If Hunt is to take another 2p of employee NI then at least he is not handing more benefits to pensioners and is much fairer
Yes, over time Employee NI need to trend to zero. It’s both regressive and discriminates against earned income. Perhaps it ends up at 1%, only to avoid the legislative nightmare brought on by abolishing it.
If Hunt is to take another 2p of employee NI then at least he is not handing more benefits to pensioners and is much fairer
Yes, over time Employee NI need to trend to zero. It’s both regressive and discriminates against earned income. Perhaps it ends up at 1%, only to avoid the legislative nightmare brought on by abolishing it.
The employee part of NI but I doubt the employer will see a reduction
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
The only comment I would make on a cut to NI rather than income tax or Indeed an increase in the personal allowance is:
Those benefiting from the NI cut are typically not supporting CON and are unlikely to be swayed by the cut
Those reliant on pensions who will receive nothing and who have typically be more pro CON may be *ed off and may be less inclined to support CON going forward
Cutting NI is the right thing to do.
So is abolishing it.
It could be merged with income tax within a few years
I'd vote for any party that proposed that.
Within reason.
I expect it will happen within the next few years, especially as 4p has been taken off in a few months
If Hunt is to take another 2p of employee NI then at least he is not handing more benefits to pensioners and is much fairer
Yes, over time Employee NI need to trend to zero. It’s both regressive and discriminates against earned income. Perhaps it ends up at 1%, only to avoid the legislative nightmare brought on by abolishing it.
The employee part of NI but I doubt the employer will see a reduction
Which is a shame, it should be abolished too and the tax redistributed equally on all earnings rather than just payroll earnings.
Employers NI is every bit as much a tax on wages as Income Tax is.
If Hunt is to take another 2p of employee NI then at least he is not handing more benefits to pensioners and is much fairer
Yes, over time Employee NI need to trend to zero. It’s both regressive and discriminates against earned income. Perhaps it ends up at 1%, only to avoid the legislative nightmare brought on by abolishing it.
And a significant cut will minimise the tax dodging by people who are individuals when it suits them or companies when it suits them.
If anyone is listening to Women's Hour on R4, Laura from Marlborough who's taken up going to the gym in her eighties and likes birdwatching is the lady who I made cry and bought a birthday card for a few weeks back
Their impact on the chronic disease burden is, potentially, very large.
Sadly the impact on various grifters, snake oil salesmen, authors of diet books and companies that make money from "managing" obesity will resist these drugs with all their might.
They have a slot machine, currently, that continues to pay out. They won't want it to stop.
I am expecting a great deal of push back on obesity drugs.
There is a bigger problem with these new diet pills, which is worldwide demand will be so high that the makers can charge whatever they like.
We were discussing a possible May election yesterday, along with the usual other autumn or January 2025 dates. I know we have to have 25 working days clear, so am I not right in thinking that if Sunak is going to go with 2nd May, he would have to call the election no later than Friday 22nd March anyway (leaving 25 working days to 2nd May)?
So we'll know in less than three weeks whether he intends to go in May or not?
And my opinion, if he doesn't, is that he'll then hang on till at least October. I don't see a June, July or September election happening.
I make it a couple of days later but Yes, we know soon if it's May 2nd.
Yes, I think dissolution would be 26 March for a May 2 election. 25 weekdays, plus 2 extra for Easter.
Their impact on the chronic disease burden is, potentially, very large.
Sadly the impact on various grifters, snake oil salesmen, authors of diet books and companies that make money from "managing" obesity will resist these drugs with all their might.
They have a slot machine, currently, that continues to pay out. They won't want it to stop.
I am expecting a great deal of push back on obesity drugs.
There is a bigger problem with these new diet pills, which is worldwide demand will be so high that the makers can charge whatever they like.
They are not good for sustained use. The data is quite poor. You will lose a fair bit of weight in the first year but then plateau after that.
The only comment I would make on a cut to NI rather than income tax or Indeed an increase in the personal allowance is:
Those benefiting from the NI cut are typically not supporting CON and are unlikely to be swayed by the cut
Those reliant on pensions who will receive nothing and who have typically be more pro CON may be *ed off and may be less inclined to support CON going forward
Cutting NI is the right thing to do.
So is abolishing it.
It could be merged with income tax within a few years
I'd vote for any party that proposed that.
Within reason.
I expect it will happen within the next few years, especially as 4p has been taken off in a few months
After the next election, whoever wins, should abolish the triple lock too.
Their impact on the chronic disease burden is, potentially, very large.
Sadly the impact on various grifters, snake oil salesmen, authors of diet books and companies that make money from "managing" obesity will resist these drugs with all their might.
They have a slot machine, currently, that continues to pay out. They won't want it to stop.
I am expecting a great deal of push back on obesity drugs.
There is a bigger problem with these new diet pills, which is worldwide demand will be so high that the makers can charge whatever they like.
Injections not pills.
Currently the demand from private fatty clinics is such that NHS diabetes patients cannot obtain it at present. Probably supply will catch up in time.
2p off National Insurance, so they can claim they have "cut taxes" by £900 per worker? But people will look at their pay packets and see taxes have gone up. That they have less money in their pockets than they did before these "tax cuts". And that their bills have gone up.
Is that it? That's the strategy? They really do need to cut and run for May when they will get trounced. But that would be better than going on and getting demolished.
One wrinkle re pay slips. Many workers no longer get printed payslips, and in my experience, few bother to look at them online. Those on fixed salaries might notice if the amount paid into their bank goes up a bit.
Rochdale Pioneers may be right, it may very well be the last date possible. Late Jan 25.
It's amazing the amount of farting we've seen on here in the last week ramping a May election.
Just shows you how weighted this board is at the moment.
I think the kerfuffle about a May election is as much about boredom at the current stasis as it reflects political biases. I want rid of this government as much as anyone but expect we'll have to endure them until November.
Labour will hold themselves together, this side of the election, despite The Gorgeous One stirring it up.
But once in power they'll fall apart, first from the left, then from the right, then from everywhere.
I think that depends on the size of their majority.
The Party has been out of power for a long while and they should be hungry for power and not want to screw it up. As happened from 97-01. Although Blair and Brown had a far better economy and situation to come into than SKS and Rachel Reeves will.
If Hunt is to take another 2p of employee NI then at least he is not handing more benefits to pensioners and is much fairer
Yes, over time Employee NI need to trend to zero. It’s both regressive and discriminates against earned income. Perhaps it ends up at 1%, only to avoid the legislative nightmare brought on by abolishing it.
If Hunt/Sunak are thinking strategically and playing the long-game (personally, I have my doubts) then, yes, it does set-up a simple, more affordable, means-tested state pension in future as it's phased out, with a perhaps a double-lock rather than a triple lock.
If the Conservatives are out of office for 10+ years then it's also worth noting, somewhat morbidly, that much of their existing 65+ base will have "moved on" and been replaced by another.
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
So where are we now with driverless cars? (The last time I really followed it was when they were saying we'll need to fit ethical algorithms into them - so they won't decide to plough into a load of children at a bus-stop instead of scratching some paintwork.)
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
So where are we now with driverless cars? (The last time I really followed it was when they were saying we'll need to fit ethical algorithms into them - so they won't decide to plough into a load of children at a bus-stop instead of scratching some paintwork.)
If Hunt is to take another 2p of employee NI then at least he is not handing more benefits to pensioners and is much fairer
Yes, over time Employee NI need to trend to zero. It’s both regressive and discriminates against earned income. Perhaps it ends up at 1%, only to avoid the legislative nightmare brought on by abolishing it.
And a significant cut will minimise the tax dodging by people who are individuals when it suits them or companies when it suits them.
No it won’t the issue with IR35 is to do with employer NI and nothing else.
And employer NI is a tax that won’t be touched as it generates far too much to be changed
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
So where are we now with driverless cars? (The last time I really followed it was when they were saying we'll need to fit ethical algorithms into them - so they won't decide to plough into a load of children at a bus-stop instead of scratching some paintwork.)
The trouble is that, like AI, driverless cars already found that great ethicist David Hume on the internet:
"It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger." Or paintwork.
Is Ashton under Lyne and the borough of Tameside generally famous for anything ?
Most other Lancashire towns have noted sports teams, food connections or historical events.
Two World Cup winning footballers were born in Ashton. One is Geoff Hurst - who is the other?
(Clue - it’s not Jimmy Armfield who was born in nearby Denton).
Is Geoff Hurst the only World Cup winning footballer to have played first class cricket?
I vaguely recall a letter to The Times when publicity-shy Tony Blair knighted Hurst, complaining this devalued the Honours system as from now on, every Englishman who scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final would expect a knighthood.
You may be about to tell me I'm wrong, but given England is the only cricket playing nation to have won the football World Cup, and they've only done so once, there is an extremely limited list of people who might realistically have done the double.
Interesting point. Almost zero overlap. Whereas several serious rugby playing nations have won: France, Italy, Argentina, England, arguably Uruguay.
England is the only nation to have won the football, cricket and rugby world cups I believe. Which is quite a distinction when you think about it: they are the three biggest team sports in the world I think (and by some distance).
England is also the only country to play all three seriously. Argentina were once a good cricket nation, comparable to NZ at the time but not since WW2, Australia are becoming stronger at football but it's relatively recent, South Africa too haven't delivered at football since the fall of apartheid, despite the potential. Beyond that, no-one.
Which (team) sports are 'biggest' is highly contestable as there are so many ways to argue it. Football is undoubtedly first but beyond that it becomes much harder; there's not really any other genuinely global team sport.
Well it’s not that hard to argue. Global spectators, viewerships, revenues. On any sensible metric, cricket is easily number two. You could argue the toss about rugby in third. But if not rugby then what? Hockey? LOL.
(Okay NFL, but we are discussing international team sports here)
But cricket is only played at a professional level in a very limited number of countries. The fact that it's number one in India skews all of those metrics, in the same way that the American sports would be well up there - possibly top on some measures? - despite being played seriously in a handful of places. Ice hockey and basketball are certainly plausible top 5 contenders.
Yes, it does indeed "skew the metrics" that approximately one in seven people is Indian.
Cricket is easily number two, by a mile. There really is no argument.
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
So where are we now with driverless cars? (The last time I really followed it was when they were saying we'll need to fit ethical algorithms into them - so they won't decide to plough into a load of children at a bus-stop instead of scratching some paintwork.)
It’s possible to drive large chunks of journeys (in the US) in fully automatic mode, in several vehicles. Bit like cruise control, you still need a driver to take control of required, legally and practically
Waymo is actually offering completely autonomous taxi rides (no human driver) in Arizona and San Fransisco. IIRC their ultimate backup is a human at a control centre, if the car signals it has an issue.
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
So where are we now with driverless cars? (The last time I really followed it was when they were saying we'll need to fit ethical algorithms into them - so they won't decide to plough into a load of children at a bus-stop instead of scratching some paintwork.)
It’s a 99.9999% problem which means it can’t go live until all the problems and scenarios are fixed.
2 examples 1) we talk about driverless trains but the only places that have them have carefully removed people from the track so the circumstances are known and controllable 2) we are happy to use software that has bugs in it because it doesn’t matter if the software crashes. Sadly it does matter if the car is going at 70 mph into a brick wall or another car
So I wouldn’t call it vapourware but it turned out to be a far bigger problem than people thought / expected
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
So where are we now with driverless cars? (The last time I really followed it was when they were saying we'll need to fit ethical algorithms into them - so they won't decide to plough into a load of children at a bus-stop instead of scratching some paintwork.)
It’s possible to drive large chunks of journeys (in the US) in fully automatic mode, in several vehicles. Bit like cruise control, you still need a driver to take control of required, legally and practically
Waymo is actually offering completely autonomous taxi rides (no human driver) in Arizona and San Fransisco. IIRC their ultimate backup is a human at a control centre, if the car signals it has an issue.
The US has the advantage of long straight roads, traffic lights and crossroads, and a distinct lack of hedged single country lanes where when two cars meet one needs to reverse into a muddy farm entrance so the other can squeeze past.
If Hunt is to take another 2p of employee NI then at least he is not handing more benefits to pensioners and is much fairer
Yes, over time Employee NI need to trend to zero. It’s both regressive and discriminates against earned income. Perhaps it ends up at 1%, only to avoid the legislative nightmare brought on by abolishing it.
And a significant cut will minimise the tax dodging by people who are individuals when it suits them or companies when it suits them.
No it won’t the issue with IR35 is to do with employer NI and nothing else.
And employer NI is a tax that won’t be touched as it generates far too much to be changed
IIRC, there have already been incidents where a car in autonomous mode took the hit-a-wall option vs hit a human.
For fairly obvious liability reasons you would go that route.
Autonomous driving will gradually come as a creeping thing. For example, there is already talk of *mandating* auto-braking systems in future cars, in the EU.
It won’t be so much a car without a steering wheel, but it will auto-brake to prevent collisions and running red lights, it will have adaptive cruise control to drive at the correct speed for a given area, it will have an auto-park and auto-unpark to get in and out of tight spaces….. most of these exist right now.
Is Ashton under Lyne and the borough of Tameside generally famous for anything ?
Most other Lancashire towns have noted sports teams, food connections or historical events.
Two World Cup winning footballers were born in Ashton. One is Geoff Hurst - who is the other?
(Clue - it’s not Jimmy Armfield who was born in nearby Denton).
Is Geoff Hurst the only World Cup winning footballer to have played first class cricket?
I vaguely recall a letter to The Times when publicity-shy Tony Blair knighted Hurst, complaining this devalued the Honours system as from now on, every Englishman who scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final would expect a knighthood.
You may be about to tell me I'm wrong, but given England is the only cricket playing nation to have won the football World Cup, and they've only done so once, there is an extremely limited list of people who might realistically have done the double.
Interesting point. Almost zero overlap. Whereas several serious rugby playing nations have won: France, Italy, Argentina, England, arguably Uruguay.
England is the only nation to have won the football, cricket and rugby world cups I believe. Which is quite a distinction when you think about it: they are the three biggest team sports in the world I think (and by some distance).
England is also the only country to play all three seriously. Argentina were once a good cricket nation, comparable to NZ at the time but not since WW2, Australia are becoming stronger at football but it's relatively recent, South Africa too haven't delivered at football since the fall of apartheid, despite the potential. Beyond that, no-one.
Which (team) sports are 'biggest' is highly contestable as there are so many ways to argue it. Football is undoubtedly first but beyond that it becomes much harder; there's not really any other genuinely global team sport.
Well it’s not that hard to argue. Global spectators, viewerships, revenues. On any sensible metric, cricket is easily number two. You could argue the toss about rugby in third. But if not rugby then what? Hockey? LOL.
(Okay NFL, but we are discussing international team sports here)
But cricket is only played at a professional level in a very limited number of countries. The fact that it's number one in India skews all of those metrics, in the same way that the American sports would be well up there - possibly top on some measures? - despite being played seriously in a handful of places. Ice hockey and basketball are certainly plausible top 5 contenders.
Yes, it does indeed "skew the metrics" that approximately one in seven people is Indian.
Cricket is easily number two, by a mile. There really is no argument.
I'd be interested to know what the fastest growing spectator sport in the world is. Excluding esports which don;t count. Possibly football extending its lead, because of more takeup in the US and increasing support in China? Possibly Cricket simply because of the vastness of India and growth of interest in the Middle East?
A Google tells me the top 3 after esports are Javelin (?), Kabbadi and Rugby.
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
So where are we now with driverless cars? (The last time I really followed it was when they were saying we'll need to fit ethical algorithms into them - so they won't decide to plough into a load of children at a bus-stop instead of scratching some paintwork.)
It’s possible to drive large chunks of journeys (in the US) in fully automatic mode, in several vehicles. Bit like cruise control, you still need a driver to take control of required, legally and practically
Waymo is actually offering completely autonomous taxi rides (no human driver) in Arizona and San Fransisco. IIRC their ultimate backup is a human at a control centre, if the car signals it has an issue.
The US has the advantage of long straight roads, traffic lights and crossroads, and a distinct lack of hedged single country lanes where when two cars meet one needs to reverse into a muddy farm entrance so the other can squeeze past.
San Fransisco has some crowded bits with narrow, complex road layouts. Also lots of pedestrians and more cyclists than most of the US road network.
I was genuinely surprised when Waymo got their stuff working there.
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
So where are we now with driverless cars? (The last time I really followed it was when they were saying we'll need to fit ethical algorithms into them - so they won't decide to plough into a load of children at a bus-stop instead of scratching some paintwork.)
It’s a 99.9999% problem which means it can’t go live until all the problems and scenarios are fixed.
2 examples 1) we talk about driverless trains but the only places that have them have carefully removed people from the track so the circumstances are known and controllable 2) we are happy to use software that has bugs in it because it doesn’t matter if the software crashes. Sadly it does matter if the car is going at 70 mph into a brick wall or another car
So I wouldn’t call it vapourware but it turned out to be a far bigger problem than people thought / expected
2) Humans have bugs as well - “I don’t know why I did that. I’ve been driving for twenty years and…”. The question is when/if automated systems have a demonstrable level of reliability that equals or exceeds humans.
Rochdale Pioneers may be right, it may very well be the last date possible. Late Jan 25.
It's amazing the amount of farting we've seen on here in the last week ramping a May election.
Just shows you how weighted this board is at the moment.
If Rishi doesn't go to the country in May, I expect it to be taken out of his hands later that month.
What do you mean by that? That he'll be ousted or that others will call an election? I can believe the former (though I don't agree - there might be a confidence vote; I don't think he'll lose one); I can't see the latter.
If Hunt is planning on cutting NI by 2%, that doesn't say to me it'll be a May election. If anything, it points to the autumn.
It's all very well announcing something but even this government - the more level-headed types anyway - must know that their credibility is low and that people will give them little credit for merely promising something. For a change to have an effect, people need to see and/or feel it. In the case of a tax cut, that takes months to work through.
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
So where are we now with driverless cars? (The last time I really followed it was when they were saying we'll need to fit ethical algorithms into them - so they won't decide to plough into a load of children at a bus-stop instead of scratching some paintwork.)
It’s possible to drive large chunks of journeys (in the US) in fully automatic mode, in several vehicles. Bit like cruise control, you still need a driver to take control of required, legally and practically
Waymo is actually offering completely autonomous taxi rides (no human driver) in Arizona and San Fransisco. IIRC their ultimate backup is a human at a control centre, if the car signals it has an issue.
It is simply not possible for a human to fully delegate driving to an automatic system and yet maintain sufficient situational awareness to safely take control of the vehicle in an emergency. Driving just doesn't work like that. When you are driving, you are, as it were, "in the zone", constantly aware of what is going on around you and so ready to deal with an emergency. This isn't the case when you're not driving.
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
So where are we now with driverless cars? (The last time I really followed it was when they were saying we'll need to fit ethical algorithms into them - so they won't decide to plough into a load of children at a bus-stop instead of scratching some paintwork.)
Was anyone seriously saying that? Last I heard the answer to all these 'ethical dilemmas' that people love to dream up is 'slam on the brakes'
Is Ashton under Lyne and the borough of Tameside generally famous for anything ?
Most other Lancashire towns have noted sports teams, food connections or historical events.
Two World Cup winning footballers were born in Ashton. One is Geoff Hurst - who is the other?
(Clue - it’s not Jimmy Armfield who was born in nearby Denton).
Is Geoff Hurst the only World Cup winning footballer to have played first class cricket?
I vaguely recall a letter to The Times when publicity-shy Tony Blair knighted Hurst, complaining this devalued the Honours system as from now on, every Englishman who scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final would expect a knighthood.
You may be about to tell me I'm wrong, but given England is the only cricket playing nation to have won the football World Cup, and they've only done so once, there is an extremely limited list of people who might realistically have done the double.
Interesting point. Almost zero overlap. Whereas several serious rugby playing nations have won: France, Italy, Argentina, England, arguably Uruguay.
England is the only nation to have won the football, cricket and rugby world cups I believe. Which is quite a distinction when you think about it: they are the three biggest team sports in the world I think (and by some distance).
England is also the only country to play all three seriously. Argentina were once a good cricket nation, comparable to NZ at the time but not since WW2, Australia are becoming stronger at football but it's relatively recent, South Africa too haven't delivered at football since the fall of apartheid, despite the potential. Beyond that, no-one.
Which (team) sports are 'biggest' is highly contestable as there are so many ways to argue it. Football is undoubtedly first but beyond that it becomes much harder; there's not really any other genuinely global team sport.
Well it’s not that hard to argue. Global spectators, viewerships, revenues. On any sensible metric, cricket is easily number two. You could argue the toss about rugby in third. But if not rugby then what? Hockey? LOL.
(Okay NFL, but we are discussing international team sports here)
But cricket is only played at a professional level in a very limited number of countries. The fact that it's number one in India skews all of those metrics, in the same way that the American sports would be well up there - possibly top on some measures? - despite being played seriously in a handful of places. Ice hockey and basketball are certainly plausible top 5 contenders.
Yes, it does indeed "skew the metrics" that approximately one in seven people is Indian.
Cricket is easily number two, by a mile. There really is no argument.
I'd be interested to know what the fastest growing spectator sport in the world is. Excluding esports which don;t count. Possibly football extending its lead, because of more takeup in the US and increasing support in China? Possibly Cricket simply because of the vastness of India and growth of interest in the Middle East?
A Google tells me the top 3 after esports are Javelin (?), Kabbadi and Rugby.
India have a training program where failed fast bowlers become javelin throwers.
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
So where are we now with driverless cars? (The last time I really followed it was when they were saying we'll need to fit ethical algorithms into them - so they won't decide to plough into a load of children at a bus-stop instead of scratching some paintwork.)
It’s possible to drive large chunks of journeys (in the US) in fully automatic mode, in several vehicles. Bit like cruise control, you still need a driver to take control of required, legally and practically
Waymo is actually offering completely autonomous taxi rides (no human driver) in Arizona and San Fransisco. IIRC their ultimate backup is a human at a control centre, if the car signals it has an issue.
It is simply not possible for a human to fully delegate driving to an automatic system and yet maintain sufficient situational awareness to safely take control of the vehicle in an emergency. Driving just doesn't work like that. When you are driving, you are, as it were, "in the zone", constantly aware of what is going on around you and so ready to deal with an emergency. This isn't the case when you're not driving.
Which is the argument people are having about such arrangements right now.
See YouTube for the insane shit people are doing with cars with some autonomous capabilities.
I've been thinking about my Rochdale predictions, which were too high for all the main parties, and 10% too low for Galloway's roof, which I put at 30%. Apart from an anti-politics feel and being blindsided by Mr Tully, who somebody knew about locally, I think I may have underestimated the Muslim population of Rochdale, for which I took a 2011 census figure of 24%, and the degree to which differential turnout of that population (and non turnout of people for anyone else) could bias the outcome.
On that note, I see EC gives an ethnic white % of 63% for the constituency. I don't know if the figures in each case are whole population or registered voters, and I don't know what sliver is non-White, non-Muslim, but the 24% figure I took was a few % too low in 2024.
I do this not only to cover off Rochdale but to note that Ashton, which I do know better, shows as being 79% white and has a definite non-white, non-Muslim segment, as the most Hindu town in GM after Bolton.
As likely Northern targets for Galloway go, Ashton seems a good way down the list and there is enough red-wallness that I don't see the different Corbyn angle getting him over the Lyne either.
That data is available from the 2021 census. You need to make conclusions from "religion", "ethnic group", "place of birth" and a couple of others.
Is Ashton under Lyne and the borough of Tameside generally famous for anything ?
Most other Lancashire towns have noted sports teams, food connections or historical events.
Two World Cup winning footballers were born in Ashton. One is Geoff Hurst - who is the other?
(Clue - it’s not Jimmy Armfield who was born in nearby Denton).
Is Geoff Hurst the only World Cup winning footballer to have played first class cricket?
I vaguely recall a letter to The Times when publicity-shy Tony Blair knighted Hurst, complaining this devalued the Honours system as from now on, every Englishman who scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final would expect a knighthood.
You may be about to tell me I'm wrong, but given England is the only cricket playing nation to have won the football World Cup, and they've only done so once, there is an extremely limited list of people who might realistically have done the double.
Interesting point. Almost zero overlap. Whereas several serious rugby playing nations have won: France, Italy, Argentina, England, arguably Uruguay.
England is the only nation to have won the football, cricket and rugby world cups I believe. Which is quite a distinction when you think about it: they are the three biggest team sports in the world I think (and by some distance).
England is also the only country to play all three seriously. Argentina were once a good cricket nation, comparable to NZ at the time but not since WW2, Australia are becoming stronger at football but it's relatively recent, South Africa too haven't delivered at football since the fall of apartheid, despite the potential. Beyond that, no-one.
Which (team) sports are 'biggest' is highly contestable as there are so many ways to argue it. Football is undoubtedly first but beyond that it becomes much harder; there's not really any other genuinely global team sport.
Well it’s not that hard to argue. Global spectators, viewerships, revenues. On any sensible metric, cricket is easily number two. You could argue the toss about rugby in third. But if not rugby then what? Hockey? LOL.
(Okay NFL, but we are discussing international team sports here)
But cricket is only played at a professional level in a very limited number of countries. The fact that it's number one in India skews all of those metrics, in the same way that the American sports would be well up there - possibly top on some measures? - despite being played seriously in a handful of places. Ice hockey and basketball are certainly plausible top 5 contenders.
Yes, it does indeed "skew the metrics" that approximately one in seven people is Indian.
Cricket is easily number two, by a mile. There really is no argument.
I'd be interested to know what the fastest growing spectator sport in the world is. Excluding esports which don;t count. Possibly football extending its lead, because of more takeup in the US and increasing support in China? Possibly Cricket simply because of the vastness of India and growth of interest in the Middle East?
A Google tells me the top 3 after esports are Javelin (?), Kabbadi and Rugby.
Javelin? LOL. Hardly likely to command huge viewerships and TV revenue "wow, a bloke has just thrown a spear 12mm further than another bloke".
Most athletics events suffer from a similar problem: without a tape or clock explaining who is winning the difference between the winner and the loser is imperceptible.
Kabbadi – fair enough. I can see that catching on. Wasn't it featured on Channel 4 a few years ago?
If Hunt is to take another 2p of employee NI then at least he is not handing more benefits to pensioners and is much fairer
Yes, over time Employee NI need to trend to zero. It’s both regressive and discriminates against earned income. Perhaps it ends up at 1%, only to avoid the legislative nightmare brought on by abolishing it.
And a significant cut will minimise the tax dodging by people who are individuals when it suits them or companies when it suits them.
No it won’t the issue with IR35 is to do with employer NI and nothing else.
And employer NI is a tax that won’t be touched as it generates far too much to be changed
IIRC, there have already been incidents where a car in autonomous mode took the hit-a-wall option vs hit a human.
For fairly obvious liability reasons you would go that route.
Autonomous driving will gradually come as a creeping thing. For example, there is already talk of *mandating* auto-braking systems in future cars, in the EU.
It won’t be so much a car without a steering wheel, but it will auto-brake to prevent collisions and running red lights, it will have adaptive cruise control to drive at the correct speed for a given area, it will have an auto-park and auto-unpark to get in and out of tight spaces….. most of these exist right now.
My Leaf has auto-braking to avoid collisions (which is prone to the occasional false alarm) and adaptive cruise control (which is actually pretty useful). Auto-parking was offered as an option, but the dealer recommended against it, saying it was so slow that most people would lose patience and do the parking themselves.
Rochdale Pioneers may be right, it may very well be the last date possible. Late Jan 25.
It's amazing the amount of farting we've seen on here in the last week ramping a May election.
Just shows you how weighted this board is at the moment.
If Rishi doesn't go to the country in May, I expect it to be taken out of his hands later that month.
I am still sticking with 2 May.
So there! 😈
2 May is Sunny's best bet IMO. No leadership challenge, two decent tax cuts (not that I support them but we will notice them), Spring warmth and probably easing inflation. I wouldn't fancy November (Trump), September (would mean a campaign in August – LOL).
January would be utter insanity – campaign over Christmas and the entire country hating on the government for ruining the holidays. Not happening.
Is Ashton under Lyne and the borough of Tameside generally famous for anything ?
Most other Lancashire towns have noted sports teams, food connections or historical events.
Two World Cup winning footballers were born in Ashton. One is Geoff Hurst - who is the other?
(Clue - it’s not Jimmy Armfield who was born in nearby Denton).
Is Geoff Hurst the only World Cup winning footballer to have played first class cricket?
I vaguely recall a letter to The Times when publicity-shy Tony Blair knighted Hurst, complaining this devalued the Honours system as from now on, every Englishman who scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final would expect a knighthood.
You may be about to tell me I'm wrong, but given England is the only cricket playing nation to have won the football World Cup, and they've only done so once, there is an extremely limited list of people who might realistically have done the double.
Interesting point. Almost zero overlap. Whereas several serious rugby playing nations have won: France, Italy, Argentina, England, arguably Uruguay.
England is the only nation to have won the football, cricket and rugby world cups I believe. Which is quite a distinction when you think about it: they are the three biggest team sports in the world I think (and by some distance).
England is also the only country to play all three seriously. Argentina were once a good cricket nation, comparable to NZ at the time but not since WW2, Australia are becoming stronger at football but it's relatively recent, South Africa too haven't delivered at football since the fall of apartheid, despite the potential. Beyond that, no-one.
Which (team) sports are 'biggest' is highly contestable as there are so many ways to argue it. Football is undoubtedly first but beyond that it becomes much harder; there's not really any other genuinely global team sport.
Well it’s not that hard to argue. Global spectators, viewerships, revenues. On any sensible metric, cricket is easily number two. You could argue the toss about rugby in third. But if not rugby then what? Hockey? LOL.
(Okay NFL, but we are discussing international team sports here)
But cricket is only played at a professional level in a very limited number of countries. The fact that it's number one in India skews all of those metrics, in the same way that the American sports would be well up there - possibly top on some measures? - despite being played seriously in a handful of places. Ice hockey and basketball are certainly plausible top 5 contenders.
Yes, it does indeed "skew the metrics" that approximately one in seven people is Indian.
Cricket is easily number two, by a mile. There really is no argument.
I'd be interested to know what the fastest growing spectator sport in the world is. Excluding esports which don;t count. Possibly football extending its lead, because of more takeup in the US and increasing support in China? Possibly Cricket simply because of the vastness of India and growth of interest in the Middle East?
A Google tells me the top 3 after esports are Javelin (?), Kabbadi and Rugby.
Javelin? LOL. Hardly likely to command huge viewerships and TV revenue "wow, a bloke has just thrown a spear 12mm further than another bloke".
Most athletics events suffer from a similar problem: without a tape or clock explaining who is winning the difference between the winner and the loser is imperceptible.
Kabbadi – fair enough. I can see that catching on. Wasn't it featured on Channel 4 a few years ago?
Is Ashton under Lyne and the borough of Tameside generally famous for anything ?
Most other Lancashire towns have noted sports teams, food connections or historical events.
Two World Cup winning footballers were born in Ashton. One is Geoff Hurst - who is the other?
(Clue - it’s not Jimmy Armfield who was born in nearby Denton).
Is Geoff Hurst the only World Cup winning footballer to have played first class cricket?
I vaguely recall a letter to The Times when publicity-shy Tony Blair knighted Hurst, complaining this devalued the Honours system as from now on, every Englishman who scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final would expect a knighthood.
You may be about to tell me I'm wrong, but given England is the only cricket playing nation to have won the football World Cup, and they've only done so once, there is an extremely limited list of people who might realistically have done the double.
Interesting point. Almost zero overlap. Whereas several serious rugby playing nations have won: France, Italy, Argentina, England, arguably Uruguay.
England is the only nation to have won the football, cricket and rugby world cups I believe. Which is quite a distinction when you think about it: they are the three biggest team sports in the world I think (and by some distance).
England is also the only country to play all three seriously. Argentina were once a good cricket nation, comparable to NZ at the time but not since WW2, Australia are becoming stronger at football but it's relatively recent, South Africa too haven't delivered at football since the fall of apartheid, despite the potential. Beyond that, no-one.
Which (team) sports are 'biggest' is highly contestable as there are so many ways to argue it. Football is undoubtedly first but beyond that it becomes much harder; there's not really any other genuinely global team sport.
Well it’s not that hard to argue. Global spectators, viewerships, revenues. On any sensible metric, cricket is easily number two. You could argue the toss about rugby in third. But if not rugby then what? Hockey? LOL.
(Okay NFL, but we are discussing international team sports here)
I reckon not only hockey, but basketball, volleyball and possibly others are bigger than rugby
Handball is popular in many European countries.
Yes round here handball probably comes after football and ice hockey, on a par with basketball in terms of team sports being followed, though I guess more people play basketball. Rugby is absolutely nowhere, more people follow American Football.
Anyone who thinks rugby is a bigger sport than basketball worldwide can never have left St Helens.
Perhaps Sunak imagines that Starmer is 81 instead of 61 and is hoping that the longer he waits, the more his relative youth will play to his advantage.
I gather that if Hunt cuts NI by a further 2pp the effect of the two cuts on the average worker will be that they are £900 a year better off than without the NI cuts.
That is barely enough to cover the additional cost of energy bills. Taking into account rises in food prices, council tax, water, frozen tax allowances, and a myriad of other price rises I'm not convinced that the average worker will show their gratitude at the ballot box. And, of course, public services will continue to deteriorate.
PBers with MBAs might like to ponder the most important factor in Greggs capturing the breakfast crown, as revealed in the article.
Earlier opening hours!
Being at the front of the plant-based options helps them too. They have a healthy (ha) throughput of vegan sausage rolls at my local one, whereas tbh I have no idea what Maccies has on the vegan breakfast front (also iirc their plant stuff was cooked with the meat stuff, so not actually vegan/veggie).
Their impact on the chronic disease burden is, potentially, very large.
Sadly the impact on various grifters, snake oil salesmen, authors of diet books and companies that make money from "managing" obesity will resist these drugs with all their might.
They have a slot machine, currently, that continues to pay out. They won't want it to stop.
I am expecting a great deal of push back on obesity drugs.
Probably.
It's not a simple issue, though. It's undoubtedly true that maintaining a healthy weight through good diet and reasonable exercise is preferable, for both health and financial reasons, to being on long term medication (which is necessarily the case with the new obesity drugs).
Is Ashton under Lyne and the borough of Tameside generally famous for anything ?
Most other Lancashire towns have noted sports teams, food connections or historical events.
Two World Cup winning footballers were born in Ashton. One is Geoff Hurst - who is the other?
(Clue - it’s not Jimmy Armfield who was born in nearby Denton).
Is Geoff Hurst the only World Cup winning footballer to have played first class cricket?
I vaguely recall a letter to The Times when publicity-shy Tony Blair knighted Hurst, complaining this devalued the Honours system as from now on, every Englishman who scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final would expect a knighthood.
You may be about to tell me I'm wrong, but given England is the only cricket playing nation to have won the football World Cup, and they've only done so once, there is an extremely limited list of people who might realistically have done the double.
Interesting point. Almost zero overlap. Whereas several serious rugby playing nations have won: France, Italy, Argentina, England, arguably Uruguay.
England is the only nation to have won the football, cricket and rugby world cups I believe. Which is quite a distinction when you think about it: they are the three biggest team sports in the world I think (and by some distance).
England is also the only country to play all three seriously. Argentina were once a good cricket nation, comparable to NZ at the time but not since WW2, Australia are becoming stronger at football but it's relatively recent, South Africa too haven't delivered at football since the fall of apartheid, despite the potential. Beyond that, no-one.
Which (team) sports are 'biggest' is highly contestable as there are so many ways to argue it. Football is undoubtedly first but beyond that it becomes much harder; there's not really any other genuinely global team sport.
Well it’s not that hard to argue. Global spectators, viewerships, revenues. On any sensible metric, cricket is easily number two. You could argue the toss about rugby in third. But if not rugby then what? Hockey? LOL.
(Okay NFL, but we are discussing international team sports here)
I reckon not only hockey, but basketball, volleyball and possibly others are bigger than rugby
Handball is popular in many European countries.
Yes round here handball probably comes after football and ice hockey, on a par with basketball in terms of team sports being followed, though I guess more people play basketball. Rugby is absolutely nowhere, more people follow American Football.
Anyone who thinks rugby is a bigger sport than basketball worldwide can never have left St Helens.
Remember the question was about international sport – you might be right that basketball beats rugby, but it's close. Certainly, the Rugby World Cup just gone has 1.3 billion TV views, possibly less than the basketball equivalent (which is unknown in the UK) but I'm not sure it's the slam dunk you think it is.
No, they'll extend the threshold freeze and/or lower the threshold for higher earners, plus put top rate back up to 50p.
Yes, I think something like that.
Personally (and I might have skin in this game) I'd like them to make £100k+ 45p but remove the attack on the Personal Allowance, which is a) an administrative nonsense and b) creates a prohibitive cliff edge that any one with a shred of sense goes out of their way to avoid (working less, phasing invoices, salary sacrifices, pension contribs etc etc).
It's utterly moronic and Labour would do well to fix it.
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
So where are we now with driverless cars? (The last time I really followed it was when they were saying we'll need to fit ethical algorithms into them - so they won't decide to plough into a load of children at a bus-stop instead of scratching some paintwork.)
It’s possible to drive large chunks of journeys (in the US) in fully automatic mode, in several vehicles. Bit like cruise control, you still need a driver to take control of required, legally and practically
Waymo is actually offering completely autonomous taxi rides (no human driver) in Arizona and San Fransisco. IIRC their ultimate backup is a human at a control centre, if the car signals it has an issue.
It is simply not possible for a human to fully delegate driving to an automatic system and yet maintain sufficient situational awareness to safely take control of the vehicle in an emergency. Driving just doesn't work like that. When you are driving, you are, as it were, "in the zone", constantly aware of what is going on around you and so ready to deal with an emergency. This isn't the case when you're not driving.
Which is the argument people are having about such arrangements right now.
See YouTube for the insane shit people are doing with cars with some autonomous capabilities.
It's a point that the self-driving car advocates persistently ignore though. You can keep on developing systems to aid the driver, but you ultimately reach a point at which you can no longer rely on a human to take control. At this point you have a sudden jump to the car being expected to deal with any eventuality. You can't achieve full automation of driving incrementally; at some point you have to take a qualitative leap, and this is the real tricky bit. That and the social aspects: Fancy robbing a automatic car occupant? Just step in front of it to make it stop while your mate smashes the window.
PBers with MBAs might like to ponder the most important factor in Greggs capturing the breakfast crown, as revealed in the article.
Earlier opening hours!
Being at the front of the plant-based options helps them too. They have a healthy (ha) throughput of vegan sausage rolls at my local one, whereas tbh I have no idea what Maccies has on the vegan breakfast front (also iirc their plant stuff was cooked with the meat stuff, so not actually vegan/veggie).
I'd punt for Location, Location, Location. Around here they are basically town centre and fuel stations.
Is Ashton under Lyne and the borough of Tameside generally famous for anything ?
Most other Lancashire towns have noted sports teams, food connections or historical events.
Two World Cup winning footballers were born in Ashton. One is Geoff Hurst - who is the other?
(Clue - it’s not Jimmy Armfield who was born in nearby Denton).
Is Geoff Hurst the only World Cup winning footballer to have played first class cricket?
I vaguely recall a letter to The Times when publicity-shy Tony Blair knighted Hurst, complaining this devalued the Honours system as from now on, every Englishman who scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final would expect a knighthood.
You may be about to tell me I'm wrong, but given England is the only cricket playing nation to have won the football World Cup, and they've only done so once, there is an extremely limited list of people who might realistically have done the double.
Interesting point. Almost zero overlap. Whereas several serious rugby playing nations have won: France, Italy, Argentina, England, arguably Uruguay.
England is the only nation to have won the football, cricket and rugby world cups I believe. Which is quite a distinction when you think about it: they are the three biggest team sports in the world I think (and by some distance).
England is also the only country to play all three seriously. Argentina were once a good cricket nation, comparable to NZ at the time but not since WW2, Australia are becoming stronger at football but it's relatively recent, South Africa too haven't delivered at football since the fall of apartheid, despite the potential. Beyond that, no-one.
Which (team) sports are 'biggest' is highly contestable as there are so many ways to argue it. Football is undoubtedly first but beyond that it becomes much harder; there's not really any other genuinely global team sport.
Well it’s not that hard to argue. Global spectators, viewerships, revenues. On any sensible metric, cricket is easily number two. You could argue the toss about rugby in third. But if not rugby then what? Hockey? LOL.
(Okay NFL, but we are discussing international team sports here)
I reckon not only hockey, but basketball, volleyball and possibly others are bigger than rugby
Handball is popular in many European countries.
Yes round here handball probably comes after football and ice hockey, on a par with basketball in terms of team sports being followed, though I guess more people play basketball. Rugby is absolutely nowhere, more people follow American Football.
Anyone who thinks rugby is a bigger sport than basketball worldwide can never have left St Helens.
Remember the question was about international sport – you might be right that basketball beats rugby, but it's close. Certainly, the Rugby World Cup just gone has 1.3 billion TV views, possibly less than the basketball equivalent (which is unknown in the UK) but I'm not sure it's the slam dunk you think it is.
Their impact on the chronic disease burden is, potentially, very large.
Sadly the impact on various grifters, snake oil salesmen, authors of diet books and companies that make money from "managing" obesity will resist these drugs with all their might.
They have a slot machine, currently, that continues to pay out. They won't want it to stop.
I am expecting a great deal of push back on obesity drugs.
There is a bigger problem with these new diet pills, which is worldwide demand will be so high that the makers can charge whatever they like.
Ah, now I have the "likes" bug too on my elitebook.
Likewise. It looks like a tooltip containing the word "Like" is obliterating the previous hover behaviour.
The question is whether @rcs1000 changed this behaviour for some reason, possibly to hide his own past likes, or (more likely) whether the good people at Vanilla and/or Wordpress blindsided him and us quite arbitrarily.
Since I only access PB on my phone I've never had any idea who was liking my posts, which I'm glad of, I think that way madness lies. I'll just continue to assume that OLB superfans like Leon, Topping and Casino are the main ones giving the love for my pearls of wisdom.
It is quite nice seeing who has liked your posts. I am often surprised by the variety of likes which usually comes from across the political spectrum. I hope it returns.
No, they'll extend the threshold freeze and/or lower the threshold for higher earners, plus put top rate back up to 50p.
That's roughly what I would expect, which I'm fine with, but I hope they will sort out the Gordon Brown £100k distortion too.
They won't because some will cast it as a 'tax-cut for millionaires', but yes, just have the same thresholds and allowances across the board. Drop the clawback and reduce the threshold for the top rate to compensate (although I suspect freezing the threshold would probably be enough to do the job).
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
No, they'll extend the threshold freeze and/or lower the threshold for higher earners, plus put top rate back up to 50p.
That's roughly what I would expect, which I'm fine with, but I hope they will sort out the Gordon Brown £100k distortion too.
Beat me to it. Remarkable that that insanity has remained in place for – count them – 15 years and counting.
I entirely agree with you on this. The reason it hasn't been changed is that it only affects a small group of people albeit that it has a significant impact on most of those (not so much on those on say £200k as the overall impact is diluted at that level), and it would be seen as 'politically difficult' to help out specifically a small group of higher earners.
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
So where are we now with driverless cars? (The last time I really followed it was when they were saying we'll need to fit ethical algorithms into them - so they won't decide to plough into a load of children at a bus-stop instead of scratching some paintwork.)
It’s a 99.9999% problem which means it can’t go live until all the problems and scenarios are fixed.
2 examples 1) we talk about driverless trains but the only places that have them have carefully removed people from the track so the circumstances are known and controllable 2) we are happy to use software that has bugs in it because it doesn’t matter if the software crashes. Sadly it does matter if the car is going at 70 mph into a brick wall or another car
So I wouldn’t call it vapourware but it turned out to be a far bigger problem than people thought / expected
On the contrary, I think it's quite likely to be rolled out incrementally - as the recent Waymo announcement tentatively suggests.
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
So where are we now with driverless cars? (The last time I really followed it was when they were saying we'll need to fit ethical algorithms into them - so they won't decide to plough into a load of children at a bus-stop instead of scratching some paintwork.)
My car is 2 years old this month and clearly has the technology to be driverless. It brakes by itself and corrects steering (which sometime can be annoying) so knows where the road is. It can drive out of parking places without me being in the car and has intelligent cruise control. All it has to do is link this to the SatNav and it is off by itself.
I'm pretty sure it can't tell the difference between a nun pushing a pram on a zebra crossing and a lamppost though. Although it does know the nun is on the road and the lamppost isn't.
No, they'll extend the threshold freeze and/or lower the threshold for higher earners, plus put top rate back up to 50p.
That's roughly what I would expect, which I'm fine with, but I hope they will sort out the Gordon Brown £100k distortion too.
Beat me to it. Remarkable that that insanity has remained in place for – count them – 15 years and counting.
Assuming a Lab win, I'd say the Conservatives will try to pin the fiscal drag they have imposed as Starmer's fault, and I see no reason why a Lab Government would let them get away with that con trick.
Rishi and Hunt have set it up to get a blip this side of the Election (iirc OBR modelling) and a collapse afterwards, and I think they need to be held accountable for that. They had the opportunity to do the prudent thing, and chose not to do so.
Is Ashton under Lyne and the borough of Tameside generally famous for anything ?
Most other Lancashire towns have noted sports teams, food connections or historical events.
Two World Cup winning footballers were born in Ashton. One is Geoff Hurst - who is the other?
(Clue - it’s not Jimmy Armfield who was born in nearby Denton).
Is Geoff Hurst the only World Cup winning footballer to have played first class cricket?
I vaguely recall a letter to The Times when publicity-shy Tony Blair knighted Hurst, complaining this devalued the Honours system as from now on, every Englishman who scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final would expect a knighthood.
You may be about to tell me I'm wrong, but given England is the only cricket playing nation to have won the football World Cup, and they've only done so once, there is an extremely limited list of people who might realistically have done the double.
Interesting point. Almost zero overlap. Whereas several serious rugby playing nations have won: France, Italy, Argentina, England, arguably Uruguay.
England is the only nation to have won the football, cricket and rugby world cups I believe. Which is quite a distinction when you think about it: they are the three biggest team sports in the world I think (and by some distance).
England is also the only country to play all three seriously. Argentina were once a good cricket nation, comparable to NZ at the time but not since WW2, Australia are becoming stronger at football but it's relatively recent, South Africa too haven't delivered at football since the fall of apartheid, despite the potential. Beyond that, no-one.
Which (team) sports are 'biggest' is highly contestable as there are so many ways to argue it. Football is undoubtedly first but beyond that it becomes much harder; there's not really any other genuinely global team sport.
Well it’s not that hard to argue. Global spectators, viewerships, revenues. On any sensible metric, cricket is easily number two. You could argue the toss about rugby in third. But if not rugby then what? Hockey? LOL.
(Okay NFL, but we are discussing international team sports here)
I reckon not only hockey, but basketball, volleyball and possibly others are bigger than rugby
Handball is popular in many European countries.
Yes round here handball probably comes after football and ice hockey, on a par with basketball in terms of team sports being followed, though I guess more people play basketball. Rugby is absolutely nowhere, more people follow American Football.
Anyone who thinks rugby is a bigger sport than basketball worldwide can never have left St Helens.
Remember the question was about international sport – you might be right that basketball beats rugby, but it's close. Certainly, the Rugby World Cup just gone has 1.3 billion TV views, possibly less than the basketball equivalent (which is unknown in the UK) but I'm not sure it's the slam dunk you think it is.
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
So where are we now with driverless cars? (The last time I really followed it was when they were saying we'll need to fit ethical algorithms into them - so they won't decide to plough into a load of children at a bus-stop instead of scratching some paintwork.)
My car is 2 years old this month and clearly has the technology to be driverless. It brakes by itself and corrects steering (which sometime can be annoying) so knows where the road is. It can drive out of parking places without me being in the car and has intelligent cruise control. All it has to do is link this to the SatNav and it is off by itself.
I'm pretty sure it can't tell the difference between a nun pushing a pram on a zebra crossing and a lamppost though. Although it does know the nun is on the road and the lamppost isn't.
I'm with you on that. My 2018 Skoda does all of that except the self-drive from parking, although there are one or two options I need to get switched on now it is out of warranty.
I have pause for thought because of collision / casualty figures for Teslas in the USA, which I would now expect to see happening here.
Personally I couldn't care less if someone wins a Darwin Award by killing themselves with their motor vehicle; that's their decision and their responsibility, and society is safer because the reckless idiot has removed themselves from it. In my book that perhaps counts as a net win on balance.
I *do* care when they put others at risk or injure other people.
If Hunt is to take another 2p of employee NI then at least he is not handing more benefits to pensioners and is much fairer
Yes, over time Employee NI need to trend to zero. It’s both regressive and discriminates against earned income. Perhaps it ends up at 1%, only to avoid the legislative nightmare brought on by abolishing it.
And a significant cut will minimise the tax dodging by people who are individuals when it suits them or companies when it suits them.
No it won’t the issue with IR35 is to do with employer NI and nothing else.
And employer NI is a tax that won’t be touched as it generates far too much to be changed
They should merge employer NI into employee NI so people can see exactly how much the government extorts out of their hard earned money. And also scrap PAYE so that people have the money, then have to give it up to the taxman. And adopt the American system of quoting prices excluding sales tax, then giving you an unpleasant surprise when you get the final bill.
Governments love trumpeting new spending, but never flag the taxes that fund it. Honesty in taxation would make people much less likely to be blase about the ever higher taxes that are strangling enterprise in this country.
Is Ashton under Lyne and the borough of Tameside generally famous for anything ?
Most other Lancashire towns have noted sports teams, food connections or historical events.
Two World Cup winning footballers were born in Ashton. One is Geoff Hurst - who is the other?
(Clue - it’s not Jimmy Armfield who was born in nearby Denton).
Is Geoff Hurst the only World Cup winning footballer to have played first class cricket?
I vaguely recall a letter to The Times when publicity-shy Tony Blair knighted Hurst, complaining this devalued the Honours system as from now on, every Englishman who scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final would expect a knighthood.
You may be about to tell me I'm wrong, but given England is the only cricket playing nation to have won the football World Cup, and they've only done so once, there is an extremely limited list of people who might realistically have done the double.
Interesting point. Almost zero overlap. Whereas several serious rugby playing nations have won: France, Italy, Argentina, England, arguably Uruguay.
England is the only nation to have won the football, cricket and rugby world cups I believe. Which is quite a distinction when you think about it: they are the three biggest team sports in the world I think (and by some distance).
England is also the only country to play all three seriously. Argentina were once a good cricket nation, comparable to NZ at the time but not since WW2, Australia are becoming stronger at football but it's relatively recent, South Africa too haven't delivered at football since the fall of apartheid, despite the potential. Beyond that, no-one.
Which (team) sports are 'biggest' is highly contestable as there are so many ways to argue it. Football is undoubtedly first but beyond that it becomes much harder; there's not really any other genuinely global team sport.
Well it’s not that hard to argue. Global spectators, viewerships, revenues. On any sensible metric, cricket is easily number two. You could argue the toss about rugby in third. But if not rugby then what? Hockey? LOL.
(Okay NFL, but we are discussing international team sports here)
I reckon not only hockey, but basketball, volleyball and possibly others are bigger than rugby
Handball is popular in many European countries.
Yes round here handball probably comes after football and ice hockey, on a par with basketball in terms of team sports being followed, though I guess more people play basketball. Rugby is absolutely nowhere, more people follow American Football.
Anyone who thinks rugby is a bigger sport than basketball worldwide can never have left St Helens.
Remember the question was about international sport – you might be right that basketball beats rugby, but it's close. Certainly, the Rugby World Cup just gone has 1.3 billion TV views, possibly less than the basketball equivalent (which is unknown in the UK) but I'm not sure it's the slam dunk you think it is.
"Support for the Conservative Party has plunged to the lowest level since 1978" with just a fifth of British voters now backing Rishi Sunak’s party, according to a new poll." but the lowest poll for the Tories in 1978 was 42% ?!
They looked at some data and the earliest point was 1978.
1978 was when the IPSOS surveys began, yesterday's figure was the lowest the Tories have ever recorded, the quote is misleading in that it implies Tory support was lower in 1978 than it is now which, as you point out, is not the case.
This sort of journalism strikes me as ripe for a complete AI takeover. Just as I mused that AI recruitment consultants will be more warm and personable than HR and recruitment functionaries, so our new overlords will likely be more thorough and accurate than the existing clowns who write this stuff up.
It's pretty clear that 80%+ of all recruitment emails I receive are top and tailed with my name alone, and the rest carbon copied.
Far too many only really 'bother' to understand you if you say 'yes', and then they make you do all the work to qualify yourself.
They're a waste of time and space.
We’re all gonna be redundant. I saw an expert prediction yesterday that AI will write NYT number 1 bestselling novels by 2030. Six years away! We’re all fucked, its best to laugh at the absurdity
"expert prediction"
LOL.
So far every “expert prediction” since the advent of GPT2 in 2019-ish, has proved to be overly CONSERVATIVE, they keep shortening their timelines, sometimes drastically - eg AGI by 2029 as against “maybe by the 2080s, or never”
Of course it may suddenly and unexpectedly pause. Or cease. But so far there are no signs of this
Not really. Just look at your hype-filled verbal diarrhea on the subject. How many times have you screeched about rumours of AGI being just around the corner?
People are hoping to make millions or billions out of this; it is therefore important for them to get the hype train going full-bore. Idiots then fall for the hype. Yes, the tech is good. It is also deeply flawed.
You may remember a similar hype 5-10 years ago about autonomous cars; I wonder if we have any exalted poster who fell for that hype hook, line and sinker?
I fell for the autonomous cars hype, I'm ashamed to say. 7-8 years ago, I did not believe that tech folk would be flat out lying about the capability they had developed, as opposed to the usual "possibility hyping". Musk and Co. changed all that.
So where are we now with driverless cars? (The last time I really followed it was when they were saying we'll need to fit ethical algorithms into them - so they won't decide to plough into a load of children at a bus-stop instead of scratching some paintwork.)
My car is 2 years old this month and clearly has the technology to be driverless. It brakes by itself and corrects steering (which sometime can be annoying) so knows where the road is. It can drive out of parking places without me being in the car and has intelligent cruise control. All it has to do is link this to the SatNav and it is off by itself.
I'm pretty sure it can't tell the difference between a nun pushing a pram on a zebra crossing and a lamppost though. Although it does know the nun is on the road and the lamppost isn't.
I'm with you on that. My 2018 Skoda does all of that except the self-drive from parking, although there are one or two options I need to get switched on now it is out of warranty.
I have pause for thought because of collision / casualty figures for Teslas in the USA, which I would now expect to see happening here.
The parking feature is ideal for when you can't get the doors open when parked. So you get out before parking or get in after getting it out of the parking place. I have never used it. Terrified where the car may end up. I watched the salesman do it. I have no idea how the car knows where to go. I can understand how it avoids a collision, but the rest of it rather concerns me.
Is Ashton under Lyne and the borough of Tameside generally famous for anything ?
Most other Lancashire towns have noted sports teams, food connections or historical events.
Two World Cup winning footballers were born in Ashton. One is Geoff Hurst - who is the other?
(Clue - it’s not Jimmy Armfield who was born in nearby Denton).
Is Geoff Hurst the only World Cup winning footballer to have played first class cricket?
I vaguely recall a letter to The Times when publicity-shy Tony Blair knighted Hurst, complaining this devalued the Honours system as from now on, every Englishman who scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final would expect a knighthood.
You may be about to tell me I'm wrong, but given England is the only cricket playing nation to have won the football World Cup, and they've only done so once, there is an extremely limited list of people who might realistically have done the double.
Interesting point. Almost zero overlap. Whereas several serious rugby playing nations have won: France, Italy, Argentina, England, arguably Uruguay.
England is the only nation to have won the football, cricket and rugby world cups I believe. Which is quite a distinction when you think about it: they are the three biggest team sports in the world I think (and by some distance).
England is also the only country to play all three seriously. Argentina were once a good cricket nation, comparable to NZ at the time but not since WW2, Australia are becoming stronger at football but it's relatively recent, South Africa too haven't delivered at football since the fall of apartheid, despite the potential. Beyond that, no-one.
Which (team) sports are 'biggest' is highly contestable as there are so many ways to argue it. Football is undoubtedly first but beyond that it becomes much harder; there's not really any other genuinely global team sport.
Well it’s not that hard to argue. Global spectators, viewerships, revenues. On any sensible metric, cricket is easily number two. You could argue the toss about rugby in third. But if not rugby then what? Hockey? LOL.
(Okay NFL, but we are discussing international team sports here)
I reckon not only hockey, but basketball, volleyball and possibly others are bigger than rugby
Handball is popular in many European countries.
Yes round here handball probably comes after football and ice hockey, on a par with basketball in terms of team sports being followed, though I guess more people play basketball. Rugby is absolutely nowhere, more people follow American Football.
Anyone who thinks rugby is a bigger sport than basketball worldwide can never have left St Helens.
Remember the question was about international sport – you might be right that basketball beats rugby, but it's close. Certainly, the Rugby World Cup just gone has 1.3 billion TV views, possibly less than the basketball equivalent (which is unknown in the UK) but I'm not sure it's the slam dunk you think it is.
Yes, saw that but couldn't find anything on spectator numbers, sponsorships or revenues (for either event).
But, happy to concede the point on the evidence we do have: clearly the Basketball World Cup is a major event, even if unheard of in the UK.
Field hockey world cup I'm less convinced about – RWC seems bigger than that on the evidence I have found.
Ice hockey surely bigger than field hockey?
Reportedly something like 2 billion people follow/participate in field hockey. Though the average professional ice hockey player is better paid by at least an order of magnitude.
The US government clearly wants an alternative provider to SpaceX, and they're going to keep funding contracts on that basis. Expensive in the short term, but a sensible policy, I think.
That’s been nailed on for a couple of months.
The alternative was a hedge fund or maybe a buyout by Lockheed.
The thing that is sustaining ULA is partly the national security contracts, but more Amazon buying every spare future launch from a non SpaceX provider, for the Amazon Kuiper project. Amazon’s version of Starlink. This means 38 launchers for ULAs new rocket (Vulcan), booked before first flight.
Amazon was supposed to be launching Kuiper on New Glen, the new rocket from Blue. But delays have pushed them into a corner. If they don’t start launching soon, Amazon risk losing their frequency allocations for Kuiper. Even if New Glen meets the new Net Q4 projected first launch, they have little time left to meet the deadline.
So Amazon booked every other launcher, except SpaceX.
The problem then was that most of these launches are very expensive and far off in the future. Amazon isn’t owned by Bezos - he is a big shareholder, but he owns Blue Origin entirely. So Amazon shareholders revolted (a bit) and some of the Kuiper satellites will now fly on SpaceX Falcon 9.
Yes, their competitor with Starlink. But SpaceX has already launched satellite for pretty much every other competitor for Starlink - including OneWeb.
All this means that Blue really, really wants launch capacity - with Russia out of the game and SpaceX surging ahead in volume to orbit, it’s only a matter of time before more Kuiper launches head to SpaceX. Bezos is trying to hold the Amazon shareholders to their original plan - to fill in with other providers and transition to Blue/New Glen.
If he can’t hold the line, the massive launch requirement could partially move to SpaceX, crippling his plans for Blue.
Buying ULA means that he gets a working rocket (backup for New Glen) and pulls a bunch of the Kuiper launches back to Blue.
Apogee on YouTube predicted BO purchasing ULA. Two years ago.
Their impact on the chronic disease burden is, potentially, very large.
Sadly the impact on various grifters, snake oil salesmen, authors of diet books and companies that make money from "managing" obesity will resist these drugs with all their might.
They have a slot machine, currently, that continues to pay out. They won't want it to stop.
I am expecting a great deal of push back on obesity drugs.
You would think the impending loss of office might concentrate a few minds. "What could that lot do with these rules if they got their hands on them?" is always a question worth asking.
Is Ashton under Lyne and the borough of Tameside generally famous for anything ?
Most other Lancashire towns have noted sports teams, food connections or historical events.
Two World Cup winning footballers were born in Ashton. One is Geoff Hurst - who is the other?
(Clue - it’s not Jimmy Armfield who was born in nearby Denton).
Is Geoff Hurst the only World Cup winning footballer to have played first class cricket?
I vaguely recall a letter to The Times when publicity-shy Tony Blair knighted Hurst, complaining this devalued the Honours system as from now on, every Englishman who scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final would expect a knighthood.
You may be about to tell me I'm wrong, but given England is the only cricket playing nation to have won the football World Cup, and they've only done so once, there is an extremely limited list of people who might realistically have done the double.
Interesting point. Almost zero overlap. Whereas several serious rugby playing nations have won: France, Italy, Argentina, England, arguably Uruguay.
England is the only nation to have won the football, cricket and rugby world cups I believe. Which is quite a distinction when you think about it: they are the three biggest team sports in the world I think (and by some distance).
England is also the only country to play all three seriously. Argentina were once a good cricket nation, comparable to NZ at the time but not since WW2, Australia are becoming stronger at football but it's relatively recent, South Africa too haven't delivered at football since the fall of apartheid, despite the potential. Beyond that, no-one.
Which (team) sports are 'biggest' is highly contestable as there are so many ways to argue it. Football is undoubtedly first but beyond that it becomes much harder; there's not really any other genuinely global team sport.
Well it’s not that hard to argue. Global spectators, viewerships, revenues. On any sensible metric, cricket is easily number two. You could argue the toss about rugby in third. But if not rugby then what? Hockey? LOL.
(Okay NFL, but we are discussing international team sports here)
I reckon not only hockey, but basketball, volleyball and possibly others are bigger than rugby
Handball is popular in many European countries.
Yes round here handball probably comes after football and ice hockey, on a par with basketball in terms of team sports being followed, though I guess more people play basketball. Rugby is absolutely nowhere, more people follow American Football.
Anyone who thinks rugby is a bigger sport than basketball worldwide can never have left St Helens.
Remember the question was about international sport – you might be right that basketball beats rugby, but it's close. Certainly, the Rugby World Cup just gone has 1.3 billion TV views, possibly less than the basketball equivalent (which is unknown in the UK) but I'm not sure it's the slam dunk you think it is.
Yes, saw that but couldn't find anything on spectator numbers, sponsorships or revenues (for either event).
But, happy to concede the point on the evidence we do have: clearly the Basketball World Cup is a major event, even if unheard of in the UK.
Field hockey world cup I'm less convinced about – RWC seems bigger than that on the evidence I have found.
Ice hockey surely bigger than field hockey?
Ice hockey is big in Canada and parts of the US. Field hockey is fair-to-middling in India. I'd suspect the Americas have more money and India more players.
Is Ashton under Lyne and the borough of Tameside generally famous for anything ?
Most other Lancashire towns have noted sports teams, food connections or historical events.
Two World Cup winning footballers were born in Ashton. One is Geoff Hurst - who is the other?
(Clue - it’s not Jimmy Armfield who was born in nearby Denton).
Is Geoff Hurst the only World Cup winning footballer to have played first class cricket?
I vaguely recall a letter to The Times when publicity-shy Tony Blair knighted Hurst, complaining this devalued the Honours system as from now on, every Englishman who scored a hat-trick in a World Cup final would expect a knighthood.
You may be about to tell me I'm wrong, but given England is the only cricket playing nation to have won the football World Cup, and they've only done so once, there is an extremely limited list of people who might realistically have done the double.
Interesting point. Almost zero overlap. Whereas several serious rugby playing nations have won: France, Italy, Argentina, England, arguably Uruguay.
England is the only nation to have won the football, cricket and rugby world cups I believe. Which is quite a distinction when you think about it: they are the three biggest team sports in the world I think (and by some distance).
England is also the only country to play all three seriously. Argentina were once a good cricket nation, comparable to NZ at the time but not since WW2, Australia are becoming stronger at football but it's relatively recent, South Africa too haven't delivered at football since the fall of apartheid, despite the potential. Beyond that, no-one.
Which (team) sports are 'biggest' is highly contestable as there are so many ways to argue it. Football is undoubtedly first but beyond that it becomes much harder; there's not really any other genuinely global team sport.
Well it’s not that hard to argue. Global spectators, viewerships, revenues. On any sensible metric, cricket is easily number two. You could argue the toss about rugby in third. But if not rugby then what? Hockey? LOL.
(Okay NFL, but we are discussing international team sports here)
I reckon not only hockey, but basketball, volleyball and possibly others are bigger than rugby
Handball is popular in many European countries.
Yes round here handball probably comes after football and ice hockey, on a par with basketball in terms of team sports being followed, though I guess more people play basketball. Rugby is absolutely nowhere, more people follow American Football.
Anyone who thinks rugby is a bigger sport than basketball worldwide can never have left St Helens.
Remember the question was about international sport – you might be right that basketball beats rugby, but it's close. Certainly, the Rugby World Cup just gone has 1.3 billion TV views, possibly less than the basketball equivalent (which is unknown in the UK) but I'm not sure it's the slam dunk you think it is.
Yes, saw that but couldn't find anything on spectator numbers, sponsorships or revenues (for either event).
But, happy to concede the point on the evidence we do have: clearly the Basketball World Cup is a major event, even if unheard of in the UK.
Field hockey world cup I'm less convinced about – RWC seems bigger than that on the evidence I have found.
Ice hockey surely bigger than field hockey?
Reportedly something like 2 billion people follow/participate in field hockey. Though the average professional ice hockey player is better paid by at least an order of magnitude.
That seems an exceptionally high number of people, unless we're including the Olympics every 4 years (in which case a few other sports say hello). I know India has a reasonably strong history with hockey but it's still not close to cricket in the country's affections.
You would think the impending loss of office might concentrate a few minds. "What could that lot do with these rules if they got their hands on them?" is always a question worth asking.
But apparently not yet.
I've little doubt we'll see the same from the left at some point, once they're in power. But the idea that Michael Gove gets to codify what is now acceptable speech is a pretty bloody stupid one.
I suppose when you and yours might be labelled 'extremists', a mob or an enemy of democracy for your non violent protests, the repressive legislation you've happily supported becomes a tangible threat.
Comments
Employers NI is every bit as much a tax on wages as Income Tax is.
https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/sites/default/files/2022-05/UKPGE%20Election%20timetable%20generic_0.doc&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK
The announcement would probably have to be made the week beforehand though, so as to get any uncontentious legislation through its remaining stages.
Just the Juniors, the SAS grades and Wales to go now.
Just shows you how weighted this board is at the moment.
But once in power they'll fall apart, first from the left, then from the right, then from everywhere.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9921/
- 6.25% if you’re on Plan 1
- 7.7% if you’re on Plan 2
- 6.25% if you’re on Plan 4
- 7.7% if you’re on Plan 5
Mortgages were cheaper at the depth of Trusses madness.Currently the demand from private fatty clinics is such that NHS diabetes patients cannot obtain it at present. Probably supply will catch up in time.
The Party has been out of power for a long while and they should be hungry for power and not want to screw it up. As happened from 97-01. Although Blair and Brown had a far better economy and situation to come into than SKS and Rachel Reeves will.
If the Conservatives are out of office for 10+ years then it's also worth noting, somewhat morbidly, that much of their existing 65+ base will have "moved on" and been replaced by another.
So there! 😈
And employer NI is a tax that won’t be touched as it generates far too much to be changed
"It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger." Or paintwork.
Cricket is easily number two, by a mile. There really is no argument.
vehicles. Bit like cruise control, you still need a driver to take control of required, legally and practically
Waymo is actually offering completely autonomous taxi rides (no human driver) in Arizona and San Fransisco. IIRC their ultimate backup is a human at a control centre, if the car signals it has an issue.
2 examples
1) we talk about driverless trains but the only places that have them have carefully removed people from the track so the circumstances are known and controllable
2) we are happy to use software that has bugs in it because it doesn’t matter if the software crashes. Sadly it does matter if the car is going at 70 mph into a brick wall or another car
So I wouldn’t call it vapourware but it turned out to be a far bigger problem than people thought / expected
For fairly obvious liability reasons you would go that route.
Autonomous driving will gradually come as a creeping thing. For example, there is already talk of *mandating* auto-braking systems in future cars, in the EU.
It won’t be so much a car without a steering wheel, but it will auto-brake to prevent collisions and running red lights, it will have adaptive cruise control to drive at the correct speed for a given area, it will have an auto-park and auto-unpark to get in and out of tight spaces….. most of these exist right now.
Bakery chain overtakes McDonald’s to become UK’s most popular breakfast spot
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/05/greggs-staff-bonus-pot-record-profit-price-rises
Good news for some.
PBers with MBAs might like to ponder the most important factor in Greggs capturing the breakfast crown, as revealed in the article.
A Google tells me the top 3 after esports are Javelin (?), Kabbadi and Rugby.
I was genuinely surprised when Waymo got their stuff working there.
It's all very well announcing something but even this government - the more level-headed types anyway - must know that their credibility is low and that people will give them little credit for merely promising something. For a change to have an effect, people need to see and/or feel it. In the case of a tax cut, that takes months to work through.
See YouTube for the insane shit people are doing with cars with some autonomous capabilities.
Link:https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/customprofiles/build/#E14000897
(I traced that by looking up the citation on the constituency profile on wikipedia.)
Most athletics events suffer from a similar problem: without a tape or clock explaining who is winning the difference between the winner and the loser is imperceptible.
Kabbadi – fair enough. I can see that catching on. Wasn't it featured on Channel 4 a few years ago?
January would be utter insanity – campaign over Christmas and the entire country hating on the government for ruining the holidays. Not happening.
Anyone who thinks rugby is a bigger sport than basketball worldwide can never have left St Helens.
That is barely enough to cover the additional cost of energy bills. Taking into account rises in food prices, council tax, water, frozen tax allowances, and a myriad of other price rises I'm not convinced that the average worker will show their gratitude at the ballot box. And, of course, public services will continue to deteriorate.
And they should do the same with the higher rate increase it to 41%/42% and allow people to keep the child allowance.
I’m not sure whether there is anything that can be done with clawing back tax credits though
It's not a simple issue, though. It's undoubtedly true that maintaining a healthy weight through good diet and reasonable exercise is preferable, for both health and financial reasons, to being on long term medication (which is necessarily the case with the new obesity drugs).
So we'll get plenty of long term data as time goes by.
Move announced by News UK venture comes weeks after Piers Morgan left his daily show on channel
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2024/mar/05/talktv-to-close-down-television-channel-and-go-online-only
GB News losses widen to £42m amid Farage, Rees-Mogg, Johnson wages and Ofcom probes
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/gb-news-losses-widen-to-42m-amid-farage-rees-mogg-johnson-wages-and-ofcom-probes/ar-BB1jmuuH
Two stories for the price of one about small television channels.
Personally (and I might have skin in this game) I'd like them to make £100k+ 45p but remove the attack on the Personal Allowance, which is a) an administrative nonsense and b) creates a prohibitive cliff edge that any one with a shred of sense goes out of their way to avoid (working less, phasing invoices, salary sacrifices, pension contribs etc etc).
It's utterly moronic and Labour would do well to fix it.
And cost control.
"According to FIBA, the TV audience for the 2019 tournament reached 3 billion, with a further 1.5 billion views on social media."
(And they're not all pills.)
Two companies already have drugs on the market, and there is at least one coming fairly soon, which is probably better.
http://ir.vikingtherapeutics.com/2024-02-27-Viking-Therapeutics-Announces-Positive-Top-Line-Results-from-Phase-2-VENTURE-Trial-of-Dual-GLP-1-GIP-Receptor-Agonist-VK2735-in-Patients-with-Obesity
Almost every big pharma will want a piece of the action, so prices ought to stabilise within only a few years.
California authorizes expansion of Waymo's driverless car services to LA, SF peninsula
https://abc7.com/waymo-los-angeles-bay-area-california/14486862/#
No chance of CON or LAB getting rid of this.
I'm pretty sure it can't tell the difference between a nun pushing a pram on a zebra crossing and a lamppost though. Although it does know the nun is on the road and the lamppost isn't.
Rishi and Hunt have set it up to get a blip this side of the Election (iirc OBR modelling) and a collapse afterwards, and I think they need to be held accountable for that. They had the opportunity to do the prudent thing, and chose not to do so.
But, happy to concede the point on the evidence we do have: clearly the Basketball World Cup is a major event, even if unheard of in the UK.
Field hockey world cup I'm less convinced about – RWC seems bigger than that on the evidence I have found.
I have pause for thought because of collision / casualty figures for Teslas in the USA, which I would now expect to see happening here.
Personally I couldn't care less if someone wins a Darwin Award by killing themselves with their motor vehicle; that's their decision and their responsibility, and society is safer because the reckless idiot has removed themselves from it. In my book that perhaps counts as a net win on balance.
I *do* care when they put others at risk or injure other people.
Governments love trumpeting new spending, but never flag the taxes that fund it. Honesty in taxation would make people much less likely to be blase about the ever higher taxes that are strangling enterprise in this country.
Though the average professional ice hockey player is better paid by at least an order of magnitude.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4xRNXyy-8o&t=1545s
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/05/senior-tories-criticise-no-10-plans-to-broaden-extremism-definition
https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1765010082851332278
Such a great place to live, eh, Tucker ?
When you basically admit the product you have been shilling and getting paid to shill for a very long time, doesn't actually work, then you know you are getting the boot. The one named permanent A list celebrity doesn't care. The company she is leaving won't be able to stay in business much longer. “Weight Watchers”/Oprah (Oprah Winfrey to Exit WeightWatchers Board After She Announced Use of Weight-Loss Drug)
But apparently not yet.
NEW THREAD
But the idea that Michael Gove gets to codify what is now acceptable speech is a pretty bloody stupid one.
I suppose when you and yours might be labelled 'extremists', a mob or an enemy of democracy for your non violent protests, the repressive legislation you've happily supported becomes a tangible threat.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/05/it-was-so-wrong-why-were-so-many-people-imprisoned-over-one-protest-in-bristol