The fever tree bar is actually very nice, albeit wildly overpriced. But aren’t they always
Next to me was a youngish American (who seemed quite an experienced traveller) saying to someone on his phone: “ah I’m good. I’m good. I’ve got a gin and tonic as big as my head. Europeans really how how to do airports”
I’m guessing his favourable impression is largely a function of everything in Europe being half the price of the USA these days. But still. For the awareness of the site
And American airports on the whole are utter shit (unless you do the private lounges). I can't think of a really good one. The best major Northern American is IMO Vancouver.
On the USA, I may need to go to Salt Lake City for a research meeting next year. Any top tips on where to see if I can wrangle a day off?
Hire a car and drive fast fast fast to Moab and just LOOK
Or go to see Spiral Jetty on the Great Salt Lake
Either will give you world class experiences you will never forget
The fever tree bar is actually very nice, albeit wildly overpriced. But aren’t they always
Next to me was a youngish American (who seemed quite an experienced traveller) saying to someone on his phone: “ah I’m good. I’m good. I’ve got a gin and tonic as big as my head. Europeans really how how to do airports”
I’m guessing his favourable impression is largely a function of everything in Europe being half the price of the USA these days. But still. For the awareness of the site
And American airports on the whole are utter shit (unless you do the private lounges). I can't think of a really good one. The best major Northern American is IMO Vancouver.
On the USA, I may need to go to Salt Lake City for a research meeting next year. Any top tips on where to see if I can wrangle a day off?
Unless you get the direct flight, which is not every day, you'll be going via Denver. If you book the denver to salt lake flights separately, you could have a night in denver on the way, and take the California Zepher from Salt lake to Denver on the way back. You'd want to pay up for a cabin though - it's overnight. And make sure there is slack. Lovely bit of track though.
Alternatively, if you want a low key rural town to drive to from Salt Lake, Helper UT is only an hour and a half drive.
Don't, whatever you do, think of going to Green River UT. Absolute shithole. Scary at night, even in the hotel.
"You know, if you just set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything, wouldn't you, at any time? And you would achieve nothing!" - M. H. Thatcher, 3 May 1989
Another delayed EasyJet. Four hours at Edinburgh airport
The dining options are limited and the entire airport smells of wee
Serves you right for flying from that poncey Edinburgh dump. What’s wrong with Glasgow?
I don't think I've been to Edinburgh Airport in over 30 years, back when I lived in Scotland and flew to various places in Continental Europe. I've never flown from London to Scotland, the train takes more or less the same amount of time door to door and is far nicer.
The fever tree bar is actually very nice, albeit wildly overpriced. But aren’t they always
Next to me was a youngish American (who seemed quite an experienced traveller) saying to someone on his phone: “ah I’m good. I’m good. I’ve got a gin and tonic as big as my head. Europeans really how how to do airports”
I’m guessing his favourable impression is largely a function of everything in Europe being half the price of the USA these days. But still. For the awareness of the site
And American airports on the whole are utter shit (unless you do the private lounges). I can't think of a really good one. The best major Northern American is IMO Vancouver.
On the USA, I may need to go to Salt Lake City for a research meeting next year. Any top tips on where to see if I can wrangle a day off?
Unless you get the direct flight, which is not every day, you'll be going via Denver.
Ms. Abbot may be hoping for a financial success like Vermont's senior senator, Socialist Bernie Sanders. His book sales have made him a millionaire. He and his wife now own three houses. Abbot may feel she deserves at least two.
Sanders has changed his standard line attacking millionaires and billionaires. He now just attacks the latter.
The fever tree bar is actually very nice, albeit wildly overpriced. But aren’t they always
Next to me was a youngish American (who seemed quite an experienced traveller) saying to someone on his phone: “ah I’m good. I’m good. I’ve got a gin and tonic as big as my head. Europeans really how how to do airports”
I’m guessing his favourable impression is largely a function of everything in Europe being half the price of the USA these days. But still. For the awareness of the site
And American airports on the whole are utter shit (unless you do the private lounges). I can't think of a really good one. The best major Northern American is IMO Vancouver.
On the USA, I may need to go to Salt Lake City for a research meeting next year. Any top tips on where to see if I can wrangle a day off?
Unless you get the direct flight, which is not every day, you'll be going via Denver.
I flew with American via Chicago back in 2007.
Fair point.
Chicago's lovely. A rare walkable American city, and actually feels American unlike, say New York or LA which feel like international cities - because they are.
Ms. Abbot may be hoping for a financial success like Vermont's senior senator, Socialist Bernie Sanders. His book sales have made him a millionaire. He and his wife now own three houses. Abbot may feel she deserves at least two.
Sanders has changed his standard line attacking millionaires and billionaires. He now just attacks the latter.
The fever tree bar is actually very nice, albeit wildly overpriced. But aren’t they always
Next to me was a youngish American (who seemed quite an experienced traveller) saying to someone on his phone: “ah I’m good. I’m good. I’ve got a gin and tonic as big as my head. Europeans really how how to do airports”
I’m guessing his favourable impression is largely a function of everything in Europe being half the price of the USA these days. But still. For the awareness of the site
And American airports on the whole are utter shit (unless you do the private lounges). I can't think of a really good one. The best major Northern American is IMO Vancouver.
On the USA, I may need to go to Salt Lake City for a research meeting next year. Any top tips on where to see if I can wrangle a day off?
Unless you get the direct flight, which is not every day, you'll be going via Denver.
I flew with American via Chicago back in 2007.
Fair point.
Chicago's lovely. A rare walkable American city, and actually feels American unlike, say New York or LA which feel like international cities - because they are.
It is downtown....not so much if you venture out of the highly policed central tourist area.
The fever tree bar is actually very nice, albeit wildly overpriced. But aren’t they always
Next to me was a youngish American (who seemed quite an experienced traveller) saying to someone on his phone: “ah I’m good. I’m good. I’ve got a gin and tonic as big as my head. Europeans really how how to do airports”
I’m guessing his favourable impression is largely a function of everything in Europe being half the price of the USA these days. But still. For the awareness of the site
And American airports on the whole are utter shit (unless you do the private lounges). I can't think of a really good one. The best major Northern American is IMO Vancouver.
On the USA, I may need to go to Salt Lake City for a research meeting next year. Any top tips on where to see if I can wrangle a day off?
Unless you get the direct flight, which is not every day, you'll be going via Denver.
I flew with American via Chicago back in 2007.
Fair point.
Chicago's lovely. A rare walkable American city, and actually feels American unlike, say New York or LA which feel like international cities - because they are.
It is downtown....not so much if you venture out of the highly policed central tourist area.
Ms. Abbot may be hoping for a financial success like Vermont's senior senator, Socialist Bernie Sanders. His book sales have made him a millionaire. He and his wife now own three houses. Abbot may feel she deserves at least two.
Sanders has changed his standard line attacking millionaires and billionaires. He now just attacks the latter.
Ms. Abbot may be hoping for a financial success like Vermont's senior senator, Socialist Bernie Sanders. His book sales have made him a millionaire. He and his wife now own three houses. Abbot may feel she deserves at least two.
Sanders has changed his standard line attacking millionaires and billionaires. He now just attacks the latter.
Spectator cover piece on Ed Milliband's disastrous energy policy, that is set to fail even if everything goes completely according to plan.
Even if distribution were viable, wind and solar energy is not as cheap as it is often made out. You just have to look at Denmark, which has the world’s highest proportion of energy generated from wind and some of the highest electricity prices. Until recently, Miliband continued to assert that wind energy was ‘nine times cheaper’ than gas-powered electricity. His claim was based on a false comparison between the long-term guaranteed prices offered to the operators of wind and solar plants with the short-term prices paid to owners of gas power stations at the height of the energy spike in August 2022.
Since then, gas prices have plummeted, while the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared. When interest rates and commodity prices were low, the cost of building wind turbines fell to the point in 2022 when wind farm operators were prepared to sign contracts to produce power at £37 per megawatt-hour. By September 2023, when the government held an auction for offshore wind – setting a maximum price of £44 per megawatt-hour – it received not a single bid. The dream of being able to buy low-price wind power was shattered.
In order to attract interest for the latest auction, Rishi Sunak’s government pushed the maximum bid price to £73 per MWh. When the results were announced this week, the successful offshore wind projects had apparently bid between £54 and £58 per megawatt-hour – which looks like reasonable value until you realise that all these figures are still somewhat randomly set at 2012 prices and have not been adjusted for inflation. The actual prices charged by the energy companies do increase with inflation, however, and in reality this year’s successful bids are between £75 and £82 per megawatt-hour.
Barty Bobbins and I have had many arguments featuring his complete pish that wind energy is cheaper than gas. It's about time we faced up to the complete absence of an energy policy we have in this country. That starts with sacking this useless chump (Ed Milliband not Barty) and putting someone competent in place.
Ms. Abbot may be hoping for a financial success like Vermont's senior senator, Socialist Bernie Sanders. His book sales have made him a millionaire. He and his wife now own three houses. Abbot may feel she deserves at least two.
Sanders has changed his standard line attacking millionaires and billionaires. He now just attacks the latter.
Given all the inflation in the US (and here), mulit-millionaires are now no longer the rich....or something.
Italy lost a lot of millionaires when they switched from the lira to the euro.
We really should switch to the Penny.
She lost her seat…
I believe she might have been about to be the challenger when Sunak was about to be VONCd. So we came quite close to having her as PM.
The new Lord's report on Tory Party reform has recommended that letters to the 1922 Committee are now public, and that the threshold should be higher. They think that this will make the leadership more secure, and perhaps this is true, but I also think it might be quite good to have the process done in public, because it would prevent the Chairman stitching it up with the leader in secret.
I doubt that, but it would be necessary to say it in order to not back down at the very first difficult decision they decide to make, otherwise they'll never achieve anything substantive even with that massive majority.
Ms. Abbot may be hoping for a financial success like Vermont's senior senator, Socialist Bernie Sanders. His book sales have made him a millionaire. He and his wife now own three houses. Abbot may feel she deserves at least two.
Sanders has changed his standard line attacking millionaires and billionaires. He now just attacks the latter.
Given all the inflation in the US (and here), mulit-millionaires are now no longer the rich....or something.
Italy lost a lot of millionaires when they switched from the lira to the euro.
We really should switch to the Penny.
She lost her seat…
I believe she might have been about to be the challenger when Sunak was about to be VONCd. So we came quite close to having her as PM.
The new Lord's report on Tory Party reform has recommended that letters to the 1922 Committee are now public, and that the threshold should be higher. They think that this will make the leadership more secure, and perhaps this is true, but I also think it might be quite good to have the process done in public, because it would prevent the Chairman stitching it up with the leader in secret.
A higher threshold means any successful challenge is more serious, though.
Apparently the article itself was from a long time ago, lord knows why it got attention now, but it does look like something that would have emerged in the last few years it's so silly. I actually don't remember either of my parents reading to me as a child, though perhaps it was not necessary since they both read quite a bit themselves and that encouraged me to be an early reader in any case.
Ms. Abbot may be hoping for a financial success like Vermont's senior senator, Socialist Bernie Sanders. His book sales have made him a millionaire. He and his wife now own three houses. Abbot may feel she deserves at least two.
Sanders has changed his standard line attacking millionaires and billionaires. He now just attacks the latter.
Given all the inflation in the US (and here), mulit-millionaires are now no longer the rich....or something.
Italy lost a lot of millionaires when they switched from the lira to the euro.
We really should switch to the Penny.
She lost her seat…
I believe she might have been about to be the challenger when Sunak was about to be VONCd. So we came quite close to having her as PM.
The new Lord's report on Tory Party reform has recommended that letters to the 1922 Committee are now public, and that the threshold should be higher. They think that this will make the leadership more secure, and perhaps this is true, but I also think it might be quite good to have the process done in public, because it would prevent the Chairman stitching it up with the leader in secret.
Openness and transparency are good things, although if the party's MPs don't trust the 1922 Chairman to conduct the process with integrity I don't think an open and transpareny process would help much, since it shows a rather severe lack of trust in one another which would surely come out in other ways.
In my last two holidays I worked every day (I'm working now!) and only work a third-day on Saturday so I can food shop. I don't know how a "working week" works in the era of WFH and email.
From someone who burned-out hard doing much the same thing - I'd advise you to stop doing that.
If you’re unlucky, your life is controlled by a talentless boss who expects you to work an eight day week because, having no friends, and family that despise and ignore him, he has no interests outside work, and assumes everyone is like him (or her).
If you can't push through to implement unpopular policies without caving when newly elected with 400 MPs, then I'm not sure when you can.
Planning reform under Boris springs to mind. Yes, there were issues to be ironed out and the Shires were definitely mad, but it was a missed opportunity to do something when they had the chance.
I doubt that, but it would be necessary to say it in order to not back down at the very first difficult decision they decide to make, otherwise they'll never achieve anything substantive even with that massive majority.
I suspect he means it. He is a KC rather than a career politician, and past experience is that he won't change his mind.
It seems to be a rather casual use of political capital though.
The fever tree bar is actually very nice, albeit wildly overpriced. But aren’t they always
Next to me was a youngish American (who seemed quite an experienced traveller) saying to someone on his phone: “ah I’m good. I’m good. I’ve got a gin and tonic as big as my head. Europeans really how how to do airports”
I’m guessing his favourable impression is largely a function of everything in Europe being half the price of the USA these days. But still. For the awareness of the site
And American airports on the whole are utter shit (unless you do the private lounges). I can't think of a really good one. The best major Northern American is IMO Vancouver.
On the USA, I may need to go to Salt Lake City for a research meeting next year. Any top tips on where to see if I can wrangle a day off?
Long drives are fine. The drive is the experience.
Just as well, as it’s at least 2,500 miles from here back to catch the ship home.
In my last two holidays I worked every day (I'm working now!) and only work a third-day on Saturday so I can food shop. I don't know how a "working week" works in the era of WFH and email.
From someone who burned-out hard doing much the same thing - I'd advise you to stop doing that.
If you’re unlucky, your life is controlled by a talentless boss who expects you to work an eight day week because, having no friends, and family that despise and ignore him, he has no interests outside work, and assumes everyone is like him (or her).
I like to think such people have their uses in the right positions, on the spectrum I'm closer to it than a super flexible one, but as @KnightsOut suggests forcing people into unreasonable routines that don't serve them well does not lead to anything good either. You cannot simply let people get on with things completely in all cases, this isn't a utopia, but the slaverdriver approach is dumb too.
The fever tree bar is actually very nice, albeit wildly overpriced. But aren’t they always
Next to me was a youngish American (who seemed quite an experienced traveller) saying to someone on his phone: “ah I’m good. I’m good. I’ve got a gin and tonic as big as my head. Europeans really how how to do airports”
I’m guessing his favourable impression is largely a function of everything in Europe being half the price of the USA these days. But still. For the awareness of the site
And American airports on the whole are utter shit (unless you do the private lounges). I can't think of a really good one. The best major Northern American is IMO Vancouver.
On the USA, I may need to go to Salt Lake City for a research meeting next year. Any top tips on where to see if I can wrangle a day off?
Hire a car and drive fast fast fast to Moab and just LOOK
Or go to see Spiral Jetty on the Great Salt Lake
Either will give you world class experiences you will never forget
I am not keen on the 4 day week. Personally I have a 5 day week but have the ability to get stuff done occasionally in the working day, life admin etc. If a report or some other urgent task needs to be done I will put in the extra time, evenings, early mornings, weekends etc. I keep on top of all my work and speak to my manager for about 20 minutes every other week. I think on average it is about 36 hours a week in front of the computer but I am thinking about work for a lot more than that. I go in to the office 1 day a week, potentially rising to 2 due to corporate changes but I don't feel any pressure to go to the office.
A lot of people I have worked with have changed to a 4 day week under "compressed hours" but if they take it seriously they keep missing out on important meetings.
One thing that I keep noticing is people are doing school runs etc and childcare while they are working and this is affecting their attentiveness, if not necessarily their performance. It seems to be permitted, I think it is just a case that the organisation has no choice, people aren't paid enough to pay for childcare as well, even on £50k+ (in the south east).
this is what I dont like. thinking about work after work
One more thing to keep your eye on for American elections: The average price of of a gallon of gasoline has been falling: https://gasprices.aaa.com/
For many American voters this is a more significant measure of inflation than the CPI, psychologically anyway. (A local TV station belonging to the Salem group was highlighting the gasoline price every day. They stopped a few weeks ago. It isn't hard to figure out why.)
As I was watching the NFL game (Seattle versus Denver), I saw my first national TV spot of the year, Kamala Harris explaining how she is going to cut taxes for the middle classes -- and make the rich pay their fair share. (She and Elon Musk may define "fair", in that context, somewhat differently.)
I'd give the commercial an average grade, at best.
(In case the BBC isn't carrying it -- as they should -- I'll just say that at half time Denver leads in what has been, so far, a vey odd game.)
Spectator cover piece on Ed Milliband's disastrous energy policy, that is set to fail even if everything goes completely according to plan.
Even if distribution were viable, wind and solar energy is not as cheap as it is often made out. You just have to look at Denmark, which has the world’s highest proportion of energy generated from wind and some of the highest electricity prices. Until recently, Miliband continued to assert that wind energy was ‘nine times cheaper’ than gas-powered electricity. His claim was based on a false comparison between the long-term guaranteed prices offered to the operators of wind and solar plants with the short-term prices paid to owners of gas power stations at the height of the energy spike in August 2022.
Since then, gas prices have plummeted, while the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared. When interest rates and commodity prices were low, the cost of building wind turbines fell to the point in 2022 when wind farm operators were prepared to sign contracts to produce power at £37 per megawatt-hour. By September 2023, when the government held an auction for offshore wind – setting a maximum price of £44 per megawatt-hour – it received not a single bid. The dream of being able to buy low-price wind power was shattered.
In order to attract interest for the latest auction, Rishi Sunak’s government pushed the maximum bid price to £73 per MWh. When the results were announced this week, the successful offshore wind projects had apparently bid between £54 and £58 per megawatt-hour – which looks like reasonable value until you realise that all these figures are still somewhat randomly set at 2012 prices and have not been adjusted for inflation. The actual prices charged by the energy companies do increase with inflation, however, and in reality this year’s successful bids are between £75 and £82 per megawatt-hour.
Barty Bobbins and I have had many arguments featuring his complete pish that wind energy is cheaper than gas. It's about time we faced up to the complete absence of an energy policy we have in this country. That starts with sacking this useless chump (Ed Milliband not Barty) and putting someone competent in place.
"Since then, gas prices have plummeted, while the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared"
I would like to see the data on the soaring cost of solar panels.
Spectator cover piece on Ed Milliband's disastrous energy policy, that is set to fail even if everything goes completely according to plan.
Even if distribution were viable, wind and solar energy is not as cheap as it is often made out. You just have to look at Denmark, which has the world’s highest proportion of energy generated from wind and some of the highest electricity prices. Until recently, Miliband continued to assert that wind energy was ‘nine times cheaper’ than gas-powered electricity. His claim was based on a false comparison between the long-term guaranteed prices offered to the operators of wind and solar plants with the short-term prices paid to owners of gas power stations at the height of the energy spike in August 2022.
Since then, gas prices have plummeted, while the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared. When interest rates and commodity prices were low, the cost of building wind turbines fell to the point in 2022 when wind farm operators were prepared to sign contracts to produce power at £37 per megawatt-hour. By September 2023, when the government held an auction for offshore wind – setting a maximum price of £44 per megawatt-hour – it received not a single bid. The dream of being able to buy low-price wind power was shattered.
In order to attract interest for the latest auction, Rishi Sunak’s government pushed the maximum bid price to £73 per MWh. When the results were announced this week, the successful offshore wind projects had apparently bid between £54 and £58 per megawatt-hour – which looks like reasonable value until you realise that all these figures are still somewhat randomly set at 2012 prices and have not been adjusted for inflation. The actual prices charged by the energy companies do increase with inflation, however, and in reality this year’s successful bids are between £75 and £82 per megawatt-hour.
Barty Bobbins and I have had many arguments featuring his complete pish that wind energy is cheaper than gas. It's about time we faced up to the complete absence of an energy policy we have in this country. That starts with sacking this useless chump (Ed Milliband not Barty) and putting someone competent in place.
Current wholesale electricity prices are about £90 per MWh so £82 would be less than that. Bear in mind: the £90 includes actually cheap previously agreed offshore wind prices as well as more expensive gas generation. Gas is always added last to the supply mix after cheaper wind has been maxed out. If decisions hadn't been made to develop renewable supplies earlier the energy crisis would have been much worse.
As I was watching the NFL game (Seattle versus Denver), I saw my first national TV spot of the year, Kamala Harris explaining how she is going to cut taxes for the middle classes -- and make the rich pay their fair share. (She and Elon Musk may define "fair", in that context, somewhat differently.)
I'd give the commercial an average grade, at best.
(In case the BBC isn't carrying it -- as they should -- I'll just say that at half time Denver leads in what has been, so far, a vey odd game.)
I’m sitting in the hotel lounge enjoying happy hour (having got soaked hiking on a forecast-sunny day) and it’s on the big screen. Funny sport, really. Whoever is in blue (presumably they expect viewers to know, as the TV doesnt display the names) is well ahead; hopefully a good sign for November.
Apparently the article itself was from a long time ago, lord knows why it got attention now, but it does look like something that would have emerged in the last few years it's so silly. I actually don't remember either of my parents reading to me as a child, though perhaps it was not necessary since they both read quite a bit themselves and that encouraged me to be an early reader in any case.
I read to both my kids well into their teens. I managed to do it even when away offshore. It became such a feature on a couple of the rigs when I was using the Company Man's office (as it had the only reliable phone connection) that, if I missed the 7pm schedule, I would get a tannoy from the Company Man to come up and make the call. I had quite an audience of supervisors listening to me reading Famous Five and Artemis Fowl.
The fever tree bar is actually very nice, albeit wildly overpriced. But aren’t they always
Next to me was a youngish American (who seemed quite an experienced traveller) saying to someone on his phone: “ah I’m good. I’m good. I’ve got a gin and tonic as big as my head. Europeans really how how to do airports”
I’m guessing his favourable impression is largely a function of everything in Europe being half the price of the USA these days. But still. For the awareness of the site
And American airports on the whole are utter shit (unless you do the private lounges). I can't think of a really good one. The best major Northern American is IMO Vancouver.
They are pretty crap. Sometimes impressive architecturally, but even then horribly expensive
European airports are usually superior, and cheaper. Tho the fast food in the USA is maybe more varied, and sometimes they nail it
CDG is the exception. One of the dirtiest, most uncomfortable and poorly designed airports I have ever had the misfortune to travel through. Strangely Orly was much nicer.
The fever tree bar is actually very nice, albeit wildly overpriced. But aren’t they always
Next to me was a youngish American (who seemed quite an experienced traveller) saying to someone on his phone: “ah I’m good. I’m good. I’ve got a gin and tonic as big as my head. Europeans really how how to do airports”
I’m guessing his favourable impression is largely a function of everything in Europe being half the price of the USA these days. But still. For the awareness of the site
And American airports on the whole are utter shit (unless you do the private lounges). I can't think of a really good one. The best major Northern American is IMO Vancouver.
They are pretty crap. Sometimes impressive architecturally, but even then horribly expensive
European airports are usually superior, and cheaper. Tho the fast food in the USA is maybe more varied, and sometimes they nail it
CDG is the exception. One of the dirtiest, most uncomfortable and poorly designed airports I have ever had the misfortune to travel through. Strangely Orly was much nicer.
I flew into Chek Lak Kop the day after it opened for the first time and it was understandably pristine being brand new. Interesting experience but not as interesting as flying Kai Tak between the skyscrapers previously.
A week later we flew out again and it was utterly filthy. Only a week old by that point but it was like they'd forgotten to hire any cleaners when they opened, it was really dirty already.
The fever tree bar is actually very nice, albeit wildly overpriced. But aren’t they always
Next to me was a youngish American (who seemed quite an experienced traveller) saying to someone on his phone: “ah I’m good. I’m good. I’ve got a gin and tonic as big as my head. Europeans really how how to do airports”
I’m guessing his favourable impression is largely a function of everything in Europe being half the price of the USA these days. But still. For the awareness of the site
And American airports on the whole are utter shit (unless you do the private lounges). I can't think of a really good one. The best major Northern American is IMO Vancouver.
They are pretty crap. Sometimes impressive architecturally, but even then horribly expensive
European airports are usually superior, and cheaper. Tho the fast food in the USA is maybe more varied, and sometimes they nail it
CDG is the exception. One of the dirtiest, most uncomfortable and poorly designed airports I have ever had the misfortune to travel through. Strangely Orly was much nicer.
TBF, you wouldn't expect an airport named after the awkward old bastard to be a barrel of fun.
I would make Harris the narrow favorite in both Wisconsin and Michigan.
It's interesting that Arizona is seen as the most likely to be won by Trump; I'm not so sure given (a) Trump won't benefit from a popular Senate candidate and (b) the abortion referendum.
I would make Harris the narrow favorite in both Wisconsin and Michigan.
It's interesting that Arizona is seen as the most likely to be won by Trump; I'm not so sure given (a) Trump won't benefit from a popular Senate candidate and (b) the abortion referendum.
@rcs1000, The "probabilities" Nate speaks of are the variability of the model, not the probability of occurence. We know his model has been wrong in the past and I'm not sure the changes he has made since has made things better. If behavior has changed since Biden's election or exit and Nate has not captured this then his model will be wrong.
This sounds like the experiment that Matthew Syed was talking about in his Sunday Times column.
"Abstract
The honesty of people in an online panel from 15 countries was measured in two experiments: reporting a coin flip with a reward for “heads”, and an online quiz with the possibility of cheating. There are large differences in honesty across countries. Average honesty is positively correlated with per capita GDP. This is driven mostly by GDP differences arising before 1950, rather than by GDP growth since 1950. A country's average honesty correlates with the proportion of its population that is Protestant. These facts suggest a long-run relationship between honesty and economic development. The experiment also elicited participants’ expectations about different countries’ levels of honesty. Expectations were not correlated with reality. Instead they appear to be driven by cognitive biases, including self-projection."
I would make Harris the narrow favorite in both Wisconsin and Michigan.
It's interesting that Arizona is seen as the most likely to be won by Trump; I'm not so sure given (a) Trump won't benefit from a popular Senate candidate and (b) the abortion referendum.
It's going to be a really difficult task accurately predicting this election, to state the obvious.
My forecast from last time was Biden 279, Trump 259. Looks like it was a case of expecting Trump to win Arizona and Georgia. Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes and Georgia by 11,779.
Voters believe James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat are the Conservative leadership candidates most likely to make a good prime minister, although both are still trailing behind Keir Starmer, polling has shown as another crunch week in the campaign begins.
Has anyone else ever sat next to someone at a random bar and thought “that must be so-and-so from PB”?
I wonder if I once met @rcs1000 at the Groucho: a quivering, drug-addled transgender wreck desperately trying to sell car park software to Damien Hirst
I know someone who retired early on the back of selling a warehouse on a Gloucestershire industrial estate to Hirst. Hirst makes a fabulous living knocking out life size copies of his most notable works to Chinese trillionaires and needed a place close to home to knock them out, as it were.
Sitting at the Fever Tree cocktail bar in Edinburgh Airport. Right next to me is a slight, and slightly elderly man, with a cultured Scottish accent, a neat corduroy jacket, and a genuinely cool Homburg hat
Or at least, this is how I like to imagine him. Kind of a short ageing very polite Scottish intellectual Elvis Costello, with great taste in hats
I’m over 6 ft but I guess there are worse doppelgängers to be attached to. As it happens I’m currently stretching a Borsalino to fit my enormous napper for a forthcoming trip to Berlin.
I’d only hang around in Edinburgh Airport under duress, and need several drinks.
Why back in 1962 my to be wife and I went for evening meals there and to be honest we enjoyed them and the restaurant
It was probably much nicer then, or at least more interesting.
In 1962 air travel was a luxury thing. So standards of catering and ancillary services matched that.
Today, airports cater for people who need to drink 7 pints of crap lager at 6:30am before they get their flight.
I don't know why air travel can't be just as luxurious today as it was then.
It can be. It you are willing to pay for it.
But the largest number of customers prefer cheap flights
In my last two holidays I worked every day (I'm working now!) and only work a third-day on Saturday so I can food shop. I don't know how a "working week" works in the era of WFH and email.
From someone who burned-out hard doing much the same thing - I'd advise you to stop doing that.
You know, this is a really interesting debate to me and actually I think the single biggest issue our “always on” work culture faces.
The key thing in all this is to set your own boundaries, because very rarely will someone else set them for you. Having the confidence to do so is the hardest part of the modern workplace, in my opinion. And also realising that it is not a race to work the longest. Some people cope better with being switched on for longer, but longer hours does not always equal higher quality work. It’s a balancing act and everyone has their own place on that spectrum.
One other problem with globalisation is being expected on remote meetings at ungodly hours around the world. I should imagine WFH nomads find this too, dialling in from Thai beaches or Edinburgh airport oyster bars. California meeting hours drove a London-based boss of mine to quit.
The fever tree bar is actually very nice, albeit wildly overpriced. But aren’t they always
Next to me was a youngish American (who seemed quite an experienced traveller) saying to someone on his phone: “ah I’m good. I’m good. I’ve got a gin and tonic as big as my head. Europeans really how how to do airports”
I’m guessing his favourable impression is largely a function of everything in Europe being half the price of the USA these days. But still. For the awareness of the site
And American airports on the whole are utter shit (unless you do the private lounges). I can't think of a really good one. The best major Northern American is IMO Vancouver.
The lounges are shit to. Although the Chelsea lounge at JFK is decent
The fever tree bar is actually very nice, albeit wildly overpriced. But aren’t they always
Next to me was a youngish American (who seemed quite an experienced traveller) saying to someone on his phone: “ah I’m good. I’m good. I’ve got a gin and tonic as big as my head. Europeans really how how to do airports”
I’m guessing his favourable impression is largely a function of everything in Europe being half the price of the USA these days. But still. For the awareness of the site
And American airports on the whole are utter shit (unless you do the private lounges). I can't think of a really good one. The best major Northern American is IMO Vancouver.
On the USA, I may need to go to Salt Lake City for a research meeting next year. Any top tips on where to see if I can wrangle a day off?
Unless you get the direct flight, which is not every day, you'll be going via Denver. If you book the denver to salt lake flights separately, you could have a night in denver on the way, and take the California Zepher from Salt lake to Denver on the way back. You'd want to pay up for a cabin though - it's overnight. And make sure there is slack. Lovely bit of track though.
Alternatively, if you want a low key rural town to drive to from Salt Lake, Helper UT is only an hour and a half drive.
Don't, whatever you do, think of going to Green River UT. Absolute shithole. Scary at night, even in the hotel.
The fever tree bar is actually very nice, albeit wildly overpriced. But aren’t they always
Next to me was a youngish American (who seemed quite an experienced traveller) saying to someone on his phone: “ah I’m good. I’m good. I’ve got a gin and tonic as big as my head. Europeans really how how to do airports”
I’m guessing his favourable impression is largely a function of everything in Europe being half the price of the USA these days. But still. For the awareness of the site
And American airports on the whole are utter shit (unless you do the private lounges). I can't think of a really good one. The best major Northern American is IMO Vancouver.
On the USA, I may need to go to Salt Lake City for a research meeting next year. Any top tips on where to see if I can wrangle a day off?
Unless you get the direct flight, which is not every day, you'll be going via Denver. If you book the denver to salt lake flights separately, you could have a night in denver on the way, and take the California Zepher from Salt lake to Denver on the way back. You'd want to pay up for a cabin though - it's overnight. And make sure there is slack. Lovely bit of track though.
Alternatively, if you want a low key rural town to drive to from Salt Lake, Helper UT is only an hour and a half drive.
Don't, whatever you do, think of going to Green River UT. Absolute shithole. Scary at night, even in the hotel.
How about Park City?
That can get pretty scary too, especially when the Sundance festival is on.
This sounds like the experiment that Matthew Syed was talking about in his Sunday Times column.
"Abstract
The honesty of people in an online panel from 15 countries was measured in two experiments: reporting a coin flip with a reward for “heads”, and an online quiz with the possibility of cheating. There are large differences in honesty across countries. Average honesty is positively correlated with per capita GDP. This is driven mostly by GDP differences arising before 1950, rather than by GDP growth since 1950. A country's average honesty correlates with the proportion of its population that is Protestant. These facts suggest a long-run relationship between honesty and economic development. The experiment also elicited participants’ expectations about different countries’ levels of honesty. Expectations were not correlated with reality. Instead they appear to be driven by cognitive biases, including self-projection."
30 seconds' thought makes me wonder if the investigator was not simply trawling for any correlation at all: GDP, GDP before 1950, Protestantism. Too often, behavioural economics is social psychology done badly.
Spectator cover piece on Ed Milliband's disastrous energy policy, that is set to fail even if everything goes completely according to plan.
Even if distribution were viable, wind and solar energy is not as cheap as it is often made out. You just have to look at Denmark, which has the world’s highest proportion of energy generated from wind and some of the highest electricity prices. Until recently, Miliband continued to assert that wind energy was ‘nine times cheaper’ than gas-powered electricity. His claim was based on a false comparison between the long-term guaranteed prices offered to the operators of wind and solar plants with the short-term prices paid to owners of gas power stations at the height of the energy spike in August 2022.
Since then, gas prices have plummeted, while the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared. When interest rates and commodity prices were low, the cost of building wind turbines fell to the point in 2022 when wind farm operators were prepared to sign contracts to produce power at £37 per megawatt-hour. By September 2023, when the government held an auction for offshore wind – setting a maximum price of £44 per megawatt-hour – it received not a single bid. The dream of being able to buy low-price wind power was shattered.
In order to attract interest for the latest auction, Rishi Sunak’s government pushed the maximum bid price to £73 per MWh. When the results were announced this week, the successful offshore wind projects had apparently bid between £54 and £58 per megawatt-hour – which looks like reasonable value until you realise that all these figures are still somewhat randomly set at 2012 prices and have not been adjusted for inflation. The actual prices charged by the energy companies do increase with inflation, however, and in reality this year’s successful bids are between £75 and £82 per megawatt-hour.
Barty Bobbins and I have had many arguments featuring his complete pish that wind energy is cheaper than gas. It's about time we faced up to the complete absence of an energy policy we have in this country. That starts with sacking this useless chump (Ed Milliband not Barty) and putting someone competent in place.
"Since then, gas prices have plummeted, while the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared"
I would like to see the data on the soaring cost of solar panels.
Given that that isn't what the sentence says, I don’t see that that's likely.
I would make Harris the narrow favorite in both Wisconsin and Michigan.
It's interesting that Arizona is seen as the most likely to be won by Trump; I'm not so sure given (a) Trump won't benefit from a popular Senate candidate and (b) the abortion referendum.
It's going to be a really difficult task accurately predicting this election, to state the obvious.
My forecast from last time was Biden 279, Trump 259. Looks like it was a case of expecting Trump to win Arizona and Georgia. Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes and Georgia by 11,779.
"Are these calculated probabilities any good? Right now, we simply don’t know. In a new paper I’ve co-authored with the University of Pennsylvania’s Dean Knox and Dartmouth College’s Sean Westwood, we show that even under assumptions very favorable to forecasters, we wouldn’t know the answer for decades, centuries, or maybe even millenia."
In the last couple of weeks, I've heard two people I know (usually non-political) criticise a member of the government.
It has not been SKS; Reeves or Rayner;
It has been Miliband.
Both talked about rising energy prices (are they?); whilst one said something like: "He was defeated, why doesn't he just go away?", and another talked about the removal of pensioners' fuel credit.
Just another anecdote, but something I found interesting.
I would make Harris the narrow favorite in both Wisconsin and Michigan.
It's interesting that Arizona is seen as the most likely to be won by Trump; I'm not so sure given (a) Trump won't benefit from a popular Senate candidate and (b) the abortion referendum.
It's going to be a really difficult task accurately predicting this election, to state the obvious.
My forecast from last time was Biden 279, Trump 259. Looks like it was a case of expecting Trump to win Arizona and Georgia. Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes and Georgia by 11,779.
"Are these calculated probabilities any good? Right now, we simply don’t know. In a new paper I’ve co-authored with the University of Pennsylvania’s Dean Knox and Dartmouth College’s Sean Westwood, we show that even under assumptions very favorable to forecasters, we wouldn’t know the answer for decades, centuries, or maybe even millenia."
Otoh bookies will pay out on the sixth of November.
In my last two holidays I worked every day (I'm working now!) and only work a third-day on Saturday so I can food shop. I don't know how a "working week" works in the era of WFH and email.
From someone who burned-out hard doing much the same thing - I'd advise you to stop doing that.
If you’re unlucky, your life is controlled by a talentless boss who expects you to work an eight day week because, having no friends, and family that despise and ignore him, he has no interests outside work, and assumes everyone is like him (or her).
Overall we should be looking at working fewer hours as standard. It's been a long, long time since the last step change in this area (when did the 5.5 day week with a half-day on Saturday before the footie cease to be 'normal'? Early 1960s?)
But in terms of individual working patterns, I think any movement towards flexibility is a good thing. Some people are more motivated and productive doing a four day week of longer days. Others would probably quite like a seven day week doing a little bit each day. Some people like to be able to 'switch off' when they leave the office or go on holiday. Others feel more empowered keeping in touch and dealing with stuff when it comes up, regardless of the time.
There really is no one-size-fits-all and I think a lot of the uninspiring overall productivity levels we've had for years are down to a lot of people feeling pretty miserable and unmotivated because they're forced into working routines that don't serve them particularly well.
Whenever I've managed a team I've tried to offer as much flexibility as is practically possible (and extend recruitment into getting different types of people on board wherever I can to cover all bases).
When running an IT support team that had to cover 365 days a year, I always found that recruiting a mix of different religions was key to harmony. Everyone could take off their own religious holidays, and work on the others. I didn’t care about working Eid, and the muslims didn’t care about working Christmas.
New Year’s Day was the one common holiday, and we’d pay volunteers double time for that. Perhaps I should have found someone Chinese or Russian.
In the last couple of weeks, I've heard two people I know (usually non-political) criticise a member of the government.
It has not been SKS; Reeves or Rayner;
It has been Miliband.
Both talked about rising energy prices (are they?); whilst one said something like: "He was defeated, why doesn't he just go away?", and another talked about the removal of pensioners' fuel credit.
Just another anecdote, but something I found interesting.
In the last couple of weeks, I've heard two people I know (usually non-political) criticise a member of the government.
It has not been SKS; Reeves or Rayner;
It has been Miliband.
Both talked about rising energy prices (are they?); whilst one said something like: "He was defeated, why doesn't he just go away?", and another talked about the removal of pensioners' fuel credit.
Just another anecdote, but something I found interesting.
In my last two holidays I worked every day (I'm working now!) and only work a third-day on Saturday so I can food shop. I don't know how a "working week" works in the era of WFH and email.
From someone who burned-out hard doing much the same thing - I'd advise you to stop doing that.
If you’re unlucky, your life is controlled by a talentless boss who expects you to work an eight day week because, having no friends, and family that despise and ignore him, he has no interests outside work, and assumes everyone is like him (or her).
Overall we should be looking at working fewer hours as standard. It's been a long, long time since the last step change in this area (when did the 5.5 day week with a half-day on Saturday before the footie cease to be 'normal'? Early 1960s?)
But in terms of individual working patterns, I think any movement towards flexibility is a good thing. Some people are more motivated and productive doing a four day week of longer days. Others would probably quite like a seven day week doing a little bit each day. Some people like to be able to 'switch off' when they leave the office or go on holiday. Others feel more empowered keeping in touch and dealing with stuff when it comes up, regardless of the time.
There really is no one-size-fits-all and I think a lot of the uninspiring overall productivity levels we've had for years are down to a lot of people feeling pretty miserable and unmotivated because they're forced into working routines that don't serve them particularly well.
Whenever I've managed a team I've tried to offer as much flexibility as is practically possible (and extend recruitment into getting different types of people on board wherever I can to cover all bases).
When running an IT support team that had to cover 365 days a year, I always found that recruiting a mix of different religions was key to harmony. Everyone could take off their own religious holidays, and work on the others. I didn’t care about working Eid, and the muslims didn’t care about working Christmas.
New Year’s Day was the one common holiday, and we’d pay volunteers double time for that. Perhaps I should have found someone Chinese or Russian.
Spectator cover piece on Ed Milliband's disastrous energy policy, that is set to fail even if everything goes completely according to plan.
Even if distribution were viable, wind and solar energy is not as cheap as it is often made out. You just have to look at Denmark, which has the world’s highest proportion of energy generated from wind and some of the highest electricity prices. Until recently, Miliband continued to assert that wind energy was ‘nine times cheaper’ than gas-powered electricity. His claim was based on a false comparison between the long-term guaranteed prices offered to the operators of wind and solar plants with the short-term prices paid to owners of gas power stations at the height of the energy spike in August 2022.
Since then, gas prices have plummeted, while the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared. When interest rates and commodity prices were low, the cost of building wind turbines fell to the point in 2022 when wind farm operators were prepared to sign contracts to produce power at £37 per megawatt-hour. By September 2023, when the government held an auction for offshore wind – setting a maximum price of £44 per megawatt-hour – it received not a single bid. The dream of being able to buy low-price wind power was shattered.
In order to attract interest for the latest auction, Rishi Sunak’s government pushed the maximum bid price to £73 per MWh. When the results were announced this week, the successful offshore wind projects had apparently bid between £54 and £58 per megawatt-hour – which looks like reasonable value until you realise that all these figures are still somewhat randomly set at 2012 prices and have not been adjusted for inflation. The actual prices charged by the energy companies do increase with inflation, however, and in reality this year’s successful bids are between £75 and £82 per megawatt-hour.
Barty Bobbins and I have had many arguments featuring his complete pish that wind energy is cheaper than gas. It's about time we faced up to the complete absence of an energy policy we have in this country. That starts with sacking this useless chump (Ed Milliband not Barty) and putting someone competent in place.
"Since then, gas prices have plummeted, while the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared"
I would like to see the data on the soaring cost of solar panels.
Given that that isn't what the sentence says, I don’t see that that's likely.
It says "the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared".
Here are the "ingredients" you will need to produce a solar plant:
Panels Inverters Cabling Land Labour (Oh and various bits of mounting kit. Total value: negligible.)
Panel prices have fallen very sharply (30+% in the last year). Inverter prices are down a little less. Copper prices (which are the biggest component in cabling) rose very sharply between March and May, but have since come down (albeit are still up 15% y-o-y).
So, how exactly, in your mind, has the cost of building a new solar plant soared?
Your total argument is based around a line by a journalist.
On this board, you have people who have worked in the extraction of oil and gas for decades (Richard Tyndall) , who have worked in the electric generating industry (Sandy Rentool) and who have financed energy projects worth tens of billions of dollars (me).
I've spent more time poring over bidding and capacity payments and transport costs than I have with my kids. (And don't accuse me of being some kind of gas hater, I made a bloody video about how great natural gas is as a generating source.)
But anyone who doesn't realize that the cost of new solar capacity is in free fall is simply engaged in reality denial.
Spectator cover piece on Ed Milliband's disastrous energy policy, that is set to fail even if everything goes completely according to plan.
Even if distribution were viable, wind and solar energy is not as cheap as it is often made out. You just have to look at Denmark, which has the world’s highest proportion of energy generated from wind and some of the highest electricity prices. Until recently, Miliband continued to assert that wind energy was ‘nine times cheaper’ than gas-powered electricity. His claim was based on a false comparison between the long-term guaranteed prices offered to the operators of wind and solar plants with the short-term prices paid to owners of gas power stations at the height of the energy spike in August 2022.
Since then, gas prices have plummeted, while the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared. When interest rates and commodity prices were low, the cost of building wind turbines fell to the point in 2022 when wind farm operators were prepared to sign contracts to produce power at £37 per megawatt-hour. By September 2023, when the government held an auction for offshore wind – setting a maximum price of £44 per megawatt-hour – it received not a single bid. The dream of being able to buy low-price wind power was shattered.
In order to attract interest for the latest auction, Rishi Sunak’s government pushed the maximum bid price to £73 per MWh. When the results were announced this week, the successful offshore wind projects had apparently bid between £54 and £58 per megawatt-hour – which looks like reasonable value until you realise that all these figures are still somewhat randomly set at 2012 prices and have not been adjusted for inflation. The actual prices charged by the energy companies do increase with inflation, however, and in reality this year’s successful bids are between £75 and £82 per megawatt-hour.
Barty Bobbins and I have had many arguments featuring his complete pish that wind energy is cheaper than gas. It's about time we faced up to the complete absence of an energy policy we have in this country. That starts with sacking this useless chump (Ed Milliband not Barty) and putting someone competent in place.
"Since then, gas prices have plummeted, while the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared"
I would like to see the data on the soaring cost of solar panels.
Given that that isn't what the sentence says, I don’t see that that's likely.
It says "the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared".
Here are the "ingredients" you will need to produce a solar plant:
Panels Inverters Cabling Land Labour (Oh and various bits of mounting kit. Total value: negligible.)
Panel prices have fallen very sharply (30+% in the last year). Inverter prices are down a little less. Copper prices (which are the biggest component in cabling) rose very sharply between March and May, but have since come down (albeit are still up 15% y-o-y).
So, how exactly, in your mind, has the cost of building a new solar plant soared?
Your total argument is based around a line by a journalist.
On this board, you have people who have worked in the extraction of oil and gas for decades (Richard Tyndall) , who have worked in the electric generating industry (Sandy Rentool) and who have financed energy projects worth tens of billions of dollars (me).
I've spent more time poring over bidding and capacity payments and transport costs than I have with my kids. (And don't accuse me of being some kind of gas hater, I made a bloody video about how great natural gas is as a generating source.)
But anyone who doesn't realize that the cost of new solar capacity is in free fall is simply engaged in reality denial.
Wouldn't rising copper prices be an issue for gas plants too, anyway?
In my last two holidays I worked every day (I'm working now!) and only work a third-day on Saturday so I can food shop. I don't know how a "working week" works in the era of WFH and email.
From someone who burned-out hard doing much the same thing - I'd advise you to stop doing that.
You know, this is a really interesting debate to me and actually I think the single biggest issue our “always on” work culture faces.
The key thing in all this is to set your own boundaries, because very rarely will someone else set them for you. Having the confidence to do so is the hardest part of the modern workplace, in my opinion. And also realising that it is not a race to work the longest. Some people cope better with being switched on for longer, but longer hours does not always equal higher quality work. It’s a balancing act and everyone has their own place on that spectrum.
One other problem with globalisation is being expected on remote meetings at ungodly hours around the world. I should imagine WFH nomads find this too, dialling in from Thai beaches or Edinburgh airport oyster bars. California meeting hours drove a London-based boss of mine to quit.
The trick is to understand who is calling into the meeting, and where they are (usually) located, then plan the time accordingly. People who only think about their own time zone annoy the hell out of everyone else in the company.
Worst was one vendor who was exactly 12 time zones away from me. We always had calls at 7:00 or 7:30, one of us would get up early and the other would miss happy hour.
In my last two holidays I worked every day (I'm working now!) and only work a third-day on Saturday so I can food shop. I don't know how a "working week" works in the era of WFH and email.
From someone who burned-out hard doing much the same thing - I'd advise you to stop doing that.
If you’re unlucky, your life is controlled by a talentless boss who expects you to work an eight day week because, having no friends, and family that despise and ignore him, he has no interests outside work, and assumes everyone is like him (or her).
Overall we should be looking at working fewer hours as standard. It's been a long, long time since the last step change in this area (when did the 5.5 day week with a half-day on Saturday before the footie cease to be 'normal'? Early 1960s?)
But in terms of individual working patterns, I think any movement towards flexibility is a good thing. Some people are more motivated and productive doing a four day week of longer days. Others would probably quite like a seven day week doing a little bit each day. Some people like to be able to 'switch off' when they leave the office or go on holiday. Others feel more empowered keeping in touch and dealing with stuff when it comes up, regardless of the time.
There really is no one-size-fits-all and I think a lot of the uninspiring overall productivity levels we've had for years are down to a lot of people feeling pretty miserable and unmotivated because they're forced into working routines that don't serve them particularly well.
Whenever I've managed a team I've tried to offer as much flexibility as is practically possible (and extend recruitment into getting different types of people on board wherever I can to cover all bases).
When running an IT support team that had to cover 365 days a year, I always found that recruiting a mix of different religions was key to harmony. Everyone could take off their own religious holidays, and work on the others. I didn’t care about working Eid, and the muslims didn’t care about working Christmas.
New Year’s Day was the one common holiday, and we’d pay volunteers double time for that. Perhaps I should have found someone Chinese or Russian.
Vietnamese.
Didn’t know they had a different new year, something learned for today!
We had various nationalities and denominations of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus, which was enough to cover most of the holidays bar a very rare clash of dates.
I would make Harris the narrow favorite in both Wisconsin and Michigan.
It's interesting that Arizona is seen as the most likely to be won by Trump; I'm not so sure given (a) Trump won't benefit from a popular Senate candidate and (b) the abortion referendum.
In my last two holidays I worked every day (I'm working now!) and only work a third-day on Saturday so I can food shop. I don't know how a "working week" works in the era of WFH and email.
From someone who burned-out hard doing much the same thing - I'd advise you to stop doing that.
If you’re unlucky, your life is controlled by a talentless boss who expects you to work an eight day week because, having no friends, and family that despise and ignore him, he has no interests outside work, and assumes everyone is like him (or her).
Overall we should be looking at working fewer hours as standard. It's been a long, long time since the last step change in this area (when did the 5.5 day week with a half-day on Saturday before the footie cease to be 'normal'? Early 1960s?)
But in terms of individual working patterns, I think any movement towards flexibility is a good thing. Some people are more motivated and productive doing a four day week of longer days. Others would probably quite like a seven day week doing a little bit each day. Some people like to be able to 'switch off' when they leave the office or go on holiday. Others feel more empowered keeping in touch and dealing with stuff when it comes up, regardless of the time.
There really is no one-size-fits-all and I think a lot of the uninspiring overall productivity levels we've had for years are down to a lot of people feeling pretty miserable and unmotivated because they're forced into working routines that don't serve them particularly well.
Whenever I've managed a team I've tried to offer as much flexibility as is practically possible (and extend recruitment into getting different types of people on board wherever I can to cover all bases).
When running an IT support team that had to cover 365 days a year, I always found that recruiting a mix of different religions was key to harmony. Everyone could take off their own religious holidays, and work on the others. I didn’t care about working Eid, and the muslims didn’t care about working Christmas.
New Year’s Day was the one common holiday, and we’d pay volunteers double time for that. Perhaps I should have found someone Chinese or Russian.
Vietnamese.
Didn’t know they had a different new year, something learned for today!
We had various nationalities and denominations of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus, which was enough to cover most of the holidays bar a very rare clash of dates.
In my last two holidays I worked every day (I'm working now!) and only work a third-day on Saturday so I can food shop. I don't know how a "working week" works in the era of WFH and email.
From someone who burned-out hard doing much the same thing - I'd advise you to stop doing that.
If you’re unlucky, your life is controlled by a talentless boss who expects you to work an eight day week because, having no friends, and family that despise and ignore him, he has no interests outside work, and assumes everyone is like him (or her).
Overall we should be looking at working fewer hours as standard. It's been a long, long time since the last step change in this area (when did the 5.5 day week with a half-day on Saturday before the footie cease to be 'normal'? Early 1960s?)
But in terms of individual working patterns, I think any movement towards flexibility is a good thing. Some people are more motivated and productive doing a four day week of longer days. Others would probably quite like a seven day week doing a little bit each day. Some people like to be able to 'switch off' when they leave the office or go on holiday. Others feel more empowered keeping in touch and dealing with stuff when it comes up, regardless of the time.
There really is no one-size-fits-all and I think a lot of the uninspiring overall productivity levels we've had for years are down to a lot of people feeling pretty miserable and unmotivated because they're forced into working routines that don't serve them particularly well.
Whenever I've managed a team I've tried to offer as much flexibility as is practically possible (and extend recruitment into getting different types of people on board wherever I can to cover all bases).
When running an IT support team that had to cover 365 days a year, I always found that recruiting a mix of different religions was key to harmony. Everyone could take off their own religious holidays, and work on the others. I didn’t care about working Eid, and the muslims didn’t care about working Christmas.
New Year’s Day was the one common holiday, and we’d pay volunteers double time for that. Perhaps I should have found someone Chinese or Russian.
Vietnamese.
Didn’t know they had a different new year, something learned for today!
We had various nationalities and denominations of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus, which was enough to cover most of the holidays bar a very rare clash of dates.
You will have heard of the Chinese New Year. Many countries in that part of the world celebrate the lunar new year.
In my last two holidays I worked every day (I'm working now!) and only work a third-day on Saturday so I can food shop. I don't know how a "working week" works in the era of WFH and email.
From someone who burned-out hard doing much the same thing - I'd advise you to stop doing that.
If you’re unlucky, your life is controlled by a talentless boss who expects you to work an eight day week because, having no friends, and family that despise and ignore him, he has no interests outside work, and assumes everyone is like him (or her).
Overall we should be looking at working fewer hours as standard. It's been a long, long time since the last step change in this area (when did the 5.5 day week with a half-day on Saturday before the footie cease to be 'normal'? Early 1960s?)
But in terms of individual working patterns, I think any movement towards flexibility is a good thing. Some people are more motivated and productive doing a four day week of longer days. Others would probably quite like a seven day week doing a little bit each day. Some people like to be able to 'switch off' when they leave the office or go on holiday. Others feel more empowered keeping in touch and dealing with stuff when it comes up, regardless of the time.
There really is no one-size-fits-all and I think a lot of the uninspiring overall productivity levels we've had for years are down to a lot of people feeling pretty miserable and unmotivated because they're forced into working routines that don't serve them particularly well.
Whenever I've managed a team I've tried to offer as much flexibility as is practically possible (and extend recruitment into getting different types of people on board wherever I can to cover all bases).
When running an IT support team that had to cover 365 days a year, I always found that recruiting a mix of different religions was key to harmony. Everyone could take off their own religious holidays, and work on the others. I didn’t care about working Eid, and the muslims didn’t care about working Christmas.
New Year’s Day was the one common holiday, and we’d pay volunteers double time for that. Perhaps I should have found someone Chinese or Russian.
Vietnamese.
Didn’t know they had a different new year, something learned for today!
We had various nationalities and denominations of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus, which was enough to cover most of the holidays bar a very rare clash of dates.
You will have heard of the Chinese New Year. Many countries in that part of the world celebrate the lunar new year.
Yes Chinese I know, and Orthodox which is a couple of weeks later than usual. Vietnamese is the same as the Chinese one?
In my last two holidays I worked every day (I'm working now!) and only work a third-day on Saturday so I can food shop. I don't know how a "working week" works in the era of WFH and email.
From someone who burned-out hard doing much the same thing - I'd advise you to stop doing that.
You know, this is a really interesting debate to me and actually I think the single biggest issue our “always on” work culture faces.
The key thing in all this is to set your own boundaries, because very rarely will someone else set them for you. Having the confidence to do so is the hardest part of the modern workplace, in my opinion. And also realising that it is not a race to work the longest. Some people cope better with being switched on for longer, but longer hours does not always equal higher quality work. It’s a balancing act and everyone has their own place on that spectrum.
One other problem with globalisation is being expected on remote meetings at ungodly hours around the world. I should imagine WFH nomads find this too, dialling in from Thai beaches or Edinburgh airport oyster bars. California meeting hours drove a London-based boss of mine to quit.
The trick is to understand who is calling into the meeting, and where they are (usually) located, then plan the time accordingly. People who only think about their own time zone annoy the hell out of everyone else in the company.
Worst was one vendor who was exactly 12 time zones away from me. We always had calls at 7:00 or 7:30, one of us would get up early and the other would miss happy hour.
Bah. I once spent months working on a project for an American client who was working with a Japanese firm. I'd be up early (*) to talk to the Japanese, which was always a pleasure, and then the Yanks would schedule a meeting for dead o'clock in the evening. Which was much less of a pleasure...
Small-team projects can be intense fun; you get to wear many hats, and the feeling of success when you ship is immense. But some aspects are less fun.
(*) No probs for me; I've aways been an early riser.
In the last couple of weeks, I've heard two people I know (usually non-political) criticise a member of the government.
It has not been SKS; Reeves or Rayner;
It has been Miliband.
Both talked about rising energy prices (are they?); whilst one said something like: "He was defeated, why doesn't he just go away?", and another talked about the removal of pensioners' fuel credit.
Just another anecdote, but something I found interesting.
Of course they are. Total pile-ons are what happens on TwiX.
There is definitely a huge amount of online pressure on Labour at the moment. but it's important to emphasise that this is coming from the left.
For many, high taxation and the universal provision of services and welfare is what Labour should be all about. That Labour are actually cutting spending on richer people is not in line with that view.
While I'm not generally a fan of universal provision - more of a safety net advocate - there is certainly a risk here for Labour. They will run into the same problem a the SNP, in that people are tolerant of high tax rates if middle class services like university tuition, dental care etc etc are in place. I think that perceived social contract could break down.
Sitting at the Fever Tree cocktail bar in Edinburgh Airport. Right next to me is a slight, and slightly elderly man, with a cultured Scottish accent, a neat corduroy jacket, and a genuinely cool Homburg hat
Or at least, this is how I like to imagine him. Kind of a short ageing very polite Scottish intellectual Elvis Costello, with great taste in hats
I’m over 6 ft but I guess there are worse doppelgängers to be attached to. As it happens I’m currently stretching a Borsalino to fit my enormous napper for a forthcoming trip to Berlin.
I’d only hang around in Edinburgh Airport under duress, and need several drinks.
Why back in 1962 my to be wife and I went for evening meals there and to be honest we enjoyed them and the restaurant
It was probably much nicer then, or at least more interesting.
In 1962 air travel was a luxury thing. So standards of catering and ancillary services matched that.
Today, airports cater for people who need to drink 7 pints of crap lager at 6:30am before they get their flight.
I don't know why air travel can't be just as luxurious today as it was then.
Too many chavs fly now, in those days they went to the seaside and rode donkeys, now they go to Spain for chips and eggs and sunburn
Spectator cover piece on Ed Milliband's disastrous energy policy, that is set to fail even if everything goes completely according to plan.
Even if distribution were viable, wind and solar energy is not as cheap as it is often made out. You just have to look at Denmark, which has the world’s highest proportion of energy generated from wind and some of the highest electricity prices. Until recently, Miliband continued to assert that wind energy was ‘nine times cheaper’ than gas-powered electricity. His claim was based on a false comparison between the long-term guaranteed prices offered to the operators of wind and solar plants with the short-term prices paid to owners of gas power stations at the height of the energy spike in August 2022.
Since then, gas prices have plummeted, while the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared. When interest rates and commodity prices were low, the cost of building wind turbines fell to the point in 2022 when wind farm operators were prepared to sign contracts to produce power at £37 per megawatt-hour. By September 2023, when the government held an auction for offshore wind – setting a maximum price of £44 per megawatt-hour – it received not a single bid. The dream of being able to buy low-price wind power was shattered.
In order to attract interest for the latest auction, Rishi Sunak’s government pushed the maximum bid price to £73 per MWh. When the results were announced this week, the successful offshore wind projects had apparently bid between £54 and £58 per megawatt-hour – which looks like reasonable value until you realise that all these figures are still somewhat randomly set at 2012 prices and have not been adjusted for inflation. The actual prices charged by the energy companies do increase with inflation, however, and in reality this year’s successful bids are between £75 and £82 per megawatt-hour.
Barty Bobbins and I have had many arguments featuring his complete pish that wind energy is cheaper than gas. It's about time we faced up to the complete absence of an energy policy we have in this country. That starts with sacking this useless chump (Ed Milliband not Barty) and putting someone competent in place.
"Since then, gas prices have plummeted, while the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared"
I would like to see the data on the soaring cost of solar panels.
Given that that isn't what the sentence says, I don’t see that that's likely.
It says "the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared".
Here are the "ingredients" you will need to produce a solar plant:
Panels Inverters Cabling Land Labour (Oh and various bits of mounting kit. Total value: negligible.)
Panel prices have fallen very sharply (30+% in the last year). Inverter prices are down a little less. Copper prices (which are the biggest component in cabling) rose very sharply between March and May, but have since come down (albeit are still up 15% y-o-y).
So, how exactly, in your mind, has the cost of building a new solar plant soared?
Your total argument is based around a line by a journalist.
On this board, you have people who have worked in the extraction of oil and gas for decades (Richard Tyndall) , who have worked in the electric generating industry (Sandy Rentool) and who have financed energy projects worth tens of billions of dollars (me).
I've spent more time poring over bidding and capacity payments and transport costs than I have with my kids. (And don't accuse me of being some kind of gas hater, I made a bloody video about how great natural gas is as a generating source.)
But anyone who doesn't realize that the cost of new solar capacity is in free fall is simply engaged in reality denial.
What’s the split between input prices and labour costs though? I’d have thought labour, planning, etc would be a big component
Spectator cover piece on Ed Milliband's disastrous energy policy, that is set to fail even if everything goes completely according to plan.
Even if distribution were viable, wind and solar energy is not as cheap as it is often made out. You just have to look at Denmark, which has the world’s highest proportion of energy generated from wind and some of the highest electricity prices. Until recently, Miliband continued to assert that wind energy was ‘nine times cheaper’ than gas-powered electricity. His claim was based on a false comparison between the long-term guaranteed prices offered to the operators of wind and solar plants with the short-term prices paid to owners of gas power stations at the height of the energy spike in August 2022.
Since then, gas prices have plummeted, while the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared. When interest rates and commodity prices were low, the cost of building wind turbines fell to the point in 2022 when wind farm operators were prepared to sign contracts to produce power at £37 per megawatt-hour. By September 2023, when the government held an auction for offshore wind – setting a maximum price of £44 per megawatt-hour – it received not a single bid. The dream of being able to buy low-price wind power was shattered.
In order to attract interest for the latest auction, Rishi Sunak’s government pushed the maximum bid price to £73 per MWh. When the results were announced this week, the successful offshore wind projects had apparently bid between £54 and £58 per megawatt-hour – which looks like reasonable value until you realise that all these figures are still somewhat randomly set at 2012 prices and have not been adjusted for inflation. The actual prices charged by the energy companies do increase with inflation, however, and in reality this year’s successful bids are between £75 and £82 per megawatt-hour.
Barty Bobbins and I have had many arguments featuring his complete pish that wind energy is cheaper than gas. It's about time we faced up to the complete absence of an energy policy we have in this country. That starts with sacking this useless chump (Ed Milliband not Barty) and putting someone competent in place.
"Since then, gas prices have plummeted, while the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared"
I would like to see the data on the soaring cost of solar panels.
Given that that isn't what the sentence says, I don’t see that that's likely.
It says "the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared".
Here are the "ingredients" you will need to produce a solar plant:
Panels Inverters Cabling Land Labour (Oh and various bits of mounting kit. Total value: negligible.)
Panel prices have fallen very sharply (30+% in the last year). Inverter prices are down a little less. Copper prices (which are the biggest component in cabling) rose very sharply between March and May, but have since come down (albeit are still up 15% y-o-y).
So, how exactly, in your mind, has the cost of building a new solar plant soared?
Your total argument is based around a line by a journalist.
On this board, you have people who have worked in the extraction of oil and gas for decades (Richard Tyndall) , who have worked in the electric generating industry (Sandy Rentool) and who have financed energy projects worth tens of billions of dollars (me).
I've spent more time poring over bidding and capacity payments and transport costs than I have with my kids. (And don't accuse me of being some kind of gas hater, I made a bloody video about how great natural gas is as a generating source.)
But anyone who doesn't realize that the cost of new solar capacity is in free fall is simply engaged in reality denial.
Because the strike price for solar has been put up by 30%?
I am delighted to hear that they can be whacked up for less than nothing, but that isn't going to help British consumers or businesses, given the above. In fact I'd say it feeds in to the narrative that it's a total racket, wouldn't you say?
He was too rigid for a front bench position. There are positives to not being a blank, shapechanging political automaton, that did help him with many people, but he could never credibly present as flexible or willing to change his mind about anything in response to evidence (which is not to say he would never have tried) when the basis of his appeal was that of the person who had not changed his positions and was right all along.
In his own way, he was an empty vessel those who liked the idea of a left-wing government could project their views on to. Because unlike others on the far left he was always more of an empty vessel who spouted the vibesy stuff but didn't follow through to its logical conclusions and hard policy like politicians of a similar ilk who are far smarter but upset people by saying the quiet, nasty or unpopular bits out loud.
Think Galloway and his open support for dictators and religious fascists rather than Corbyn's suggestions that we're really the ones to blame for not peacefully inviting them in for a cuppa and giving them what they want. Or Abbott's more admirable but outspoken and occasionally narrow views on racism.
Hence how you end up with absurd positions like being a politician beloved of 'greens' who went on TV and announced he'd like to reopen coal mines. Or someone who is about as eurosceptic as Nigel Farage drawing support from young pro-Europeans.
Of course that's also the difference between the 2017 and 2019 result. In the case of the former he could still broadly maintain the line that was just a bit left of Ed Miliband if that's what you wanted, or a pre-Thatcher restoration, while more radical if that's what you liked. Helped by a more moderate manifesto even Corbyn-sceptics quite liked. You could keep to the vibesy idea he was with you on being anti-Brexit as opposed May, Salisbury hadn't happened, his failings on antisemitism weren't so obvious and toxic unless you were versed in his history.
By 2019 he had to pick a side on Brexit - or desperately try not to and upset part of his base. The consequences of his dangerous views on defence were made clear by his response to Salisbury, was personally implicated in numerous indefensible actions on antisemitism, and the huge manifesto commitments made clear that it wasn't just going to be a bit more public spending, but completely ignoring established treasury norms.
In my last two holidays I worked every day (I'm working now!) and only work a third-day on Saturday so I can food shop. I don't know how a "working week" works in the era of WFH and email.
From someone who burned-out hard doing much the same thing - I'd advise you to stop doing that.
You know, this is a really interesting debate to me and actually I think the single biggest issue our “always on” work culture faces.
The key thing in all this is to set your own boundaries, because very rarely will someone else set them for you. Having the confidence to do so is the hardest part of the modern workplace, in my opinion. And also realising that it is not a race to work the longest. Some people cope better with being switched on for longer, but longer hours does not always equal higher quality work. It’s a balancing act and everyone has their own place on that spectrum.
One other problem with globalisation is being expected on remote meetings at ungodly hours around the world. I should imagine WFH nomads find this too, dialling in from Thai beaches or Edinburgh airport oyster bars. California meeting hours drove a London-based boss of mine to quit.
The trick is to understand who is calling into the meeting, and where they are (usually) located, then plan the time accordingly. People who only think about their own time zone annoy the hell out of everyone else in the company.
Worst was one vendor who was exactly 12 time zones away from me. We always had calls at 7:00 or 7:30, one of us would get up early and the other would miss happy hour.
I once worked on a project where my client was in Melbourne/LA, the business in PA and the seller in France.
90 minute calls every week at 1am on a Monday morning really sets you up well for the next few days…
And then they tell you being called a liar counts as abusive in the study. In most cases its a statement of fact.
" At the time of the 2017 general election an Amnesty investigation found I got more online abuse than all the other women MPs put together."
From memory, that was an incredibly poor 'study'.
But at least the quote says: "women MPs" and not, unlike the Guardian at first, all MPs.
And why are Amnesty only interested in abuse against female MPs? Did they ever do a similar study for male MPs?
Diane Abbott misremembers. Her share of abuse was a mere 45 per cent, so that's all right then.
In the six weeks prior to 8 June, Diane Abbott received almost half or 45.14% of all abusive tweets against women MPs included in our study. For the total period of analysis between 1 January and 8 June she received 31.61% or almost one-third of all abusive tweets. Not only did she top the list of MPs for most abusive tweets but she received 10 times more abuse than any other woman MP in the run-up to the Election and 8 times more abuse than any other woman MP during the entire period of analysis. https://medium.com/@AmnestyInsights/unsocial-media-tracking-twitter-abuse-against-women-mps-fc28aeca498a
The study began as a hackathon with Accenture. Twitter refused access to their full data set. Now, as the Guardian notes:-
The University of Sheffield researchers were limited in their ability to track abuse against all politicians on X because after it was bought by Elon Musk, the platform revoked free access to its application programming interface (API). In 2023 Musk instigated a paid regime instead where equivalent data access starts at $42,000 (£33,000) a month.
In my last two holidays I worked every day (I'm working now!) and only work a third-day on Saturday so I can food shop. I don't know how a "working week" works in the era of WFH and email.
From someone who burned-out hard doing much the same thing - I'd advise you to stop doing that.
If you’re unlucky, your life is controlled by a talentless boss who expects you to work an eight day week because, having no friends, and family that despise and ignore him, he has no interests outside work, and assumes everyone is like him (or her).
Overall we should be looking at working fewer hours as standard. It's been a long, long time since the last step change in this area (when did the 5.5 day week with a half-day on Saturday before the footie cease to be 'normal'? Early 1960s?)
But in terms of individual working patterns, I think any movement towards flexibility is a good thing. Some people are more motivated and productive doing a four day week of longer days. Others would probably quite like a seven day week doing a little bit each day. Some people like to be able to 'switch off' when they leave the office or go on holiday. Others feel more empowered keeping in touch and dealing with stuff when it comes up, regardless of the time.
There really is no one-size-fits-all and I think a lot of the uninspiring overall productivity levels we've had for years are down to a lot of people feeling pretty miserable and unmotivated because they're forced into working routines that don't serve them particularly well.
Whenever I've managed a team I've tried to offer as much flexibility as is practically possible (and extend recruitment into getting different types of people on board wherever I can to cover all bases).
When running an IT support team that had to cover 365 days a year, I always found that recruiting a mix of different religions was key to harmony. Everyone could take off their own religious holidays, and work on the others. I didn’t care about working Eid, and the muslims didn’t care about working Christmas.
New Year’s Day was the one common holiday, and we’d pay volunteers double time for that. Perhaps I should have found someone Chinese or Russian.
Vietnamese.
Didn’t know they had a different new year, something learned for today!
We had various nationalities and denominations of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus, which was enough to cover most of the holidays bar a very rare clash of dates.
You will have heard of the Chinese New Year. Many countries in that part of the world celebrate the lunar new year.
Yes Chinese I know, and Orthodox which is a couple of weeks later than usual. Vietnamese is the same as the Chinese one?
When I was working, I often worked with foreign firms.
I loved working for/with the Japanese companies. German companies were a bit meh. Yank companies were sh*ts.
I'd describe it this way: with a Japanese company, you spend ages working out what is wanted, sign a contract, and they expect you to deliver to that contract. Any changes *they* want are paid for or, more often, shifted to a follow-up project.
With an American company, they decide they want something. They don't/refuse to give a firm specification, then spend the entire project adding feature creep. From my perspective, it led to lots of wasted work and exasperation as they would change things.
Apple are different (and worse...) than the usual Yank company...
The fever tree bar is actually very nice, albeit wildly overpriced. But aren’t they always
Next to me was a youngish American (who seemed quite an experienced traveller) saying to someone on his phone: “ah I’m good. I’m good. I’ve got a gin and tonic as big as my head. Europeans really how how to do airports”
I’m guessing his favourable impression is largely a function of everything in Europe being half the price of the USA these days. But still. For the awareness of the site
And American airports on the whole are utter shit (unless you do the private lounges). I can't think of a really good one. The best major Northern American is IMO Vancouver.
On the USA, I may need to go to Salt Lake City for a research meeting next year. Any top tips on where to see if I can wrangle a day off?
Hire a car and drive fast fast fast to Moab and just LOOK
Or go to see Spiral Jetty on the Great Salt Lake
Either will give you world class experiences you will never forget
One of my favourite Youtube channels is a guy who runs a car towing company - in the middle of nowhere, Southern Utah.
He sees plenty of tourists getting stuck in unusual places, and people who came to the area to go off-roading in the sand or on the rocks, who run out of luck or talent and need rescuing, often miles from where your regular towing company would be able to reach, so he’s engineered himself a fleet of offroad recovery vehicles.
He was too rigid for a front bench position. There are positives to not being a blank, shapechanging political automaton, that did help him with many people, but he could never credibly present as flexible or willing to change his mind about anything in response to evidence (which is not to say he would never have tried) when the basis of his appeal was that of the person who had not changed his positions and was right all along.
In his own way, he was an empty vessel those who liked the idea of a left-wing government could project their views on to. Because unlike others on the far left he was always more of an empty vessel who spouted the vibesy stuff but didn't follow through to its logical conclusions and hard policy like politicians of a similar ilk who are far smarter but upset people by saying the quiet, nasty or unpopular bits out loud.
Think Galloway and his open support for dictators and religious fascists rather than Corbyn's suggestions that we're really the ones to blame for not peacefully inviting them in for a cuppa and giving them what they want. Or Abbott's more admirable but outspoken and occasionally narrow views on racism.
Hence how you end up with absurd positions like being a politician beloved of 'greens' who went on TV and announced he'd like to reopen coal mines. Or someone who is about as eurosceptic as Nigel Farage drawing support from young pro-Europeans.
Of course that's also the difference between the 2017 and 2019 result. In the case of the former he could still broadly maintain the line that was just a bit left of Ed Miliband if that's what you wanted, or a pre-Thatcher restoration, while more radical if that's what you liked. Helped by a more moderate manifesto even Corbyn-sceptics quite liked. You could keep to the vibesy idea he was with you on being anti-Brexit as opposed May, Salisbury hadn't happened, his failings on antisemitism weren't so obvious and toxic unless you were versed in his history.
By 2019 he had to pick a side on Brexit - or desperately try not to and upset part of his base. The consequences of his dangerous views on defence were made clear by his response to Salisbury, was personally implicated in numerous indefensible actions on antisemitism, and the huge manifesto commitments made clear that it wasn't just going to be a bit more public spending, but completely ignoring established treasury norms.
Even if you are right, you are wrong imo about the elections. In 2017 Corbyn was personally popular (Oh Jeremy Corbyn) but what swung the election was the two terrorist outrages followed by Theresa May telling the nation her 20,000 police cuts made no difference to the murdered children at the Ariana Grande concert.
By 2019, Corbyn had become visibly older and grumpy. An eye injury (or as some have speculated, an undeclared stroke) meant he could no longer make eye contact with television viewers. Boris had pinched the popular parts of Labour's 2017 platform (including restoring the police cuts) but paradoxically Labour now presented an incoherent mess reminiscent of Ed Miliband's 2015 manifesto, as Seamus Milne, who might as well have been a CCHQ plant for what effect he had, apparently added every thought that crossed his mind or his desk.
And then they tell you being called a liar counts as abusive in the study. In most cases its a statement of fact.
" At the time of the 2017 general election an Amnesty investigation found I got more online abuse than all the other women MPs put together."
From memory, that was an incredibly poor 'study'.
But at least the quote says: "women MPs" and not, unlike the Guardian at first, all MPs.
And why are Amnesty only interested in abuse against female MPs? Did they ever do a similar study for male MPs?
Diane Abbott misremembers. Her share of abuse was a mere 45 per cent, so that's all right then.
In the six weeks prior to 8 June, Diane Abbott received almost half or 45.14% of all abusive tweets against women MPs included in our study. For the total period of analysis between 1 January and 8 June she received 31.61% or almost one-third of all abusive tweets. Not only did she top the list of MPs for most abusive tweets but she received 10 times more abuse than any other woman MP in the run-up to the Election and 8 times more abuse than any other woman MP during the entire period of analysis. https://medium.com/@AmnestyInsights/unsocial-media-tracking-twitter-abuse-against-women-mps-fc28aeca498a
The study began as a hackathon with Accenture. Twitter refused access to their full data set. Now, as the Guardian notes:-
The University of Sheffield researchers were limited in their ability to track abuse against all politicians on X because after it was bought by Elon Musk, the platform revoked free access to its application programming interface (API). In 2023 Musk instigated a paid regime instead where equivalent data access starts at $42,000 (£33,000) a month.
Yet there were other studies over the same period that gave *very* different results. And not only because they included men.
But the biggest shit thing about this was the Guardian's headline, which they later altered:
" This article was amended on 20 November 2018. The headline and some text references in an earlier version said that Diane Abbott received more abuse than any other MP. The data involved were from a study of female MPs only."
In my last two holidays I worked every day (I'm working now!) and only work a third-day on Saturday so I can food shop. I don't know how a "working week" works in the era of WFH and email.
From someone who burned-out hard doing much the same thing - I'd advise you to stop doing that.
If you’re unlucky, your life is controlled by a talentless boss who expects you to work an eight day week because, having no friends, and family that despise and ignore him, he has no interests outside work, and assumes everyone is like him (or her).
Overall we should be looking at working fewer hours as standard. It's been a long, long time since the last step change in this area (when did the 5.5 day week with a half-day on Saturday before the footie cease to be 'normal'? Early 1960s?)
But in terms of individual working patterns, I think any movement towards flexibility is a good thing. Some people are more motivated and productive doing a four day week of longer days. Others would probably quite like a seven day week doing a little bit each day. Some people like to be able to 'switch off' when they leave the office or go on holiday. Others feel more empowered keeping in touch and dealing with stuff when it comes up, regardless of the time.
There really is no one-size-fits-all and I think a lot of the uninspiring overall productivity levels we've had for years are down to a lot of people feeling pretty miserable and unmotivated because they're forced into working routines that don't serve them particularly well.
Whenever I've managed a team I've tried to offer as much flexibility as is practically possible (and extend recruitment into getting different types of people on board wherever I can to cover all bases).
When running an IT support team that had to cover 365 days a year, I always found that recruiting a mix of different religions was key to harmony. Everyone could take off their own religious holidays, and work on the others. I didn’t care about working Eid, and the muslims didn’t care about working Christmas.
New Year’s Day was the one common holiday, and we’d pay volunteers double time for that. Perhaps I should have found someone Chinese or Russian.
Vietnamese.
Didn’t know they had a different new year, something learned for today!
We had various nationalities and denominations of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus, which was enough to cover most of the holidays bar a very rare clash of dates.
You will have heard of the Chinese New Year. Many countries in that part of the world celebrate the lunar new year.
Yes Chinese I know, and Orthodox which is a couple of weeks later than usual. Vietnamese is the same as the Chinese one?
Comments
Or go to see Spiral Jetty on the Great Salt Lake
Either will give you world class experiences you will never forget
Alternatively, if you want a low key rural town to drive to from Salt Lake, Helper UT is only an hour and a half drive.
Don't, whatever you do, think of going to Green River UT. Absolute shithole. Scary at night, even in the hotel.
ITV News.
- M. H. Thatcher, 3 May 1989
George Mann
@sgfmann
·
1m
Daily Mail: LABOUR SAID CUTTING OAP WINTER FUEL
CASH COULD KILL 4,000 #TomorrowsPapersToday
Chicago's lovely. A rare walkable American city, and actually feels American unlike, say New York or LA which feel like international cities - because they are.
Spectator cover piece on Ed Milliband's disastrous energy policy, that is set to fail even if everything goes completely according to plan.
Since then, gas prices have plummeted, while the cost of building wind and solar plants has soared. When interest rates and commodity prices were low, the cost of building wind turbines fell to the point in 2022 when wind farm operators were prepared to sign contracts to produce power at £37 per megawatt-hour. By September 2023, when the government held an auction for offshore wind – setting a maximum price of £44 per megawatt-hour – it received not a single bid. The dream of being able to buy low-price wind power was shattered.
In order to attract interest for the latest auction, Rishi Sunak’s government pushed the maximum bid price to £73 per MWh. When the results were announced this week, the successful offshore wind projects had apparently bid between £54 and £58 per megawatt-hour – which looks like reasonable value until you realise that all these figures are still somewhat randomly set at 2012 prices and have not been adjusted for inflation. The actual prices charged by the energy companies do increase with inflation, however, and in reality this year’s successful bids are between £75 and £82 per megawatt-hour.
Barty Bobbins and I have had many arguments featuring his complete pish that wind energy is cheaper than gas. It's about time we faced up to the complete absence of an energy policy we have in this country. That starts with sacking this useless chump (Ed Milliband not Barty) and putting someone competent in place.
The new Lord's report on Tory Party reform has recommended that letters to the 1922 Committee are now public, and that the threshold should be higher. They think that this will make the leadership more secure, and perhaps this is true, but I also think it might be quite good to have the process done in public, because it would prevent the Chairman stitching it up with the leader in secret.
I actually don't remember either of my parents reading to me as a child, though perhaps it was not necessary since they both read quite a bit themselves and that encouraged me to be an early reader in any case.
It seems to be a rather casual use of political capital though.
For many American voters this is a more significant measure of inflation than the CPI, psychologically anyway. (A local TV station belonging to the Salem group was highlighting the gasoline price every day. They stopped a few weeks ago.
It isn't hard to figure out why.)
I'd give the commercial an average grade, at best.
(In case the BBC isn't carrying it -- as they should -- I'll just say that at half time Denver leads in what has been, so far, a vey odd game.)
I would like to see the data on the soaring cost of solar panels.
Overall nonsense I think
Dozens said to be considering abstaining from Tuesday’s vote over pensioners’ payments, as PM says dealing with dissent is ‘matter for chief whip’"
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/sep/08/up-to-50-labour-mps-could-rebel-over-cut-to-winter-fuel-allowance
You can't trust anyone these days...
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2024/09/08/france-s-le-pen-urges-macron-to-hold-referendum-to-break-political-statemate_6725272_7.html
#Latest @NateSilver538 Forecast (9/8)
🟥 Trump: 63.8% (new high)
🟦 Harris: 36%
——
Swing States: chance of winning
Pennsylvania - 🔴 Trump 64-36%
Michigan - 🔴 Trump 54-46%
Wisconsin - 🔴 Trump 53-47%
Arizona - 🔴 Trump 77-23%
North Carolina - 🔴 Trump 75-25%
Georgia - 🔴 Trump 68-32%
Nevada - 🔴 Trump 61-39%
A week later we flew out again and it was utterly filthy. Only a week old by that point but it was like they'd forgotten to hire any cleaners when they opened, it was really dirty already.
It's interesting that Arizona is seen as the most likely to be won by Trump; I'm not so sure given (a) Trump won't benefit from a popular Senate candidate and (b) the abortion referendum.
Speaking of models, you know I recommended Erica Thompson's book "Escape from Model Land"? The audiobook is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3bYGoFfKrE and a previous version of the lecture is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhHK-6QDCr0
"Abstract
The honesty of people in an online panel from 15 countries was measured in two experiments: reporting a coin flip with a reward for “heads”, and an online quiz with the possibility of cheating. There are large differences in honesty across countries. Average honesty is positively correlated with per capita GDP. This is driven mostly by GDP differences arising before 1950, rather than by GDP growth since 1950. A country's average honesty correlates with the proportion of its population that is Protestant. These facts suggest a long-run relationship between honesty and economic development. The experiment also elicited participants’ expectations about different countries’ levels of honesty. Expectations were not correlated with reality. Instead they appear to be driven by cognitive biases, including self-projection."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S016726811630052X#:~:text=The honesty of people in,correlated with per capita GDP.
My forecast from last time was Biden 279, Trump 259. Looks like it was a case of expecting Trump to win Arizona and Georgia. Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes and Georgia by 11,779.
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2020/11/03/the-trump-presidency-are-we-about-to-start-the-end-days/
But the largest number of customers prefer cheap flights
RacetotheWH Harris 55%
Here's an article pointing out that these statistical forecasts shouldn't be trusted
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/03/election-forecasts-data-00176905
"Are these calculated probabilities any good? Right now, we simply don’t know. In a new paper I’ve co-authored with the University of Pennsylvania’s Dean Knox and Dartmouth College’s Sean Westwood, we show that even under assumptions very favorable to forecasters, we wouldn’t know the answer for decades, centuries, or maybe even millenia."
It has not been SKS; Reeves or Rayner;
It has been Miliband.
Both talked about rising energy prices (are they?); whilst one said something like: "He was defeated, why doesn't he just go away?", and another talked about the removal of pensioners' fuel credit.
Just another anecdote, but something I found interesting.
New Year’s Day was the one common holiday, and we’d pay volunteers double time for that. Perhaps I should have found someone Chinese or Russian.
Curious about what the Labour government has been up to this week?
https://twitter.com/UKLabour/status/1832826815884243106
The comments are a total pile on.
Deluge of abuse sent on X to prominent UK politicians in election period
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/sep/09/abuse-x-uk-politicians-election-period
And then they tell you being called a liar counts as abusive in the study. In most cases its a statement of fact.
Here are the "ingredients" you will need to produce a solar plant:
Panels
Inverters
Cabling
Land
Labour
(Oh and various bits of mounting kit. Total value: negligible.)
Panel prices have fallen very sharply (30+% in the last year). Inverter prices are down a little less. Copper prices (which are the biggest component in cabling) rose very sharply between March and May, but have since come down (albeit are still up 15% y-o-y).
So, how exactly, in your mind, has the cost of building a new solar plant soared?
Your total argument is based around a line by a journalist.
On this board, you have people who have worked in the extraction of oil and gas for decades (Richard Tyndall) , who have worked in the electric generating industry (Sandy Rentool) and who have financed energy projects worth tens of billions of dollars (me).
I've spent more time poring over bidding and capacity payments and transport costs than I have with my kids. (And don't accuse me of being some kind of gas hater, I made a bloody video about how great natural gas is as a generating source.)
But anyone who doesn't realize that the cost of new solar capacity is in free fall is simply engaged in reality denial.
Worst was one vendor who was exactly 12 time zones away from me. We always had calls at 7:00 or 7:30, one of us would get up early and the other would miss happy hour.
From memory, that was an incredibly poor 'study'.
But at least the quote says: "women MPs" and not, unlike the Guardian at first, all MPs.
And why are Amnesty only interested in abuse against female MPs? Did they ever do a similar study for male MPs?
We had various nationalities and denominations of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus, which was enough to cover most of the holidays bar a very rare clash of dates.
Hence why the guerillas were Offensive.
Small-team projects can be intense fun; you get to wear many hats, and the feeling of success when you ship is immense. But some aspects are less fun.
(*) No probs for me; I've aways been an early riser.
For many, high taxation and the universal provision of services and welfare is what Labour should be all about. That Labour are actually cutting spending on richer people is not in line with that view.
While I'm not generally a fan of universal provision - more of a safety net advocate - there is certainly a risk here for Labour. They will run into the same problem a the SNP, in that people are tolerant of high tax rates if middle class services like university tuition, dental care etc etc are in place. I think that perceived social contract could break down.
https://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/cfd-solar-strike-price-increases-by-30/
I am delighted to hear that they can be whacked up for less than nothing, but that isn't going to help British consumers or businesses, given the above. In fact I'd say it feeds in to the narrative that it's a total racket, wouldn't you say?
Think Galloway and his open support for dictators and religious fascists rather than Corbyn's suggestions that we're really the ones to blame for not peacefully inviting them in for a cuppa and giving them what they want. Or Abbott's more admirable but outspoken and occasionally narrow views on racism.
Hence how you end up with absurd positions like being a politician beloved of 'greens' who went on TV and announced he'd like to reopen coal mines. Or someone who is about as eurosceptic as Nigel Farage drawing support from young pro-Europeans.
Of course that's also the difference between the 2017 and 2019 result. In the case of the former he could still broadly maintain the line that was just a bit left of Ed Miliband if that's what you wanted, or a pre-Thatcher restoration, while more radical if that's what you liked. Helped by a more moderate manifesto even Corbyn-sceptics quite liked. You could keep to the vibesy idea he was with you on being anti-Brexit as opposed May, Salisbury hadn't happened, his failings on antisemitism weren't so obvious and toxic unless you were versed in his history.
By 2019 he had to pick a side on Brexit - or desperately try not to and upset part of his base. The consequences of his dangerous views on defence were made clear by his response to Salisbury, was personally implicated in numerous indefensible actions on antisemitism, and the huge manifesto commitments made clear that it wasn't just going to be a bit more public spending, but completely ignoring established treasury norms.
90 minute calls every week at 1am on a Monday morning really sets you up well for the next few days…
In the six weeks prior to 8 June, Diane Abbott received almost half or 45.14% of all abusive tweets against women MPs included in our study. For the total period of analysis between 1 January and 8 June she received 31.61% or almost one-third of all abusive tweets. Not only did she top the list of MPs for most abusive tweets but she received 10 times more abuse than any other woman MP in the run-up to the Election and 8 times more abuse than any other woman MP during the entire period of analysis.
https://medium.com/@AmnestyInsights/unsocial-media-tracking-twitter-abuse-against-women-mps-fc28aeca498a
The study began as a hackathon with Accenture. Twitter refused access to their full data set. Now, as the Guardian notes:-
The University of Sheffield researchers were limited in their ability to track abuse against all politicians on X because after it was bought by Elon Musk, the platform revoked free access to its application programming interface (API). In 2023 Musk instigated a paid regime instead where equivalent data access starts at $42,000 (£33,000) a month.
While EU researchers qualify for free data access on X because of the provisions within the EU Digital Services Act, there is no equivalent clause in the Online Safety Act to benefit UK researchers.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/sep/09/abuse-x-uk-politicians-election-period
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_New_Year
When I was working, I often worked with foreign firms.
I loved working for/with the Japanese companies.
German companies were a bit meh.
Yank companies were sh*ts.
I'd describe it this way: with a Japanese company, you spend ages working out what is wanted, sign a contract, and they expect you to deliver to that contract. Any changes *they* want are paid for or, more often, shifted to a follow-up project.
With an American company, they decide they want something. They don't/refuse to give a firm specification, then spend the entire project adding feature creep. From my perspective, it led to lots of wasted work and exasperation as they would change things.
Apple are different (and worse...) than the usual Yank company...
He sees plenty of tourists getting stuck in unusual places, and people who came to the area to go off-roading in the sand or on the rocks, who run out of luck or talent and need rescuing, often miles from where your regular towing company would be able to reach, so he’s engineered himself a fleet of offroad recovery vehicles.
https://youtube.com/@MattsOffRoadRecovery He has 1.75m subscribers.
He spends a lot of his days dragging out tourists in rental cars or from California who get stranded going off road in totally unsuitable vehicles!
By 2019, Corbyn had become visibly older and grumpy. An eye injury (or as some have speculated, an undeclared stroke) meant he could no longer make eye contact with television viewers. Boris had pinched the popular parts of Labour's 2017 platform (including restoring the police cuts) but paradoxically Labour now presented an incoherent mess reminiscent of Ed Miliband's 2015 manifesto, as Seamus Milne, who might as well have been a CCHQ plant for what effect he had, apparently added every thought that crossed his mind or his desk.
But the biggest shit thing about this was the Guardian's headline, which they later altered:
" This article was amended on 20 November 2018. The headline and some text references in an earlier version said that Diane Abbott received more abuse than any other MP. The data involved were from a study of female MPs only."
That was over a year later.
Mistake, or deliberate?
NEW THREAD
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cm2ngqj836do
When Britain had a very different view of its future...
England adopted 25th March as new year's day in the 12th century.