I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Invite the little shit who tried to whip up race riots in our country? That's a hard and obvious No.
A PB moment for the ages. This is @kinabalu, an obscure retired accountant who thinks going to Bruges is an adventure for the ages, calling << checks notes >> world’s richest man and probably the greatest engineer in human history, Elon Musk, “a little shit”
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
What Musk drama? Ignoring his political opinion for a second, is he about to invest in the UK? Following Sunak's cosying up to him how much did he invest in the UK?
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
What Musk drama? Ignoring his political opinion for a second, is he about to invest in the UK? Following Sunak's cosying up to him how much did he invest in the UK?
If you don't have the conversation you will never know. It doesn't mean you just give them carte blanche, but I would certainly want to talk about cars, batteries, AI, robots, rockets....all of which the UK is good at / needs.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Invite the little shit who tried to whip up race riots in our country? That's a hard and obvious No.
A PB moment for the ages. This is @kinabalu, an obscure retired accountant who thinks going to Bruges is an adventure for the ages, calling << checks notes >> world’s richest man and probably the greatest engineer in human history, Elon Musk, “a little shit”
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
??
No we’re not. Recent polls all have them rising. That might stop soon - I expect it will - I reckon their ceiling is 20-25% - but it hasn’t stopped yet
The interesting problem Reform will hit at some point is the calibre of their top support base. Beyond Farage - who is very able in a particular way - there are currently no names at all, and in particular no names with an apparent capacity to run a medium size or large organisation - like a council, or a ministry.
If they remain just a vehicle of protest - like the extreme left but even less intelligent - then it's manageable for the majority of voters who still will only vote for parties with a degree, however tarnished and limited, of capacity for being centrist and capable, and keep the rickety show of UKplc on the road.
The interesting point would be if a significant group of people with real clout and ability get to the top of the Reform tree. SFAICS we are not close to that yet.
Farage has said he wants to build Reform into a serious party
I suspect it’s a reach too far. It’s so hard in the UK with FPTP. Can he really find - as you say - lots of capable and sane people willing to be candidates for a controversial right wing party? I doubt it
That said, remember what he did with UKIP. We Brexited precisely because of what he achieved with UKIP. So only a fool writes him off entirely
Fully agree. Reform should not be written off; but Farage's track record, while substantial, is not about running the sorts of complex, often boring, entity serious politics engages with. He has been a fantastic campaigner from the perch of someone who has influence and some power but absolutely zero accountability or responsibility for consequences. From his position he can take 100% glory and credit for all his achievements (considerable), and 100% non-responsibility for any down side (considerable). My belief is he likes it that way, but we shall see.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Invite the little shit who tried to whip up race riots in our country? That's a hard and obvious No.
But inviting the guys who cut up journalists is fine?
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
What Musk drama? Ignoring his political opinion for a second, is he about to invest in the UK? Following Sunak's cosying up to him how much did he invest in the UK?
If you don't have the conversation you will never know.
Yes exactly. Musk is an innovator and an ideas guy and clearly somewhat unstable - and a genius
He is the kind of guy who will look at a field near Newent and then suddenly say “fuck it I’m going to build the worlds biggest air dryer right here and it will be two miles high and employ 80,000 people”
And most people will look at him in bewilderment and then he will go and do it, and it will work
But first you have to get him to that field in newent. You have to talk to him
Part of the problem is that the Labour Party is full of people who are the opposite of musk. It is full of @kinabalus. Crouched and cowering people, timid and disapproving, who have never designed or created or innovated anything in their lives. And would be too scared to do so
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
I suspect your bar for what counts as racism is pretty high. Personally, I think Trumps 'black jobs' comment is racist but I appreciate others might disagree.
Accusing Haitian immigrants of eating pets seems pretty obviously racist. Calling Mexican immigrants rapists ditto. There is good evidence of Trump making openly racist statements in private. He seems pretty obviously racist to anyone paying attention. Not in a kkk kind of way, just a kind of basic racist old man kind of way.
His mother was, of course, an immigrant. And his wife is. And 'recent' ones, as are a large number of 'Americans'. The majority of African-Americans are, of course, descended from involuntary immigrants.
His first wife was another immigrant, as were his paternal grandparents. But they were all white. When Trump says “immigrant”, he means black or brown, Hispanic or Muslim.
Quite. It's Humpty-Dumpty land isn't it. When I use a word it means what I choose it to mean. Or something like that. It's weird because many 'white' Americans are descended from late 19th or early 20th Century immigrants. Whereas I would guess that most of the African-Americans' ancestors have been in the US longer.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Invite the little shit who tried to whip up race riots in our country? That's a hard and obvious No.
A PB moment for the ages. This is @kinabalu, an obscure retired accountant who thinks going to Bruges is an adventure for the ages, calling << checks notes >> world’s richest man and probably the greatest engineer in human history, Elon Musk, “a little shit”
Aw the little fanboy is upset.
If you think Elon is too dodgy to talk to - why aren't we cutting off all relations with China?
As the Guardian reveals today, Treasury officials are considering proposals to double taxes levied on parts of the sector, as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, aims to pull every lever possible to raise funds in her upcoming budget.
If Labour can make progress on planning that will be good for us all.
And how would that be done ? Return to the principle that there is an assumption in favour in the absence of a policy against ? It really isn't easy. The Town and Country Planning Act was probably as bad as anything the 45 to 51 government did but no Conservative government has challenged what was in effect the nationalisation of land usage.
It has done a hell of a lot of harm, created an artifical shortage of affordable housing by preventing the building of slums (the two can often be the same thing). But it has reduced urban sprall, it has prevented billboards on every corner, it has put some pressure on to build on derelict land. And it has kept some sanity on the size of housing plots and maintained quite a lot of open countryside.
So far Rayner's proposals seem to have been concentrating on building houses where people do not want to live. It was ever thus.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Invite the little shit who tried to whip up race riots in our country? That's a hard and obvious No.
A PB moment for the ages. This is @kinabalu, an obscure retired accountant who thinks going to Bruges is an adventure for the ages, calling << checks notes >> world’s richest man and probably the greatest engineer in human history, Elon Musk, “a little shit”
Aw the little fanboy is upset.
If you think Elon is too dodgy to talk to - why aren't we cutting off all relations with China?
Exactly. I suspect someone in Number 10 thought it would be a nice Woke gesture to demonstrate their leftiness to unhappy lefty voters - snub Musk - but instead it comes across as adolescent tit-wankery - because we are courting China, as you say. So what exactly are they trying to prove? That we’re unserious idiots, it seems
They are utterly hapless. And now they are running around trying to clean up another mess
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
What Musk drama? Ignoring his political opinion for a second, is he about to invest in the UK? Following Sunak's cosying up to him how much did he invest in the UK?
If you don't have the conversation you will never know.
Yes exactly. Musk is an innovator and an ideas guy and clearly somewhat unstable - and a genius
He is the kind of guy who will look at a field near Newent and then suddenly say “fuck it I’m going to build the worlds biggest air dryer right here and it will be two miles high and employ 80,000 people”
And most people will look at him in bewilderment and then he will go and do it, and it will work
But first you have to get him to that field in newent. You have to talk to him
Part of the problem is that the Labour Party is full of people who are the opposite of musk. It is full of @kinabalus. Crouched and cowering people, timid and disapproving, who have never designed or created or innovated anything in their lives. And would be too scared to do so
I don't think the problem is that the Labour Party is bereft of innovators. I have no problem with people who have never innovated - that's true of most of us. I think the problem is that the Labour Party is full of people who value how something looks to their left wing mates over what the impact is. Hence, VAT on private schools, giving away the Chagos Islands to China, Ed Miliband, scaring off investors and the wealthy and trash-talking Musk. All catnip for the left; all makes Britain poorer.
While at the same time introducing a load of new red tape on workers rights...
A stupid childish catechism which reveals only a politician who has not bothered to read the Grenfell Tower report and has no understanding of the history of finance in the last 50 years.
Both of which relate to the piling up of paperwork and process, without any concern for the actual goal.
Well, that's not quite what the Grenfell Tower Report says. It makes a very clear link between politicians' demands for No More Red Tape and the refusal of the department to implement the recommendations of the Lakanal Fire coroner, to take only one of many many examples. And that weak regulatory system and feeble enforcement was deliberately and dishonestly exploited by bad actors, whose products directly led to the deaths of 72 people.
When politicians talk in trite terms they are not addressing the very real issues that arise which is why in this country we have all the disadvantages of a bureaucracy and few of its advantages. The state abdicating from its basic responsibilities is not a good thing. And the Red Tape / Blob discussion is frankly a facile way of approaching it.
The Grenfell rebuild project generated multiple metric tons of paperwork. Rooms full of folders, plus vast numbers of electronic documents.
Hidden in this mass was the fact that the external insulation was dangerously inflatable. Said insulation had tons of paperwork itself. Makes you wonder which was more inflatable.
The complex process for signing the insulation off as safe was utter bullshit.
Just as complex tax laws create loop holes for evasion, process and documentation for its own sake creates a forest for malefactors to hide in.
In domestic construction, if you follow the rules, you have a project document the size of a telephone directory. For just one house. No one reads it. Many builders simply don't bother to generate it. The one for my most recent project was generated, mostly, automatically.
What is needed is
1) A clear set of aims 2) A clear setting out of these aims, the way they are to be achieved and the methods to achieve them. 3) A clear enforcement of (1)
I'v encountered far too many people over the years who believe that a 500 page document is more professional than 5 pages. It isn't.
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
My thumbnail metric for Reform being serious is that they need 250 Local Councillors from somewhere, quite soon.
At present afaics they have 27 nationally. For a benchmark, the Ashfield Independents have 42.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
What Musk drama? Ignoring his political opinion for a second, is he about to invest in the UK? Following Sunak's cosying up to him how much did he invest in the UK?
If you don't have the conversation you will never know.
Yes exactly. Musk is an innovator and an ideas guy and clearly somewhat unstable - and a genius
He is the kind of guy who will look at a field near Newent and then suddenly say “fuck it I’m going to build the worlds biggest air dryer right here and it will be two miles high and employ 80,000 people”
And most people will look at him in bewilderment and then he will go and do it, and it will work
But first you have to get him to that field in newent. You have to talk to him
Part of the problem is that the Labour Party is full of people who are the opposite of musk. It is full of @kinabalus. Crouched and cowering people, timid and disapproving, who have never designed or created or innovated anything in their lives. And would be too scared to do so
I don't think the problem is that the Labour Party is bereft of innovators. I have no problem with people who have never innovated - that's true of most of us. I think the problem is that the Labour Party is full of people who value how something looks to their left wing mates over what the impact is. Hence, VAT on private schools, giving away the Chagos Islands to China, Ed Miliband, scaring off investors and the wealthy and trash-talking Musk. All catnip for the left; all makes Britain poorer.
I entirely agree. But I think both are true
There are no innovators and entrepreneurs in Labour. And they are ALSO fond of wanky gestural politics
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Invite the little shit who tried to whip up race riots in our country? That's a hard and obvious No.
A PB moment for the ages. This is @kinabalu, an obscure retired accountant who thinks going to Bruges is an adventure for the ages, calling << checks notes >> world’s richest man and probably the greatest engineer in human history, Elon Musk, “a little shit”
Aw the little fanboy is upset.
If you think Elon is too dodgy to talk to - why aren't we cutting off all relations with China?
If we don't cut off all relations with China how can we proscribe Hamas as a terrorist organisation?
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
How do you distinguish between xenophobia and racism ? (Genuine question.) In any event, the xenophobia has become pretty clearly based, with its talk of "poisoning the blood", etc.
"The Democrats say, 'Please don't call them animals. They're humans.' I said, 'No, they're not humans, they're not humans, they're animals,'" said Trump
This is textbook dehumanisation. We’ve seen this over and over, with the Holocaust, with the Armenian genocide, with the Rwandan genocide.
And it’s clear that Trump’s views (like Musk’s) are racist, like when he talks about “bad genes”. Trump has a long history of racism. We can go back to the 1973 case where the US government sued him for racial discrimination in renting practices. He has constantly attacked people born in the US, be that promoting conspiracy theories that Obama wasn’t born in the US; claiming the judge in the Trump University case would be biased because he’s of “Mexican heritage”; saying of 4 non-white, Democratic congresswomen, 3 of whom were born in the US, “Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” As you note, he has repeatedly talked of how immigrants, "they're poisoning the blood of our country". He has repeatedly lied about black Americans, e.g. made-up crime statistics. It was never just about immigration.
Indeed. If Trump isn't racist we might as well retire the word.
If Trump was recorded using the N word (which I would bet my house on that he has) there would still be folk saying that wasn't real racism.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Invite the little shit who tried to whip up race riots in our country? That's a hard and obvious No.
A PB moment for the ages. This is @kinabalu, an obscure retired accountant who thinks going to Bruges is an adventure for the ages, calling << checks notes >> world’s richest man and probably the greatest engineer in human history, Elon Musk, “a little shit”
Well he's not wrong about Musk being a shit. But we have to deal with shits, like it or not.
If we and Europe had bothered to develop a tech industry somewhere on a par with the US, that might be different. But we didn't.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Invite the little shit who tried to whip up race riots in our country? That's a hard and obvious No.
But inviting the guys who cut up journalists is fine?
While at the same time introducing a load of new red tape on workers rights...
A stupid childish catechism which reveals only a politician who has not bothered to read the Grenfell Tower report and has no understanding of the history of finance in the last 50 years.
Both of which relate to the piling up of paperwork and process, without any concern for the actual goal.
Well, that's not quite what the Grenfell Tower Report says. It makes a very clear link between politicians' demands for No More Red Tape and the refusal of the department to implement the recommendations of the Lakanal Fire coroner, to take only one of many many examples. And that weak regulatory system and feeble enforcement was deliberately and dishonestly exploited by bad actors, whose products directly led to the deaths of 72 people.
When politicians talk in trite terms they are not addressing the very real issues that arise which is why in this country we have all the disadvantages of a bureaucracy and few of its advantages. The state abdicating from its basic responsibilities is not a good thing. And the Red Tape / Blob discussion is frankly a facile way of approaching it.
The Grenfell rebuild project generated multiple metric tons of paperwork. Rooms full of folders, plus vast numbers of electronic documents.
Hidden in this mass was the fact that the external insulation was dangerously inflatable. Said insulation had tons of paperwork itself. Makes you wonder which was more inflatable.
The complex process for signing the insulation off as safe was utter bullshit.
Just as complex tax laws create loop holes for evasion, process and documentation for its own sake creates a forest for malefactors to hide in.
In domestic construction, if you follow the rules, you have a project document the size of a telephone directory. For just one house. No one reads it. Many builders simply don't bother to generate it. The one for my most recent project was generated, mostly, automatically.
What is needed is
1) A clear set of aims 2) A clear setting out of these aims, the way they are to be achieved and the methods to achieve them. 3) A clear enforcement of (1)
I'v encountered far too many people over the years who believe that a 500 page document is more professional than 5 pages. It isn't.
I heard an interview the other day with somebody high up in assessing and fixing all the buildings with dodgy cladding...they were asking why it was taking so long and could it be sped up like Big Ange was calling for...their response was the red tape on doing this work is incredibly demanding, it means few people can do the work and takes a incredibly amount of time to sort out.
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
You still haven't got the GPS working? You shouldn't need to "get it working", it should just work. How is it tracking your walks/runs etc without a functioning GPS?
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
I suspect your bar for what counts as racism is pretty high. Personally, I think Trumps 'black jobs' comment is racist but I appreciate others might disagree.
Accusing Haitian immigrants of eating pets seems pretty obviously racist. Calling Mexican immigrants rapists ditto. There is good evidence of Trump making openly racist statements in private. He seems pretty obviously racist to anyone paying attention. Not in a kkk kind of way, just a kind of basic racist old man kind of way.
His mother was, of course, an immigrant. And his wife is. And 'recent' ones, as are a large number of 'Americans'. The majority of African-Americans are, of course, descended from involuntary immigrants.
His first wife was another immigrant, as were his paternal grandparents. But they were all white. When Trump says “immigrant”, he means black or brown, Hispanic or Muslim.
There's a reason why he does that. He's a massive racist.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Invite the little shit who tried to whip up race riots in our country? That's a hard and obvious No.
A PB moment for the ages. This is @kinabalu, an obscure retired accountant who thinks going to Bruges is an adventure for the ages, calling << checks notes >> world’s richest man and probably the greatest engineer in human history, Elon Musk, “a little shit”
Aw the little fanboy is upset.
If you think Elon is too dodgy to talk to - why aren't we cutting off all relations with China?
If we don't cut off all relations with China how can we proscribe Hamas as a terrorist organisation?
While at the same time introducing a load of new red tape on workers rights...
A stupid childish catechism which reveals only a politician who has not bothered to read the Grenfell Tower report and has no understanding of the history of finance in the last 50 years.
Both of which relate to the piling up of paperwork and process, without any concern for the actual goal.
Well, that's not quite what the Grenfell Tower Report says. It makes a very clear link between politicians' demands for No More Red Tape and the refusal of the department to implement the recommendations of the Lakanal Fire coroner, to take only one of many many examples. And that weak regulatory system and feeble enforcement was deliberately and dishonestly exploited by bad actors, whose products directly led to the deaths of 72 people.
When politicians talk in trite terms they are not addressing the very real issues that arise which is why in this country we have all the disadvantages of a bureaucracy and few of its advantages. The state abdicating from its basic responsibilities is not a good thing. And the Red Tape / Blob discussion is frankly a facile way of approaching it.
The Grenfell rebuild project generated multiple metric tons of paperwork. Rooms full of folders, plus vast numbers of electronic documents.
Hidden in this mass was the fact that the external insulation was dangerously inflatable. Said insulation had tons of paperwork itself. Makes you wonder which was more inflatable.
The complex process for signing the insulation off as safe was utter bullshit.
Just as complex tax laws create loop holes for evasion, process and documentation for its own sake creates a forest for malefactors to hide in.
In domestic construction, if you follow the rules, you have a project document the size of a telephone directory. For just one house. No one reads it. Many builders simply don't bother to generate it. The one for my most recent project was generated, mostly, automatically.
What is needed is
1) A clear set of aims 2) A clear setting out of these aims, the way they are to be achieved and the methods to achieve them. 3) A clear enforcement of (1)
I'v encountered far too many people over the years who believe that a 500 page document is more professional than 5 pages. It isn't.
I'm not a particular admirer of Churchill's peacetime Government experience, but didn't he used to say something about one side of A4? (Or more likely, foolscap!)
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
How do you distinguish between xenophobia and racism ? (Genuine question.) In any event, the xenophobia has become pretty clearly based, with its talk of "poisoning the blood", etc.
"The Democrats say, 'Please don't call them animals. They're humans.' I said, 'No, they're not humans, they're not humans, they're animals,'" said Trump
This is textbook dehumanisation. We’ve seen this over and over, with the Holocaust, with the Armenian genocide, with the Rwandan genocide.
And it’s clear that Trump’s views (like Musk’s) are racist, like when he talks about “bad genes”. Trump has a long history of racism. We can go back to the 1973 case where the US government sued him for racial discrimination in renting practices. He has constantly attacked people born in the US, be that promoting conspiracy theories that Obama wasn’t born in the US; claiming the judge in the Trump University case would be biased because he’s of “Mexican heritage”; saying of 4 non-white, Democratic congresswomen, 3 of whom were born in the US, “Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” As you note, he has repeatedly talked of how immigrants, "they're poisoning the blood of our country". He has repeatedly lied about black Americans, e.g. made-up crime statistics. It was never just about immigration.
Indeed. If Trump isn't racist we might as well retire the word.
If Trump was recorded using the N word (which I would bet my house on that he has) there would still be folk saying that wasn't real racism.
Yup. They'd be looking for some hard and proper 'white hood and lynching' evidence.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Invite the little shit who tried to whip up race riots in our country? That's a hard and obvious No.
A PB moment for the ages. This is @kinabalu, an obscure retired accountant who thinks going to Bruges is an adventure for the ages, calling << checks notes >> world’s richest man and probably the greatest engineer in human history, Elon Musk, “a little shit”
Aw the little fanboy is upset.
If you think Elon is too dodgy to talk to - why aren't we cutting off all relations with China?
Exactly. I suspect someone in Number 10 thought it would be a nice Woke gesture to demonstrate their leftiness to unhappy lefty voters - snub Musk - but instead it comes across as adolescent tit-wankery - because we are courting China, as you say. So what exactly are they trying to prove? That we’re unserious idiots, it seems
They are utterly hapless. And now they are running around trying to clean up another mess
To be honest I am not sure that these “investment summit” type events are anything other than a bit of a press jamboree and a posh dinner. Much of the announcements are either reheats or things that were going to happen in the first place.
It is good “vibes” and some connections will be made that may lead to future investment. But, it is not meaningful in the grand scheme of things.
And if you accept that it is a presentational event then of course the Government aren’t going to want an individual who is going to steal their limelight and potentially say something offensive over supper.
No one will ever admit that - hence all these odd reasons why Mr Musk was NFI. But that is what it comes down to.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
What Musk drama? Ignoring his political opinion for a second, is he about to invest in the UK? Following Sunak's cosying up to him how much did he invest in the UK?
If you don't have the conversation you will never know.
Yes exactly. Musk is an innovator and an ideas guy and clearly somewhat unstable - and a genius
He is the kind of guy who will look at a field near Newent and then suddenly say “fuck it I’m going to build the worlds biggest air dryer right here and it will be two miles high and employ 80,000 people”
And most people will look at him in bewilderment and then he will go and do it, and it will work
But first you have to get him to that field in newent. You have to talk to him
Part of the problem is that the Labour Party is full of people who are the opposite of musk. It is full of @kinabalus. Crouched and cowering people, timid and disapproving, who have never designed or created or innovated anything in their lives. And would be too scared to do so
I don't think the problem is that the Labour Party is bereft of innovators. I have no problem with people who have never innovated - that's true of most of us. I think the problem is that the Labour Party is full of people who value how something looks to their left wing mates over what the impact is. Hence, VAT on private schools, giving away the Chagos Islands to China, Ed Miliband, scaring off investors and the wealthy and trash-talking Musk. All catnip for the left; all makes Britain poorer.
I entirely agree. But I think both are true
There are no innovators and entrepreneurs in Labour. And they are ALSO fond of wanky gestural politics
The last decade and a half proved that the Tories don't really have many innovators, either. Other than Brexit - that enormous waste of enormous effort - what did they actually achieve ?
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
??
No we’re not. Recent polls all have them rising. That might stop soon - I expect it will - I reckon their ceiling is 20-25% - but it hasn’t stopped yet
The interesting problem Reform will hit at some point is the calibre of their top support base. Beyond Farage - who is very able in a particular way - there are currently no names at all, and in particular no names with an apparent capacity to run a medium size or large organisation - like a council, or a ministry.
If they remain just a vehicle of protest - like the extreme left but even less intelligent - then it's manageable for the majority of voters who still will only vote for parties with a degree, however tarnished and limited, of capacity for being centrist and capable, and keep the rickety show of UKplc on the road.
The interesting point would be if a significant group of people with real clout and ability get to the top of the Reform tree. SFAICS we are not close to that yet.
Farage has said he wants to build Reform into a serious party
I suspect it’s a reach too far. It’s so hard in the UK with FPTP. Can he really find - as you say - lots of capable and sane people willing to be candidates for a controversial right wing party? I doubt it
That said, remember what he did with UKIP. We Brexited precisely because of what he achieved with UKIP. So only a fool writes him off entirely
No, Brexit came about because of Cameron's frustration with Tory Eurosceptics, not Ukip who in 2010 scored only 3 per cent of the vote.
While at the same time introducing a load of new red tape on workers rights...
A stupid childish catechism which reveals only a politician who has not bothered to read the Grenfell Tower report and has no understanding of the history of finance in the last 50 years.
Both of which relate to the piling up of paperwork and process, without any concern for the actual goal.
Well, that's not quite what the Grenfell Tower Report says. It makes a very clear link between politicians' demands for No More Red Tape and the refusal of the department to implement the recommendations of the Lakanal Fire coroner, to take only one of many many examples. And that weak regulatory system and feeble enforcement was deliberately and dishonestly exploited by bad actors, whose products directly led to the deaths of 72 people.
When politicians talk in trite terms they are not addressing the very real issues that arise which is why in this country we have all the disadvantages of a bureaucracy and few of its advantages. The state abdicating from its basic responsibilities is not a good thing. And the Red Tape / Blob discussion is frankly a facile way of approaching it.
The Grenfell rebuild project generated multiple metric tons of paperwork. Rooms full of folders, plus vast numbers of electronic documents.
Hidden in this mass was the fact that the external insulation was dangerously inflatable. Said insulation had tons of paperwork itself. Makes you wonder which was more inflatable.
The complex process for signing the insulation off as safe was utter bullshit.
Just as complex tax laws create loop holes for evasion, process and documentation for its own sake creates a forest for malefactors to hide in.
In domestic construction, if you follow the rules, you have a project document the size of a telephone directory. For just one house. No one reads it. Many builders simply don't bother to generate it. The one for my most recent project was generated, mostly, automatically.
What is needed is
1) A clear set of aims 2) A clear setting out of these aims, the way they are to be achieved and the methods to achieve them. 3) A clear enforcement of (1)
I'v encountered far too many people over the years who believe that a 500 page document is more professional than 5 pages. It isn't.
I heard an interview the other day with somebody high up in assessing and fixing all the buildings with dodgy cladding...they were asking why it was taking so long and could it be sped up like Big Ange was calling for...their response was the red tape on doing this work is incredibly demanding, it means few people can do the work and takes a incredibly amount of time to sort out.
I think I've mentioned her, before, a friend who is on the management committee for his block (freeholders etc).
When they got the engineers in to look at the cladding, they were told the block was structurally deficient. Literally not enough concrete at high enough spec. The documentation for the building filled rooms. The original Big Builder took responsibility and paid for the failures of their subcontractor.
But consider this - in the rooms of paperwork, data on concrete testing was missing. Bazlegette knew that game and instead on cement testing as a standard for the frigging Embankment sewers.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
The case against inviting Musk to the investment conference is that he's now an active participant in politics, openly campaigning for a Cabinet job in a potential future Trump administration. Inviting him would be to risk him using the conference as a campaigning platform for the imminent US election (three weeks and a day?)
The case for inviting Musk is that Britain needs investment, Musk is the richest man on the planet, Britain needs investment in the technologies of the future even more, and if plucking a rocket out of mid-air isn't future technology I don't know what is. Plus, if you encourage him to spend more time on the stuff he's good at - creating new companies that push forward new technology - then you might distract him from the stuff he's crap at (politics, media).
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
My thumbnail metric for Reform being serious is that they need 250 Local Councillors from somewhere, quite soon.
At present afaics they have 27 nationally. For a benchmark, the Ashfield Independents have 42.
Or, as another benchmark, UKIP peaked somewhere in the 300s. (It's not that demanding a hurdle- it's a solid opposition block on thirty or so councils.)
Incidentally, while looking up that number, I stumbled on this in the same article. Nothing new under the sun:
UKIP initially paid little attention to local government elections. However, this changed after Farage observed that building localised strongholds of support in various parts of the country had been the process by which the Liberal Democrats had entered the House of Commons, and that this was a strategy that could benefit UKIP. UKIP subsequently focused on the 2011 local elections, in which it fielded over 1,100 candidates, winning seven seats and becoming the main opposition in over 100.
The difficulty is that the kind of mindset that permeates the Liberal Democrats attracts/creates people who want to be local councillors. I'm not convinced that the same goes for Faragism.
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
You still haven't got the GPS working? You shouldn't need to "get it working", it should just work. How is it tracking your walks/runs etc without a functioning GPS?
Something that confuses people is this. GPS on its own takes quite a while to get its initial fix.
Mobile phones are much faster, because they use mast data and nearby mapped WiFi to guesstimate their position, which makes getting the initial fix faster.
Smart watches without a mobile connection don't do this. So they can take a minute or so to get a fix. This is noticeable because most do not maintain a GPS fix all the time - only for some activities. This is to save power.
So when I put my Garmin in the activity mode for rowing, it starts getting a GPS fix and takes a little while to say that it is ready.
The case against inviting Musk to the investment conference is that he's now an active participant in politics, openly campaigning for a Cabinet job in a potential future Trump administration. Inviting him would be to risk him using the conference as a campaigning platform for the imminent US election (three weeks and a day?)
The case for inviting Musk is that Britain needs investment, Musk is the richest man on the planet, Britain needs investment in the technologies of the future even more, and if plucking a rocket out of mid-air isn't future technology I don't know what is. Plus, if you encourage him to spend more time on the stuff he's good at - creating new companies that push forward new technology - then you might distract him from the stuff he's crap at (politics, media).
Why would be actively campaigning for Trump at a UK investment conference? It won't get any coverage in the US media anyway. Also, he doesn't do that when he is banging on about self driving cars or robots or rockets in the US, where you could argue it might make a difference.
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
How do you distinguish between xenophobia and racism ? (Genuine question.) In any event, the xenophobia has become pretty clearly based, with its talk of "poisoning the blood", etc.
"The Democrats say, 'Please don't call them animals. They're humans.' I said, 'No, they're not humans, they're not humans, they're animals,'" said Trump
This is textbook dehumanisation. We’ve seen this over and over, with the Holocaust, with the Armenian genocide, with the Rwandan genocide.
And it’s clear that Trump’s views (like Musk’s) are racist, like when he talks about “bad genes”. Trump has a long history of racism. We can go back to the 1973 case where the US government sued him for racial discrimination in renting practices. He has constantly attacked people born in the US, be that promoting conspiracy theories that Obama wasn’t born in the US; claiming the judge in the Trump University case would be biased because he’s of “Mexican heritage”; saying of 4 non-white, Democratic congresswomen, 3 of whom were born in the US, “Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” As you note, he has repeatedly talked of how immigrants, "they're poisoning the blood of our country". He has repeatedly lied about black Americans, e.g. made-up crime statistics. It was never just about immigration.
Indeed. If Trump isn't racist we might as well retire the word.
If Trump was recorded using the N word (which I would bet my house on that he has) there would still be folk saying that wasn't real racism.
Yup. They'd be looking for some hard and proper 'white hood and lynching' evidence.
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
??
No we’re not. Recent polls all have them rising. That might stop soon - I expect it will - I reckon their ceiling is 20-25% - but it hasn’t stopped yet
The interesting problem Reform will hit at some point is the calibre of their top support base. Beyond Farage - who is very able in a particular way - there are currently no names at all, and in particular no names with an apparent capacity to run a medium size or large organisation - like a council, or a ministry.
If they remain just a vehicle of protest - like the extreme left but even less intelligent - then it's manageable for the majority of voters who still will only vote for parties with a degree, however tarnished and limited, of capacity for being centrist and capable, and keep the rickety show of UKplc on the road.
The interesting point would be if a significant group of people with real clout and ability get to the top of the Reform tree. SFAICS we are not close to that yet.
Farage has said he wants to build Reform into a serious party
I suspect it’s a reach too far. It’s so hard in the UK with FPTP. Can he really find - as you say - lots of capable and sane people willing to be candidates for a controversial right wing party? I doubt it
That said, remember what he did with UKIP. We Brexited precisely because of what he achieved with UKIP. So only a fool writes him off entirely
No, Brexit came about because of Cameron's frustration with Tory Eurosceptics, not Ukip who in 2010 scored only 3 per cent of the vote.
Arrant nonsense. It was UKIP’s devastation of the Tories in EU elections which terrified Tory MPs and persuaded Cameron to call an in/out vote
Here you go. See for yourself. 2014 eu elex. Farage won
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
While at the same time introducing a load of new red tape on workers rights...
A stupid childish catechism which reveals only a politician who has not bothered to read the Grenfell Tower report and has no understanding of the history of finance in the last 50 years.
Both of which relate to the piling up of paperwork and process, without any concern for the actual goal.
Well, that's not quite what the Grenfell Tower Report says. It makes a very clear link between politicians' demands for No More Red Tape and the refusal of the department to implement the recommendations of the Lakanal Fire coroner, to take only one of many many examples. And that weak regulatory system and feeble enforcement was deliberately and dishonestly exploited by bad actors, whose products directly led to the deaths of 72 people.
When politicians talk in trite terms they are not addressing the very real issues that arise which is why in this country we have all the disadvantages of a bureaucracy and few of its advantages. The state abdicating from its basic responsibilities is not a good thing. And the Red Tape / Blob discussion is frankly a facile way of approaching it.
The Grenfell rebuild project generated multiple metric tons of paperwork. Rooms full of folders, plus vast numbers of electronic documents.
Hidden in this mass was the fact that the external insulation was dangerously inflatable. Said insulation had tons of paperwork itself. Makes you wonder which was more inflatable.
The complex process for signing the insulation off as safe was utter bullshit.
Just as complex tax laws create loop holes for evasion, process and documentation for its own sake creates a forest for malefactors to hide in.
In domestic construction, if you follow the rules, you have a project document the size of a telephone directory. For just one house. No one reads it. Many builders simply don't bother to generate it. The one for my most recent project was generated, mostly, automatically.
What is needed is
1) A clear set of aims 2) A clear setting out of these aims, the way they are to be achieved and the methods to achieve them. 3) A clear enforcement of (1)
I'v encountered far too many people over the years who believe that a 500 page document is more professional than 5 pages. It isn't.
I'm not a particular admirer of Churchill's peacetime Government experience, but didn't he used to say something about one side of A4? (Or more likely, foolscap!)
Yes - because this is exactly how bullshit is hidden.
The case against inviting Musk to the investment conference is that he's now an active participant in politics, openly campaigning for a Cabinet job in a potential future Trump administration. Inviting him would be to risk him using the conference as a campaigning platform for the imminent US election (three weeks and a day?)
The case for inviting Musk is that Britain needs investment, Musk is the richest man on the planet, Britain needs investment in the technologies of the future even more, and if plucking a rocket out of mid-air isn't future technology I don't know what is. Plus, if you encourage him to spend more time on the stuff he's good at - creating new companies that push forward new technology - then you might distract him from the stuff he's crap at (politics, media).
Why would be actively campaigning for Trump at a UK investment conference? It won't get any coverage in the US media anyway. Also, he doesn't do that when he is banging on about self driving cars or robots or rockets in the US, where you could argue it might make a difference.
Not sure why the whiny little man-baby would want to invest in a country in which he thinks civil war is inevitable.
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
You still haven't got the GPS working? You shouldn't need to "get it working", it should just work. How is it tracking your walks/runs etc without a functioning GPS?
Something that confuses people is this. GPS on its own takes quite a while to get its initial fix.
Mobile phones are much faster, because they use mast data and nearby mapped WiFi to guesstimate their position, which makes getting the initial fix faster.
Smart watches without a mobile connection don't do this. So they can take a minute or so to get a fix. This is noticeable because most do not maintain a GPS fix all the time - only for some activities. This is to save power.
So when I put my Garmin in the activity mode for rowing, it starts getting a GPS fix and takes a little while to say that it is ready.
My Apple Watch Ultra works instantly without any problem, without being shackled to a phone. It has its own e-sim card. I never have a phone with me when running – there is no point. The watch works without it and can make and receive calls and texts etc so the bulky phone stays at home.
'Elon Musk has never come to any of the past investment summits that have been held under the previous government, he doesn't tend to do these sort of events, but I stand absolutely ready to engage with him, to talk about any potential global investments he's making - I'm not aware of any at this moment in time.'
Weird,
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has predicted that artificial intelligence will eventually mean that no one will have to work. He was speaking to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during an unusual "in conversation" event at the end of this week's summit on AI.
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
??
No we’re not. Recent polls all have them rising. That might stop soon - I expect it will - I reckon their ceiling is 20-25% - but it hasn’t stopped yet
The interesting problem Reform will hit at some point is the calibre of their top support base. Beyond Farage - who is very able in a particular way - there are currently no names at all, and in particular no names with an apparent capacity to run a medium size or large organisation - like a council, or a ministry.
If they remain just a vehicle of protest - like the extreme left but even less intelligent - then it's manageable for the majority of voters who still will only vote for parties with a degree, however tarnished and limited, of capacity for being centrist and capable, and keep the rickety show of UKplc on the road.
The interesting point would be if a significant group of people with real clout and ability get to the top of the Reform tree. SFAICS we are not close to that yet.
Farage has said he wants to build Reform into a serious party
I suspect it’s a reach too far. It’s so hard in the UK with FPTP. Can he really find - as you say - lots of capable and sane people willing to be candidates for a controversial right wing party? I doubt it
That said, remember what he did with UKIP. We Brexited precisely because of what he achieved with UKIP. So only a fool writes him off entirely
No, Brexit came about because of Cameron's frustration with Tory Eurosceptics, not Ukip who in 2010 scored only 3 per cent of the vote.
Arrant nonsense. It was UKIP’s devastation of the Tories in EU elections which terrified Tory MPs and persuaded Cameron to call an in/out vote
Here you go. See for yourself. 2014 eu elex. Farage won
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
What Musk drama? Ignoring his political opinion for a second, is he about to invest in the UK? Following Sunak's cosying up to him how much did he invest in the UK?
If you don't have the conversation you will never know.
Yes exactly. Musk is an innovator and an ideas guy and clearly somewhat unstable - and a genius
He is the kind of guy who will look at a field near Newent and then suddenly say “fuck it I’m going to build the worlds biggest air dryer right here and it will be two miles high and employ 80,000 people”
And most people will look at him in bewilderment and then he will go and do it, and it will work
But first you have to get him to that field in newent. You have to talk to him
Part of the problem is that the Labour Party is full of people who are the opposite of musk. It is full of @kinabalus. Crouched and cowering people, timid and disapproving, who have never designed or created or innovated anything in their lives. And would be too scared to do so
He's also the "kind of guy" who'll see racial unrest in our country - OUR country - and seek to fan it. That shouldn't come free of consequence purely because he's rich and powerful.
We see that over and over (latest with the Harrods creep), don't we, rich powerful men getting away with sick and twisted behaviour?
So, sorry and all, but no welcome mat at number 10 for Elon isn't my idea of a scandal. But then in the words of 10cc ... I'm not in love.
'Elon Musk has never come to any of the past investment summits that have been held under the previous government, he doesn't tend to do these sort of events, but I stand absolutely ready to engage with him, to talk about any potential global investments he's making - I'm not aware of any at this moment in time.'
Weird,
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has predicted that artificial intelligence will eventually mean that no one will have to work. He was speaking to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during an unusual "in conversation" event at the end of this week's summit on AI.
The case against inviting Musk to the investment conference is that he's now an active participant in politics, openly campaigning for a Cabinet job in a potential future Trump administration. Inviting him would be to risk him using the conference as a campaigning platform for the imminent US election (three weeks and a day?)
The case for inviting Musk is that Britain needs investment, Musk is the richest man on the planet, Britain needs investment in the technologies of the future even more, and if plucking a rocket out of mid-air isn't future technology I don't know what is. Plus, if you encourage him to spend more time on the stuff he's good at - creating new companies that push forward new technology - then you might distract him from the stuff he's crap at (politics, media).
Why would be actively campaigning for Trump at a UK investment conference? It won't get any coverage in the US media anyway. Also, he doesn't do that when he is banging on about self driving cars or robots or rockets in the US, where you could argue it might make a difference.
Not sure why the whiny little man-baby would want to invest in a country in which he thinks civil war is inevitable.
One imagines that he wouldn't. Whereas, I suspect most of the attendees at this conference have deals pretty much ready to roll. In which case, the rule Musk falls foul of is the unwritten one about "no time wasters".
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
What Musk drama? Ignoring his political opinion for a second, is he about to invest in the UK? Following Sunak's cosying up to him how much did he invest in the UK?
If you don't have the conversation you will never know.
Yes exactly. Musk is an innovator and an ideas guy and clearly somewhat unstable - and a genius
He is the kind of guy who will look at a field near Newent and then suddenly say “fuck it I’m going to build the worlds biggest air dryer right here and it will be two miles high and employ 80,000 people”
And most people will look at him in bewilderment and then he will go and do it, and it will work
But first you have to get him to that field in newent. You have to talk to him
Part of the problem is that the Labour Party is full of people who are the opposite of musk. It is full of @kinabalus. Crouched and cowering people, timid and disapproving, who have never designed or created or innovated anything in their lives. And would be too scared to do so
I don't think the problem is that the Labour Party is bereft of innovators. I have no problem with people who have never innovated - that's true of most of us. I think the problem is that the Labour Party is full of people who value how something looks to their left wing mates over what the impact is. Hence, VAT on private schools, giving away the Chagos Islands to China, Ed Miliband, scaring off investors and the wealthy and trash-talking Musk. All catnip for the left; all makes Britain poorer.
I entirely agree. But I think both are true
There are no innovators and entrepreneurs in Labour. And they are ALSO fond of wanky gestural politics
The last decade and a half proved that the Tories don't really have many innovators, either. Other than Brexit - that enormous waste of enormous effort - what did they actually achieve ?
Levelling-up was a tremendous initiative which had enormous resonance. It could have transformed the political landscape. However Covid intervened and Boris's personal limitations (ahem) sank it. A huge opportunity missed. So, as you say, little achieved. But it was innovative. No doubt about that. And now we're left with Sir Keir for 5 years.
The case against inviting Musk to the investment conference is that he's now an active participant in politics, openly campaigning for a Cabinet job in a potential future Trump administration. Inviting him would be to risk him using the conference as a campaigning platform for the imminent US election (three weeks and a day?)
The case for inviting Musk is that Britain needs investment, Musk is the richest man on the planet, Britain needs investment in the technologies of the future even more, and if plucking a rocket out of mid-air isn't future technology I don't know what is. Plus, if you encourage him to spend more time on the stuff he's good at - creating new companies that push forward new technology - then you might distract him from the stuff he's crap at (politics, media).
Why would be actively campaigning for Trump at a UK investment conference? It won't get any coverage in the US media anyway. Also, he doesn't do that when he is banging on about self driving cars or robots or rockets in the US, where you could argue it might make a difference.
I think that when Musk says something it's news, and he's a loose cannon who could say anything at any time.
I'd want him at the conference, but I can imagine the protocol sticklers not being happy about it because of the election. So, would have been better to have the conference earlier, or after election day.
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
You still haven't got the GPS working? You shouldn't need to "get it working", it should just work. How is it tracking your walks/runs etc without a functioning GPS?
Something that confuses people is this. GPS on its own takes quite a while to get its initial fix.
Mobile phones are much faster, because they use mast data and nearby mapped WiFi to guesstimate their position, which makes getting the initial fix faster.
Smart watches without a mobile connection don't do this. So they can take a minute or so to get a fix. This is noticeable because most do not maintain a GPS fix all the time - only for some activities. This is to save power.
So when I put my Garmin in the activity mode for rowing, it starts getting a GPS fix and takes a little while to say that it is ready.
My Apple Watch Ultra works instantly without any problem, without being shackled to a phone. It has its own e-sim card. I never have a phone with me when running – there is no point. The watch works without it and can make and receive calls and texts etc so the bulky phone stays at home.
Which is the reason for the lower battery life on Apple Watches (and other sim'd smart watches) vs those without.
'Elon Musk has never come to any of the past investment summits that have been held under the previous government, he doesn't tend to do these sort of events, but I stand absolutely ready to engage with him, to talk about any potential global investments he's making - I'm not aware of any at this moment in time.'
Weird,
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has predicted that artificial intelligence will eventually mean that no one will have to work. He was speaking to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during an unusual "in conversation" event at the end of this week's summit on AI.
That was a summit on AI, not an investment summit.
That is really splitting hairs....he came to a government organised event about technology of the future, investment in it and met with the PM. He also said he would have liked to come to this event this week, so the government line is utter BS.
'Elon Musk has never come to any of the past investment summits that have been held under the previous government, he doesn't tend to do these sort of events, but I stand absolutely ready to engage with him, to talk about any potential global investments he's making - I'm not aware of any at this moment in time.'
Weird,
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has predicted that artificial intelligence will eventually mean that no one will have to work. He was speaking to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during an unusual "in conversation" event at the end of this week's summit on AI.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
What Musk drama? Ignoring his political opinion for a second, is he about to invest in the UK? Following Sunak's cosying up to him how much did he invest in the UK?
If you don't have the conversation you will never know.
Yes exactly. Musk is an innovator and an ideas guy and clearly somewhat unstable - and a genius
He is the kind of guy who will look at a field near Newent and then suddenly say “fuck it I’m going to build the worlds biggest air dryer right here and it will be two miles high and employ 80,000 people”
And most people will look at him in bewilderment and then he will go and do it, and it will work
But first you have to get him to that field in newent. You have to talk to him
Part of the problem is that the Labour Party is full of people who are the opposite of musk. It is full of @kinabalus. Crouched and cowering people, timid and disapproving, who have never designed or created or innovated anything in their lives. And would be too scared to do so
He's also the "kind of guy" who'll see racial unrest in our country - OUR country - and seek to fan it. That shouldn't come free of consequence purely because he's rich and powerful.
We see that over and over (latest with the Harrods creep), don't we, rich powerful men getting away with sick and twisted behaviour?
So, sorry and all, but no welcome mat at number 10 for Elon isn't my idea of a scandal. But then in the words of 10cc ... I'm not in love.
That's all well and good. But we better put up a closed for business from China and Middle East as well then. Are we all good with that?
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
How do you distinguish between xenophobia and racism ? (Genuine question.) In any event, the xenophobia has become pretty clearly based, with its talk of "poisoning the blood", etc.
"The Democrats say, 'Please don't call them animals. They're humans.' I said, 'No, they're not humans, they're not humans, they're animals,'" said Trump
This is textbook dehumanisation. We’ve seen this over and over, with the Holocaust, with the Armenian genocide, with the Rwandan genocide.
And it’s clear that Trump’s views (like Musk’s) are racist, like when he talks about “bad genes”. Trump has a long history of racism. We can go back to the 1973 case where the US government sued him for racial discrimination in renting practices. He has constantly attacked people born in the US, be that promoting conspiracy theories that Obama wasn’t born in the US; claiming the judge in the Trump University case would be biased because he’s of “Mexican heritage”; saying of 4 non-white, Democratic congresswomen, 3 of whom were born in the US, “Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.” As you note, he has repeatedly talked of how immigrants, "they're poisoning the blood of our country". He has repeatedly lied about black Americans, e.g. made-up crime statistics. It was never just about immigration.
Indeed. If Trump isn't racist we might as well retire the word.
If Trump was recorded using the N word (which I would bet my house on that he has) there would still be folk saying that wasn't real racism.
Yup. They'd be looking for some hard and proper 'white hood and lynching' evidence.
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
??
No we’re not. Recent polls all have them rising. That might stop soon - I expect it will - I reckon their ceiling is 20-25% - but it hasn’t stopped yet
The interesting problem Reform will hit at some point is the calibre of their top support base. Beyond Farage - who is very able in a particular way - there are currently no names at all, and in particular no names with an apparent capacity to run a medium size or large organisation - like a council, or a ministry.
If they remain just a vehicle of protest - like the extreme left but even less intelligent - then it's manageable for the majority of voters who still will only vote for parties with a degree, however tarnished and limited, of capacity for being centrist and capable, and keep the rickety show of UKplc on the road.
The interesting point would be if a significant group of people with real clout and ability get to the top of the Reform tree. SFAICS we are not close to that yet.
Farage has said he wants to build Reform into a serious party
I suspect it’s a reach too far. It’s so hard in the UK with FPTP. Can he really find - as you say - lots of capable and sane people willing to be candidates for a controversial right wing party? I doubt it
That said, remember what he did with UKIP. We Brexited precisely because of what he achieved with UKIP. So only a fool writes him off entirely
No, Brexit came about because of Cameron's frustration with Tory Eurosceptics, not Ukip who in 2010 scored only 3 per cent of the vote.
Arrant nonsense. It was UKIP’s devastation of the Tories in EU elections which terrified Tory MPs and persuaded Cameron to call an in/out vote
Here you go. See for yourself. 2014 eu elex. Farage won
David Cameron promised a referendum on Britain’s membership in the EU if the Conservative Party won the next general election. He did so in January 2013
Bread making and other advanced food prep discovered at Karahan Tepe. That takes the earliest bread-making back 3-5000 years to 10,000 BC. Just like that
We thought these people were cavemen. This is 10,000BC. Yet it turns out they had kitchens and ovens and advanced water systems - plus shrines and auditoriums and elaborate religion
I strongly suspect they had some kind of written language as well
The case against inviting Musk to the investment conference is that he's now an active participant in politics, openly campaigning for a Cabinet job in a potential future Trump administration. Inviting him would be to risk him using the conference as a campaigning platform for the imminent US election (three weeks and a day?)
The case for inviting Musk is that Britain needs investment, Musk is the richest man on the planet, Britain needs investment in the technologies of the future even more, and if plucking a rocket out of mid-air isn't future technology I don't know what is. Plus, if you encourage him to spend more time on the stuff he's good at - creating new companies that push forward new technology - then you might distract him from the stuff he's crap at (politics, media).
Why would be actively campaigning for Trump at a UK investment conference? It won't get any coverage in the US media anyway. Also, he doesn't do that when he is banging on about self driving cars or robots or rockets in the US, where you could argue it might make a difference.
I think that when Musk says something it's news, and he's a loose cannon who could say anything at any time.
I'd want him at the conference, but I can imagine the protocol sticklers not being happy about it because of the election. So, would have been better to have the conference earlier, or after election day.
I think what you do is reach out before hand, and say look you can't do BS about Trump etc. Just promise us this, stick to the talking about tech. He is a loose cannon, but he isn't that loose. As I say, he manages to go all this own business events without them being MAGA rallies.
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
??
No we’re not. Recent polls all have them rising. That might stop soon - I expect it will - I reckon their ceiling is 20-25% - but it hasn’t stopped yet
The interesting problem Reform will hit at some point is the calibre of their top support base. Beyond Farage - who is very able in a particular way - there are currently no names at all, and in particular no names with an apparent capacity to run a medium size or large organisation - like a council, or a ministry.
If they remain just a vehicle of protest - like the extreme left but even less intelligent - then it's manageable for the majority of voters who still will only vote for parties with a degree, however tarnished and limited, of capacity for being centrist and capable, and keep the rickety show of UKplc on the road.
The interesting point would be if a significant group of people with real clout and ability get to the top of the Reform tree. SFAICS we are not close to that yet.
Farage has said he wants to build Reform into a serious party
I suspect it’s a reach too far. It’s so hard in the UK with FPTP. Can he really find - as you say - lots of capable and sane people willing to be candidates for a controversial right wing party? I doubt it
That said, remember what he did with UKIP. We Brexited precisely because of what he achieved with UKIP. So only a fool writes him off entirely
No, Brexit came about because of Cameron's frustration with Tory Eurosceptics, not Ukip who in 2010 scored only 3 per cent of the vote.
Arrant nonsense. It was UKIP’s devastation of the Tories in EU elections which terrified Tory MPs and persuaded Cameron to call an in/out vote
Here you go. See for yourself. 2014 eu elex. Farage won
David Cameron promised a referendum on Britain’s membership in the EU if the Conservative Party won the next general election. He did so in January 2013
Arrant nonsense indeed.
Because of the growing threat of UKIP, cemented by the 2014 result. Plus his own eurosceptic backbenchers
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
I suspect that is wishful thinking. I also think, living in a seat predicted to go Reform on the latest polling, is the plague on all your houses view comes from the feeling none of these parties have ever done anything for areas like mine. Rochdale is right in so far as areas like mine, in decline, want stuff done in our towns to revive them.
We currently have a problem in the local town with a gang of youths from not only the town but outside coming and making bother. Petty vandalism, harassing shops and customers, petty vandalism and the like. Shops are locking their door at 5PM and customers can enter when let in. The Police have been as much use as a marzipan dildo until recently. Now they are raising their presence and have spoken to a few kids and their parents but it persists. People get fed up.
The local elections next year won't say much for Reform based on where they are but in places like Durham they will really need to go forward there and pick up a number of councillors if they are to have any impact.
There's a lot in this analysis imo. Politically as I see it, the Conservatives won a hearing with levelling up and similar, on top of Brexit and anti-Corbyn. Then they spent the next 4-5 years demonstrating that they were not capable of running a bath, that their promises of levelling-up were worth diddly squat, and that when push came to shove they would burn it all down and circle the wagons around what they thought of as their core territory - Nimbyland.
They had their chance, and blew it.
Reform are a protest party, lots of shouting but no one who has ever delivered anything. And rather nihilist politics sometimes walking along the BNP edge of UKIP territory, whilst most of their MPs seem to have lucrative media gigs funded by Paul Marshall. If their voters apply the 'self serving money shovelling MPs only in it for themselves' yardstick to Farage and Anderson, it will not be pretty.
But they have no extant traction either.
It is for Labour to lose, and if they do enough on the retail politics side to change conditions you desribe ... police numbers, dealing with ASBO, potholes, local Government resourced to make a difference and that starting to happen, NHS waiting lists substantially reduced, and so on, Conservatives and Reform will not get a hearing.
Both Cons and Reform need Labour to screw up badly to have a chance, or for events to force them to be unable to deliver.
At present the new Government hold the entire deck of cards in their hands, including the Jokers from team Sunak.
The case against inviting Musk to the investment conference is that he's now an active participant in politics, openly campaigning for a Cabinet job in a potential future Trump administration. Inviting him would be to risk him using the conference as a campaigning platform for the imminent US election (three weeks and a day?)
The case for inviting Musk is that Britain needs investment, Musk is the richest man on the planet, Britain needs investment in the technologies of the future even more, and if plucking a rocket out of mid-air isn't future technology I don't know what is. Plus, if you encourage him to spend more time on the stuff he's good at - creating new companies that push forward new technology - then you might distract him from the stuff he's crap at (politics, media).
Yes, for me the 'no invite' is a good decision but there is a case either way. That's fair comment.
'Elon Musk has never come to any of the past investment summits that have been held under the previous government, he doesn't tend to do these sort of events, but I stand absolutely ready to engage with him, to talk about any potential global investments he's making - I'm not aware of any at this moment in time.'
Weird,
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has predicted that artificial intelligence will eventually mean that no one will have to work. He was speaking to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during an unusual "in conversation" event at the end of this week's summit on AI.
That was a summit on AI, not an investment summit.
That is really splitting hairs....he came to a government organised event about technology of the future, investment in it and met with the PM. He also said he would have liked to come to this event this week, so the government line is utter BS.
It is splitting hairs, but they lay out the hair split clearly in what they write. That’s my point. That’s how you do government spin.
The Lincoln Project released a great video yesterday warning about anti-American immigrants to the US. They focused on three bad players; Peter Thiel, Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk.
'Elon Musk has never come to any of the past investment summits that have been held under the previous government, he doesn't tend to do these sort of events, but I stand absolutely ready to engage with him, to talk about any potential global investments he's making - I'm not aware of any at this moment in time.'
Weird,
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has predicted that artificial intelligence will eventually mean that no one will have to work. He was speaking to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during an unusual "in conversation" event at the end of this week's summit on AI.
That was a summit on AI, not an investment summit.
That is really splitting hairs....he came to a government organised event about technology of the future, investment in it and met with the PM. He also said he would have liked to come to this event this week, so the government line is utter BS.
It is splitting hairs, but they lay out the hair split clearly in what they write. That’s my point. That’s how you do government spin.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
What Musk drama? Ignoring his political opinion for a second, is he about to invest in the UK? Following Sunak's cosying up to him how much did he invest in the UK?
If you don't have the conversation you will never know.
Yes exactly. Musk is an innovator and an ideas guy and clearly somewhat unstable - and a genius
He is the kind of guy who will look at a field near Newent and then suddenly say “fuck it I’m going to build the worlds biggest air dryer right here and it will be two miles high and employ 80,000 people”
And most people will look at him in bewilderment and then he will go and do it, and it will work
But first you have to get him to that field in newent. You have to talk to him
Part of the problem is that the Labour Party is full of people who are the opposite of musk. It is full of @kinabalus. Crouched and cowering people, timid and disapproving, who have never designed or created or innovated anything in their lives. And would be too scared to do so
He's also the "kind of guy" who'll see racial unrest in our country - OUR country - and seek to fan it. That shouldn't come free of consequence purely because he's rich and powerful.
We see that over and over (latest with the Harrods creep), don't we, rich powerful men getting away with sick and twisted behaviour?
So, sorry and all, but no welcome mat at number 10 for Elon isn't my idea of a scandal. But then in the words of 10cc ... I'm not in love.
That's all well and good. But we better put up a closed for business from China and Middle East as well then. Are we all good with that?
It depends on the medium as to survival too. Papyrus in Egypt has survived relatively well but rotted elsewhere. Ceramic notes on pottery shards in Greece survived very nicely, as did clay tablets for cuneiform. Steles of stone or bronze that are engraved can be handy, but most written material across time has been lost.
Today, we have the ephemeral nature of the internet/electronic communications combined with a flood of dross.
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
You still haven't got the GPS working? You shouldn't need to "get it working", it should just work. How is it tracking your walks/runs etc without a functioning GPS?
Something that confuses people is this. GPS on its own takes quite a while to get its initial fix.
Mobile phones are much faster, because they use mast data and nearby mapped WiFi to guesstimate their position, which makes getting the initial fix faster.
Smart watches without a mobile connection don't do this. So they can take a minute or so to get a fix. This is noticeable because most do not maintain a GPS fix all the time - only for some activities. This is to save power.
So when I put my Garmin in the activity mode for rowing, it starts getting a GPS fix and takes a little while to say that it is ready.
My Apple Watch Ultra works instantly without any problem, without being shackled to a phone. It has its own e-sim card. I never have a phone with me when running – there is no point. The watch works without it and can make and receive calls and texts etc so the bulky phone stays at home.
Which is the reason for the lower battery life on Apple Watches (and other sim'd smart watches) vs those without.
Nope. As I have said repeatedly now, you only have you charge the AWU every three days despite its manifold features (which are why it is awesome). And it charges from flat in the time it takes you to get washed and dressed of a morning. I mean, you can get years out of a basic Casio, but it has very few features. If your 'smartwatch' only works when shackled to a phone it is limited by your phone's battery life regardless of its own notional battery life.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Invite the little shit who tried to whip up race riots in our country? That's a hard and obvious No.
A PB moment for the ages. This is @kinabalu, an obscure retired accountant who thinks going to Bruges is an adventure for the ages, calling << checks notes >> world’s richest man and probably the greatest engineer in human history, Elon Musk, “a little shit”
Aw the little fanboy is upset.
If you think Elon is too dodgy to talk to - why aren't we cutting off all relations with China?
Exactly. I suspect someone in Number 10 thought it would be a nice Woke gesture to demonstrate their leftiness to unhappy lefty voters - snub Musk - but instead it comes across as adolescent tit-wankery - because we are courting China, as you say. So what exactly are they trying to prove? That we’re unserious idiots, it seems
They are utterly hapless. And now they are running around trying to clean up another mess
To be honest I am not sure that these “investment summit” type events are anything other than a bit of a press jamboree and a posh dinner. Much of the announcements are either reheats or things that were going to happen in the first place.
It is good “vibes” and some connections will be made that may lead to future investment. But, it is not meaningful in the grand scheme of things.
And if you accept that it is a presentational event then of course the Government aren’t going to want an individual who is going to steal their limelight and potentially say something offensive over supper.
No one will ever admit that - hence all these odd reasons why Mr Musk was NFI. But that is what it comes down to.
Yep. The fact Musk appears to have no intention of investing in the UK would be a reason for not including him in an investment summit. Different from DP World who have an actual project.
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
I suspect your bar for what counts as racism is pretty high. Personally, I think Trumps 'black jobs' comment is racist but I appreciate others might disagree.
Accusing Haitian immigrants of eating pets seems pretty obviously racist. Calling Mexican immigrants rapists ditto. There is good evidence of Trump making openly racist statements in private. He seems pretty obviously racist to anyone paying attention. Not in a kkk kind of way, just a kind of basic racist old man kind of way.
There is also his threat to forcibly export legal migrants, which would certainly fall into the category of racism
I think he's indifferent to whether his comments seem racist or not (unlike most of us who would be upset to be thought racist)- every single one is calculated on the basis of whether it will win votes. I have little idea what his core beliefs are, if any.
'Elon Musk has never come to any of the past investment summits that have been held under the previous government, he doesn't tend to do these sort of events, but I stand absolutely ready to engage with him, to talk about any potential global investments he's making - I'm not aware of any at this moment in time.'
Weird,
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has predicted that artificial intelligence will eventually mean that no one will have to work. He was speaking to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during an unusual "in conversation" event at the end of this week's summit on AI.
That was a summit on AI, not an investment summit.
That is really splitting hairs....he came to a government organised event about technology of the future, investment in it and met with the PM. He also said he would have liked to come to this event this week, so the government line is utter BS.
It is splitting hairs, but they lay out the hair split clearly in what they write. That’s my point. That’s how you do government spin.
Expect it isn't, because in the same sentence they lied. "He doesn't do these events", when he said I want to do this event.
You can tell the government are floundering on this, the line changes every few hours. It was we don't talk about individuals, then well he doesn't have anything to invest, to well he doesn't actually do these type of events and didn't want to come (and even if he doesn't normally, its your job to get people like that to your event)....besides he does do these events, he has gone to the ones Macron has held that the UK government are doing a LIDL knock off version.
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
You still haven't got the GPS working? You shouldn't need to "get it working", it should just work. How is it tracking your walks/runs etc without a functioning GPS?
Something that confuses people is this. GPS on its own takes quite a while to get its initial fix.
Mobile phones are much faster, because they use mast data and nearby mapped WiFi to guesstimate their position, which makes getting the initial fix faster.
Smart watches without a mobile connection don't do this. So they can take a minute or so to get a fix. This is noticeable because most do not maintain a GPS fix all the time - only for some activities. This is to save power.
So when I put my Garmin in the activity mode for rowing, it starts getting a GPS fix and takes a little while to say that it is ready.
My Apple Watch Ultra works instantly without any problem, without being shackled to a phone. It has its own e-sim card. I never have a phone with me when running – there is no point. The watch works without it and can make and receive calls and texts etc so the bulky phone stays at home.
Which is the reason for the lower battery life on Apple Watches (and other sim'd smart watches) vs those without.
Nope. As I have said repeatedly now, you only have you charge the AWU every three days despite its manifold features (which are why it is awesome). And it charges from flat in the time it takes you to get washed and dressed of a morning. I mean, you can get years out of a basic Casio, but it has very few features. If your 'smartwatch' only works when shackled to a phone it is limited by your phone's battery life regardless of its own notional battery life.
Oh dear. I seem to have restarted the Great PB Watch Wars, via the Second Battle of GPS Availability
While at the same time introducing a load of new red tape on workers rights...
A stupid childish catechism which reveals only a politician who has not bothered to read the Grenfell Tower report and has no understanding of the history of finance in the last 50 years.
Both of which relate to the piling up of paperwork and process, without any concern for the actual goal.
Well, that's not quite what the Grenfell Tower Report says. It makes a very clear link between politicians' demands for No More Red Tape and the refusal of the department to implement the recommendations of the Lakanal Fire coroner, to take only one of many many examples. And that weak regulatory system and feeble enforcement was deliberately and dishonestly exploited by bad actors, whose products directly led to the deaths of 72 people.
When politicians talk in trite terms they are not addressing the very real issues that arise which is why in this country we have all the disadvantages of a bureaucracy and few of its advantages. The state abdicating from its basic responsibilities is not a good thing. And the Red Tape / Blob discussion is frankly a facile way of approaching it.
The Grenfell rebuild project generated multiple metric tons of paperwork. Rooms full of folders, plus vast numbers of electronic documents.
Hidden in this mass was the fact that the external insulation was dangerously inflatable. Said insulation had tons of paperwork itself. Makes you wonder which was more inflatable.
The complex process for signing the insulation off as safe was utter bullshit.
Just as complex tax laws create loop holes for evasion, process and documentation for its own sake creates a forest for malefactors to hide in.
In domestic construction, if you follow the rules, you have a project document the size of a telephone directory. For just one house. No one reads it. Many builders simply don't bother to generate it. The one for my most recent project was generated, mostly, automatically.
What is needed is
1) A clear set of aims 2) A clear setting out of these aims, the way they are to be achieved and the methods to achieve them. 3) A clear enforcement of (1)
I'v encountered far too many people over the years who believe that a 500 page document is more professional than 5 pages. It isn't.
Agree with 1, 2 and 3. But that isn't what we've got.
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
I suspect your bar for what counts as racism is pretty high. Personally, I think Trumps 'black jobs' comment is racist but I appreciate others might disagree.
Accusing Haitian immigrants of eating pets seems pretty obviously racist. Calling Mexican immigrants rapists ditto. There is good evidence of Trump making openly racist statements in private. He seems pretty obviously racist to anyone paying attention. Not in a kkk kind of way, just a kind of basic racist old man kind of way.
There is also his threat to forcibly export legal migrants, which would certainly fall into the category of racism
I think he's indifferent to whether his comments seem racist or not (unlike most of us who would be upset to be thought racist)- every single one is calculated on the basis of whether it will win votes. I have little idea what his core beliefs are, if any.
Trump was racist long before he ever sought political office. I think that tells you what his core beliefs are.
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
We currently have a problem in the local town with a gang of youths from not only the town but outside coming and making bother. Petty vandalism, harassing shops and customers, petty vandalism and the like. Shops are locking their door at 5PM and customers can enter when let in. The Police have been as much use as a marzipan dildo until recently. Now they are raising their presence and have spoken to a few kids and their parents but it persists. People get fed up
The local elections next year won't say much for Reform based on where they are but in places like Durham they will really need to go forward there and pick up a number of councillors if they are to have any impact.
This is far from unique and a problem which exists in many small towns and parts of cities.
In the "old days", we'd have had the local copper "give 'em a clip round the ear and send 'em home". Well, whether that ever actually worked I don't know but is anyone arguing for a physical response and if so, would a clip round the ear work these days?
What then is the solution? Finding out who they are isn't difficult so if we go and "talk to the parents", will that achieve anything? Did it ever? Are the school aware of what these children/young people/strudents are doing - would they take the line that if it happens outside their gates they don't care?
Is it simply a question of them being "bored"? I suspect most youth-based activities have long since been closed because of lack of funding (how short-sighted we were and are) but there's a fundamental at work here to do with how those young people who fall out of education and can't fall into work are living their lives.
Talking to the parents, so far, has yielded nothing apart from more harrasment of businesses.
In the old days the Police were respected. Clearly nowadays that is not the case.
The thing is, in this case, it has moved on from harrasment to criminal damage. How long before it becomes an attack against the person.
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
You still haven't got the GPS working? You shouldn't need to "get it working", it should just work. How is it tracking your walks/runs etc without a functioning GPS?
Something that confuses people is this. GPS on its own takes quite a while to get its initial fix.
Mobile phones are much faster, because they use mast data and nearby mapped WiFi to guesstimate their position, which makes getting the initial fix faster.
Smart watches without a mobile connection don't do this. So they can take a minute or so to get a fix. This is noticeable because most do not maintain a GPS fix all the time - only for some activities. This is to save power.
So when I put my Garmin in the activity mode for rowing, it starts getting a GPS fix and takes a little while to say that it is ready.
My Apple Watch Ultra works instantly without any problem, without being shackled to a phone. It has its own e-sim card. I never have a phone with me when running – there is no point. The watch works without it and can make and receive calls and texts etc so the bulky phone stays at home.
Which is the reason for the lower battery life on Apple Watches (and other sim'd smart watches) vs those without.
Nope. As I have said repeatedly now, you only have you charge the AWU every three days despite its manifold features (which are why it is awesome). And it charges from flat in the time it takes you to get washed and dressed of a morning. I mean, you can get years out of a basic Casio, but it has very few features. If your 'smartwatch' only works when shackled to a phone it is limited by your phone's battery life regardless of its own notional battery life.
Oh dear. I seem to have restarted the Great PB Watch Wars, via the Second Battle of GPS Availability
I can't understand why you can't get the GPS to work on your watch? What use is it without GPS? That is the way it tracks all your walks and runs. Is it faulty?
Not to be outdone by Leon I am jet setting today. Well turbo-propping actually. Copious pictures of my Premier Inn dinner and a drink package to follow.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Invite the little shit who tried to whip up race riots in our country? That's a hard and obvious No.
A PB moment for the ages. This is @kinabalu, an obscure retired accountant who thinks going to Bruges is an adventure for the ages, calling << checks notes >> world’s richest man and probably the greatest engineer in human history, Elon Musk, “a little shit”
Elon Musk did use his platform (and several opportunities subsequently) to publicly attack the Government and its policies. It so happens that I completely agree with Musk's perspective (though not every Tweet) and completely deplore the UK Government's undermining of free speech - however, the circumstances being what they are, I recognise that it would have been quite impossible to invite him to the summit. Surely that is obvious?
The case against inviting Musk to the investment conference is that he's now an active participant in politics, openly campaigning for a Cabinet job in a potential future Trump administration. Inviting him would be to risk him using the conference as a campaigning platform for the imminent US election (three weeks and a day?)
The case for inviting Musk is that Britain needs investment, Musk is the richest man on the planet, Britain needs investment in the technologies of the future even more, and if plucking a rocket out of mid-air isn't future technology I don't know what is. Plus, if you encourage him to spend more time on the stuff he's good at - creating new companies that push forward new technology - then you might distract him from the stuff he's crap at (politics, media).
Why would be actively campaigning for Trump at a UK investment conference? It won't get any coverage in the US media anyway. Also, he doesn't do that when he is banging on about self driving cars or robots or rockets in the US, where you could argue it might make a difference.
I think that when Musk says something it's news, and he's a loose cannon who could say anything at any time.
I'd want him at the conference, but I can imagine the protocol sticklers not being happy about it because of the election. So, would have been better to have the conference earlier, or after election day.
I think what you do is reach out before hand, and say look you can't do BS about Trump etc. Just promise us this, stick to the talking about tech. He is a loose cannon, but he isn't that loose. As I say, he manages to go all this own business events without them being MAGA rallies.
Forget about America, during the riots he smeared and attacked our PM and our efforts to diffuse and control a very dangerous situation. He was actually trolling Starmer on Twix. So now he doesn't get to have the target of his imbecilic taunts welcome him to a conference. Diddums.
It depends on the medium as to survival too. Papyrus in Egypt has survived relatively well but rotted elsewhere. Ceramic notes on pottery shards in Greece survived very nicely, as did clay tablets for cuneiform. Steles of stone or bronze that are engraved can be handy, but most written material across time has been lost.
Today, we have the ephemeral nature of the internet/electronic communications combined with a flood of dross.
You can have a civilisation without writing - the incans? - but it is rare. Almost all do from Sumer on
So the Tas Tepeler may have been pre-literate but given that it keeps surprising, wildly, on the upside, my guess is that they did have writing. But it has probably perished, as you suggest
Remember that the only reason these incredible stone sites survive is because they were, almost certainly, deliberately buried
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
What Musk drama? Ignoring his political opinion for a second, is he about to invest in the UK? Following Sunak's cosying up to him how much did he invest in the UK?
If you don't have the conversation you will never know.
Yes exactly. Musk is an innovator and an ideas guy and clearly somewhat unstable - and a genius
He is the kind of guy who will look at a field near Newent and then suddenly say “fuck it I’m going to build the worlds biggest air dryer right here and it will be two miles high and employ 80,000 people”
And most people will look at him in bewilderment and then he will go and do it, and it will work
But first you have to get him to that field in newent. You have to talk to him
Part of the problem is that the Labour Party is full of people who are the opposite of musk. It is full of @kinabalus. Crouched and cowering people, timid and disapproving, who have never designed or created or innovated anything in their lives. And would be too scared to do so
He's also the "kind of guy" who'll see racial unrest in our country - OUR country - and seek to fan it. That shouldn't come free of consequence purely because he's rich and powerful.
We see that over and over (latest with the Harrods creep), don't we, rich powerful men getting away with sick and twisted behaviour?
So, sorry and all, but no welcome mat at number 10 for Elon isn't my idea of a scandal. But then in the words of 10cc ... I'm not in love.
That's all well and good. But we better put up a closed for business from China and Middle East as well then. Are we all good with that?
Russia would be a better example of actively trying to disrupt the UK. The Middle Eastern countries we trade with want to be able to do what they want at home but don't care what we do here, beyond perhaps Premier League financial regulations.....
Actively creating harm to the UK is a different category to different moral values.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
Politicians like big ticket items they can put into GE campaigns, they don't particularly care about making small incremental improvements to services or infrastructure because it's not something that works in a national campaign and local parties might end up getting the credit for it.
Imagine how much stuff might actually get achieved, if everyone stopped caring about where the credit might end up.
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
How much have you been drinking? I had two beers and a glass of wine on Friday and pushed my sleep score down into the low 70s.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Invite the little shit who tried to whip up race riots in our country? That's a hard and obvious No.
A PB moment for the ages. This is @kinabalu, an obscure retired accountant who thinks going to Bruges is an adventure for the ages, calling << checks notes >> world’s richest man and probably the greatest engineer in human history, Elon Musk, “a little shit”
Elon Musk did use his platform (and several opportunities subsequently) to publicly attack the Government and its policies. It so happens that I completely agree with Musk's perspective (though not every Tweet) and completely deplore the UK Government's undermining of free speech - however, the circumstances being what they are, I recognise that it would have been quite impossible to invite him to the summit. Surely that is obvious?
One sometimes finds sense in the most surprising places!
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
You still haven't got the GPS working? You shouldn't need to "get it working", it should just work. How is it tracking your walks/runs etc without a functioning GPS?
Something that confuses people is this. GPS on its own takes quite a while to get its initial fix.
Mobile phones are much faster, because they use mast data and nearby mapped WiFi to guesstimate their position, which makes getting the initial fix faster.
Smart watches without a mobile connection don't do this. So they can take a minute or so to get a fix. This is noticeable because most do not maintain a GPS fix all the time - only for some activities. This is to save power.
So when I put my Garmin in the activity mode for rowing, it starts getting a GPS fix and takes a little while to say that it is ready.
My Apple Watch Ultra works instantly without any problem, without being shackled to a phone. It has its own e-sim card. I never have a phone with me when running – there is no point. The watch works without it and can make and receive calls and texts etc so the bulky phone stays at home.
Which is the reason for the lower battery life on Apple Watches (and other sim'd smart watches) vs those without.
Nope. As I have said repeatedly now, you only have you charge the AWU every three days despite its manifold features (which are why it is awesome). And it charges from flat in the time it takes you to get washed and dressed of a morning. I mean, you can get years out of a basic Casio, but it has very few features. If your 'smartwatch' only works when shackled to a phone it is limited by your phone's battery life regardless of its own notional battery life.
Oh dear. I seem to have restarted the Great PB Watch Wars, via the Second Battle of GPS Availability
I can't understand why you can't get the GPS to work on your watch? What use is it without GPS? That is the way it tracks all your walks and runs. Is it faulty?
Calm down! I think I have to go outside and wave it about a bit
I dunno. I’m still obsessed with its health tracking features
I’m pretty sure it is inferior to the AUW in this aspect, but I don’t care. It does exactly what I want and I don’t have to charge it for two whole weeks which is superb
We’ve discussed why charging is a vexatious issue for me. It’s coz I travel so much - and I’m off again today
I’m gonna try the Garmin Venu’s “jet lag” feature. Apparently it can monitor all my health and sleep patterns and advise me how to get over jet lag. Given that I had horrible jet lag on my last long haul flight (to Vancouver) this could be a life saver
And on that note I’d better get up and start packing. Later
On topic - losing BEs to Ref should not increase chat about a pact. It should increase Ref confidence about replacing the COns and Con MPs inclination to switch parties.
Now losses to Lab or LD due to the Ref/Con vote splitting - that would be a different matter
Is he openly racist? Trump? He says some mad stuff and some of it is deeply menacing and xenophobic but I’ve not heard actual racism
Not a taunt - a genuine query
I suspect your bar for what counts as racism is pretty high. Personally, I think Trumps 'black jobs' comment is racist but I appreciate others might disagree.
Accusing Haitian immigrants of eating pets seems pretty obviously racist. Calling Mexican immigrants rapists ditto. There is good evidence of Trump making openly racist statements in private. He seems pretty obviously racist to anyone paying attention. Not in a kkk kind of way, just a kind of basic racist old man kind of way.
There is also his threat to forcibly export legal migrants, which would certainly fall into the category of racism
Hasn't he also been talking about using the whatever act it is from 1791 to imprison migrants in internment camps - on the model of Japanese Americans in WW2?
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
Politicians like big ticket items they can put into GE campaigns, they don't particularly care about making small incremental improvements to services or infrastructure because it's not something that works in a national campaign and local parties might end up getting the credit for it.
Imagine how much stuff might actually get achieved, if everyone stopped caring about where the credit might end up.
(I thought it was Reagan, then I found it was Truman, but the quote goes back further than that)
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
You still haven't got the GPS working? You shouldn't need to "get it working", it should just work. How is it tracking your walks/runs etc without a functioning GPS?
Something that confuses people is this. GPS on its own takes quite a while to get its initial fix.
Mobile phones are much faster, because they use mast data and nearby mapped WiFi to guesstimate their position, which makes getting the initial fix faster.
Smart watches without a mobile connection don't do this. So they can take a minute or so to get a fix. This is noticeable because most do not maintain a GPS fix all the time - only for some activities. This is to save power.
So when I put my Garmin in the activity mode for rowing, it starts getting a GPS fix and takes a little while to say that it is ready.
My Apple Watch Ultra works instantly without any problem, without being shackled to a phone. It has its own e-sim card. I never have a phone with me when running – there is no point. The watch works without it and can make and receive calls and texts etc so the bulky phone stays at home.
Which is the reason for the lower battery life on Apple Watches (and other sim'd smart watches) vs those without.
Nope. As I have said repeatedly now, you only have you charge the AWU every three days despite its manifold features (which are why it is awesome). And it charges from flat in the time it takes you to get washed and dressed of a morning. I mean, you can get years out of a basic Casio, but it has very few features. If your 'smartwatch' only works when shackled to a phone it is limited by your phone's battery life regardless of its own notional battery life.
Oh dear. I seem to have restarted the Great PB Watch Wars, via the Second Battle of GPS Availability
I can't understand why you can't get the GPS to work on your watch? What use is it without GPS? That is the way it tracks all your walks and runs. Is it faulty?
Calm down! I think I have to go outside and wave it about a bit
I dunno. I’m still obsessed with its health tracking features
I’m pretty sure it is inferior to the AUW in this aspect, but I don’t care. It does exactly what I want and I don’t have to charge it for two whole weeks which is superb
We’ve discussed why charging is a vexatious issue for me. It’s coz I travel so much - and I’m off again today
I’m gonna try the Garmin Venu’s “jet lag” feature. Apparently it can monitor all my health and sleep patterns and advise me how to get over jet lag. Given that I had horrible jet lag on my last long haul flight (to Vancouver) this could be a life saver
And on that note I’d better get up and start packing. Later
Fair enough, as I have said. But my point is that comparing a watch that relies on a phone with one that works independently is comparing apples with pears. You need a functioning phone (which has to be charged regularly) for the your watch to work properly.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
Politicians like big ticket items they can put into GE campaigns, they don't particularly care about making small incremental improvements to services or infrastructure because it's not something that works in a national campaign and local parties might end up getting the credit for it.
Imagine how much stuff might actually get achieved, if everyone stopped caring about where the credit might end up.
(I thought it was Reagan, then I found it was Truman, but the quote goes back further than that)
Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
??
No we’re not. Recent polls all have them rising. That might stop soon - I expect it will - I reckon their ceiling is 20-25% - but it hasn’t stopped yet
The interesting problem Reform will hit at some point is the calibre of their top support base. Beyond Farage - who is very able in a particular way - there are currently no names at all, and in particular no names with an apparent capacity to run a medium size or large organisation - like a council, or a ministry.
If they remain just a vehicle of protest - like the extreme left but even less intelligent - then it's manageable for the majority of voters who still will only vote for parties with a degree, however tarnished and limited, of capacity for being centrist and capable, and keep the rickety show of UKplc on the road.
The interesting point would be if a significant group of people with real clout and ability get to the top of the Reform tree. SFAICS we are not close to that yet.
Scarily Richard Tice has more experience running businesses than the whole of the current cabinet combined.
I'm not sure that it is even medium sized organisations, though.
Like Trump, it was an inherited property business, and then in Tice's case followed by bits of investment-trust type things.
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
You still haven't got the GPS working? You shouldn't need to "get it working", it should just work. How is it tracking your walks/runs etc without a functioning GPS?
Something that confuses people is this. GPS on its own takes quite a while to get its initial fix.
Mobile phones are much faster, because they use mast data and nearby mapped WiFi to guesstimate their position, which makes getting the initial fix faster.
Smart watches without a mobile connection don't do this. So they can take a minute or so to get a fix. This is noticeable because most do not maintain a GPS fix all the time - only for some activities. This is to save power.
So when I put my Garmin in the activity mode for rowing, it starts getting a GPS fix and takes a little while to say that it is ready.
My Apple Watch Ultra works instantly without any problem, without being shackled to a phone. It has its own e-sim card. I never have a phone with me when running – there is no point. The watch works without it and can make and receive calls and texts etc so the bulky phone stays at home.
Which is the reason for the lower battery life on Apple Watches (and other sim'd smart watches) vs those without.
Nope. As I have said repeatedly now, you only have you charge the AWU every three days despite its manifold features (which are why it is awesome). And it charges from flat in the time it takes you to get washed and dressed of a morning. I mean, you can get years out of a basic Casio, but it has very few features. If your 'smartwatch' only works when shackled to a phone it is limited by your phone's battery life regardless of its own notional battery life.
Non tethered (and non sim'd) smart watches work just fine. The slower GPS startup is design choice.
The battery size is pretty similar, so you have an energy budget. The more features you run, the quicker the battery is exhausted.
One criticism of the earlier Apple Watches, was that, when used in exercise modes, the battery didn't last for a full exercise session. For exercise monitoring, on nearly all smart watches, a bunch of things pop into high gear. So if you go for a run, the battery will be depleted much faster than if you are reading the paper.
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
You still haven't got the GPS working? You shouldn't need to "get it working", it should just work. How is it tracking your walks/runs etc without a functioning GPS?
Something that confuses people is this. GPS on its own takes quite a while to get its initial fix.
Mobile phones are much faster, because they use mast data and nearby mapped WiFi to guesstimate their position, which makes getting the initial fix faster.
Smart watches without a mobile connection don't do this. So they can take a minute or so to get a fix. This is noticeable because most do not maintain a GPS fix all the time - only for some activities. This is to save power.
So when I put my Garmin in the activity mode for rowing, it starts getting a GPS fix and takes a little while to say that it is ready.
My Apple Watch Ultra works instantly without any problem, without being shackled to a phone. It has its own e-sim card. I never have a phone with me when running – there is no point. The watch works without it and can make and receive calls and texts etc so the bulky phone stays at home.
Which is the reason for the lower battery life on Apple Watches (and other sim'd smart watches) vs those without.
Nope. As I have said repeatedly now, you only have you charge the AWU every three days despite its manifold features (which are why it is awesome). And it charges from flat in the time it takes you to get washed and dressed of a morning. I mean, you can get years out of a basic Casio, but it has very few features. If your 'smartwatch' only works when shackled to a phone it is limited by your phone's battery life regardless of its own notional battery life.
Non tethered (and non sim'd) smart watches work just fine. The slower GPS startup is design choice.
The battery size is pretty similar, so you have an energy budget. The more features you run, the quicker the battery is exhausted.
One criticism of the earlier Apple Watches, was that, when used in exercise modes, the battery didn't last for a full exercise session. For exercise monitoring, on nearly all smart watches, a bunch of things pop into high gear. So if you go for a run, the battery will be depleted much faster than if you are reading the paper.
Again – AGAIN – I'm not talking about the Apple Watch (earlier models or otherwise), but the Apple Watch Ultra – which is a different beast entirely, and has a vastly superior battery life. I would never buy a watch without its own sim as I'd then have to take my phone out running ... and swimming!
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
You still haven't got the GPS working? You shouldn't need to "get it working", it should just work. How is it tracking your walks/runs etc without a functioning GPS?
Something that confuses people is this. GPS on its own takes quite a while to get its initial fix.
Mobile phones are much faster, because they use mast data and nearby mapped WiFi to guesstimate their position, which makes getting the initial fix faster.
Smart watches without a mobile connection don't do this. So they can take a minute or so to get a fix. This is noticeable because most do not maintain a GPS fix all the time - only for some activities. This is to save power.
So when I put my Garmin in the activity mode for rowing, it starts getting a GPS fix and takes a little while to say that it is ready.
My Apple Watch Ultra works instantly without any problem, without being shackled to a phone. It has its own e-sim card. I never have a phone with me when running – there is no point. The watch works without it and can make and receive calls and texts etc so the bulky phone stays at home.
Which is the reason for the lower battery life on Apple Watches (and other sim'd smart watches) vs those without.
Nope. As I have said repeatedly now, you only have you charge the AWU every three days despite its manifold features (which are why it is awesome). And it charges from flat in the time it takes you to get washed and dressed of a morning. I mean, you can get years out of a basic Casio, but it has very few features. If your 'smartwatch' only works when shackled to a phone it is limited by your phone's battery life regardless of its own notional battery life.
Oh dear. I seem to have restarted the Great PB Watch Wars, via the Second Battle of GPS Availability
I can't understand why you can't get the GPS to work on your watch? What use is it without GPS? That is the way it tracks all your walks and runs. Is it faulty?
Calm down! I think I have to go outside and wave it about a bit
I dunno. I’m still obsessed with its health tracking features
I’m pretty sure it is inferior to the AUW in this aspect, but I don’t care. It does exactly what I want and I don’t have to charge it for two whole weeks which is superb
We’ve discussed why charging is a vexatious issue for me. It’s coz I travel so much - and I’m off again today
I’m gonna try the Garmin Venu’s “jet lag” feature. Apparently it can monitor all my health and sleep patterns and advise me how to get over jet lag. Given that I had horrible jet lag on my last long haul flight (to Vancouver) this could be a life saver
And on that note I’d better get up and start packing. Later
Fair enough, as I have said. But my point is that comparing a watch that relies on a phone with one that works independently is comparing apples with pears. You need a functioning phone (which has to be charged regularly) for the your watch to work properly.
Right, but he needs a functioning charged phone for his travels anyway, so he can assume that he will already have the phone. A watch that doesn't need charging for the duration of a week away is one less charging cable to pack. I can see the advantage for his use case.
You're even more inflexible than HYUFD on some topics.
While at the same time introducing a load of new red tape on workers rights...
A stupid childish catechism which reveals only a politician who has not bothered to read the Grenfell Tower report and has no understanding of the history of finance in the last 50 years.
Both of which relate to the piling up of paperwork and process, without any concern for the actual goal.
Well, that's not quite what the Grenfell Tower Report says. It makes a very clear link between politicians' demands for No More Red Tape and the refusal of the department to implement the recommendations of the Lakanal Fire coroner, to take only one of many many examples. And that weak regulatory system and feeble enforcement was deliberately and dishonestly exploited by bad actors, whose products directly led to the deaths of 72 people.
When politicians talk in trite terms they are not addressing the very real issues that arise which is why in this country we have all the disadvantages of a bureaucracy and few of its advantages. The state abdicating from its basic responsibilities is not a good thing. And the Red Tape / Blob discussion is frankly a facile way of approaching it.
The Grenfell rebuild project generated multiple metric tons of paperwork. Rooms full of folders, plus vast numbers of electronic documents.
Hidden in this mass was the fact that the external insulation was dangerously inflatable. Said insulation had tons of paperwork itself. Makes you wonder which was more inflatable.
The complex process for signing the insulation off as safe was utter bullshit.
Just as complex tax laws create loop holes for evasion, process and documentation for its own sake creates a forest for malefactors to hide in.
In domestic construction, if you follow the rules, you have a project document the size of a telephone directory. For just one house. No one reads it. Many builders simply don't bother to generate it. The one for my most recent project was generated, mostly, automatically.
What is needed is
1) A clear set of aims 2) A clear setting out of these aims, the way they are to be achieved and the methods to achieve them. 3) A clear enforcement of (1)
I'v encountered far too many people over the years who believe that a 500 page document is more professional than 5 pages. It isn't.
the fact that the external insulation was dangerously inflatable
I love this idea. It means that Tower Blocks will be blown up rather than burnt down .
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
After the experience of the last couple of decades of UK infrastructure investment, one has to wonder how the motorway network ever got built in the first place!
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
Politicians like big ticket items they can put into GE campaigns, they don't particularly care about making small incremental improvements to services or infrastructure because it's not something that works in a national campaign and local parties might end up getting the credit for it.
Imagine how much stuff might actually get achieved, if everyone stopped caring about where the credit might end up.
(I thought it was Reagan, then I found it was Truman, but the quote goes back further than that)
The sentiment is expressed in Middlemarch.
“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
You still haven't got the GPS working? You shouldn't need to "get it working", it should just work. How is it tracking your walks/runs etc without a functioning GPS?
Something that confuses people is this. GPS on its own takes quite a while to get its initial fix.
Mobile phones are much faster, because they use mast data and nearby mapped WiFi to guesstimate their position, which makes getting the initial fix faster.
Smart watches without a mobile connection don't do this. So they can take a minute or so to get a fix. This is noticeable because most do not maintain a GPS fix all the time - only for some activities. This is to save power.
So when I put my Garmin in the activity mode for rowing, it starts getting a GPS fix and takes a little while to say that it is ready.
My Apple Watch Ultra works instantly without any problem, without being shackled to a phone. It has its own e-sim card. I never have a phone with me when running – there is no point. The watch works without it and can make and receive calls and texts etc so the bulky phone stays at home.
Which is the reason for the lower battery life on Apple Watches (and other sim'd smart watches) vs those without.
Nope. As I have said repeatedly now, you only have you charge the AWU every three days despite its manifold features (which are why it is awesome). And it charges from flat in the time it takes you to get washed and dressed of a morning. I mean, you can get years out of a basic Casio, but it has very few features. If your 'smartwatch' only works when shackled to a phone it is limited by your phone's battery life regardless of its own notional battery life.
Non tethered (and non sim'd) smart watches work just fine. The slower GPS startup is design choice.
The battery size is pretty similar, so you have an energy budget. The more features you run, the quicker the battery is exhausted.
One criticism of the earlier Apple Watches, was that, when used in exercise modes, the battery didn't last for a full exercise session. For exercise monitoring, on nearly all smart watches, a bunch of things pop into high gear. So if you go for a run, the battery will be depleted much faster than if you are reading the paper.
Again – AGAIN – I'm not talking about the Apple Watch (earlier models or otherwise), but the Apple Watch Ultra – which is a different beast entirely, and has a vastly superior battery life. I would never buy a watch without its own sim as I'd then have to take my phone out running ... and swimming!
If you wanted to be able to take calls etc while you running.
Even the quite basic Garmins (for example) can play music, record exercise data and make electronic payments without any phone being involved.
Comments
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-ministers-visit-gulf-to-boost-trade-and-investment
He is the kind of guy who will look at a field near Newent and then suddenly say “fuck it I’m going to build the worlds biggest air dryer right here and it will be two miles high and employ 80,000 people”
And most people will look at him in bewilderment and then he will go and do it, and it will work
But first you have to get him to that field in newent. You have to talk to him
Part of the problem is that the Labour Party is full of people who are the opposite of musk. It is full of @kinabalus. Crouched and cowering people, timid and disapproving, who have never designed or created or innovated anything in their lives. And would be too scared to do so
The Minimum Wage was introduced over vociferous political protests, but is not accepted as routine and desirable.
These may go the same way, and we may see the next Conservative leader embracing them.
It's weird because many 'white' Americans are descended from late 19th or early 20th Century immigrants. Whereas I would guess that most of the African-Americans' ancestors have been in the US longer.
As the Guardian reveals today, Treasury officials are considering proposals to double taxes levied on parts of the sector, as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, aims to pull every lever possible to raise funds in her upcoming budget.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/oct/11/gambler-uk-tax-derek-webb-online-casinos-bookmakers
At least this donor is upfront about why he is giving all this money.
It has done a hell of a lot of harm, created an artifical shortage of affordable housing by preventing the building of slums (the two can often be the same thing). But it has reduced urban sprall, it has prevented billboards on every corner, it has put some pressure on to build on derelict land. And it has kept some sanity on the size of housing plots and maintained quite a lot of open countryside.
So far Rayner's proposals seem to have been concentrating on building houses where people do not want to live. It was ever thus.
They are utterly hapless. And now they are running around trying to clean up another mess
Hidden in this mass was the fact that the external insulation was dangerously inflatable. Said insulation had tons of paperwork itself. Makes you wonder which was more inflatable.
The complex process for signing the insulation off as safe was utter bullshit.
Just as complex tax laws create loop holes for evasion, process and documentation for its own sake creates a forest for malefactors to hide in.
In domestic construction, if you follow the rules, you have a project document the size of a telephone directory. For just one house. No one reads it. Many builders simply don't bother to generate it. The one for my most recent project was generated, mostly, automatically.
What is needed is
1) A clear set of aims
2) A clear setting out of these aims, the way they are to be achieved and the methods to achieve them.
3) A clear enforcement of (1)
I'v encountered far too many people over the years who believe that a 500 page document is more professional than 5 pages. It isn't.
At present afaics they have 27 nationally. For a benchmark, the Ashfield Independents have 42.
There are no innovators and entrepreneurs in Labour. And they are ALSO fond of wanky gestural politics
Bla bla bla.
But we have to deal with shits, like it or not.
If we and Europe had bothered to develop a tech industry somewhere on a par with the US, that might be different. But we didn't.
Well well well.
It is good “vibes” and some connections will be made that may lead to future investment. But, it is not meaningful in the grand scheme of things.
And if you accept that it is a presentational event then of course the Government aren’t going to want an individual who is going to steal their limelight and potentially say something offensive over supper.
No one will ever admit that - hence all these odd reasons why Mr Musk was NFI. But that is what it comes down to.
Other than Brexit - that enormous waste of enormous effort - what did they actually achieve ?
When they got the engineers in to look at the cladding, they were told the block was structurally deficient. Literally not enough concrete at high enough spec. The documentation for the building filled rooms. The original Big Builder took responsibility and paid for the failures of their subcontractor.
But consider this - in the rooms of paperwork, data on concrete testing was missing. Bazlegette knew that game and instead on cement testing as a standard for the frigging Embankment sewers.
Time for a real Back To Basics?
The case for inviting Musk is that Britain needs investment, Musk is the richest man on the planet, Britain needs investment in the technologies of the future even more, and if plucking a rocket out of mid-air isn't future technology I don't know what is. Plus, if you encourage him to spend more time on the stuff he's good at - creating new companies that push forward new technology - then you might distract him from the stuff he's crap at (politics, media).
Incidentally, while looking up that number, I stumbled on this in the same article. Nothing new under the sun:
UKIP initially paid little attention to local government elections. However, this changed after Farage observed that building localised strongholds of support in various parts of the country had been the process by which the Liberal Democrats had entered the House of Commons, and that this was a strategy that could benefit UKIP. UKIP subsequently focused on the 2011 local elections, in which it fielded over 1,100 candidates, winning seven seats and becoming the main opposition in over 100.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_Independence_Party#Representatives
The difficulty is that the kind of mindset that permeates the Liberal Democrats attracts/creates people who want to be local councillors. I'm not convinced that the same goes for Faragism.
Mobile phones are much faster, because they use mast data and nearby mapped WiFi to guesstimate their position, which makes getting the initial fix faster.
Smart watches without a mobile connection don't do this. So they can take a minute or so to get a fix. This is noticeable because most do not maintain a GPS fix all the time - only for some activities. This is to save power.
So when I put my Garmin in the activity mode for rowing, it starts getting a GPS fix and takes a little while to say that it is ready.
https://x.com/maryltrump/status/1845631573481148478?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Here you go. See for yourself. 2014 eu elex. Farage won
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_European_Parliament_election_in_the_United_Kingdom
'Elon Musk has never come to any of the past investment summits that have been held under the previous government, he doesn't tend to do these sort of events, but I stand absolutely ready to engage with him, to talk about any potential global investments he's making - I'm not aware of any at this moment in time.'
Weird,
Tech billionaire Elon Musk has predicted that artificial intelligence will eventually mean that no one will have to work. He was speaking to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak during an unusual "in conversation" event at the end of this week's summit on AI.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-67302048
We see that over and over (latest with the Harrods creep), don't we, rich powerful men getting away with sick and twisted behaviour?
So, sorry and all, but no welcome mat at number 10 for Elon isn't my idea of a scandal. But then in the words of 10cc ... I'm not in love.
I'd want him at the conference, but I can imagine the protocol sticklers not being happy about it because of the election. So, would have been better to have the conference earlier, or after election day.
Arrant nonsense indeed.
https://www.turkiyetoday.com/culture/evidence-kitchen-karahantepe-65017/
We thought these people were cavemen. This is 10,000BC. Yet it turns out they had kitchens and ovens and advanced water systems - plus shrines and auditoriums and elaborate religion
I strongly suspect they had some kind of written language as well
Without Farage, no Brexit. This is plainly true
They had their chance, and blew it.
Reform are a protest party, lots of shouting but no one who has ever delivered anything. And rather nihilist politics sometimes walking along the BNP edge of UKIP territory, whilst most of their MPs seem to have lucrative media gigs funded by Paul Marshall. If their voters apply the 'self serving money shovelling MPs only in it for themselves' yardstick to Farage and Anderson, it will not be pretty.
But they have no extant traction either.
It is for Labour to lose, and if they do enough on the retail politics side to change conditions you desribe ... police numbers, dealing with ASBO, potholes, local Government resourced to make a difference and that starting to happen, NHS waiting lists substantially reduced, and so on, Conservatives and Reform will not get a hearing.
Both Cons and Reform need Labour to screw up badly to have a chance, or for events to force them to be unable to deliver.
At present the new Government hold the entire deck of cards in their hands, including the Jokers from team Sunak.
How will they play it, and with what success?
It depends on the medium as to survival too. Papyrus in Egypt has survived relatively well but rotted elsewhere. Ceramic notes on pottery shards in Greece survived very nicely, as did clay tablets for cuneiform. Steles of stone or bronze that are engraved can be handy, but most written material across time has been lost.
Today, we have the ephemeral nature of the internet/electronic communications combined with a flood of dross.
You can tell the government are floundering on this, the line changes every few hours. It was we don't talk about individuals, then well he doesn't have anything to invest, to well he doesn't actually do these type of events and didn't want to come (and even if he doesn't normally, its your job to get people like that to your event)....besides he does do these events, he has gone to the ones Macron has held that the UK government are doing a LIDL knock off version.
In the old days the Police were respected. Clearly nowadays that is not the case.
The thing is, in this case, it has moved on from harrasment to criminal damage. How long before it becomes an attack against the person.
I don't know if this would work. A PSPO
https://www.durham.gov.uk/article/31914/News-Anti-social-behaviour-controls-get-the-go-ahead-for-Durham-City#:~:text=New proposals to control anti-social behaviour in Durham,the street and the use of intoxicating substances.
So the Tas Tepeler may have been pre-literate but given that it keeps surprising, wildly, on the upside, my guess is that they did have writing. But it has probably perished, as you suggest
Remember that the only reason these incredible stone sites survive is because they were, almost certainly, deliberately buried
Actively creating harm to the UK is a different category to different moral values.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
I dunno. I’m still obsessed with its health tracking features
I’m pretty sure it is inferior to the AUW in this aspect, but I don’t care. It does exactly what I want and I don’t have to charge it for two whole weeks which is superb
We’ve discussed why charging is a vexatious issue for me. It’s coz I travel so much - and I’m off again today
I’m gonna try the Garmin Venu’s “jet lag” feature. Apparently it can monitor all my health and sleep patterns and advise me how to get over jet lag. Given that I had horrible jet lag on my last long haul flight (to Vancouver) this could be a life saver
And on that note I’d better get up and start packing. Later
Now losses to Lab or LD due to the Ref/Con vote splitting - that would be a different matter
Like Trump, it was an inherited property business, and then in Tice's case followed by bits of investment-trust type things.
AIUI - perhaps a PBer is acquainted?
The battery size is pretty similar, so you have an energy budget. The more features you run, the quicker the battery is exhausted.
One criticism of the earlier Apple Watches, was that, when used in exercise modes, the battery didn't last for a full exercise session. For exercise monitoring, on nearly all smart watches, a bunch of things pop into high gear. So if you go for a run, the battery will be depleted much faster than if you are reading the paper.
You're even more inflexible than HYUFD on some topics.
I love this idea. It means that Tower Blocks will be blown up rather than burnt down
Just got my hardback copy of UNLEASHED delivered from Aamzon!
“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”
Even the quite basic Garmins (for example) can play music, record exercise data and make electronic payments without any phone being involved.
They're eating the cats.