The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It is a foundation of politics to the right of the centre that regulation impedes growth, so presumably looking at what regulators do (or don't do) should be relevant to a growth agenda. If you're going to make changes in this area, then it makes sense to get input first from the regulators. So, I don't see what's so terrible about this.
No, it really doesn’t. You should start with those regulated, and ask them what the problems are.
But jeez, what on earth is OFGEM likely to contribute to the debate ?
The other two make slightly more sense. Though as we all know, planning is the area of regulation most ripe for change, as it has likely cost our economy hundreds of billions over the last couple of decades. But again, asking the planners is starting at the wrong end of the problem.
The report doesn't say that the government aren't asking anyone else. This isn't an either/or situation. This letter was to the regulators. The government will, I suspect as it is normal practice, ask others for input as well.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
What's weird is that there are plenty of Labour-affiliated (or sympathetic) think tanks doing exactly this.
Take the new economics foundation for example. It is of course possible to vehemently disagree with their prescription that we should change the fiscal rules to allow greater borrow to finance massive green investment. But at least they have a plan.
I don't understand why Labour haven't found and used their pet think tank. It's like they are trying and failing to reinvent the wheel.
Former Trump ambassador to Denmark on Greenland: The idea that little Denmark can afford to defend Greenland is preposterous. They can't afford to defend and develop it... What President Trump is suggesting is common sense solution.
I have seen the future and it's four years of Donald Trump spouting rubbish which all the people seeking to curry favour with him pretend is the wisdom of Solomon.
Quite often he spouts rubbish which is jumped on by a pack of crazed commentators saying 'SEEEEEEE!!' like this Greenland thing, and he does something completely different.
And do you think that’s a good thing? Do you think going on about Greenland like this has made the US or the world a better place?
I think it was probably a classic Trump shakedown - Denmark was perhaps uming and ahing over a lucrative US defence contract, and now after Trump's guff about Greenland, they will sign. I don't approve of it or think it's a good thing, but those of us who adore the US and want everyone to spend money keeping its defence companies in plentiful employment should be delighted.
Trump is all about the US balance of payments and their defence companies especially. He will do the same to us when it's our turn (he'll probably enjoy it especially because it's the loathed Starmer), but happily we will not be able to discern any difference, as we have always had the chequebook out with pen hovering where the US is concerned anyway.
You’ve just made that up out of thin air. There is zero evidence of any such Danish-US defence contract.
Yes, I have made it up, as I clearly state when I use the word 'perhaps'.
However, I doubt it's far from the truth. Wasn't the new runway they have promised to build designed for F16s (or similar, I don’t know the makes)? Perhaps they will need a couple of F16s to go on them. Either way, I strongly suspect a large portion of that £1.5bn in Greenland defence spending will be tinkling into US coffers, so Trump will be happy. And everyone else will read it as 'humiliated Trump backs down on Greenland threats'.
You are still just making things up. Evidence should be rooted in reality, not fantasy. There is no evidence for any of your speculation.
The increased Greenland defence spending was planned before Trump said anything. The timing of its announcement was just coincidental.
Yes I am making things up, otherwise known as speculating, you utter tosspiece, I HAVE SAID THAT'S WHAT I AM DOING. Unless I am passing off my thoughts as proven fact, I am doing what every other PBer does, all the time. Not being party to either Trump's brain or private negotiations, that's all we can do.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
What's weird is that there are plenty of Labour-affiliated (or sympathetic) think tanks doing exactly this.
Take the new economics foundation for example. It is of course possible to vehemently disagree with their prescription that we should change the fiscal rules to allow greater borrow to finance massive green investment. But at least they have a plan.
I don't understand why Labour haven't found and used their pet think tank. It's like they are trying and failing to reinvent the wheel.
Not surprising given the way they are so reliant on spokes people.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
What's weird is that there are plenty of Labour-affiliated (or sympathetic) think tanks doing exactly this.
Take the new economics foundation for example. It is of course possible to vehemently disagree with their prescription that we should change the fiscal rules to allow greater borrow to finance massive green investment. But at least they have a plan.
I don't understand why Labour haven't found and used their pet think tank. It's like they are trying and failing to reinvent the wheel.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It is a foundation of politics to the right of the centre that regulation impedes growth, so presumably looking at what regulators do (or don't do) should be relevant to a growth agenda. If you're going to make changes in this area, then it makes sense to get input first from the regulators. So, I don't see what's so terrible about this.
Similarly every year my department has to come up with 4% savings as part of the "Cost Improvement Programme" each year.
Asking bodies to look at what they are doing and considering savings and efficiencies is pretty standard management practice.
So if you identify ways to save 8%, you only implement half, and keep the rest in your back pocket until next year.
"The Russian shadow fleet tanker seized for damaging the Estlink-2 cable in the Baltic Sea had spy equipment for tracking NATO ships and aircrafts installed on it.
The hi-tech equipment on board was abnormal for a merchant ship and consumed more power from the ship’s generator, leading to repeated blackouts"
Detecting SARS-CoV-2 Cryptic Lineages using Publicly Available Whole Genome Wastewater Sequencing Data
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.24.24319568v1 .. Surprisingly, seven of the mutations that appeared convergently in cryptic lineages were reversions to sequences that were highly conserved in SARS-CoV-2-related bat Sarbecoviruses. The apparent reversion to bat Sarbecovirus sequences suggests that SARS-CoV-2 adaptation to replicate efficiently in respiratory tissues preceded the COVID-19 pandemic….
See this is why the NHS is in crisis. We don't allow the family of doctors to come to the UK.
It's Mrs Assad who has the UK citizenship surely?
Surely she should be allowed to return, albeit for trial on complicity in war crimes, embezzlement etc?
Oh yes, like Kemi Badenoch she is also a computer scientist.
Have the Tories tried switching Kemi off and back on again?
It's only a matter of time before they reboot the leadership.
Farage must be absolutely delighted with Kemi.
It's becoming increasingly easy to see how the Tories might collapse from here.
A few more MP, and big business donor defections - the latter don't even have great reasons of either loyalty or ideology not to jump - could become a self-reinforcing trend.
"You can't win a majority starting with only five seats" might be true - but what if it's thirty ? Or more ? And you have several years to spend £100m, before election restrictions ...
Yet the biggest gainers on seats on current polls will be the Tories from Labour due to big inroads Farage's party has made into the 2024 Labour vote while Kemi is holding the 2024 Tory vote
Good morning
I think that is fairly realistic, and I for one am quite happy with Kemi and not concerned she has Farage threatening legal action, as it is very important to this conservative that the two parties are not seen as one identity
There are many writing Kemi off , but they are not her audience and she has barely been in the job a few weeks
I expect that as 2025 progresses the extremes of the Trump Presidency and Musk's financial backing for Farage will not play as well for either him or Reform, but also I cannot see a boost for Labour as the dire economic position post Reeves miscalculated budget manifests itself
As long as Kemi retains the support of conservatives, [and she headed the last conhome table], then she will be OK
I expect reform to do well in red seats in the locals but it looks as if labour are considering cancelling some of these locals which is bizarre
Anyway, I may be a lone voice in support of Kemi, but I do think Farage and Reform during 2025 will face a difficult time with their support for Trump and Musk
Occurs to me that if Musk goes full-on Reform/Farage backing with cash and twitter, when Trump falls out with Musk it's going to leave Farage in a tricky spot. On the one hand - lovely cash and hordes of Musk fanboys, on the other - a constant barrage from the loyal MAGA hordes.
That won't be a problem at all as long as Farage continues the ritual obeisance toward DJT, which he surely will, then DJT won't give a fuck if Musk gives Farage money.
We are probably underestimating how much Musk will weigh in on the next British GE and what a profound effect it will have. He saw how the flattery and money formula worked with DJT and he clearly liked both the process and the outcome so why wouldn't he put his man in No.10?
I'm very much expecting it. Apparently we have a special place in Musk's heart as the "mothership of the English speaking peoples."
Chest puffing out as I was typing there.
I fee left out; no one in Europe has had a threat of invasion yet.
Trump has outsourced that to Putin and the North Koreans.
Maybe he should invite Ukraine to become an American state.
Former Trump ambassador to Denmark on Greenland: The idea that little Denmark can afford to defend Greenland is preposterous. They can't afford to defend and develop it... What President Trump is suggesting is common sense solution.
I have seen the future and it's four years of Donald Trump spouting rubbish which all the people seeking to curry favour with him pretend is the wisdom of Solomon.
Quite often he spouts rubbish which is jumped on by a pack of crazed commentators saying 'SEEEEEEE!!' like this Greenland thing, and he does something completely different.
And do you think that’s a good thing? Do you think going on about Greenland like this has made the US or the world a better place?
I think it was probably a classic Trump shakedown - Denmark was perhaps uming and ahing over a lucrative US defence contract, and now after Trump's guff about Greenland, they will sign. I don't approve of it or think it's a good thing, but those of us who adore the US and want everyone to spend money keeping its defence companies in plentiful employment should be delighted.
Trump is all about the US balance of payments and their defence companies especially. He will do the same to us when it's our turn (he'll probably enjoy it especially because it's the loathed Starmer), but happily we will not be able to discern any difference, as we have always had the chequebook out with pen hovering where the US is concerned anyway.
You’ve just made that up out of thin air. There is zero evidence of any such Danish-US defence contract.
Yes, I have made it up, as I clearly state when I use the word 'perhaps'.
However, I doubt it's far from the truth. Wasn't the new runway they have promised to build designed for F16s (or similar, I don’t know the makes)? Perhaps they will need a couple of F16s to go on them. Either way, I strongly suspect a large portion of that £1.5bn in Greenland defence spending will be tinkling into US coffers, so Trump will be happy. And everyone else will read it as 'humiliated Trump backs down on Greenland threats'.
You are still just making things up. Evidence should be rooted in reality, not fantasy. There is no evidence for any of your speculation.
The increased Greenland defence spending was planned before Trump said anything. The timing of its announcement was just coincidental.
Yes I am making things up, otherwise known as speculating, you utter tosspiece, I HAVE SAID THAT'S WHAT I AM DOING. Unless I am passing off my thoughts as proven fact, I am doing what every other PBer does, all the time. Not being party to either Trump's brain or private negotiations, that's all we can do.
It's one thing to speculate based on available facts. It's another thing to just make up a whole scenario based on nothing except your desire to justify Trump's actions.
Detecting SARS-CoV-2 Cryptic Lineages using Publicly Available Whole Genome Wastewater Sequencing Data
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.24.24319568v1 .. Surprisingly, seven of the mutations that appeared convergently in cryptic lineages were reversions to sequences that were highly conserved in SARS-CoV-2-related bat Sarbecoviruses. The apparent reversion to bat Sarbecovirus sequences suggests that SARS-CoV-2 adaptation to replicate efficiently in respiratory tissues preceded the COVID-19 pandemic….
Nice.
The observation that SARS-CoV-2 contains at least seven distinct substitutions that convergently changed to the sequence found in enteric Sarbecoviruses suggests a strong conditional selective pressure to maintain the Sarbecovirus consensus sequence at these positions. The fact that SARS-CoV-2 had changes at each of these positions when it began circulating in humans suggests that SARS-CoV-2 had replicated in a non-enteric environment for a long enough period of time to allow these substitutions to persist and become fixed in the viral genomes that started the COVID-19 pandemic.
To translate, it didn't just jump from a bat to a human, but was circulating as a respiratory virus in some intermediate species (which is all consistent with a wet market origin).
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
Detecting SARS-CoV-2 Cryptic Lineages using Publicly Available Whole Genome Wastewater Sequencing Data
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.24.24319568v1 .. Surprisingly, seven of the mutations that appeared convergently in cryptic lineages were reversions to sequences that were highly conserved in SARS-CoV-2-related bat Sarbecoviruses. The apparent reversion to bat Sarbecovirus sequences suggests that SARS-CoV-2 adaptation to replicate efficiently in respiratory tissues preceded the COVID-19 pandemic….
Nice.
The observation that SARS-CoV-2 contains at least seven distinct substitutions that convergently changed to the sequence found in enteric Sarbecoviruses suggests a strong conditional selective pressure to maintain the Sarbecovirus consensus sequence at these positions. The fact that SARS-CoV-2 had changes at each of these positions when it began circulating in humans suggests that SARS-CoV-2 had replicated in a non-enteric environment for a long enough period of time to allow these substitutions to persist and become fixed in the viral genomes that started the COVID-19 pandemic.
To translate, it didn't just jump from a bat to a human, but was circulating as a respiratory virus in some intermediate species (which is all consistent with a wet market origin).
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
Detecting SARS-CoV-2 Cryptic Lineages using Publicly Available Whole Genome Wastewater Sequencing Data
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.24.24319568v1 .. Surprisingly, seven of the mutations that appeared convergently in cryptic lineages were reversions to sequences that were highly conserved in SARS-CoV-2-related bat Sarbecoviruses. The apparent reversion to bat Sarbecovirus sequences suggests that SARS-CoV-2 adaptation to replicate efficiently in respiratory tissues preceded the COVID-19 pandemic….
Nice.
The observation that SARS-CoV-2 contains at least seven distinct substitutions that convergently changed to the sequence found in enteric Sarbecoviruses suggests a strong conditional selective pressure to maintain the Sarbecovirus consensus sequence at these positions. The fact that SARS-CoV-2 had changes at each of these positions when it began circulating in humans suggests that SARS-CoV-2 had replicated in a non-enteric environment for a long enough period of time to allow these substitutions to persist and become fixed in the viral genomes that started the COVID-19 pandemic.
To translate, it didn't just jump from a bat to a human, but was circulating as a respiratory virus in some intermediate species (which is all consistent with a wet market origin).
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
The ones in the private sector have skived off so aren't there to open the letters sent to them and tell us about them?
Detecting SARS-CoV-2 Cryptic Lineages using Publicly Available Whole Genome Wastewater Sequencing Data
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.24.24319568v1 .. Surprisingly, seven of the mutations that appeared convergently in cryptic lineages were reversions to sequences that were highly conserved in SARS-CoV-2-related bat Sarbecoviruses. The apparent reversion to bat Sarbecovirus sequences suggests that SARS-CoV-2 adaptation to replicate efficiently in respiratory tissues preceded the COVID-19 pandemic….
Nice.
The observation that SARS-CoV-2 contains at least seven distinct substitutions that convergently changed to the sequence found in enteric Sarbecoviruses suggests a strong conditional selective pressure to maintain the Sarbecovirus consensus sequence at these positions. The fact that SARS-CoV-2 had changes at each of these positions when it began circulating in humans suggests that SARS-CoV-2 had replicated in a non-enteric environment for a long enough period of time to allow these substitutions to persist and become fixed in the viral genomes that started the COVID-19 pandemic.
To translate, it didn't just jump from a bat to a human, but was circulating as a respiratory virus in some intermediate species (which is all consistent with a wet market origin).
You get a nice car (we can get Dura to actually fix it), you get a nice searchlight, and you get the assistance of a man in odd attire (well that's TSE all over) - what's not to like?
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
But only after they tried teaching in that industry :-)
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It is a foundation of politics to the right of the centre that regulation impedes growth, so presumably looking at what regulators do (or don't do) should be relevant to a growth agenda. If you're going to make changes in this area, then it makes sense to get input first from the regulators. So, I don't see what's so terrible about this.
Similarly every year my department has to come up with 4% savings as part of the "Cost Improvement Programme" each year.
Asking bodies to look at what they are doing and considering savings and efficiencies is pretty standard management practice.
So if you identify ways to save 8%, you only implement half, and keep the rest in your back pocket until next year.
We do over achieve our CIP target most years, but any excess over the 4% can be invested in the department rather than central funds, so we don't generally hold it over to next year.
We managed about a million off the pharmacy budget this year, as patent expiry allowed us to substitute cheaper generics in some roles
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It is a foundation of politics to the right of the centre that regulation impedes growth, so presumably looking at what regulators do (or don't do) should be relevant to a growth agenda. If you're going to make changes in this area, then it makes sense to get input first from the regulators. So, I don't see what's so terrible about this.
Similarly every year my department has to come up with 4% savings as part of the "Cost Improvement Programme" each year.
Asking bodies to look at what they are doing and considering savings and efficiencies is pretty standard management practice.
So if you identify ways to save 8%, you only implement half, and keep the rest in your back pocket until next year.
We do over achieve our CIP target most years, but any excess over the 4% can be invested in the department rather than central funds, so we don't generally hold it over to next year.
We managed about a million off the pharmacy budget this year, as patent expiry allowed us to substitute cheaper generics in some roles
For one horrible moment I read that as patient expiry.
Some online are suggesting a UK-Canada economic and defence union.
We could call it NATO....
In passing, can NATO operate without the permission of the President of the USA?
Yes. At core, NATO says if one member is attacked (under certain criteria), then the others will come to its aid. If say Bulgaria is attacked, then say Spain should come to Bulgaria's aid, etc. Spain is acting as a sovereign country. The actions of the US President are irrelevant. See: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_110496.htm
In practice, many joint NATO operations include US forces and would be complicated by the US withdrawing. But NATO joint operations aren't the core of the alliance. France was long a member of NATO while opting out of all joint operations.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
Regulators in general have two jobs: (1) stop bad stuff happening; (2) ensure a transparent level playing field for a particular market. Regulators doing those two things gives producers and consumers the confidence to participate in the activity and you may see growth as a consequence. Rachel Reeves should only be interested in the effectiveness regulators. I find it slightly surprising a former Bank of England employee clearly has no idea what regulators are there to do
So Starmer and co having not done their homework are asking the less able kids in the class to do it for them....
Not having anybody who has setup or run a proper business in cabinet is rather showing.
Total shitshow, Reeves really is appalling.
In my view your ire is misplaced. I think she's great. Her big problem is that Labour's economic thinking is so hopeless. What made little sense in the 19th century makes even less sense now.
The big villains in all this though are the Tories. How hard can it be to be in government and actually do some governing?
Former Trump ambassador to Denmark on Greenland: The idea that little Denmark can afford to defend Greenland is preposterous. They can't afford to defend and develop it... What President Trump is suggesting is common sense solution.
I have seen the future and it's four years of Donald Trump spouting rubbish which all the people seeking to curry favour with him pretend is the wisdom of Solomon.
He certainly has. Which only puffs him up even more. This is uncharted territory for a mature western democracy, becoming the toy of an ageing despot, and unfortunately it's the biggest wealthiest most powerful one. I hope the checks and balances are resting up and eating well because they're about to face a hell of a battle.
It will be a real test of the Constitution.
Part of America's political sclerosis is down the rigidities of the US Constitution, which has almost Holy Writ in US minds.
In particular, I think the Supreme Court will be a check on Trumps power. Theres only so far that they can bend interpretation.
Majority Dem committee thinks majority Rep SCOTUS has an "ethical crisis"?
They provide evidence. It’s all detailed in the report.
I'm certain that they found things they could portray in such a way as to support the conclusion they started from, yes.
Here’s the summary:
[big block of text completely missing my point]
Which of these are misleading or wrong?
Well, congratulations on spectacularly missing my point.
You keep repeating the same assertion, but you don’t provide any evidence, you don’t specify any examples. Can you point to an error in the report? It appears not.
The error is yours - by portraying a partisan hit job as in any way worthy of consideration.
Maybe there is an "ethical crisis" in SCOTUS. If there is, a Democrat-majority committee that the public has just voted out of office which assumes the worst from the beginning isn't going to find it.
Or, in short: "Dems say GOP bad" is "well, duh".
It’s hard to see the behaviour of Justices Alito and Thomas as not being highly improper, on the part of judges. That’s not a matter of partisanship.
"Two judges bad" is not the same as "entire court illegitimate", which is what the Dems want people to think.
So Starmer and co having not done their homework are asking the less able kids in the class to do it for them....
Not having anybody who has setup or run a proper business in cabinet is rather showing.
Total shitshow, Reeves really is appalling.
Conservative Cabinets had several former entrepreneurs, including Nadhim Zahawi, Jeremy Hunt and Jacob Rees-Mogg. I cannot see it was much help in ending waste or stimulating growth.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
Regulators in general have two jobs: (1) stop bad stuff happening; (2) ensure a transparent level playing field for a particular market. Regulators doing those two things gives producers and consumers the confidence to participate in the activity and you may see growth as a consequence. Rachel Reeves should only be interested in the effectiveness regulators. I find it slightly surprising a former Bank of England employee clearly has no idea what regulators are there to do
Here's the FCA website, https://www.fca.org.uk/about/what-we-do/the-fca Under "Our role", it states, "Financial markets must be honest, competitive and fair so consumers get a fair deal. We work to ensure these markets work well for individuals, for businesses, and for the growth and competitiveness of the UK economy."
Note the use of the word "growth". The FCA believes growth is part of its role. Maybe Reeves has a better idea than you do!
Former Trump ambassador to Denmark on Greenland: The idea that little Denmark can afford to defend Greenland is preposterous. They can't afford to defend and develop it... What President Trump is suggesting is common sense solution.
I have seen the future and it's four years of Donald Trump spouting rubbish which all the people seeking to curry favour with him pretend is the wisdom of Solomon.
He certainly has. Which only puffs him up even more. This is uncharted territory for a mature western democracy, becoming the toy of an ageing despot, and unfortunately it's the biggest wealthiest most powerful one. I hope the checks and balances are resting up and eating well because they're about to face a hell of a battle.
It will be a real test of the Constitution.
Part of America's political sclerosis is down the rigidities of the US Constitution, which has almost Holy Writ in US minds.
In particular, I think the Supreme Court will be a check on Trumps power. Theres only so far that they can bend interpretation.
Majority Dem committee thinks majority Rep SCOTUS has an "ethical crisis"?
They provide evidence. It’s all detailed in the report.
I'm certain that they found things they could portray in such a way as to support the conclusion they started from, yes.
Here’s the summary:
[big block of text completely missing my point]
Which of these are misleading or wrong?
Well, congratulations on spectacularly missing my point.
You keep repeating the same assertion, but you don’t provide any evidence, you don’t specify any examples. Can you point to an error in the report? It appears not.
The error is yours - by portraying a partisan hit job as in any way worthy of consideration.
Maybe there is an "ethical crisis" in SCOTUS. If there is, a Democrat-majority committee that the public has just voted out of office which assumes the worst from the beginning isn't going to find it.
Or, in short: "Dems say GOP bad" is "well, duh".
It’s hard to see the behaviour of Justices Alito and Thomas as not being highly improper, on the part of judges. That’s not a matter of partisanship.
"Two judges bad" is not the same as "entire court illegitimate", which is what the Dems want people to think.
Again, if you wilfully ignore the reporting about other Justices, that looks to be a you-problem.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
Regulators in general have two jobs: (1) stop bad stuff happening; (2) ensure a transparent level playing field for a particular market. Regulators doing those two things gives producers and consumers the confidence to participate in the activity and you may see growth as a consequence. Rachel Reeves should only be interested in the effectiveness regulators. I find it slightly surprising a former Bank of England employee clearly has no idea what regulators are there to do
Here's the FCA website, https://www.fca.org.uk/about/what-we-do/the-fca Under "Our role", it states, "Financial markets must be honest, competitive and fair so consumers get a fair deal. We work to ensure these markets work well for individuals, for businesses, and for the growth and competitiveness of the UK economy."
Note the use of the word "growth". The FCA believes growth is part of its role. Maybe Reeves has a better idea than you do!
It's all very well them saying who they hope to employ. If you in fact have ever met the people they actually employ then you'll appreciate the problem.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
See this is why the NHS is in crisis. We don't allow the family of doctors to come to the UK.
It's Mrs Assad who has the UK citizenship surely?
Surely she should be allowed to return, albeit for trial on complicity in war crimes, embezzlement etc?
Oh yes, like Kemi Badenoch she is also a computer scientist.
Have the Tories tried switching Kemi off and back on again?
It's only a matter of time before they reboot the leadership.
Farage must be absolutely delighted with Kemi.
It's becoming increasingly easy to see how the Tories might collapse from here.
A few more MP, and big business donor defections - the latter don't even have great reasons of either loyalty or ideology not to jump - could become a self-reinforcing trend.
"You can't win a majority starting with only five seats" might be true - but what if it's thirty ? Or more ? And you have several years to spend £100m, before election restrictions ...
Yet the biggest gainers on seats on current polls will be the Tories from Labour due to big inroads Farage's party has made into the 2024 Labour vote while Kemi is holding the 2024 Tory vote
Good morning
I think that is fairly realistic, and I for one am quite happy with Kemi and not concerned she has Farage threatening legal action, as it is very important to this conservative that the two parties are not seen as one identity
There are many writing Kemi off , but they are not her audience and she has barely been in the job a few weeks
I expect that as 2025 progresses the extremes of the Trump Presidency and Musk's financial backing for Farage will not play as well for either him or Reform, but also I cannot see a boost for Labour as the dire economic position post Reeves miscalculated budget manifests itself
As long as Kemi retains the support of conservatives, [and she headed the last conhome table], then she will be OK
I expect reform to do well in red seats in the locals but it looks as if labour are considering cancelling some of these locals which is bizarre
Anyway, I may be a lone voice in support of Kemi, but I do think Farage and Reform during 2025 will face a difficult time with their support for Trump and Musk
Occurs to me that if Musk goes full-on Reform/Farage backing with cash and twitter, when Trump falls out with Musk it's going to leave Farage in a tricky spot. On the one hand - lovely cash and hordes of Musk fanboys, on the other - a constant barrage from the loyal MAGA hordes.
That won't be a problem at all as long as Farage continues the ritual obeisance toward DJT, which he surely will, then DJT won't give a fuck if Musk gives Farage money.
We are probably underestimating how much Musk will weigh in on the next British GE and what a profound effect it will have. He saw how the flattery and money formula worked with DJT and he clearly liked both the process and the outcome so why wouldn't he put his man in No.10?
I'm very much expecting it. Apparently we have a special place in Musk's heart as the "mothership of the English speaking peoples."
Chest puffing out as I was typing there.
I fee left out; no one in Europe has had a threat of invasion yet.
Trump has outsourced that to Putin and the North Koreans.
Maybe he should invite Ukraine to become an American state.
Trump's more likely to invite Russia...
если не можешь их победить, присоединяйся к ним (but which way round?)
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
Eh? Libraries *are* a place to go to for that. This is the first return on Google, pretty much.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I have dealt a fair amount with regulators. I don't recognise this.
Regulators and business have different agendas (and there can often be different agendas within a business and between regulators). It's a tension that needs to be managed. For example in financial services, business will always want to sell higher risk products because they are more profitable. Regulators can remove risk by banning everything but there wouldn't be an industry left to regulate in that case. Meanwhile the people pushing the higher risk products should also recognize the importance of the long term survival of the institution they work at.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
I am still puzzling about why these librarians are being employed by councils on tips. Is it because they have closed the libraries and it is cheaper to redeploy them than pay redundancy,?
Detecting SARS-CoV-2 Cryptic Lineages using Publicly Available Whole Genome Wastewater Sequencing Data
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.24.24319568v1 .. Surprisingly, seven of the mutations that appeared convergently in cryptic lineages were reversions to sequences that were highly conserved in SARS-CoV-2-related bat Sarbecoviruses. The apparent reversion to bat Sarbecovirus sequences suggests that SARS-CoV-2 adaptation to replicate efficiently in respiratory tissues preceded the COVID-19 pandemic….
Nice.
The observation that SARS-CoV-2 contains at least seven distinct substitutions that convergently changed to the sequence found in enteric Sarbecoviruses suggests a strong conditional selective pressure to maintain the Sarbecovirus consensus sequence at these positions. The fact that SARS-CoV-2 had changes at each of these positions when it began circulating in humans suggests that SARS-CoV-2 had replicated in a non-enteric environment for a long enough period of time to allow these substitutions to persist and become fixed in the viral genomes that started the COVID-19 pandemic.
To translate, it didn't just jump from a bat to a human, but was circulating as a respiratory virus in some intermediate species (which is all consistent with a wet market origin).
Except it is far more consistent with gain of function research, the aim of which is to make diseases more transmissible and deadly (for reasons). In fact, doesn't each knocking around of the virus from species to species actually make the wet market theory less plausible, in a 'tornado blows through a haystack, makes a thatched cottage' sort of way?
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
This call for evidence ran from 14 November 2024 to 11:59pm on 12 December 2024
LOL, less than a month consultation period, they aren't serious...
Most PBers can fire off a dozen posts a day explaining how to fix the country in a few easy steps. A month seems plenty of time, particularly if the answers are as simple as you suggest (NI, business rates)!
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
This call for evidence ran from 14 November 2024 to 11:59pm on 12 December 2024
LOL, less than a month consultation period, they aren't serious...
Most PBers can fire off a dozen posts a day explaining how to fix the country in a few easy steps. A month seems plenty of time, particularly if the answers are as simple as you suggest (NI, business rates)!
There weren't my suggestions for serious growth strategy, they were the the response they will get from business about fixing the shit show they have created in a few months that has made the situation far worse.
And to put proper proposal together, not that businesses are sitting proactively searching the sort of website you showed, yes it takes a) awareness that the government is looking for that b) buy in, after you just f##ked them and c) then it does take time to put together a coherent set of ideas.
Detecting SARS-CoV-2 Cryptic Lineages using Publicly Available Whole Genome Wastewater Sequencing Data
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.24.24319568v1 .. Surprisingly, seven of the mutations that appeared convergently in cryptic lineages were reversions to sequences that were highly conserved in SARS-CoV-2-related bat Sarbecoviruses. The apparent reversion to bat Sarbecovirus sequences suggests that SARS-CoV-2 adaptation to replicate efficiently in respiratory tissues preceded the COVID-19 pandemic….
Nice.
The observation that SARS-CoV-2 contains at least seven distinct substitutions that convergently changed to the sequence found in enteric Sarbecoviruses suggests a strong conditional selective pressure to maintain the Sarbecovirus consensus sequence at these positions. The fact that SARS-CoV-2 had changes at each of these positions when it began circulating in humans suggests that SARS-CoV-2 had replicated in a non-enteric environment for a long enough period of time to allow these substitutions to persist and become fixed in the viral genomes that started the COVID-19 pandemic.
To translate, it didn't just jump from a bat to a human, but was circulating as a respiratory virus in some intermediate species (which is all consistent with a wet market origin).
Except it is far more consistent with gain of function research, the aim of which is to make diseases more transmissible and deadly (for reasons). In fact, doesn't each knocking around of the virus from species to species actually make the wet market theory less plausible, in a 'tornado blows through a haystack, makes a thatched cottage' sort of way?
No. That paper was written by people who know what they're doing and they write, "had replicated in a non-enteric environment for a long enough period of time". They don't write "had been changed through gain of function research".
You are, for a third time, just randomly making up things you want to be true.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
This call for evidence ran from 14 November 2024 to 11:59pm on 12 December 2024
LOL, less than a month consultation period, they aren't serious...
Most PBers can fire off a dozen posts a day explaining how to fix the country in a few easy steps. A month seems plenty of time, particularly if the answers are as simple as you suggest (NI, business rates)!
I am fully prepared to have my 'easy steps' proven to be facile and silly in the event, but the 'easy steps' (get off businesses backs, ensure energy is cheap, incentivise work, disincentivise dinghy migration) never actually get tried. Why don't we do the easy solutions, and if they prove as risible as you seem to think, move over to complex ones.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
This call for evidence ran from 14 November 2024 to 11:59pm on 12 December 2024
LOL, less than a month consultation period, they aren't serious...
Most PBers can fire off a dozen posts a day explaining how to fix the country in a few easy steps. A month seems plenty of time, particularly if the answers are as simple as you suggest (NI, business rates)!
I am fully prepared to have my 'easy steps' proven to be facile and silly in the event, but the 'easy steps' (get off businesses backs, ensure energy is cheap, incentivise work, disincentivise dinghy migration) never actually get tried. Why don't we do the easy solutions, and if they prove as risible as you seem to think, move over to complex ones.
This, to me, sums up why Labour haven't got the first fucking clue about business and it's effect on the economy. Instead of asking businesses what is needed for growth our public sector obsessed government thinks it is regulators that have the answers ffs
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
Isn't it more like asking a librarian to write a novel? In that they will know all the books/tools and what's good or bad, so in theory might be good - and sometimes are if offered the chance. In this case, no one will know that 'Regulation 2.C subsection 4.8' is one that has no impact but costs businesses to comply with better than a regulator or the company lawyers/consultants hired to know this stuff.
However, there maybe a reason they are a librarian/regulator and not a novellist or entrepreneur in that have different motivations in life and work, or skills that means they aren't necessarily great at doing the thing they are an expert in reviewing themselves.
So the key is finding those who are. The librarians whose knowledge of literature combines with the motivation and skill to write, or the person working for a regulator with the motivation to design the ones they enforce better.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
So some six months after coming to power, about 2 years after it was obvious that they would be in power and after a Budget which has raised taxes on businesses and employment, the Labour government decides to ask for ideas for growth.
As for the FCA's role, its role is to make sure financial markets work well for growth. Its job is not to create that growth. Asking it to promote growth creates an obvious conflict of interest with its main job which is to ensure that the financial sector does not behave in a way which leads to excessive and badly managed risk-taking which inhibits or damages growth and which causes harm to those financial markets and to consumers. There is a tension there. The last time a government took the brakes off those markets, weakened regulation and the power of regulators to keep them in check we ended up with the GFC, for which we are still paying.
Judging by the way Reeves and Siddiq are talking to City regulators, they seem intent on repeating the mistakes of the last Labour government.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
So some six months after coming to power, about 2 years after it was obvious that they would be in power and after a Budget which has raised taxes on businesses and employment, the Labour government decides to ask for ideas for growth.
As for the FCA's role, its role is to make sure financial markets work well for growth. Its job is not to create that growth. Asking it to promote growth creates an obvious conflict of interest with its main job which is to ensure that the financial sector does not behave in a way which leads to excessive and badly managed risk-taking which inhibits or damages growth and which causes harm to those financial markets and to consumers. There is a tension there. The last time a government took the brakes off those markets, weakened regulation and the power of regulators to keep them in check we ended up with the GFC, for which we are still paying.
Judging by the way Reeves and Siddiq are talking to City regulators, they seem intent on repeating the mistakes of the last Labour government.
It is chalk and cheese vs 1997 Labour. You can disagree about the Blair policies, but they change into government with a clear plan of action leveraging a load of research by the likes of the IPPR.
Detecting SARS-CoV-2 Cryptic Lineages using Publicly Available Whole Genome Wastewater Sequencing Data
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.24.24319568v1 .. Surprisingly, seven of the mutations that appeared convergently in cryptic lineages were reversions to sequences that were highly conserved in SARS-CoV-2-related bat Sarbecoviruses. The apparent reversion to bat Sarbecovirus sequences suggests that SARS-CoV-2 adaptation to replicate efficiently in respiratory tissues preceded the COVID-19 pandemic….
Nice.
The observation that SARS-CoV-2 contains at least seven distinct substitutions that convergently changed to the sequence found in enteric Sarbecoviruses suggests a strong conditional selective pressure to maintain the Sarbecovirus consensus sequence at these positions. The fact that SARS-CoV-2 had changes at each of these positions when it began circulating in humans suggests that SARS-CoV-2 had replicated in a non-enteric environment for a long enough period of time to allow these substitutions to persist and become fixed in the viral genomes that started the COVID-19 pandemic.
To translate, it didn't just jump from a bat to a human, but was circulating as a respiratory virus in some intermediate species (which is all consistent with a wet market origin).
Except it is far more consistent with gain of function research, the aim of which is to make diseases more transmissible and deadly (for reasons). In fact, doesn't each knocking around of the virus from species to species actually make the wet market theory less plausible, in a 'tornado blows through a haystack, makes a thatched cottage' sort of way?
No. That paper was written by people who know what they're doing and they write, "had replicated in a non-enteric environment for a long enough period of time". They don't write "had been changed through gain of function research".
You are, for a third time, just randomly making up things you want to be true.
On the contrary, it is you who is desperately imputing conclusions about the origins of the pandemic to a paper that absolutely does not draw them, wisely sticking to scientific observation. Quite why you are mischievously misrepresenting someone's work in this way is a matter I wouldn't like to speculate upon.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
So some six months after coming to power, about 2 years after it was obvious that they would be in power and after a Budget which has raised taxes on businesses and employment, the Labour government decides to ask for ideas for growth.
As for the FCA's role, its role is to make sure financial markets work well for growth. Its job is not to create that growth. Asking it to promote growth creates an obvious conflict of interest with its main job which is to ensure that the financial sector does not behave in a way which leads to excessive and badly managed risk-taking which inhibits or damages growth and which causes harm to those financial markets and to consumers. There is a tension there. The last time a government took the brakes off those markets, weakened regulation and the power of regulators to keep them in check we ended up with the GFC, for which we are still paying.
Judging by the way Reeves and Siddiq are talking to City regulators, they seem intent on repeating the mistakes of the last Labour government.
The whole govt in waiting line that labour span and the friendly media happily recycled has been exposed to be a lie.
You have a business team who have never run a business and who have mainly worked on NGO’s, quangos and charities.
The Tories were poor and deserved to lose.
This lot are just as bad.
Never felt to pessimistic about our future as a nation.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
Regulators in general have two jobs: (1) stop bad stuff happening; (2) ensure a transparent level playing field for a particular market. Regulators doing those two things gives producers and consumers the confidence to participate in the activity and you may see growth as a consequence. Rachel Reeves should only be interested in the effectiveness regulators. I find it slightly surprising a former Bank of England employee clearly has no idea what regulators are there to do
Here's the FCA website, https://www.fca.org.uk/about/what-we-do/the-fca Under "Our role", it states, "Financial markets must be honest, competitive and fair so consumers get a fair deal. We work to ensure these markets work well for individuals, for businesses, and for the growth and competitiveness of the UK economy."
Note the use of the word "growth". The FCA believes growth is part of its role. Maybe Reeves has a better idea than you do!
That speech was entirely about ensuring level playing fields, greater transparency and increasing confidence in participation, exactly as I said. If she wants to sprinkle the word "growth" into her speech to keep the government happy and out of her hair, fair enough. But she doesn't mention any specific action to achieve it.
I think there are questions for the government about risk appetite. What appetite do governments have for bad things potentially happening due to the absence of a control or intervention? But these are highly specific policy questions. It doesn't get addressed by a CoE pontificating on growth.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
So some six months after coming to power, about 2 years after it was obvious that they would be in power and after a Budget which has raised taxes on businesses and employment, the Labour government decides to ask for ideas for growth.
As for the FCA's role, its role is to make sure financial markets work well for growth. Its job is not to create that growth. Asking it to promote growth creates an obvious conflict of interest with its main job which is to ensure that the financial sector does not behave in a way which leads to excessive and badly managed risk-taking which inhibits or damages growth and which causes harm to those financial markets and to consumers. There is a tension there. The last time a government took the brakes off those markets, weakened regulation and the power of regulators to keep them in check we ended up with the GFC, for which we are still paying.
Judging by the way Reeves and Siddiq are talking to City regulators, they seem intent on repeating the mistakes of the last Labour government.
It is chalk and cheese vs 1997 Labour. You can disagree about the Blair policies, but they change into government with a clear plan of action leveraging a load of research by the likes of the IPPR.
Yes, although their 1997 clear plan of action for the first two years was basically doing what the Conservatives would have done, with a few exceptions at the margin like giving the BofE operational independence, devastating the pension funds and raiding the privatised utilities.
Damaging, but not as disastrous as it later became till they suddenly ran out of other people's money in 2009.
On the whole, I think it's better that Starmer had no plan, because any roadmap this former Corbyn pal and the economic cretins he surrounds himself with had would almost certainly have been catastrophic, and he has the huge majority to implement it.
Talk about monkeys with guns. Pointed straight at the economy.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
So some six months after coming to power, about 2 years after it was obvious that they would be in power and after a Budget which has raised taxes on businesses and employment, the Labour government decides to ask for ideas for growth.
As for the FCA's role, its role is to make sure financial markets work well for growth. Its job is not to create that growth. Asking it to promote growth creates an obvious conflict of interest with its main job which is to ensure that the financial sector does not behave in a way which leads to excessive and badly managed risk-taking which inhibits or damages growth and which causes harm to those financial markets and to consumers. There is a tension there. The last time a government took the brakes off those markets, weakened regulation and the power of regulators to keep them in check we ended up with the GFC, for which we are still paying.
It wasn't so much that the financial regulators, here and in the US, didn't have powers, it was that they were staggeringly complacent and incompetent and didn't use the powers they had effectively.
And having met and worked alongside tenth-raters like Lord Useless Turner and Callum McCarthy the amazing thing was that the whole show lasted as long as it did.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
So some six months after coming to power, about 2 years after it was obvious that they would be in power and after a Budget which has raised taxes on businesses and employment, the Labour government decides to ask for ideas for growth.
As for the FCA's role, its role is to make sure financial markets work well for growth. Its job is not to create that growth. Asking it to promote growth creates an obvious conflict of interest with its main job which is to ensure that the financial sector does not behave in a way which leads to excessive and badly managed risk-taking which inhibits or damages growth and which causes harm to those financial markets and to consumers. There is a tension there. The last time a government took the brakes off those markets, weakened regulation and the power of regulators to keep them in check we ended up with the GFC, for which we are still paying.
Judging by the way Reeves and Siddiq are talking to City regulators, they seem intent on repeating the mistakes of the last Labour government.
It is chalk and cheese vs 1997 Labour. You can disagree about the Blair policies, but they change into government with a clear plan of action leveraging a load of research by the likes of the IPPR.
The economic situation is also chalk and cheese.
in 1997 Blair had and economy 5 years away from the most recent recession and didn't have to make any major tax rises. The Major government had been steadying the ship quite well and they weren't going to stick to the budget constraints they'd set themselves (which Brown ultimately did do for the first 2 years).
this year we are recovering from two major shocks (Covid and the Energy crisis) and had a previous government which, through Johnson, Truss and Sunak, had been running the economy through their own best interests. Like or dislike the NI cut it was mostly done to cause Labour issues rather than because it was the right tax to cut.
Former Trump ambassador to Denmark on Greenland: The idea that little Denmark can afford to defend Greenland is preposterous. They can't afford to defend and develop it... What President Trump is suggesting is common sense solution.
I have seen the future and it's four years of Donald Trump spouting rubbish which all the people seeking to curry favour with him pretend is the wisdom of Solomon.
He certainly has. Which only puffs him up even more. This is uncharted territory for a mature western democracy, becoming the toy of an ageing despot, and unfortunately it's the biggest wealthiest most powerful one. I hope the checks and balances are resting up and eating well because they're about to face a hell of a battle.
It will be a real test of the Constitution.
Part of America's political sclerosis is down the rigidities of the US Constitution, which has almost Holy Writ in US minds.
In particular, I think the Supreme Court will be a check on Trumps power. Theres only so far that they can bend interpretation.
Majority Dem committee thinks majority Rep SCOTUS has an "ethical crisis"?
They provide evidence. It’s all detailed in the report.
I'm certain that they found things they could portray in such a way as to support the conclusion they started from, yes.
Here’s the summary:
[big block of text completely missing my point]
Which of these are misleading or wrong?
Well, congratulations on spectacularly missing my point.
You keep repeating the same assertion, but you don’t provide any evidence, you don’t specify any examples. Can you point to an error in the report? It appears not.
The error is yours - by portraying a partisan hit job as in any way worthy of consideration.
Maybe there is an "ethical crisis" in SCOTUS. If there is, a Democrat-majority committee that the public has just voted out of office which assumes the worst from the beginning isn't going to find it.
Or, in short: "Dems say GOP bad" is "well, duh".
It’s hard to see the behaviour of Justices Alito and Thomas as not being highly improper, on the part of judges. That’s not a matter of partisanship.
"Two judges bad" is not the same as "entire court illegitimate", which is what the Dems want people to think.
How many corrupt judges on the SUPREME COURT before it becomes worth mentioning in your view?
See this is why the NHS is in crisis. We don't allow the family of doctors to come to the UK.
It’s funny. Assad would probably have led an entirely uneventful life, as an eye-doctor in the UK, had his brother not died in a car crash.
So what turned him to the Dark Side?
I think Frank Herbert was wrong, and Hannah Arendt and Christopher Browning were right.
Evil leaders are very rarely dark messiahs; they're ordinary men (and sometimes women), who quite suddenly find themselves in a position to do great harm, for their own gain, and they rationalise it to themselves. No doubt Assad persuaded himself that he was trying to make things better, when he took over from his father, and each act of cruelty was a necessary evil/for the greater good. And, of course, he found himself in charge of a multi-million pound property portfolio.
.....We all live in A Bashar Assad home A Bashar Assad Home A Bashar Assad Home
Detecting SARS-CoV-2 Cryptic Lineages using Publicly Available Whole Genome Wastewater Sequencing Data
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.24.24319568v1 .. Surprisingly, seven of the mutations that appeared convergently in cryptic lineages were reversions to sequences that were highly conserved in SARS-CoV-2-related bat Sarbecoviruses. The apparent reversion to bat Sarbecovirus sequences suggests that SARS-CoV-2 adaptation to replicate efficiently in respiratory tissues preceded the COVID-19 pandemic….
Nice.
The observation that SARS-CoV-2 contains at least seven distinct substitutions that convergently changed to the sequence found in enteric Sarbecoviruses suggests a strong conditional selective pressure to maintain the Sarbecovirus consensus sequence at these positions. The fact that SARS-CoV-2 had changes at each of these positions when it began circulating in humans suggests that SARS-CoV-2 had replicated in a non-enteric environment for a long enough period of time to allow these substitutions to persist and become fixed in the viral genomes that started the COVID-19 pandemic.
To translate, it didn't just jump from a bat to a human, but was circulating as a respiratory virus in some intermediate species (which is all consistent with a wet market origin).
This is no good. What you need to say (and preferably repeat several times whenever the topic arises) is along the lines of "ha, as if there could be any sentient being left on the planet who doesn't by now know for a stone cold fact that it came from the wet market."
which were said by Liz Truss and who by this Labour Government...
1. "We are rolling up our sleeves and removing red tape" 2. "A red tape bonfire will encourage business investment and boost growth" 3. "[Regulation of financial services] has gone too far" 4. "Where [regulation] is stopping us building… then mark my words - we will get rid of it" 5. "We needed to stop drifting in the direction of… more regulation, which was causing sluggish growth
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I don't think that is necessary true. Working for a regulator is not the same as working in business, in the latter your focus is mainly on making a profit in the former it is ensuring compliance with laws and regulations.
Indeed you get more ex lawyers working for regulators than those who have worked in industry normally
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
So some six months after coming to power, about 2 years after it was obvious that they would be in power and after a Budget which has raised taxes on businesses and employment, the Labour government decides to ask for ideas for growth.
As for the FCA's role, its role is to make sure financial markets work well for growth. Its job is not to create that growth. Asking it to promote growth creates an obvious conflict of interest with its main job which is to ensure that the financial sector does not behave in a way which leads to excessive and badly managed risk-taking which inhibits or damages growth and which causes harm to those financial markets and to consumers. There is a tension there. The last time a government took the brakes off those markets, weakened regulation and the power of regulators to keep them in check we ended up with the GFC, for which we are still paying.
Judging by the way Reeves and Siddiq are talking to City regulators, they seem intent on repeating the mistakes of the last Labour government.
Let us hope that with his Musk millions Farage is already putting in place his formula for economic growth.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
So some six months after coming to power, about 2 years after it was obvious that they would be in power and after a Budget which has raised taxes on businesses and employment, the Labour government decides to ask for ideas for growth.
As for the FCA's role, its role is to make sure financial markets work well for growth. Its job is not to create that growth. Asking it to promote growth creates an obvious conflict of interest with its main job which is to ensure that the financial sector does not behave in a way which leads to excessive and badly managed risk-taking which inhibits or damages growth and which causes harm to those financial markets and to consumers. There is a tension there. The last time a government took the brakes off those markets, weakened regulation and the power of regulators to keep them in check we ended up with the GFC, for which we are still paying.
It wasn't so much that the financial regulators, here and in the US, didn't have powers, it was that they were staggeringly complacent and incompetent and didn't use the powers they had effectively.
And having met and worked alongside tenth-raters like Lord Useless Turner and Callum McCarthy the amazing thing was that the whole show lasted as long as it did.
The target culture (ok'd from the very top) was to let the City rip because they made a shedload of (taxable) money and knew how to manage risk, it being their job. The latter turned out to be an "lol" assumption.
Detecting SARS-CoV-2 Cryptic Lineages using Publicly Available Whole Genome Wastewater Sequencing Data
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.24.24319568v1 .. Surprisingly, seven of the mutations that appeared convergently in cryptic lineages were reversions to sequences that were highly conserved in SARS-CoV-2-related bat Sarbecoviruses. The apparent reversion to bat Sarbecovirus sequences suggests that SARS-CoV-2 adaptation to replicate efficiently in respiratory tissues preceded the COVID-19 pandemic….
Nice.
The observation that SARS-CoV-2 contains at least seven distinct substitutions that convergently changed to the sequence found in enteric Sarbecoviruses suggests a strong conditional selective pressure to maintain the Sarbecovirus consensus sequence at these positions. The fact that SARS-CoV-2 had changes at each of these positions when it began circulating in humans suggests that SARS-CoV-2 had replicated in a non-enteric environment for a long enough period of time to allow these substitutions to persist and become fixed in the viral genomes that started the COVID-19 pandemic.
To translate, it didn't just jump from a bat to a human, but was circulating as a respiratory virus in some intermediate species (which is all consistent with a wet market origin).
This is no good. What you need to say (and preferably repeat several times whenever the topic arises) is along the lines of "ha, as if there could be any sentient being left on the planet who doesn't by now know for a stone cold fact that it came from the wet market."
Does Leon count as a sentient being or as several of them?
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
This call for evidence ran from 14 November 2024 to 11:59pm on 12 December 2024
LOL, less than a month consultation period, they aren't serious...
Most PBers can fire off a dozen posts a day explaining how to fix the country in a few easy steps. A month seems plenty of time, particularly if the answers are as simple as you suggest (NI, business rates)!
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
So some six months after coming to power, about 2 years after it was obvious that they would be in power and after a Budget which has raised taxes on businesses and employment, the Labour government decides to ask for ideas for growth.
As for the FCA's role, its role is to make sure financial markets work well for growth. Its job is not to create that growth. Asking it to promote growth creates an obvious conflict of interest with its main job which is to ensure that the financial sector does not behave in a way which leads to excessive and badly managed risk-taking which inhibits or damages growth and which causes harm to those financial markets and to consumers. There is a tension there. The last time a government took the brakes off those markets, weakened regulation and the power of regulators to keep them in check we ended up with the GFC, for which we are still paying.
Judging by the way Reeves and Siddiq are talking to City regulators, they seem intent on repeating the mistakes of the last Labour government.
It is chalk and cheese vs 1997 Labour. You can disagree about the Blair policies, but they change into government with a clear plan of action leveraging a load of research by the likes of the IPPR.
Yes, although their 1997 clear plan of action for the first two years was basically doing what the Conservatives would have done, with a few exceptions at the margin like giving the BofE operational independence, devastating the pension funds and raiding the privatised utilities.
Damaging, but not as disastrous as it later became till they suddenly ran out of other people's money in 2009.
On the whole, I think it's better that Starmer had no plan, because any roadmap this former Corbyn pal and the economic cretins he surrounds himself with had would almost certainly have been catastrophic, and he has the huge majority to implement it.
Talk about monkeys with guns. Pointed straight at the economy.
Could you not have squeezed a couple more right wing cliches about Labour into that post? Bit rushed, I sense.
Former Trump ambassador to Denmark on Greenland: The idea that little Denmark can afford to defend Greenland is preposterous. They can't afford to defend and develop it... What President Trump is suggesting is common sense solution.
I have seen the future and it's four years of Donald Trump spouting rubbish which all the people seeking to curry favour with him pretend is the wisdom of Solomon.
Quite often he spouts rubbish which is jumped on by a pack of crazed commentators saying 'SEEEEEEE!!' like this Greenland thing, and he does something completely different.
And do you think that’s a good thing? Do you think going on about Greenland like this has made the US or the world a better place?
I think it was probably a classic Trump shakedown - Denmark was perhaps uming and ahing over a lucrative US defence contract, and now after Trump's guff about Greenland, they will sign. I don't approve of it or think it's a good thing, but those of us who adore the US and want everyone to spend money keeping its defence companies in plentiful employment should be delighted.
Trump is all about the US balance of payments and their defence companies especially. He will do the same to us when it's our turn (he'll probably enjoy it especially because it's the loathed Starmer), but happily we will not be able to discern any difference, as we have always had the chequebook out with pen hovering where the US is concerned anyway.
You’ve just made that up out of thin air. There is zero evidence of any such Danish-US defence contract.
Yes, I have made it up, as I clearly state when I use the word 'perhaps'.
However, I doubt it's far from the truth. Wasn't the new runway they have promised to build designed for F16s (or similar, I don’t know the makes)? Perhaps they will need a couple of F16s to go on them. Either way, I strongly suspect a large portion of that £1.5bn in Greenland defence spending will be tinkling into US coffers, so Trump will be happy. And everyone else will read it as 'humiliated Trump backs down on Greenland threats'.
You are still just making things up. Evidence should be rooted in reality, not fantasy. There is no evidence for any of your speculation.
The increased Greenland defence spending was planned before Trump said anything. The timing of its announcement was just coincidental.
Yes I am making things up, otherwise known as speculating, you utter tosspiece, I HAVE SAID THAT'S WHAT I AM DOING. Unless I am passing off my thoughts as proven fact, I am doing what every other PBer does, all the time. Not being party to either Trump's brain or private negotiations, that's all we can do.
It's one thing to speculate based on available facts. It's another thing to just make up a whole scenario based on nothing except your desire to justify Trump's actions.
This is speculation based on the available facts. Other PBers (known as sensible posters for some reason) have speculated that Trump is mad, that he actually wants to invade Greenland and that Denmark is increasing its military spend there to stop the US invasion (an invasion which Trump has cunningly announced on Twitter). I am suggesting that he is adopting a bellicose maximalist stance, in order to apply pressure, for the purpose of filling the order books of US weapons manufacturers. I suspect his comments on Canada have the same motivation. I think that's sensible analysis based on his past actions, known preoccupations, stated priorities as President, and general style. I have no idea why you're losing your shit over this suggestion to the extent of seeming to find it personally unacceptable. It's odd frankly.
It would also be quite helpful if you didn't argue in bad faith - how do my posts show a 'desire to justify Trump's actions' when I have stated that I disapprove of his actions?
Detecting SARS-CoV-2 Cryptic Lineages using Publicly Available Whole Genome Wastewater Sequencing Data
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.24.24319568v1 .. Surprisingly, seven of the mutations that appeared convergently in cryptic lineages were reversions to sequences that were highly conserved in SARS-CoV-2-related bat Sarbecoviruses. The apparent reversion to bat Sarbecovirus sequences suggests that SARS-CoV-2 adaptation to replicate efficiently in respiratory tissues preceded the COVID-19 pandemic….
Nice.
The observation that SARS-CoV-2 contains at least seven distinct substitutions that convergently changed to the sequence found in enteric Sarbecoviruses suggests a strong conditional selective pressure to maintain the Sarbecovirus consensus sequence at these positions. The fact that SARS-CoV-2 had changes at each of these positions when it began circulating in humans suggests that SARS-CoV-2 had replicated in a non-enteric environment for a long enough period of time to allow these substitutions to persist and become fixed in the viral genomes that started the COVID-19 pandemic.
To translate, it didn't just jump from a bat to a human, but was circulating as a respiratory virus in some intermediate species (which is all consistent with a wet market origin).
This is no good. What you need to say (and preferably repeat several times whenever the topic arises) is along the lines of "ha, as if there could be any sentient being left on the planet who doesn't by now know for a stone cold fact that it came from the wet market."
Does Leon count as a sentient being or as several of them?
Detecting SARS-CoV-2 Cryptic Lineages using Publicly Available Whole Genome Wastewater Sequencing Data
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.24.24319568v1 .. Surprisingly, seven of the mutations that appeared convergently in cryptic lineages were reversions to sequences that were highly conserved in SARS-CoV-2-related bat Sarbecoviruses. The apparent reversion to bat Sarbecovirus sequences suggests that SARS-CoV-2 adaptation to replicate efficiently in respiratory tissues preceded the COVID-19 pandemic….
Nice.
The observation that SARS-CoV-2 contains at least seven distinct substitutions that convergently changed to the sequence found in enteric Sarbecoviruses suggests a strong conditional selective pressure to maintain the Sarbecovirus consensus sequence at these positions. The fact that SARS-CoV-2 had changes at each of these positions when it began circulating in humans suggests that SARS-CoV-2 had replicated in a non-enteric environment for a long enough period of time to allow these substitutions to persist and become fixed in the viral genomes that started the COVID-19 pandemic.
To translate, it didn't just jump from a bat to a human, but was circulating as a respiratory virus in some intermediate species (which is all consistent with a wet market origin).
This is no good. What you need to say (and preferably repeat several times whenever the topic arises) is along the lines of "ha, as if there could be any sentient being left on the planet who doesn't by now know for a stone cold fact that it came from the wet market."
Except that would be moving from distorting the conclusions of the paper into outright fantasy. Bondegoozoo has at least had the sense to stay in the shallow end.
An AI version of renowned oracle Baba Vanga has unveiled a series of chilling predictions for 2025 and it's bad news for some of the world's most powerful leaders.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
So some six months after coming to power, about 2 years after it was obvious that they would be in power and after a Budget which has raised taxes on businesses and employment, the Labour government decides to ask for ideas for growth.
As for the FCA's role, its role is to make sure financial markets work well for growth. Its job is not to create that growth. Asking it to promote growth creates an obvious conflict of interest with its main job which is to ensure that the financial sector does not behave in a way which leads to excessive and badly managed risk-taking which inhibits or damages growth and which causes harm to those financial markets and to consumers. There is a tension there. The last time a government took the brakes off those markets, weakened regulation and the power of regulators to keep them in check we ended up with the GFC, for which we are still paying.
Judging by the way Reeves and Siddiq are talking to City regulators, they seem intent on repeating the mistakes of the last Labour government.
Let us hope that with his Musk millions Farage is already putting in place his formula for economic growth.
Yes, the economic growth of Farage's bank account is already planned for.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
So some six months after coming to power, about 2 years after it was obvious that they would be in power and after a Budget which has raised taxes on businesses and employment, the Labour government decides to ask for ideas for growth.
As for the FCA's role, its role is to make sure financial markets work well for growth. Its job is not to create that growth. Asking it to promote growth creates an obvious conflict of interest with its main job which is to ensure that the financial sector does not behave in a way which leads to excessive and badly managed risk-taking which inhibits or damages growth and which causes harm to those financial markets and to consumers. There is a tension there. The last time a government took the brakes off those markets, weakened regulation and the power of regulators to keep them in check we ended up with the GFC, for which we are still paying.
Judging by the way Reeves and Siddiq are talking to City regulators, they seem intent on repeating the mistakes of the last Labour government.
The whole govt in waiting line that labour span and the friendly media happily recycled has been exposed to be a lie.
You have a business team who have never run a business and who have mainly worked on NGO’s, quangos and charities.
The Tories were poor and deserved to lose.
This lot are just as bad.
Never felt to pessimistic about our future as a nation.
I am completely the opposite - I've never been more optimistic. I'm glad that Labour have come in - imagine Rishi had limped on, we'd still have a poor Government, the case for Sir Blob would be becoming unanswerable (nobody would know how crap he was going to be - he'd still look like the sensible alternative), it would be the worst of all worlds. Labour are now consigning themselves the pedal bin of history, and we'll get a Reform Government with the Tories, or vice versa. Either is fine by me. Sunak did everyone a favour really.
See this is why the NHS is in crisis. We don't allow the family of doctors to come to the UK.
It's Mrs Assad who has the UK citizenship surely?
Surely she should be allowed to return, albeit for trial on complicity in war crimes, embezzlement etc?
Oh yes, like Kemi Badenoch she is also a computer scientist.
Have the Tories tried switching Kemi off and back on again?
It's only a matter of time before they reboot the leadership.
Farage must be absolutely delighted with Kemi.
It's becoming increasingly easy to see how the Tories might collapse from here.
A few more MP, and big business donor defections - the latter don't even have great reasons of either loyalty or ideology not to jump - could become a self-reinforcing trend.
"You can't win a majority starting with only five seats" might be true - but what if it's thirty ? Or more ? And you have several years to spend £100m, before election restrictions ...
Yet the biggest gainers on seats on current polls will be the Tories from Labour due to big inroads Farage's party has made into the 2024 Labour vote while Kemi is holding the 2024 Tory vote
On current polls.
I'm not saying it will happen, but Labour have an irreducible core, which I don't think is as true of the Tories. A panic run from Tory to RefUK - both MPs and base - is quite possible.
What would you do, if it was clearly your best chance of another conservative-ish government ?
Is it? If anything the Tories are already down to their core, pensioners and the private sector middle class who voted Leave, nearly half of whom would probably vote LD over Reform anyway (as would half the current Tory MPs go LD over Reform) but otherwise as long as the Conservative Party exists as an independent party they will stay in it.
Whereas Reform has made more net gains from Labour than the Tories since the general election, especially from white working class voters who voted for Boris in 2019, Starmer in 2024 but are hardline anti immigration Leavers and already fed up with the government.
For myself I will always vote Tory as long as it exists as an independent Conservative Party
Detecting SARS-CoV-2 Cryptic Lineages using Publicly Available Whole Genome Wastewater Sequencing Data
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.24.24319568v1 .. Surprisingly, seven of the mutations that appeared convergently in cryptic lineages were reversions to sequences that were highly conserved in SARS-CoV-2-related bat Sarbecoviruses. The apparent reversion to bat Sarbecovirus sequences suggests that SARS-CoV-2 adaptation to replicate efficiently in respiratory tissues preceded the COVID-19 pandemic….
Nice.
The observation that SARS-CoV-2 contains at least seven distinct substitutions that convergently changed to the sequence found in enteric Sarbecoviruses suggests a strong conditional selective pressure to maintain the Sarbecovirus consensus sequence at these positions. The fact that SARS-CoV-2 had changes at each of these positions when it began circulating in humans suggests that SARS-CoV-2 had replicated in a non-enteric environment for a long enough period of time to allow these substitutions to persist and become fixed in the viral genomes that started the COVID-19 pandemic.
To translate, it didn't just jump from a bat to a human, but was circulating as a respiratory virus in some intermediate species (which is all consistent with a wet market origin).
This is no good. What you need to say (and preferably repeat several times whenever the topic arises) is along the lines of "ha, as if there could be any sentient being left on the planet who doesn't by now know for a stone cold fact that it came from the wet market."
Except that would be moving from distorting the conclusions of the paper into outright fantasy. Bondegoozoo has at least had the sense to stay in the shallow end.
Yes. That there was a little Leon dig. Although he's not here so I suppose it was inappropriate and cowardly.
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
So some six months after coming to power, about 2 years after it was obvious that they would be in power and after a Budget which has raised taxes on businesses and employment, the Labour government decides to ask for ideas for growth.
As for the FCA's role, its role is to make sure financial markets work well for growth. Its job is not to create that growth. Asking it to promote growth creates an obvious conflict of interest with its main job which is to ensure that the financial sector does not behave in a way which leads to excessive and badly managed risk-taking which inhibits or damages growth and which causes harm to those financial markets and to consumers. There is a tension there. The last time a government took the brakes off those markets, weakened regulation and the power of regulators to keep them in check we ended up with the GFC, for which we are still paying.
Judging by the way Reeves and Siddiq are talking to City regulators, they seem intent on repeating the mistakes of the last Labour government.
The whole govt in waiting line that labour span and the friendly media happily recycled has been exposed to be a lie.
You have a business team who have never run a business and who have mainly worked on NGO’s, quangos and charities.
The Tories were poor and deserved to lose.
This lot are just as bad.
Never felt to pessimistic about our future as a nation.
I am completely the opposite - I've never been more optimistic. I'm glad that Labour have come in - imagine Rishi had limped on, we'd still have a poor Government, the case for Sir Blob would be becoming unanswerable (nobody would know how crap he was going to be - he'd still look like the sensible alternative), it would be the worst of all worlds. Labour are now consigning themselves the pedal bin of history, and we'll get a Reform Government with the Tories, or vice versa. Either is fine by me. Sunak did everyone a favour really.
At the moment the most likely outcome next time is a Labour minority government propped up by the LDs but that might be just a bridge to a Tory and Reform government, unless Labour dump Starmer and replace him with someone more New Labour like Streeting
The PM, chancellor and business secretary have written to watchdogs including Ofgem, the FCA and CMA to demand ideas for growth
This is what's wrong with the government and its budget. Labour has no policies, just some vague aspirations. It wants savings but does not know from where. It wants growth but does not know how. This is a motherhood and apple pie government.
It's not the job of regulators to do this. Did no-one in Labour do any thinking at all while in opposition?
It seems to me to be quite in order to ask regulators how regulation can be improved; they are the ones who are closest to their industries or sectors.
And it seems that it is in the remit:
Most of Britain's economic regulators already have a Growth Duty enshrined in their statute, having come into effect in March 2017 under the Deregulation Act of two years earlier.
I think we have a late winner for Freudian slip of the year.
Good thinking Batman - let's get the Management Consultants in, instead of anyone who understands the industry !
The regulators understand the industry?
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Apparently Starmer is making an appeal to the regulators of various industries as to their bright ideas for the future. It's very lawyerly. Doesn't he realise that the people that can't make it in any given industry are precisely those that are employed by the regulators?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulators. But they tend not to be experts in "what causes growth?". It's like asking librarians on tips to improve numeracy.
The problem is if they asked those responsible for producing the growth they won't like the answers e.g. beep beep beep NI rise, beep beep beep business rates, ....
This call for evidence ran from 14 November 2024 to 11:59pm on 12 December 2024
LOL, less than a month consultation period, they aren't serious...
Most PBers can fire off a dozen posts a day explaining how to fix the country in a few easy steps. A month seems plenty of time, particularly if the answers are as simple as you suggest (NI, business rates)!
Comments
Take the new economics foundation for example. It is of course possible to vehemently disagree with their prescription that we should change the fiscal rules to allow greater borrow to finance massive green investment. But at least they have a plan.
I don't understand why Labour haven't found and used their pet think tank. It's like they are trying and failing to reinvent the wheel.
Brainchild of this guy (private equity type), reportedly.
https://www.spears500.com/adviser/16830/varun-chandra
The hi-tech equipment on board was abnormal for a merchant ship and consumed more power from the ship’s generator, leading to repeated blackouts"
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1872706762513760586
and
https://www.lloydslist.com/LL1151955/Russia-linked-cable-cutting-tanker-seized-by-Finland-was-loaded-with-spying-equipment
Detecting SARS-CoV-2 Cryptic Lineages using Publicly Available Whole Genome Wastewater Sequencing Data
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.12.24.24319568v1
.. Surprisingly, seven of the mutations that appeared convergently in cryptic lineages were reversions to sequences that were highly conserved in SARS-CoV-2-related bat Sarbecoviruses. The apparent reversion to bat Sarbecovirus sequences suggests that SARS-CoV-2 adaptation to replicate efficiently in respiratory tissues preceded the COVID-19 pandemic….
(Asking for a friend.)
The observation that SARS-CoV-2 contains at least seven distinct substitutions that convergently changed to the sequence found in enteric Sarbecoviruses suggests a strong conditional selective pressure to maintain the Sarbecovirus consensus sequence at these positions. The fact that SARS-CoV-2 had changes at each of these positions when it began circulating in humans suggests that SARS-CoV-2 had replicated in a non-enteric environment for a long enough period of time to allow these substitutions to persist and become fixed in the viral genomes that started the COVID-19 pandemic.
To translate, it didn't just jump from a bat to a human, but was circulating as a respiratory virus in some intermediate species (which is all consistent with a wet market origin).
Bloody hell, they've hid that well.
Please nobody tell Leon!
Best have control of Greenland first!
We managed about a million off the pharmacy budget this year, as patent expiry allowed us to substitute cheaper generics in some roles
Not having anybody who has setup or run a proper business in cabinet is rather showing.
In passing, can NATO operate without the permission of the President of the USA?
In practice, many joint NATO operations include US forces and would be complicated by the US withdrawing. But NATO joint operations aren't the core of the alliance. France was long a member of NATO while opting out of all joint operations.
The big villains in all this though are the Tories. How hard can it be to be in government and actually do some governing?
Note the use of the word "growth". The FCA believes growth is part of its role. Maybe Reeves has a better idea than you do!
Let's move on to the CMA. Top of their website is https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/driving-growth-how-the-cma-is-rising-to-the-challenge , which is a speech entitled from Nov 2024 entitled "Driving growth: how the CMA is rising to the challenge" by Sarah Cardell, the CMA's Chief Executive. Again, the CMA believes growth is parts of its role.
https://library.leeds.ac.uk/info/14012/mathematics/57/numeracy
https://library.leeds.ac.uk/info/14012/mathematics
Regulators and business have different agendas (and there can often be different agendas within a business and between regulators). It's a tension that needs to be managed. For example in financial services, business will always want to sell higher risk products because they are more profitable. Regulators can remove risk by banning everything but there wouldn't be an industry left to regulate in that case. Meanwhile the people pushing the higher risk products should also recognize the importance of the long term survival of the institution they work at.
In the end it's a negotiation.
LOL, less than a month consultation period, that received no serious exposure, they aren't serious...
We saw what a shit show their growth summit was. Some new rip-off priced EV charging stations at service stations was the headline grabber.
And to put proper proposal together, not that businesses are sitting proactively searching the sort of website you showed, yes it takes a) awareness that the government is looking for that b) buy in, after you just f##ked them and c) then it does take time to put together a coherent set of ideas.
You are, for a third time, just randomly making up things you want to be true.
However, there maybe a reason they are a librarian/regulator and not a novellist or entrepreneur in that have different motivations in life and work, or skills that means they aren't necessarily great at doing the thing they are an expert in reviewing themselves.
So the key is finding those who are. The librarians whose knowledge of literature combines with the motivation and skill to write, or the person working for a regulator with the motivation to design the ones they enforce better.
As for the FCA's role, its role is to make sure financial markets work well for growth. Its job is not to create that growth. Asking it to promote growth creates an obvious conflict of interest with its main job which is to ensure that the financial sector does not behave in a way which leads to excessive and badly managed risk-taking which inhibits or damages growth and which causes harm to those financial markets and to consumers. There is a tension there. The last time a government took the brakes off those markets, weakened regulation and the power of regulators to keep them in check we ended up with the GFC, for which we are still paying.
Judging by the way Reeves and Siddiq are talking to City regulators, they seem intent on repeating the mistakes of the last Labour government.
wisely sticking to scientific observation. Quite why you are mischievously misrepresenting someone's work in this way is a matter I wouldn't like to speculate upon.
You have a business team who have never run a business and who have mainly worked on NGO’s, quangos and charities.
The Tories were poor and deserved to lose.
This lot are just as bad.
Never felt to pessimistic about our future as a nation.
I think there are questions for the government about risk appetite. What appetite do governments have for bad things potentially happening due to the absence of a control or intervention? But these are highly specific policy questions. It doesn't get addressed by a CoE pontificating on growth.
Damaging, but not as disastrous as it later became till they suddenly ran out of other people's money in 2009.
On the whole, I think it's better that Starmer had no plan, because any roadmap this former Corbyn pal and the economic cretins he surrounds himself with had would almost certainly have been catastrophic, and he has the huge majority to implement it.
Talk about monkeys with guns. Pointed straight at the economy.
Hard to argue against.
And having met and worked alongside tenth-raters like Lord Useless Turner and Callum McCarthy the amazing thing was that the whole show lasted as long as it did.
in 1997 Blair had and economy 5 years away from the most recent recession and didn't have to make any major tax rises. The Major government had been steadying the ship quite well and they weren't going to stick to the budget constraints they'd set themselves (which Brown ultimately did do for the first 2 years).
this year we are recovering from two major shocks (Covid and the Energy crisis) and had a previous government which, through Johnson, Truss and Sunak, had been running the economy through their own best interests. Like or dislike the NI cut it was mostly done to cause Labour issues rather than because it was the right tax to cut.
Let us pray this Government doesn't call a ludicrous referendum to impose economic sanctions on ourselves. That would be the height of folly.
A Bashar Assad home
A Bashar Assad Home
A Bashar Assad Home
which were said by Liz Truss and who by this Labour Government...
1. "We are rolling up our sleeves and removing red tape"
2. "A red tape bonfire will encourage business investment and boost growth"
3. "[Regulation of financial services] has gone too far"
4. "Where [regulation] is stopping us building… then mark my words - we will get rid of it"
5. "We needed to stop drifting in the direction of… more regulation, which was causing sluggish growth
Answers in the link
Indeed you get more ex lawyers working for regulators than those who have worked in industry normally
It has just happened again...
Coatigan.
FFS.
Join Schengen
Join the Euro
No Win No Fee.....
It would also be quite helpful if you didn't argue in bad faith - how do my posts show a 'desire to justify Trump's actions' when I have stated that I disapprove of his actions?
This Is Known.
An AI version of renowned oracle Baba Vanga has unveiled a series of chilling predictions for 2025 and it's bad news for some of the world's most powerful leaders.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14231995/AI-version-Baba-Vanga-startling-2025-predictions.html
Includes a Trump health scare.
Whereas Reform has made more net gains from Labour than the Tories since the general election, especially from white working class voters who voted for Boris in 2019, Starmer in 2024 but are hardline anti immigration Leavers and already fed up with the government.
For myself I will always vote Tory as long as it exists as an independent Conservative Party
Single Market Kingdom with France.
Implement the Treaty of Paris.