korea, the planet would be substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years.
Your attitude is pretty short-sighted.
The total opposite. The long-term prospects for the planet, its flora and fauna are best served by having a heck of a lot fewer humans buggering things up.
If humans die out then I don't see much hope of life on earth surviving the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years.
Plenty of time for some other species to evolve advanced intelligence, then develop spaceflight and stellar engineering. Probably cockroaches. Super-intelligent, giant cockroaches.
Possibly.
Still, I care most about my immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me, humans in general, animals that show some signs of awareness, and so on through animals that I actively dislike (mosquitoes), then plants I don't have much feeling for, bacteria, the mould growing on my bathroom ceiling, stuff that I wouldn't offer any humans to die or suffer for.
SandyRentool seems to care about 1) SandyRentool (otherwise why is they still around?) 2) other lifeforms, and only 3) other human beings. Just seems an extremely selfish attitude to me.
Your stance makes no sense though. Reducing the human population through lower birth rates doesn't mean killing off any of today's living human beings. None of the list of who you care about will be affected by that.
Huh? What do you think my 'stance' is?
I don't think the "planet being substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years" is a good thing for the billions of humans who are going to be around for the next couple of hundred years. I'm all in favour of the human population stabilising and slowly reducing. But a very rapid reduction would be pretty bad news for most humans in the short/medium term.
I’ve not seen any evidence that a “very rapid reduction” is particularly likely. There’s a low fertility rate in South Korea, but South Korea is just one part of the world.
China's birthrate is just over 1, half the rate needed for stability. More or less nowhere is Europe is at replacement levels. The UK level has indeed fallen fast, from 2.1 to 1.5 in just a few years.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
It seems fairly sensible to have at least a plan of what population looks like in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure.
It is sensible to know what the population will be in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure, but that’s different from having a target. I’m a liberal. I’m sceptical of state-led targets. They are appropriate in many situations, but I think you have to make a case for them instead of just rushing to presume the government should be telling people how many kids to have.
Sure but if your forecast comes out as you have big demographic timebombs ahead (whether too many, too few or the wrong age pyramids), why not plan to adjust a bit?
A lot of the UKs woes are because we haven't properly had this conversation beyond some people saying its too many and therefore we don't have the right number of houses nor the related infrastructure for the people who are here and the people we need.
If we had been honest about it 10-20 years ago, we could have planned for the obvious issues around the demographic pyramid, understood that immigration was going to happen regardless of it being too many in some eyes and built more appropriately.
You should adjust to forecasts, but preferably in a way that maximises happiness and liberty. And can’t we come up with better solutions?
There’s a demographic timebomb: people are living longer, so there aren’t enough working age people to support them. The proposed solution is to increase the number of working age people. That works in the short term, but then in 30-40 years, we’ll have even more old people! It’s a population Ponzi scheme.
What about thinking how we can increase the amount of lifespan when we can be productive, by focusing on preventative health and redirecting medical research efforts to health conditions that disable people in old age (e.g., dementia, back pain)? (Consider how Japan has put a lot of investment into robots.)
What happens when we get a cure for dementia?
Vast amounts are being invested obviating/eliminating the effects of old age. This own't lead to immortality overnight, but if your brain doesn't turn to much, your body doesn't pack up....
I don’t understand your point. Are you saying a cure for dementia would be a bad thing?!
There is a significant bias in medical research towards things like cancer over things like dementia. Alzheimer’s Research UK note: “In 2017/18, government investment in dementia research was just £82.5m, equivalent to 0.3% of the total annual cost of dementia. By contrast, government funding for cancer research stood at £269 million in 2015/16 – 1.6% of cancer’s £16.4 billion annual cost to the UK.”
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
A reason to celebrate.
If only the rest of the world would follow the shining example set by the good people of South Korea, the planet would be substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years.
Your attitude is pretty short-sighted.
The total opposite. The long-term prospects for the planet, its flora and fauna are best served by having a heck of a lot fewer humans buggering things up.
If humans die out then I don't see much hope of life on earth surviving the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years.
Plenty of time for some other species to evolve advanced intelligence, then develop spaceflight and stellar engineering. Probably cockroaches. Super-intelligent, giant cockroaches.
Possibly.
Still, I care most about my immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me, humans in general, animals that show some signs of awareness, and so on through animals that I actively dislike (mosquitoes), then plants I don't have much feeling for, bacteria, the mould growing on my bathroom ceiling, stuff that I wouldn't offer any humans to die or suffer for.
SandyRentool seems to care about 1) SandyRentool (otherwise why is they still around?) 2) other lifeforms, and only 3) other human beings. Just seems an extremely selfish attitude to me.
Your stance makes no sense though. Reducing the human population through lower birth rates doesn't mean killing off any of today's living human beings. None of the list of who you care about will be affected by that.
Huh? What do you think my 'stance' is?
I don't think the "planet being substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years" is a good thing for the billions of humans who are going to be around for the next couple of hundred years. I'm all in favour of the human population stabilising and slowly reducing. But a very rapid reduction would be pretty bad news for most humans in the short/medium term.
So your environmental 'concern' translates as concern for humans? You know - the species that is trashing the planet.
Without the humans, who or what gets to look round and appreciate the joint? The cockroaches aren't going to write down Maxwell's equations or appreciate the bird song on a spring morning.
What's the point in having a 'pristine' Earth just sitting there is space waiting to be evaporated?
We could certainly make do with a few less humans, but a total wipe out would be unfortunate.
That's just saying that the only value is instrumental value rather that all the results of such awesome forces of nature have value in themselves. And, to clarify, true green deep ecologists are not anti-human as such - nothing against the few (and dwindling) hunter-gatherer tribes that still exist.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
It seems fairly sensible to have at least a plan of what population looks like in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure.
It is sensible to know what the population will be in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure, but that’s different from having a target. I’m a liberal. I’m sceptical of state-led targets. They are appropriate in many situations, but I think you have to make a case for them instead of just rushing to presume the government should be telling people how many kids to have.
Sure but if your forecast comes out as you have big demographic timebombs ahead (whether too many, too few or the wrong age pyramids), why not plan to adjust a bit?
A lot of the UKs woes are because we haven't properly had this conversation beyond some people saying its too many and therefore we don't have the right number of houses nor the related infrastructure for the people who are here and the people we need.
If we had been honest about it 10-20 years ago, we could have planned for the obvious issues around the demographic pyramid, understood that immigration was going to happen regardless of it being too many in some eyes and built more appropriately.
You should adjust to forecasts, but preferably in a way that maximises happiness and liberty. And can’t we come up with better solutions?
There’s a demographic timebomb: people are living longer, so there aren’t enough working age people to support them. The proposed solution is to increase the number of working age people. That works in the short term, but then in 30-40 years, we’ll have even more old people! It’s a population Ponzi scheme.
What about thinking how we can increase the amount of lifespan when we can be productive, by focusing on preventative health and redirecting medical research efforts to health conditions that disable people in old age (e.g., dementia, back pain)? (Consider how Japan has put a lot of investment into robots.)
What happens when we get a cure for dementia?
Vast amounts are being invested obviating/eliminating the effects of old age. This own't lead to immortality overnight, but if your brain doesn't turn to much, your body doesn't pack up....
We'd have to reverse the effect of cell ageing. You can only divide cells so many times before they pack it in.
Some kind of dodgy RNA vax that splices bits on to your telomeres? What could possibly go wrong...
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
It seems fairly sensible to have at least a plan of what population looks like in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure.
It is sensible to know what the population will be in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure, but that’s different from having a target. I’m a liberal. I’m sceptical of state-led targets. They are appropriate in many situations, but I think you have to make a case for them instead of just rushing to presume the government should be telling people how many kids to have.
I think what's being talked about is interventions, rather than targets. (eg at different end of the scale, immigration policies - pro or anti - or making life less difficult for working mothers) That doesn't require you to abandon liberal principles.
If policy making isn't as chaotic as it now is, you can then make useful predictions about future population.
If you dig back through the conversation, I was responding to the word “target”. I took “target” to mean a target.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
A reason to celebrate.
If only the rest of the world would follow the shining example set by the good people of South Korea, the planet would be substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years.
Your attitude is pretty short-sighted.
The total opposite. The long-term prospects for the planet, its flora and fauna are best served by having a heck of a lot fewer humans buggering things up.
If humans die out then I don't see much hope of life on earth surviving the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years.
Plenty of time for some other species to evolve advanced intelligence, then develop spaceflight and stellar engineering. Probably cockroaches. Super-intelligent, giant cockroaches.
Possibly.
Still, I care most about my immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me, humans in general, animals that show some signs of awareness, and so on through animals that I actively dislike (mosquitoes), then plants I don't have much feeling for, bacteria, the mould growing on my bathroom ceiling, stuff that I wouldn't offer any humans to die or suffer for.
SandyRentool seems to care about 1) SandyRentool (otherwise why is they still around?) 2) other lifeforms, and only 3) other human beings. Just seems an extremely selfish attitude to me.
Your stance makes no sense though. Reducing the human population through lower birth rates doesn't mean killing off any of today's living human beings. None of the list of who you care about will be affected by that.
Huh? What do you think my 'stance' is?
I don't think the "planet being substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years" is a good thing for the billions of humans who are going to be around for the next couple of hundred years. I'm all in favour of the human population stabilising and slowly reducing. But a very rapid reduction would be pretty bad news for most humans in the short/medium term.
I’ve not seen any evidence that a “very rapid reduction” is particularly likely. There’s a low fertility rate in South Korea, but South Korea is just one part of the world.
China's birthrate is just over 1, half the rate needed for stability. More or less nowhere is Europe is at replacement levels. The UK level has indeed fallen fast, from 2.1 to 1.5 in just a few years.
And the global population is still increasing at a substantial rate.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
It seems fairly sensible to have at least a plan of what population looks like in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure.
It is sensible to know what the population will be in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure, but that’s different from having a target. I’m a liberal. I’m sceptical of state-led targets. They are appropriate in many situations, but I think you have to make a case for them instead of just rushing to presume the government should be telling people how many kids to have.
Sure but if your forecast comes out as you have big demographic timebombs ahead (whether too many, too few or the wrong age pyramids), why not plan to adjust a bit?
A lot of the UKs woes are because we haven't properly had this conversation beyond some people saying its too many and therefore we don't have the right number of houses nor the related infrastructure for the people who are here and the people we need.
If we had been honest about it 10-20 years ago, we could have planned for the obvious issues around the demographic pyramid, understood that immigration was going to happen regardless of it being too many in some eyes and built more appropriately.
You should adjust to forecasts, but preferably in a way that maximises happiness and liberty. And can’t we come up with better solutions?
There’s a demographic timebomb: people are living longer, so there aren’t enough working age people to support them. The proposed solution is to increase the number of working age people. That works in the short term, but then in 30-40 years, we’ll have even more old people! It’s a population Ponzi scheme.
What about thinking how we can increase the amount of lifespan when we can be productive, by focusing on preventative health and redirecting medical research efforts to health conditions that disable people in old age (e.g., dementia, back pain)? (Consider how Japan has put a lot of investment into robots.)
What happens when we get a cure for dementia?
Vast amounts are being invested obviating/eliminating the effects of old age. This own't lead to immortality overnight, but if your brain doesn't turn to much, your body doesn't pack up....
We'd have to reverse the effect of cell ageing. You can only divide cells so many times before they pack it in.
Some kind of dodgy RNA vax that splices bits on to your telomeres? What could possibly go wrong...
I have complete faith that the Umbrella Corporation are upholding rigorous standards in their research.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
It seems fairly sensible to have at least a plan of what population looks like in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure.
It is sensible to know what the population will be in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure, but that’s different from having a target. I’m a liberal. I’m sceptical of state-led targets. They are appropriate in many situations, but I think you have to make a case for them instead of just rushing to presume the government should be telling people how many kids to have.
Sure but if your forecast comes out as you have big demographic timebombs ahead (whether too many, too few or the wrong age pyramids), why not plan to adjust a bit?
A lot of the UKs woes are because we haven't properly had this conversation beyond some people saying its too many and therefore we don't have the right number of houses nor the related infrastructure for the people who are here and the people we need.
If we had been honest about it 10-20 years ago, we could have planned for the obvious issues around the demographic pyramid, understood that immigration was going to happen regardless of it being too many in some eyes and built more appropriately.
You should adjust to forecasts, but preferably in a way that maximises happiness and liberty. And can’t we come up with better solutions?
There’s a demographic timebomb: people are living longer, so there aren’t enough working age people to support them. The proposed solution is to increase the number of working age people. That works in the short term, but then in 30-40 years, we’ll have even more old people! It’s a population Ponzi scheme.
What about thinking how we can increase the amount of lifespan when we can be productive, by focusing on preventative health and redirecting medical research efforts to health conditions that disable people in old age (e.g., dementia, back pain)? (Consider how Japan has put a lot of investment into robots.)
What happens when we get a cure for dementia?
Vast amounts are being invested obviating/eliminating the effects of old age. This own't lead to immortality overnight, but if your brain doesn't turn to much, your body doesn't pack up....
Malmesbury Jr CIVth commented:
"I think it's outrageous the pension age being raised to 120, gone are the good old days when you could expect a comfortable retirement at 110."
I'm trying to remember the ScFi author - one of the Scottish New Wave, I think - who wrote of the following happening - you got nanotech unlimited lifespan, in return for giving up all your benefits and retirement. Set in a dystopian future UK.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
It seems fairly sensible to have at least a plan of what population looks like in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure.
It is sensible to know what the population will be in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure, but that’s different from having a target. I’m a liberal. I’m sceptical of state-led targets. They are appropriate in many situations, but I think you have to make a case for them instead of just rushing to presume the government should be telling people how many kids to have.
I think what's being talked about is interventions, rather than targets. (eg at different end of the scale, immigration policies - pro or anti - or making life less difficult for working mothers) That doesn't require you to abandon liberal principles.
If policy making isn't as chaotic as it now is, you can then make useful predictions about future population.
If you dig back through the conversation, I was responding to the word “target”. I took “target” to mean a target.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
He also has a puzzling inability to set out any kind of vision as to where he wants to take the country, let alone persuade people to buy into it. That's the difference, I think, between an average politician and a leader. Like Gordon Brown Sunak can fill in some of the details in somebody else's vision, but has none of his own. And it's also the main reason why Sunak, though probably pretty good as a junior minister, was criminally over-promoted as a senior Cabinet Minister, let alone as PM.
If you have bet on Biden this is a very worrying piece...
"Muslims represent only around 1 percent of the overall electorate, but Awad believes there are enough Muslim voters in Michigan and Georgia, two swing states, to make it nearly impossible for Biden to win re-election without their support."
"For some voters, this isn’t just a policy dispute. It’s a moral mission, and the mark of victory is a Biden defeat. The question now is, how large is that constituency?"
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
It seems fairly sensible to have at least a plan of what population looks like in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure.
It is sensible to know what the population will be in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure, but that’s different from having a target. I’m a liberal. I’m sceptical of state-led targets. They are appropriate in many situations, but I think you have to make a case for them instead of just rushing to presume the government should be telling people how many kids to have.
Sure but if your forecast comes out as you have big demographic timebombs ahead (whether too many, too few or the wrong age pyramids), why not plan to adjust a bit?
A lot of the UKs woes are because we haven't properly had this conversation beyond some people saying its too many and therefore we don't have the right number of houses nor the related infrastructure for the people who are here and the people we need.
If we had been honest about it 10-20 years ago, we could have planned for the obvious issues around the demographic pyramid, understood that immigration was going to happen regardless of it being too many in some eyes and built more appropriately.
You should adjust to forecasts, but preferably in a way that maximises happiness and liberty. And can’t we come up with better solutions?
There’s a demographic timebomb: people are living longer, so there aren’t enough working age people to support them. The proposed solution is to increase the number of working age people. That works in the short term, but then in 30-40 years, we’ll have even more old people! It’s a population Ponzi scheme.
What about thinking how we can increase the amount of lifespan when we can be productive, by focusing on preventative health and redirecting medical research efforts to health conditions that disable people in old age (e.g., dementia, back pain)? (Consider how Japan has put a lot of investment into robots.)
What happens when we get a cure for dementia?
Vast amounts are being invested obviating/eliminating the effects of old age. This own't lead to immortality overnight, but if your brain doesn't turn to much, your body doesn't pack up....
We'd have to reverse the effect of cell ageing. You can only divide cells so many times before they pack it in.
Some kind of dodgy RNA vax that splices bits on to your telomeres? What could possibly go wrong...
That combined with a gamma ray accident, and then we send all the crumblies to fight Russia. Being green, 20 foot tall and bullet proof.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
He also has a puzzling inability to set out any kind of vision as to where he wants to take the country, let alone persuade people to buy into it. That's the difference, I think, between an average politician and a leader. And it's also the main reason why Sunak, though probably pretty good as a junior minister, was criminally over-promoted as a senior Cabinet Minister, let alone as PM.
Given the abject failure of Truss’s vision and Johnson’s vision before that, maybe, just maybe, the Conservatives and the country are better off with Sunak without a vision.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
A reason to celebrate.
If only the rest of the world would follow the shining example set by the good people of South Korea, the planet would be substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years.
Your attitude is pretty short-sighted.
The total opposite. The long-term prospects for the planet, its flora and fauna are best served by having a heck of a lot fewer humans buggering things up.
If humans die out then I don't see much hope of life on earth surviving the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years.
Plenty of time for some other species to evolve advanced intelligence, then develop spaceflight and stellar engineering. Probably cockroaches. Super-intelligent, giant cockroaches.
Possibly.
Still, I care most about my immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me, humans in general, animals that show some signs of awareness, and so on through animals that I actively dislike (mosquitoes), then plants I don't have much feeling for, bacteria, the mould growing on my bathroom ceiling, stuff that I wouldn't offer any humans to die or suffer for.
SandyRentool seems to care about 1) SandyRentool (otherwise why is they still around?) 2) other lifeforms, and only 3) other human beings. Just seems an extremely selfish attitude to me.
Your stance makes no sense though. Reducing the human population through lower birth rates doesn't mean killing off any of today's living human beings. None of the list of who you care about will be affected by that.
Huh? What do you think my 'stance' is?
I don't think the "planet being substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years" is a good thing for the billions of humans who are going to be around for the next couple of hundred years. I'm all in favour of the human population stabilising and slowly reducing. But a very rapid reduction would be pretty bad news for most humans in the short/medium term.
So your environmental 'concern' translates as concern for humans? You know - the species that is trashing the planet.
Without the humans, who or what gets to look round and appreciate the joint? The cockroaches aren't going to write down Maxwell's equations or appreciate the bird song on a spring morning.
What's the point in having a 'pristine' Earth just sitting there is space waiting to be evaporated?
We could certainly make do with a few less humans, but a total wipe out would be unfortunate.
That's just saying that the only value is instrumental value rather that all the results of such awesome forces of nature have value in themselves. And, to clarify, true green deep ecologists are not anti-human as such - nothing against the few (and dwindling) hunter-gatherer tribes that still exist.
I agree that everything has its own value but if the Universe can't look back at itself then it seems to me to be a little diminished.
Ultimately Entropy Wins, so it is all pointless, but hey.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
A reason to celebrate.
If only the rest of the world would follow the shining example set by the good people of South Korea, the planet would be substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years.
Your attitude is pretty short-sighted.
The total opposite. The long-term prospects for the planet, its flora and fauna are best served by having a heck of a lot fewer humans buggering things up.
If humans die out then I don't see much hope of life on earth surviving the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years.
Plenty of time for some other species to evolve advanced intelligence, then develop spaceflight and stellar engineering. Probably cockroaches. Super-intelligent, giant cockroaches.
Possibly.
Still, I care most about my immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me, humans in general, animals that show some signs of awareness, and so on through animals that I actively dislike (mosquitoes), then plants I don't have much feeling for, bacteria, the mould growing on my bathroom ceiling, stuff that I wouldn't offer any humans to die or suffer for.
SandyRentool seems to care about 1) SandyRentool (otherwise why is they still around?) 2) other lifeforms, and only 3) other human beings. Just seems an extremely selfish attitude to me.
Your stance makes no sense though. Reducing the human population through lower birth rates doesn't mean killing off any of today's living human beings. None of the list of who you care about will be affected by that.
Huh? What do you think my 'stance' is?
I don't think the "planet being substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years" is a good thing for the billions of humans who are going to be around for the next couple of hundred years. I'm all in favour of the human population stabilising and slowly reducing. But a very rapid reduction would be pretty bad news for most humans in the short/medium term.
I’ve not seen any evidence that a “very rapid reduction” is particularly likely. There’s a low fertility rate in South Korea, but South Korea is just one part of the world.
China's birthrate is just over 1, half the rate needed for stability. More or less nowhere is Europe is at replacement levels. The UK level has indeed fallen fast, from 2.1 to 1.5 in just a few years.
Even India is below replacement !
Israel has many problems but they've maintained above replacement TFR with a good per capita income. Lower gini coefficient than the UK too...
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
If you have bet on Biden this is a very worrying piece...
"Muslims represent only around 1 percent of the overall electorate, but Awad believes there are enough Muslim voters in Michigan and Georgia, two swing states, to make it nearly impossible for Biden to win re-election without their support."
"For some voters, this isn’t just a policy dispute. It’s a moral mission, and the mark of victory is a Biden defeat. The question now is, how large is that constituency?"
I’m posting this simply to illustrate that many of us travel all over the world, including in business, without the need of clogging up this political betting website with irrevelant travelogues.
Hypocrisy and irony? No because of the intent …
Have a nice day everyone and let’s hope GG does not win tonight. Whatever one’s persuasion he is simply an awful little man.
To you afford the business flights by saving a few pennies a year keeping excess boiled water in the old flask of yours? Still makes me laugh!
I have no issue with money and energy saving, but that one is just so utterly pointless its actually hilarious.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
More of the same vapid, ineffective centre-leftism that he is currently presiding over, I expect....
He's not centre-left, he's failed neoliberal right.
Nope. Petty interfering in people's lives and businesses smacks entirely of vapid new-labourism.
It pre-dates New Labour. Charles Arnold Baker's fabulous 'Companion to British History' described Major's government as "meddlesome", which I always thought very fitting.
"Charles Arnold-Baker has shaky credentials for writing The Companion to British History. For a start, he is a Prussian nobleman, born Wolfgang Charles Werner von Blumenthal, and he gave up history for law after graduating from Oxford University. As the Second World War approached, he repudiated his German nationality, adopted his stepfather's surname for safety's sake and served as an officer in the British Army, becoming part of Churchill's bodyguard and later moving to M16, where he "had the misfortune" to work with Kim Philby."
I’m posting this simply to illustrate that many of us travel all over the world, including in business, without the need of clogging up this political betting website with irrevelant travelogues.
Hypocrisy and irony? No because of the intent …
Have a nice day everyone and let’s hope GG does not win tonight. Whatever one’s persuasion he is simply an awful little man.
You need to work on your angles. Put your glass of bubbles in the front of the photo, to give it life and scale, and you've posted too many photos of the same scene
Me, going to long covid fitness assessment test at 10am this morning: Sure, long covid is bad, but I'm sure I'll feel fine after this
Me, after doing a fast walk / light jog version of the bleep test that was like 10 minutes long, max: I want to die and go to sleep and my brain isn't working, why why why why...
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
It seems fairly sensible to have at least a plan of what population looks like in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure.
It is sensible to know what the population will be in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure, but that’s different from having a target. I’m a liberal. I’m sceptical of state-led targets. They are appropriate in many situations, but I think you have to make a case for them instead of just rushing to presume the government should be telling people how many kids to have.
Sure but if your forecast comes out as you have big demographic timebombs ahead (whether too many, too few or the wrong age pyramids), why not plan to adjust a bit?
A lot of the UKs woes are because we haven't properly had this conversation beyond some people saying its too many and therefore we don't have the right number of houses nor the related infrastructure for the people who are here and the people we need.
If we had been honest about it 10-20 years ago, we could have planned for the obvious issues around the demographic pyramid, understood that immigration was going to happen regardless of it being too many in some eyes and built more appropriately.
You should adjust to forecasts, but preferably in a way that maximises happiness and liberty. And can’t we come up with better solutions?
There’s a demographic timebomb: people are living longer, so there aren’t enough working age people to support them. The proposed solution is to increase the number of working age people. That works in the short term, but then in 30-40 years, we’ll have even more old people! It’s a population Ponzi scheme.
What about thinking how we can increase the amount of lifespan when we can be productive, by focusing on preventative health and redirecting medical research efforts to health conditions that disable people in old age (e.g., dementia, back pain)? (Consider how Japan has put a lot of investment into robots.)
What happens when we get a cure for dementia?
Vast amounts are being invested obviating/eliminating the effects of old age. This own't lead to immortality overnight, but if your brain doesn't turn to much, your body doesn't pack up....
I don’t understand your point. Are you saying a cure for dementia would be a bad thing?!
There is a significant bias in medical research towards things like cancer over things like dementia. Alzheimer’s Research UK note: “In 2017/18, government investment in dementia research was just £82.5m, equivalent to 0.3% of the total annual cost of dementia. By contrast, government funding for cancer research stood at £269 million in 2015/16 – 1.6% of cancer’s £16.4 billion annual cost to the UK.”
That's a tiny fraction of what pharma/biotech spends. The reason dementia research is a poor relation is that until very recently, billions had been spent for absolutely no useful results at all. And even now, they're only a few marginal interventions.
In the meantime, an obesity gold rush has just kicked off. Every pharma company that missed out is looking for a promising biotech to buy.
If you have bet on Biden this is a very worrying piece...
"Muslims represent only around 1 percent of the overall electorate, but Awad believes there are enough Muslim voters in Michigan and Georgia, two swing states, to make it nearly impossible for Biden to win re-election without their support."
"For some voters, this isn’t just a policy dispute. It’s a moral mission, and the mark of victory is a Biden defeat. The question now is, how large is that constituency?"
Swing states do what it says on the tin. The Muslim vote could turn it one way or another, but so could every other group. You can't deal with a swing seat or state by only addressing one particular swing group within it. Because you may lose as many votes as you gain.
Having said that, because of polling in the 6 or so swingest states, I think, barring legal bars, Trump is going to win those states, and therefore the election, anyway. As Trump would say, "Sad".
If you have bet on Biden this is a very worrying piece...
"Muslims represent only around 1 percent of the overall electorate, but Awad believes there are enough Muslim voters in Michigan and Georgia, two swing states, to make it nearly impossible for Biden to win re-election without their support."
"For some voters, this isn’t just a policy dispute. It’s a moral mission, and the mark of victory is a Biden defeat. The question now is, how large is that constituency?"
That gives Biden nine months to get a ceasefire and leak to the press about American diplomacy. It should not take that long.
Surely Biden's got very little chance in Georgia anyway? It doesn't help to lose Muslim votes in Michigan, but there must be loads of other demographic micro-groups which have more than 1 percent of the electorate...
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
A reason to celebrate.
If only the rest of the world would follow the shining example set by the good people of South Korea, the planet would be substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years.
Your attitude is pretty short-sighted.
The total opposite. The long-term prospects for the planet, its flora and fauna are best served by having a heck of a lot fewer humans buggering things up.
If humans die out then I don't see much hope of life on earth surviving the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years.
Plenty of time for some other species to evolve advanced intelligence, then develop spaceflight and stellar engineering. Probably cockroaches. Super-intelligent, giant cockroaches.
Possibly.
Still, I care most about my immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me, humans in general, animals that show some signs of awareness, and so on through animals that I actively dislike (mosquitoes), then plants I don't have much feeling for, bacteria, the mould growing on my bathroom ceiling, stuff that I wouldn't offer any humans to die or suffer for.
SandyRentool seems to care about 1) SandyRentool (otherwise why is they still around?) 2) other lifeforms, and only 3) other human beings. Just seems an extremely selfish attitude to me.
I don't have a great deal of concern for humans who will never exist. Which actually represents the vast, vast majority of potential humans, past, present and future.
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
Yes, we need to discuss this great replacement theory.
1) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing the birth rate is racist crazy talk 2) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing immigration to compensate is just common sense. 3) We have a collapsing population pyramid, but talking about increasing education and automation to compensate is stupid or something.
Birth rates are nearly universally falling - the countries that are above 2.1 included. What's the plan when we run out of other people's birth rate?
None of this is at the core of the Great Replacement Theory. It isnt what happens or who moves where. The basis of the Theory rests on which masterminds are directing all of those people to move and why. Once you understand that you have a chance of contributing to the argument in a way that does not risk you looking in very, VERY, bad company indeed
Why should we talk about the ravings of loons, rather than the actual issues?
I think that we should discuss what the target population of the UK would look like. Then discuss the options for the demographic pyramid.
Why do we need to have a target population? Governments for centuries didn't.
It seems fairly sensible to have at least a plan of what population looks like in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure.
It is sensible to know what the population will be in 10-50 years time so we can build the right infrastructure, but that’s different from having a target. I’m a liberal. I’m sceptical of state-led targets. They are appropriate in many situations, but I think you have to make a case for them instead of just rushing to presume the government should be telling people how many kids to have.
Sure but if your forecast comes out as you have big demographic timebombs ahead (whether too many, too few or the wrong age pyramids), why not plan to adjust a bit?
A lot of the UKs woes are because we haven't properly had this conversation beyond some people saying its too many and therefore we don't have the right number of houses nor the related infrastructure for the people who are here and the people we need.
If we had been honest about it 10-20 years ago, we could have planned for the obvious issues around the demographic pyramid, understood that immigration was going to happen regardless of it being too many in some eyes and built more appropriately.
You should adjust to forecasts, but preferably in a way that maximises happiness and liberty. And can’t we come up with better solutions?
There’s a demographic timebomb: people are living longer, so there aren’t enough working age people to support them. The proposed solution is to increase the number of working age people. That works in the short term, but then in 30-40 years, we’ll have even more old people! It’s a population Ponzi scheme.
What about thinking how we can increase the amount of lifespan when we can be productive, by focusing on preventative health and redirecting medical research efforts to health conditions that disable people in old age (e.g., dementia, back pain)? (Consider how Japan has put a lot of investment into robots.)
What happens when we get a cure for dementia?
Vast amounts are being invested obviating/eliminating the effects of old age. This own't lead to immortality overnight, but if your brain doesn't turn to much, your body doesn't pack up....
I don’t understand your point. Are you saying a cure for dementia would be a bad thing?!
There is a significant bias in medical research towards things like cancer over things like dementia. Alzheimer’s Research UK note: “In 2017/18, government investment in dementia research was just £82.5m, equivalent to 0.3% of the total annual cost of dementia. By contrast, government funding for cancer research stood at £269 million in 2015/16 – 1.6% of cancer’s £16.4 billion annual cost to the UK.”
If we cure dementia, then a big chunk of the old age care stuff goes away.
If we cure muscle wasting and bone loss, another chunk goes away.
As an alternative to everyone needing large numbers of minimum wage servants to wipe their arses.
Me, going to long covid fitness assessment test at 10am this morning: Sure, long covid is bad, but I'm sure I'll feel fine after this
Me, after doing a fast walk / light jog version of the bleep test that was like 10 minutes long, max: I want to die and go to sleep and my brain isn't working, why why why why...
Can be a long haul.
I was lucky; I just lost my sense of taste/smell for a couple of years.
Don't try to rush recovery is the advice, from what I can gather.
Peston ( I know) suggesting Hunt is to abolish non dom status
Given that Labour has spent that money several times over and it props up some of the few remaining promises of significance in its intended manifesto, that would be political genius from the Tories, even if they do it in a way that ensures nothing changes until after the election
🙂
But Labour no longer have a policy to scrap non dom status. See my previous post.
Under their new flag “fiscal prudence or death” Labour realise they cannot get scrapping nom dom bringing in assured promise of money past the OBR and City as confirmed extra money every year, and realise the damage it will cause scrapping it, so Labour are now keeping it, only calling it another name to pretend they scrapped it as promised.
Rather than “political genius” from Tories, is the truth here a sign of their struggle and desperation to cobble together legitimate funding for the tax cuts?
Much more that than 4D chess. The reality is that with borrowing as high as it currently is, tax cuts are a joke anyway.
Unfortunately, they are the lucky rabbit's foot for the Conservatives. (Sorry for bringing it up, Moon), so they have to happen, whatever the effect on the rabbit (sorry again).
But you do finally agree with me about the 4D chess at play over timing of the next general election?
Those who want Tories to get the worst possible result, perhaps wipe out, trying to influence it to much later in year - talk up and tempt, like siren ferrets sitting on rocks and hiding their teeth, wait till later in the year where you can meet your pledges - and those who care about the party and wish to give the Conservatives the best possible result to recover from, suggesting this is May 2nd before sailing into choppy waters through summer and autumn.
Halcyon birds nest in summer, just like humans attracted by calm look of the weather and water. But however you delve into this and analyse it, this summer offers our sitting government no respite at all.
There is only one person who decides when the next general election is, and that's the PM. He will be much less concerned about 'building a base to recover from' than winning or losing. Losing by 200 rather than 175 is much, much less of a concern (and wholly speculative as we can never know the reality of the alternative). He'd be out either way. I also doubt that he will necessarily expect the Tories' rating to get worse over the summer, pointing to inflation falling, energy bills falling and so on. He'll probably also think that he can get a grip on the small-boat immigration, which is more optimistic but PMs are invariably optimistic.
Either way, an election now results in an absolute battering. Maybe the Tories can recover some of that in an election campaign - but again, if they can recover it in a campaign in April, then they can also do so in a campaign in Sept or Oct.
I see no case from No 10's point of view for suffering a landslide defeat now when there's the chance of improvement later.
Indeed. Sunak's pledges were...
• Halve inflation - this should continue to improve with time whatever Sunak does.
• Grow the economy - this is expected to improve with time. We're in recession: you'd expect us to come out of recession.
• Reduce debt - also expected to improve with time on current figures, although dependent on budget.
• Cut NHS waiting lists and times - some reason to believe it will improve on current figures.
• Stop the boats - :shrug:
He's 1/5 right now. He could be up to 2 or 3 in a few months with a bit of luck.
Yes. FWIW, I don't think the public give a stuff about whether these are Sunak's pledges or not, although they will care about most of them as issues in their own right (not the debt one, which is fortunate as there's not a cat-in-hell's chance of it being met). But No 10 will think they matter.
The far bigger issue is a total absence of Sunak's vision for the next parliament.
Just what exactly is his prospectus to the country?
Why would he bother? It would be as pointless me issuing my plans for managing the England football team to world cup glory in 2026.
That's like saying why bother fighting hopeless or safe seats.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
They're not going to come out.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
The trouble is that Sunak comes across as the school swat.
One of the many problems.
The others being:
- terrible policy - not being good at politics
Honestly, I do not know why he is still in place....
Have you looked at the alternatives? Jeez.
Yep! I'd take Mrs May over Sunak....
She might do better, but only marginally surely? And she might not. I can't see that yet another change of leader is a good idea.
There are two problems with May as PM right now. She would probably find it impossible to keep the party united. Even though Brexit is dealt with now, the scars from her time as PM are still there. And she couldn't credibly pretend that she was campaigning to be PM for the whole of the next Parliament. She'd transparently be a caretaker. So who would come next in the unlikely event the Tories stayed in office?
Extinction level events in 3 generations. South Korea birthrate, now 0.7 per woman.
Is this maths approx correct (rounding upwards)?
A group of 200 South Koreans, 100 female, 100 male, will have 70 babies.
That group of 70, 35 male 35 female, will have 25 babies.
That group of 25, 13 f and 13 m, will have 10 babies.
That group of 10, 5f and 5 m, will have 4 babies....and so on.
Now that the UK has joined the race to get below replacement levels (now about 1.5) should we be worried?
A reason to celebrate.
If only the rest of the world would follow the shining example set by the good people of South Korea, the planet would be substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years.
Your attitude is pretty short-sighted.
The total opposite. The long-term prospects for the planet, its flora and fauna are best served by having a heck of a lot fewer humans buggering things up.
If humans die out then I don't see much hope of life on earth surviving the sun becoming a red giant in 5 billion years.
Plenty of time for some other species to evolve advanced intelligence, then develop spaceflight and stellar engineering. Probably cockroaches. Super-intelligent, giant cockroaches.
Possibly.
Still, I care most about my immediate family, then close friends, other family, friends, people around me, humans in general, animals that show some signs of awareness, and so on through animals that I actively dislike (mosquitoes), then plants I don't have much feeling for, bacteria, the mould growing on my bathroom ceiling, stuff that I wouldn't offer any humans to die or suffer for.
SandyRentool seems to care about 1) SandyRentool (otherwise why is they still around?) 2) other lifeforms, and only 3) other human beings. Just seems an extremely selfish attitude to me.
I don't have a great deal of concern for humans who will never exist. Which actually represents the vast, vast majority of potential humans, past, present and future.
Why are you bringing 'humans who will never exist' into it???? Bonkers.
You sound like you don't have a great deal of concern about humans who do exist.
Comments
Excellent TV manner. Very sad to see his passing. But, as TUD said, he looked frail in his latest series.
Tho one must wonder how a woman who is so poor she has to boil water first thing in the day then keep it in a thermos to save 0.002p, can nevertheless afford to fly business class, even if the lounge looks like the resto in a slightly upmarket Marriot hotel in Ohio
Would be fascinating to see from a distance.
I think there's a similar, less extreme, effect in the West. The combination of a proportion of women who have no children - either by choice or circumstance - and the rarity of families with more than two children, makes it very hard to get the birth rate above replacement level.
To have a family with more than two children a woman would have to start relatively early, and then want to continue. And the longer a woman puts their career on hold the harder it is to afford the third child too.
It's very easy to see "stop at two", becoming a cultural norm - I think it already has to a large extent - and then that's pretty much the end of any hope of keeping the birth rate above the replacement level.
If you don't seriously aspire to govern you risk not even motivating your base to come out.
Balancing the books and cutting tax isn't enough of an answer.
A good 75% of the ACTIVISTS in my local party are not feeling motivated. God only knows what the voter base is like.
If only we had a year of polls showing Sunak is a failed leader, some on the backbenches might make a move...
But yes, we do need to think about the consequences, for society, for the economy and for security.
A lot of the UKs woes are because we haven't properly had this conversation beyond some people saying its too many and therefore we don't have the right number of houses nor the related infrastructure for the people who are here and the people we need.
If we had been honest about it 10-20 years ago, we could have planned for the obvious issues around the demographic pyramid, understood that immigration was going to happen regardless of it being too many in some eyes and built more appropriately.
It you want targets for everything, you end up with a 5-year plan for tractor production, and we know where that ended.
The newly refurbed Edinburgh BA lounge is excellent, for example. Near the BA gates, 16 year old Lagavulin, decent food etc.
That alone is worth the hassle of getting out to the airport, rather than getting on a train from Waverley.
The others being:
- terrible policy
- not being good at politics
Honestly, I do not know why he is still in place....
-1
I don't think the "planet being substantially rid of us in a couple of hundred years" is a good thing for the billions of humans who are going to be around for the next couple of hundred years. I'm all in favour of the human population stabilising and slowly reducing. But a very rapid reduction would be pretty bad news for most humans in the short/medium term.
There would need to be an immediate general election if he went - with likely no honeymoon period for his successor.
Plus, he still has a doozy of a proppa Tory Budget to see delivered.
I'd disagree with that. I've literally never met at Old Wykehamist who wasn't very very nice in person, and also trustworthy.
My money is on Badenoch vs Mordaunt when the May local election rout happens.
Mordaunt probably wins that.
There is no clarification in the Betfair rules about it one way or the other.
Is he technically "Labour" cause it says so on the ballot?
Jim Waterson investigates the circumstances surrounding the loss of a handwritten note from Boris Johnson [that] caused his 2016 Conservative leadership campaign to collapse - and led to Theresa May becoming the prime minister tasked with negotiating Brexit.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0012qgc
2015 when Kelly Tolhurst defeated Mark Reckless but I think I kept my feelings well hidden.
Yes, my first concern about the environment is how it affects humans, not how it affects bacteria. I pretty much only care about the bacteria as far as they are needed for humans and other more complex life forms. And not just bacteria.
For example I am in favour of the complete eradication - the deliberate human caused extinction - of the parasitic worm that causes Guinea worm disease.
I wouldn't have thought this was a particularly controversial attitude tbh.
Not for nothing, has it been described as the Oxygen Holocaust.
There’s a demographic timebomb: people are living longer, so there aren’t enough working age people to support them. The proposed solution is to increase the number of working age people. That works in the short term, but then in 30-40 years, we’ll have even more old people! It’s a population Ponzi scheme.
What about thinking how we can increase the amount of lifespan when we can be productive, by focusing on preventative health and redirecting medical research efforts to health conditions that disable people in old age (e.g., dementia, back pain)? (Consider how Japan has put a lot of investment into robots.)
The only good thing about them is the free booze, and maybe the odd snack (in general the food is cheap crap), and also the chance to escape hoi polloi if the airport is crowded (but often lounges get crowded, too)
I have only encountered four or five lounges in my life where you think Wow, this is actually lovely
The Concorde Lounge as was in LHR (but it is in decline)
Singapore Airlines at Changi
Cathay at HK
Virgin 1st Class at LHR (but it was a while back - they had free and excellent sashimi!)
Emirates in the Emirates
Air France at CDG yesterday was pretty good, but nothing incredible
Some airport lounges are amusing because they are SO bad and you would literally prefer to be in the Spoons at Gatwick
Sex toy magnate locked in inheritance fight for family home
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/entertainment/other/sex-toy-magnate-locked-in-inheritance-fight-for-family-home/ar-BB1j2ZZv?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=94bfe9d338c34f48bdb172ff07838791&ei=9
The bloke is legally and lawfully the Labour candidate. The external extra-legal Labour party rumpus makes no difference as it is of no legal effect. If he wins Betfair pays up.
Let's hope the LDs are trying hard.
Vast amounts are being invested obviating/eliminating the effects of old age. This own't lead to immortality overnight, but if your brain doesn't turn to much, your body doesn't pack up....
It was traitorous pig-dog defector.
What's the point in having a 'pristine' Earth just sitting there is space waiting to be evaporated?
We could certainly make do with a few less humans, but a total wipe out would be unfortunate.
"I think it's outrageous the pension age being raised to 120, gone are the good old days when you could expect a comfortable retirement at 110."
(eg at different end of the scale, immigration policies - pro or anti - or making life less difficult for working mothers)
That doesn't require you to abandon liberal principles.
If policy making isn't as chaotic as it now is, you can then make useful predictions about future population.
The airport was crowded, smelly and hideous so I headed to the lounge with great vigour, only to discover that the "lounge" was the size of a garden shed, and it was even more smelly crowded and hideous than the airport. and the only "free stuff" was a machine pumping out cold drinks and people were actually FIGHTING over the chance to use it
I retreated to some corridor and sat on my bags
Seventy years ago S Korea was the poorest country in the world. 20 years ago it didn't have a demographic problem.
There is a significant bias in medical research towards things like cancer over things like dementia. Alzheimer’s Research UK note: “In 2017/18, government investment in dementia research was just £82.5m, equivalent to 0.3% of the total annual cost of dementia. By contrast, government funding for cancer research stood at £269 million in 2015/16 – 1.6% of cancer’s £16.4 billion annual cost to the UK.”
Some kind of dodgy RNA vax that splices bits on to your telomeres? What could possibly go wrong...
As I recall.
When he lost people within a 10 mile radius of me could hear me celebrate.
If you have bet on Biden this is a very worrying piece...
"Muslims represent only around 1 percent of the overall electorate, but Awad believes there are enough Muslim voters in Michigan and Georgia, two swing states, to make it nearly impossible for Biden to win re-election without their support."
"For some voters, this isn’t just a policy dispute. It’s a moral mission, and the mark of victory is a Biden defeat. The question now is, how large is that constituency?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/28/opinion/voters-michigan-biden-gaza.html
Ultimately Entropy Wins, so it is all pointless, but hey.
Israel has many problems but they've maintained above replacement TFR with a good per capita income. Lower gini coefficient than the UK too...
I have no issue with money and energy saving, but that one is just so utterly pointless its actually hilarious.
It's a fabulous book, by the way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Companion_to_British_History
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/3652762/In-the-footsteps-of-Dr-Johnson.html
"Charles Arnold-Baker has shaky credentials for writing The Companion to British History. For a start, he is a Prussian nobleman, born Wolfgang Charles Werner von Blumenthal, and he gave up history for law after graduating from Oxford University. As the Second World War approached, he repudiated his German nationality, adopted his stepfather's surname for safety's sake and served as an officer in the British Army, becoming part of Churchill's bodyguard and later moving to M16, where he "had the misfortune" to work with Kim Philby."
Me, after doing a fast walk / light jog version of the bleep test that was like 10 minutes long, max: I want to die and go to sleep and my brain isn't working, why why why why...
The reason dementia research is a poor relation is that until very recently, billions had been spent for absolutely no useful results at all. And even now, they're only a few marginal interventions.
In the meantime, an obesity gold rush has just kicked off. Every pharma company that missed out is looking for a promising biotech to buy.
Having said that, because of polling in the 6 or so swingest states, I think, barring legal bars, Trump is going to win those states, and therefore the election, anyway. As Trump would say, "Sad".
If we cure muscle wasting and bone loss, another chunk goes away.
As an alternative to everyone needing large numbers of minimum wage servants to wipe their arses.
I was lucky; I just lost my sense of taste/smell for a couple of years.
Don't try to rush recovery is the advice, from what I can gather.
You sound like you don't have a great deal of concern about humans who do exist.