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.
One of your less imaginative "Reeves is shit" posts.
Still, to the point.
Hard to argue against.
I'll agree, not the most sure-footed of starts, but four and a half years to pull it around.
Let us pray this Government doesn't call a ludicrous referendum to impose economic sanctions on ourselves. That would be the height of folly.
Is taking the democratic option ever the height of folly? Interesting that you think so.
We are first and foremost a Parliamentary democracy. Parliament is sovereign. I thought you Conservatives were great advocates of Parliamentary sovereignty.
Anyway, if it is democracy by referenda you prefer, perhaps we should have another plebiscite to see if we have changed our minds now we are more aware of the facts. You can't wait for the next GE because you believe the nation has changed it's mind, but after 11 years of Brexit we are not allowed to change our minds*. Democracy has spoken.
*OK the rejoin referendum ship has sailed off into the sunset, but you see my point.
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.
One of your less imaginative "Reeves is shit" posts.
Still, to the point.
Hard to argue against.
I'll agree, not the most sure-footed of starts, but four and a half years to pull it around.
Let us pray this Government doesn't call a ludicrous referendum to impose economic sanctions on ourselves. That would be the height of folly.
Is taking the democratic option ever the height of folly? Interesting that you think so.
We are first and foremost a Parliamentary democracy. Parliament is sovereign. I thought you Conservatives were great advocates of Parliamentary sovereignty.
Anyway, if it is democracy by referenda you prefer, perhaps we should have another plebiscite to see if we have changed our minds now we are more aware of the facts. You can't wait for the next GE because you believe the nation has changed it's mind, but after 11 years of Brexit we are not allowed to change our minds*. Democracy has spoken.
*OK the rejoin referendum ship has sailed off into the sunset, but you see my point.
Why has the rejoin referendum ship sailed off into the sunset? Apart from the advocates of the rejoin not having the guts to advocate it?
As someone who voted Remain, I've got no time for the politicians who cowered between “I can’t vote for it” and “I can’t vote against it”.
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)!
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.
One of your less imaginative "Reeves is shit" posts.
Still, to the point.
Hard to argue against.
I'll agree, not the most sure-footed of starts, but four and a half years to pull it around.
Let us pray this Government doesn't call a ludicrous referendum to impose economic sanctions on ourselves. That would be the height of folly.
Is taking the democratic option ever the height of folly? Interesting that you think so.
We are first and foremost a Parliamentary democracy. Parliament is sovereign. I thought you Conservatives were great advocates of Parliamentary sovereignty.
Anyway, if it is democracy by referenda you prefer, perhaps we should have another plebiscite to see if we have changed our minds now we are more aware of the facts. You can't wait for the next GE because you believe the nation has changed it's mind, but after 11 years of Brexit we are not allowed to change our minds*. Democracy has spoken.
*OK the rejoin referendum ship has sailed off into the sunset, but you see my point.
Why has the rejoin referendum ship sailed off into the sunset? Apart from the advocates of the rejoin not having the guts to advocate it?
As someone who voted Remain, I've got no time for the politicians who cowered between “I can’t vote for it” and “I can’t vote against it”.
Grow a pair and advocate a policy.
The study of how a society like ours gets to the point of calling a referendum is arguably more interesting than the study of how it is won, lost, and implemented.
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)!
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.
One of your less imaginative "Reeves is shit" posts.
Still, to the point.
Hard to argue against.
I'll agree, not the most sure-footed of starts, but four and a half years to pull it around.
Let us pray this Government doesn't call a ludicrous referendum to impose economic sanctions on ourselves. That would be the height of folly.
Is taking the democratic option ever the height of folly? Interesting that you think so.
We are first and foremost a Parliamentary democracy. Parliament is sovereign. I thought you Conservatives were great advocates of Parliamentary sovereignty.
Anyway, if it is democracy by referenda you prefer, perhaps we should have another plebiscite to see if we have changed our minds now we are more aware of the facts. You can't wait for the next GE because you believe the nation has changed it's mind, but after 11 years of Brexit we are not allowed to change our minds*. Democracy has spoken.
*OK the rejoin referendum ship has sailed off into the sunset, but you see my point.
Why has the rejoin referendum ship sailed off into the sunset? Apart from the advocates of the rejoin not having the guts to advocate it?
As someone who voted Remain, I've got no time for the politicians who cowered between “I can’t vote for it” and “I can’t vote against it”.
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)!
Rejoin the EU Join Schengen Join the Euro
No Win No Fee.....
What about a really old fashioned policy?
Single Market Kingdom with France.
Implement the Treaty of Paris.
Annexe Monaco. Much easier.
Think big or go home.
“My plan for growth is to double the country….”
Well, we could more than double the Irish part. ***ducks***
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?
The impression (apologies if this is wrong) is of a person faced with a pile of madness digging his way into it determined to locate a shiny lump of method.
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)!
Rejoin the EU Join Schengen Join the Euro
No Win No Fee.....
What about a really old fashioned policy?
Single Market Kingdom with France.
Implement the Treaty of Paris.
Annexe Monaco. Much easier.
Think big or go home.
“My plan for growth is to double the country….”
Well, we could more than double the Irish part. ***ducks***
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)!
Rejoin the EU Join Schengen Join the Euro
No Win No Fee.....
What about a really old fashioned policy?
Single Market Kingdom with France.
Implement the Treaty of Paris.
It's a start but the country will never find peace until we rejoin. The full fat version.......
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)!
Rejoin the EU Join Schengen Join the Euro
No Win No Fee.....
What about a really old fashioned policy?
Single Market Kingdom with France.
Implement the Treaty of Paris.
It's a start but the country will never find peace until we rejoin. The full fat version.......
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.
One of your less imaginative "Reeves is shit" posts.
Still, to the point.
Hard to argue against.
I'll agree, not the most sure-footed of starts, but four and a half years to pull it around.
Let us pray this Government doesn't call a ludicrous referendum to impose economic sanctions on ourselves. That would be the height of folly.
Is taking the democratic option ever the height of folly? Interesting that you think so.
We are first and foremost a Parliamentary democracy. Parliament is sovereign. I thought you Conservatives were great advocates of Parliamentary sovereignty.
Anyway, if it is democracy by referenda you prefer, perhaps we should have another plebiscite to see if we have changed our minds now we are more aware of the facts. You can't wait for the next GE because you believe the nation has changed it's mind, but after 11 years of Brexit we are not allowed to change our minds*. Democracy has spoken.
*OK the rejoin referendum ship has sailed off into the sunset, but you see my point.
Why has the rejoin referendum ship sailed off into the sunset? Apart from the advocates of the rejoin not having the guts to advocate it?
As someone who voted Remain, I've got no time for the politicians who cowered between “I can’t vote for it” and “I can’t vote against it”.
Grow a pair and advocate a policy.
Would those "bloody foreigners" want us back?
Why given them a choice? That sounds fearfully “democratic” {sneers in full Marquis de Maynes}
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)!
Rejoin the EU Join Schengen Join the Euro
No Win No Fee.....
What about a really old fashioned policy?
Single Market Kingdom with France.
Implement the Treaty of Paris.
It's a start but the country will never find peace until we rejoin. The full fat version.......
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 City did not understand the risks it was taking on. The regulators didn't understand either and even when they were told, in detail, specifically of the risks and indeed the actual criminality that was happening, they ignored it. The stories I could tell .......
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?
On topic, observe that the annual competition forces us to take a position and live or fall by it, a year later. There’s no opportunity to post a myriad of predictions over an extended period and then claim retrospective clairvoyance for whichever comes closest.
No surprise, then, that a certain prominent PB’er chose not to take part…
Thanks @Benpointer for this brilliant competition. Quite pleased with my 25= position and especially with my inflation forecast as this is my actual job!
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)!
Ok throwing out something as I am always accused of being negative
Divide towns are areas into 5 categories
from 1...doing great to 5....yeah major decline and no hope
area 1...companies pay full ni area 2 ....companies pay ni -2 for employees from there ... area 5 companies pay ni - 10 for employes from there
reassess every 3 to 5 years and also prioritise improving transport links from lowest to highest....there levelling up
"the downside of living in a country with an extraordinarily one-sided media is that it becomes ever harder not to be affected by the dissing-the-Labour-government-at-every-turn lens through which it sees the world."
An appropriate start for a columnist, not a broadsheet leader.
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 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.
Serious question , if you have to save 4% every year and NHS keeps getting more money , why are things so bad and people waiting years for appointments. Sounds like an oxymoron to me.
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 City did not understand the risks it was taking on. The regulators didn't understand either and even when they were told, in detail, specifically of the risks and indeed the actual criminality that was happening, they ignored it. The stories I could tell .......
To be fair, some bits of the City knew. A few Risk managers of my acquaintance… One Bank Of England researcher wrote a paper describing what was going to happen.
The thing was, as usual, that no one wanted to hear the truth.
"the downside of living in a country with an extraordinarily one-sided media is that it becomes ever harder not to be affected by the dissing-the-Labour-government-at-every-turn lens through which it sees the world."
An appropriate start for a columnist, not a broadsheet leader.
I think it's correct. I looked at the Telegraph today and it reads like the Mail at its worst. Just one unpleasant story about Reeves or Starmer after the other. Not a thoughtful insight anywhere just non stop negativity. It was like Alanbrooke followed by Luckyguy followed by Leon except all the writers seemed to be female. I'm sure it'll turn round for Reeves and Starmer but I'm not sure it will for the telegraph
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.
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.
Serious question , if you have to save 4% every year and NHS keeps getting more money , why are things so bad and people waiting years for appointments. Sounds like an oxymoron to me.
Partly it's demand going up each year, and it does, and partly to free up funds for new service developments.
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.
Last govt had run its course. Labour now have a chance to do things their way. They can probably blame the Tories for 2-3 years, but people will want better come the next election.
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 City did not understand the risks it was taking on. The regulators didn't understand either and even when they were told, in detail, specifically of the risks and indeed the actual criminality that was happening, they ignored it. The stories I could tell .......
To be fair, some bits of the City knew. A few Risk managers of my acquaintance… One Bank Of England researcher wrote a paper describing what was going to happen.
The thing was, as usual, that no one wanted to hear the truth.
Pretty much anyone who was awake was aware it was unsustainable.
Chuck Prince, the former CEO of Citigroup, famously said in 2007 “When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing”.
The problem was, while it continued all the incentives penalized the skeptical and rewarded the "dancers".
I have been a conservative my entire life. I was a two term tea party governor and was proud to serve in Trump’s first administration. And you are surprised that I am to the right of the guys who were Democrats a couple of days ago?
The concern we should have are the liberal Democrats who are trying to move their own agenda and disguise themselves as conservatives.
"the downside of living in a country with an extraordinarily one-sided media is that it becomes ever harder not to be affected by the dissing-the-Labour-government-at-every-turn lens through which it sees the world."
An appropriate start for a columnist, not a broadsheet leader.
I think it's correct. I looked at the Telegraph today and it reads like the Mail at its worst. Just one unpleasant story about Reeves or Starmer after the other. Not a thoughtful insight anywhere just non stop negativity. It was like Alanbrooke followed by Luckyguy followed by Leon except all the writers seemed to be female. I'm sure it'll turn round for Reeves and Starmer but I'm not sure it will for the telegraph
The DT are chasing their readership to the grave.
The Right wing Comitariat are going to be so pissed off by Labour's second term.
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?
The impression (apologies if this is wrong) is of a person faced with a pile of madness digging his way into it determined to locate a shiny lump of method.
Aren't you in danger of taking Trump's words as truth when you've previously called him a liar? He's not a neocon - why would he suddenly want to annexe Canada and Greenland? I'm suggesting you don't fall for his bullshit - but by all means fall for it if you wish.
I have been a conservative my entire life. I was a two term tea party governor and was proud to serve in Trump’s first administration. And you are surprised that I am to the right of the guys who were Democrats a couple of days ago?
The concern we should have are the liberal Democrats who are trying to move their own agenda and disguise themselves as conservatives.
"the downside of living in a country with an extraordinarily one-sided media is that it becomes ever harder not to be affected by the dissing-the-Labour-government-at-every-turn lens through which it sees the world."
An appropriate start for a columnist, not a broadsheet leader.
Rings a bit hollow when the only media institution that actually matters is on the left.
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.
I still have a soft spot for Sunak.
I don't think he was so bad. Good guy.
I am between thinking he was simply overpromoted with an exaggerated sense of his own capabilities, which gives me a shade of sympathy with him, and suspecting that he came into politics with the sole intention of enriching his father in law. Which would make me deeply angry.
He and Hunt were at any rate better than what followed. Which is something.
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?
The impression (apologies if this is wrong) is of a person faced with a pile of madness digging his way into it determined to locate a shiny lump of method.
Aren't you in danger of taking Trump's words as truth when you've previously called him a liar? He's not a neocon - why would he suddenly want to annexe Canada and Greenland? I'm suggesting you don't fall for his bullshit - but by all means fall for it if you wish.
No, I think he's a troll. No truth, no deep machinations.
"the downside of living in a country with an extraordinarily one-sided media is that it becomes ever harder not to be affected by the dissing-the-Labour-government-at-every-turn lens through which it sees the world."
An appropriate start for a columnist, not a broadsheet leader.
Rings a bit hollow when the only media institution that actually matters is on the left.
Hmmm… I recall the Guardian wall to wall bad news, every day the Conservatives were in power.
It is funny how Labour don’t seem to realise that people always moan about the *government*. It’s not just The Evul Tories.
"the downside of living in a country with an extraordinarily one-sided media is that it becomes ever harder not to be affected by the dissing-the-Labour-government-at-every-turn lens through which it sees the world."
An appropriate start for a columnist, not a broadsheet leader.
But the argument is false. Two bits of evidence: The UK media I follow most is BBC, Guardian, Economist, New Statesman. From these non right wing sources it is quite possible to pick up plenty of criticisms of the government.
Secongly, SFAICS, during the last years of the Tory government I almost never noticed anyone giving them any support or sympathy at all.
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?
The impression (apologies if this is wrong) is of a person faced with a pile of madness digging his way into it determined to locate a shiny lump of method.
Aren't you in danger of taking Trump's words as truth when you've previously called him a liar? He's not a neocon - why would he suddenly want to annexe Canada and Greenland? I'm suggesting you don't fall for his bullshit - but by all means fall for it if you wish.
No, I think he's a troll. No truth, no deep machinations.
How deep do you need to be to want the moon and therefore loudly demand the stars as a way of getting it? Are you really going to kid yourself that Trump can't use his undoubted skill of trolling with his negotiating partners to get them to give him what he wants?
You don't have to like him, but to insist he is without even low cunning is just daft.
"the downside of living in a country with an extraordinarily one-sided media is that it becomes ever harder not to be affected by the dissing-the-Labour-government-at-every-turn lens through which it sees the world."
An appropriate start for a columnist, not a broadsheet leader.
But the argument is false. Two bits of evidence: The UK media I follow most is BBC, Guardian, Economist, New Statesman. From these non right wing sources it is quite possible to pick up plenty of criticisms of the government.
Secongly, SFAICS, during the last years of the Tory government I almost never noticed anyone giving them any support or sympathy at all.
Its because its they myth...left wing governments dont get elected because right wing media....it makes them happier to believe it rather than left wing governments dont get elected because people don't want them.
The other myth they tell themselves other than that is that left wing governments dont get elected because the electorate is to thick to know their betters are right
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.
I confess to feeling similar sentiments as the Trussterfuck conclusively consigned the last iteration of the Tories to the scrap heap.
Turns out that the alternative isn't exactly the shining beacon of hope one might have hoped for after 14 years to sit around and devise a plan.
I have quite some admiration for the clarity and boldness of your prescription for future prosperity, even if I think you're mistaken in that prescription.
Regardless of whether your particular brand of medicine will cure or kill, though, pinning your hopes on Farage's Reform to deliver it is a bit like taking a shiny new wonder drug and injecting it with a rusty needle that you have picked up from the nearest street corner.
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.
I still have a soft spot for Sunak.
I don't think he was so bad. Good guy.
I am between thinking he was simply overpromoted with an exaggerated sense of his own capabilities, which gives me a shade of sympathy with him, and suspecting that he came into politics with the sole intention of enriching his father in law. Which would make me deeply angry.
He and Hunt were at any rate better than what followed. Which is something.
Nah, he was poor at the politics but he was a decent bloke who wanted to do the right thing.
Also, on Hunt, I think he was the first properly Tory Chancellor in a long time.
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.
Serious question , if you have to save 4% every year and NHS keeps getting more money , why are things so bad and people waiting years for appointments. Sounds like an oxymoron to me.
If you save 4% in real terms every year, year on year. and manage to do as much as when you started, after about 17 years you have halved your costs and achieving just as much.
I have a feeling something in this formula isn't quite right.
"the downside of living in a country with an extraordinarily one-sided media is that it becomes ever harder not to be affected by the dissing-the-Labour-government-at-every-turn lens through which it sees the world."
An appropriate start for a columnist, not a broadsheet leader.
I think it's correct. I looked at the Telegraph today and it reads like the Mail at its worst. Just one unpleasant story about Reeves or Starmer after the other. Not a thoughtful insight anywhere just non stop negativity. It was like Alanbrooke followed by Luckyguy followed by Leon except all the writers seemed to be female. I'm sure it'll turn round for Reeves and Starmer but I'm not sure it will for the telegraph
I would agree on The Telegraph. Not The Times, though.
In a break from tradition, we've just had our Christmas Pudding.
Normally we rediscover it in the back of the cupboard and eat it around Easter.
At our house, everyone is full and no-one really wants the Christmas tea. But this year, the number of slices of Christmas cake eaten went from two or three to none!
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.
I still have a soft spot for Sunak.
I don't think he was so bad. Good guy.
I am between thinking he was simply overpromoted with an exaggerated sense of his own capabilities, which gives me a shade of sympathy with him, and suspecting that he came into politics with the sole intention of enriching his father in law. Which would make me deeply angry.
He and Hunt were at any rate better than what followed. Which is something.
Nah, he was poor at the politics but he was a decent bloke who wanted to do the right thing.
Also, on Hunt, I think he was the first properly Tory Chancellor in a long time.
Hunt wanted to put CT down to 15%, and said so. But as Chancellor, he came in on a ticket of raising CT to 'clear up the mess' after Truss keeping CT where it was. She hadn't even cut it.
That was fundamentally dishonest, and poor economic policy by Hunt's own words, and I'm sorry but that's that for me.
It's good that you have Sunak down as a decent bloke - many would agree. And nobody is all bad. But I back my verdicts on people, as I back my verdict on Badenoch.
Some online are suggesting a UK-Canada economic and defence union.
Up for it.
Get Canada into the EU with the UK. The Biggest trading block in the World
Why would canada want to join a failure like the eu?
Genuine question, how is the EU a failure?
Economic growth per capita data, the EU is a sclerotic failure that has failed to keep up with economic growth (GDP per capita) with the rest of the developed world.
In the 1980s the 12 nations that made up the then-EEC had a combined economy bigger than the United States. Now the 27 nations of the EU (plus the UK for fair comparison) don't even come close.
However its not just the USA. Canada, Australia, New Zealand . . . every English speaking developed nation has outgrown the EU since the EU was created.
If you want to grow the economy, the first rule is: don't demand that extremely long lockdowns get extended even further
How many billions bigger a black hole would there be if we'd followed Slalom's lockdown advice?
The second rule, which would be the first rule if our new PM hadn't been such an imbecile during Covid, is don't massively increase the cost of employing people
I guess having "a laser like focus on growth" doesn't specify whether one is focused on promoting or destroying it
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.
Serious question , if you have to save 4% every year and NHS keeps getting more money , why are things so bad and people waiting years for appointments. Sounds like an oxymoron to me.
If you save 4% in real terms every year, year on year. and manage to do as much as when you started, after about 17 years you have halved your costs and achieving just as much.
I have a feeling something in this formula isn't quite right.
You may have stumbled onto the reason that the NHS has been hollowed out of "non-frontline" services, and is running on empty.
The change of government hasn't altered the CIP programme. Indeed with Streeting planning to shift funding to Primary Care and Private outsourcing it is likely to be needed even more.
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.
I still have a soft spot for Sunak.
I don't think he was so bad. Good guy.
I am between thinking he was simply overpromoted with an exaggerated sense of his own capabilities, which gives me a shade of sympathy with him, and suspecting that he came into politics with the sole intention of enriching his father in law. Which would make me deeply angry.
He and Hunt were at any rate better than what followed. Which is something.
Nah, he was poor at the politics but he was a decent bloke who wanted to do the right thing.
Also, on Hunt, I think he was the first properly Tory Chancellor in a long time.
Hunt wanted to put CT down to 15%, and said so. But as Chancellor, he came in on a ticket of raising CT to 'clear up the mess' after Truss keeping CT where it was. She hadn't even cut it.
That was fundamentally dishonest, and poor economic policy by Hunt's own words, and I'm sorry but that's that for me.
It's good that you have Sunak down as a decent bloke - many would agree. And nobody is all bad. But I back my verdicts on people, as I back my verdict on Badenoch.
Um, because Truss did make the mess.
I've no doubt Hunt was sincere on the 15% had she (and Covid) not shat the bed.
Some online are suggesting a UK-Canada economic and defence union.
Up for it.
Get Canada into the EU with the UK. The Biggest trading block in the World
Why would canada want to join a failure like the eu?
Genuine question, how is the EU a failure?
Economic growth per capita data, the EU is a sclerotic failure that has failed to keep up with economic growth (GDP per capita) with the rest of the developed world.
In the 1980s the 12 nations that made up the then-EEC had a combined economy bigger than the United States. Now the 27 nations of the EU (plus the UK for fair comparison) don't even come close.
However its not just the USA. Canada, Australia, New Zealand . . . every English speaking developed nation has outgrown the EU since the EU was created.
There's nothing impressive about the EU's economic performance.
The reason it gets trumpeted to the rooftops is that there's a certain cadre of people who love what they see as its internationalist values.
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?
The impression (apologies if this is wrong) is of a person faced with a pile of madness digging his way into it determined to locate a shiny lump of method.
Aren't you in danger of taking Trump's words as truth when you've previously called him a liar? He's not a neocon - why would he suddenly want to annexe Canada and Greenland? I'm suggesting you don't fall for his bullshit - but by all means fall for it if you wish.
No, I think he's a troll. No truth, no deep machinations.
How deep do you need to be to want the moon and therefore loudly demand the stars as a way of getting it? Are you really going to kid yourself that Trump can't use his undoubted skill of trolling with his negotiating partners to get them to give him what he wants?
You don't have to like him, but to insist he is without even low cunning is just daft.
I think you need to take me seriously but not literally.
Obviously not everything is pure troll. But all this type stuff, Canada the 51st state, Panama Canal, Greenland bla bla, along with a great deal else that he comes out with, is.
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.
I confess to feeling similar sentiments as the Trussterfuck conclusively consigned the last iteration of the Tories to the scrap heap.
Turns out that the alternative isn't exactly the shining beacon of hope one might have hoped for after 14 years to sit around and devise a plan.
I have quite some admiration for the clarity and boldness of your prescription for future prosperity, even if I think you're mistaken in that prescription.
Regardless of whether your particular brand of medicine will cure or kill, though, pinning your hopes on Farage's Reform to deliver it is a bit like taking a shiny new wonder drug and injecting it with a rusty needle that you have picked up from the nearest street corner.
Many would agree. And Truss's bull-in-a-China shop stuff did damage the credibility of her economic policies, and that's sad (for me). Thankfully, the current lot are in the process of making her look like Mother Theresa of Calculator.
I don't think my prescription as you call it is anything special - you want something to happen, stop legislating to stop it happening. We tax cigarettes to stop people smoking. What do we think will happen if we tax employment?
Reform are good. We are lucky to have a right wing party of the yeomanry who aren't blackshirts. It speaks well of our national character. They are the heirs of Cobden and Bright in my opinion.
Or we could think differently, as in some areas of life we should, and stop blaming suppliers for supplying what customers demand.
We have managed to go some way in this direction WRT prostitution; it would absolutely be game changing if we stopped blaming drugs wholesalers and retailers, and stopped giving them 20 year jail terms, and started expecting the users to be a seen as the Mr Bigs of this trade anmd blaming them instead.
The small boat suppliers exist to meet a real demand. There is nothing essentially immoral about assisting someone with a claim to asylum to get to a country where they wish to make such a claim.
Or we could think differently, as in some areas of life we should, and stop blaming suppliers for supplying what customers demand.
We have managed to go some way in this direction WRT prostitution; it would absolutely be game changing if we stopped blaming drugs wholesalers and retailers, and stopped giving them 20 year jail terms, and started expecting the users to be a seen as the Mr Bigs of this trade anmd blaming them instead.
The small boat suppliers exist to meet a real demand.
Hard to blame people for wanting a better life for their children, even if risk is involved. A more moral motive than wanting a shag or a high. Remember that, if their asylum claim is accepted, they can bring family.
One can sympathise with the boat people and still want them stopped. Within a global context, there is no hypocrisy in such a position.
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.
I still have a soft spot for Sunak.
I don't think he was so bad. Good guy.
I am between thinking he was simply overpromoted with an exaggerated sense of his own capabilities, which gives me a shade of sympathy with him, and suspecting that he came into politics with the sole intention of enriching his father in law. Which would make me deeply angry.
He and Hunt were at any rate better than what followed. Which is something.
Nah, he was poor at the politics but he was a decent bloke who wanted to do the right thing.
Also, on Hunt, I think he was the first properly Tory Chancellor in a long time.
Hunt wanted to put CT down to 15%, and said so. But as Chancellor, he came in on a ticket of raising CT to 'clear up the mess' after Truss keeping CT where it was. She hadn't even cut it.
That was fundamentally dishonest, and poor economic policy by Hunt's own words, and I'm sorry but that's that for me.
It's good that you have Sunak down as a decent bloke - many would agree. And nobody is all bad. But I back my verdicts on people, as I back my verdict on Badenoch.
Um, because Truss did make the mess.
I've no doubt Hunt was sincere on the 15% had she (and Covid) not shat the bed.
We can argue Truss's mess and who created it separately. But the CT freeze wasn't part of that 'mess' - it wasn't a fiscally costly part of the budget and I suspect the reinstated increase will prove a fiscal cost in the medium term.
Hunt could not have expressed wholehearted agreement with Truss on CT - he had to reverse the policy. But he (and Sunak) could have avoided the wholesale acceptance of Labour attack lines around the minibudget, and they could have set in motion proper investigations around the events surrounding it, which could have highlighted very serious accountability and competency issues with our state apparatus.
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.
Serious question , if you have to save 4% every year and NHS keeps getting more money , why are things so bad and people waiting years for appointments. Sounds like an oxymoron to me.
Partly it's demand going up each year, and it does, and partly to free up funds for new service developments.
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.
I confess to feeling similar sentiments as the Trussterfuck conclusively consigned the last iteration of the Tories to the scrap heap.
Turns out that the alternative isn't exactly the shining beacon of hope one might have hoped for after 14 years to sit around and devise a plan.
I have quite some admiration for the clarity and boldness of your prescription for future prosperity, even if I think you're mistaken in that prescription.
Regardless of whether your particular brand of medicine will cure or kill, though, pinning your hopes on Farage's Reform to deliver it is a bit like taking a shiny new wonder drug and injecting it with a rusty needle that you have picked up from the nearest street corner.
Many would agree. And Truss's bull-in-a-China shop stuff did damage the credibility of her economic policies, and that's sad (for me). Thankfully, the current lot are in the process of making her look like Mother Theresa of Calculator.
I don't think my prescription as you call it is anything special - you want something to happen, stop legislating to stop it happening. We tax cigarettes to stop people smoking. What do we think will happen if we tax employment?
Reform are good. We are lucky to have a right wing party of the yeomanry who aren't blackshirts. It speaks well of our national character. They are the heirs of Cobden and Bright in my opinion.
I'm not sure employment is the big issue for the UK people think it is. We've had massive immigration yet have a pretty reasonable rate at 75%, compared with 75.4% for Canada and 72% for the US. Italy is down at 62%. The countries doing better are Iceland, Netherlands, Switzerland, New Zealand, the rest of the Nordics.
The ability of our economy to employ people isn't bad at all. Now that might change with Labour's tax changes (see France), but if they achieve a period of lower immigration then pressure on the bottom of the labour market will counterract that to an extent. I also think the worries about the new NMW are misplaced - I think the market wage will end up being quite a bit higher than it.
I'm not sure exactly how employer NICs will pass through to employees, but I think it's more likely that it depresses wages in and around the median wage rather than on employment rates/lower wages at the bottom.
"the downside of living in a country with an extraordinarily one-sided media is that it becomes ever harder not to be affected by the dissing-the-Labour-government-at-every-turn lens through which it sees the world."
An appropriate start for a columnist, not a broadsheet leader.
I think it's correct. I looked at the Telegraph today and it reads like the Mail at its worst. Just one unpleasant story about Reeves or Starmer after the other. Not a thoughtful insight anywhere just non stop negativity. It was like Alanbrooke followed by Luckyguy followed by Leon except all the writers seemed to be female. I'm sure it'll turn round for Reeves and Starmer but I'm not sure it will for the telegraph
The DT are chasing their readership to the grave.
The Right wing Comitariat are going to be so pissed off by Labour's second term.
Don't count your chickens before they hatch. Electoral Calculus on its latest poll average already has Labour losing its majority and a hung parliament despite the Labour landslide in July even if they still would win most seats, for now https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html
"the downside of living in a country with an extraordinarily one-sided media is that it becomes ever harder not to be affected by the dissing-the-Labour-government-at-every-turn lens through which it sees the world."
An appropriate start for a columnist, not a broadsheet leader.
I think it's correct. I looked at the Telegraph today and it reads like the Mail at its worst. Just one unpleasant story about Reeves or Starmer after the other. Not a thoughtful insight anywhere just non stop negativity. It was like Alanbrooke followed by Luckyguy followed by Leon except all the writers seemed to be female. I'm sure it'll turn round for Reeves and Starmer but I'm not sure it will for the telegraph
The DT are chasing their readership to the grave.
The Right wing Comitariat are going to be so pissed off by Labour's second term.
Don't count your chickens before they hatch. Electoral Calculus on its latest poll average already has Labour losing its majority and a hung parliament despite the Labour landslide in July even if they still would win most seats, for now https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html
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.
I confess to feeling similar sentiments as the Trussterfuck conclusively consigned the last iteration of the Tories to the scrap heap.
Turns out that the alternative isn't exactly the shining beacon of hope one might have hoped for after 14 years to sit around and devise a plan.
I have quite some admiration for the clarity and boldness of your prescription for future prosperity, even if I think you're mistaken in that prescription.
Regardless of whether your particular brand of medicine will cure or kill, though, pinning your hopes on Farage's Reform to deliver it is a bit like taking a shiny new wonder drug and injecting it with a rusty needle that you have picked up from the nearest street corner.
Many would agree. And Truss's bull-in-a-China shop stuff did damage the credibility of her economic policies, and that's sad (for me). Thankfully, the current lot are in the process of making her look like Mother Theresa of Calculator.
I don't think my prescription as you call it is anything special - you want something to happen, stop legislating to stop it happening. We tax cigarettes to stop people smoking. What do we think will happen if we tax employment?
Reform are good. We are lucky to have a right wing party of the yeomanry who aren't blackshirts. It speaks well of our national character. They are the heirs of Cobden and Bright in my opinion.
I agree we are lucky that we don't have an overtly fascist party making electoral progress.
However we have no evidence at all from any source that Reform collectively have the intellectual resource and political skill to actually run a country.
While Labour ran an OK campaign, with some broad brush realism and well as low level dishonesty to win an election against a bunch of comedians, and are running a country is a fairly desultory way, Reform's programme was the product of hallucination and unicorn thinking so that we have no idea what they would do, or how they would do it, or who would have the competence to even try to run any complex department of state.
if 30 competent and experienced senior Tories (both from current MPs, policy wonks and ex MPs) collectively joined them, the picture would be transformed.
On that new JL poll projection Labour down to just 256 seats already, Conservatives up to 208 and Reform take third place in the Commons on 71 MPs, just ahead of the LDs on 66 https://x.com/JLPartnersPolls/status/1873089335463125097
Fleet Street is catching up with PB on the splits, or one of them, between the Musk and Vance tendencies in Trumpland. Tariffs is another.
'Preston Parra, the 23-year-old influencer behind ConservativeOG, said he considered Musk to be a “Trojan horse” in the Maga camp.
“If anyone thinks for one minute the REAL backbone of the Right wing and Maga is gonna stand idly by while these big tech gillionaire Silicon Valley dweebs who didn’t get bullied enough in high school steal our country, they’re mistaken,” Mr Parra told NBC.
I hoped you and More In Common would remember that the MRP were utter bollocks at the last general election.
I am putting them in the Scottish subsample category.
Are you saying more in common are not a reputable polling company, or you just do not like what they and the other poll tonight have reported, both of which say much the same
It was sniffing around a front door on my round. It obviously wasn’t a healthy rat; it took a few seconds to notice me, and it limped back into the corner
Then the plucky little fucker surprised me - it jumped and swiped a front paw at me
It missed by a couple of inches, and then ‘ran’ down the path. It tried to jump into the undergrowth, but was too big for the hole it aimed for and just sat in the corner, when I got the picture
When I walked past it went for me, and missed, again
Comments
Anyway, if it is democracy by referenda you prefer, perhaps we should have another plebiscite to see if we have changed our minds now we are more aware of the facts. You can't wait for the next GE because you believe the nation has changed it's mind, but after 11 years of Brexit we are not allowed to change our minds*. Democracy has spoken.
*OK the rejoin referendum ship has sailed off into the sunset, but you see my point.
As someone who voted Remain, I've got no time for the politicians who cowered between “I can’t vote for it” and “I can’t vote against it”.
Grow a pair and advocate a policy.
Hope I'm very bad at predictions.
“My plan for growth is to double the country….”
Sir Keir Starmer asks for help with growth
Tories: no, not like that!
'Can Heironimus Merkin ever forget Mercy Hump and find true happiness........no'
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Maltese_United_Kingdom_integration_referendum
One need only "respect the vote", innit?
No surprise, then, that a certain prominent PB’er chose not to take part…
Divide towns are areas into 5 categories
from 1...doing great
to 5....yeah major decline and no hope
area 1...companies pay full ni
area 2 ....companies pay ni -2 for employees from there
...
area 5 companies pay ni - 10 for employes from there
reassess every 3 to 5 years and also prioritise improving transport links from lowest to highest....there levelling up
Don’t despair, it says.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/28/the-observer-view-on-the-uk-economy-dont-despair-signs-of-growth-are-emerging
An appropriate start for a columnist, not a broadsheet leader.
I'm not even sure if Leon does superheroes in lilac jumpsuits.
I did dreadfully. Biden not being nominee particularly painful error.
The thing was, as usual, that no one wanted to hear the truth.
I don't think he was so bad. Good guy.
Chuck Prince, the former CEO of Citigroup, famously said in 2007 “When the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing”.
The problem was, while it continued all the incentives penalized the skeptical and rewarded the "dancers".
https://x.com/nikkihaley/status/1873045695428489664
I have been a conservative my entire life. I was a two term tea party governor and was proud to serve in Trump’s first administration. And you are surprised that I am to the right of the guys who were Democrats a couple of days ago?
The concern we should have are the liberal Democrats who are trying to move their own agenda and disguise themselves as conservatives.
The Right wing Comitariat are going to be so pissed off by Labour's second term.
He and Hunt were at any rate better than what followed. Which is something.
It is funny how Labour don’t seem to realise that people always moan about the *government*. It’s not just The Evul Tories.
Secongly, SFAICS, during the last years of the Tory government I almost never noticed anyone giving them any support or sympathy at all.
Ce qu'il fallait démontrer.
You don't have to like him, but to insist he is without even low cunning is just daft.
The other myth they tell themselves other than that is that left wing governments dont get elected because the electorate is to thick to know their betters are right
Just as well there's no precedent for a virus jumping species via an intermediate host in conditions of poor animal husbandry and hygiene.
Turns out that the alternative isn't exactly the shining beacon of hope one might have hoped for after 14 years to sit around and devise a plan.
I have quite some admiration for the clarity and boldness of your prescription for future prosperity, even if I think you're mistaken in that prescription.
Regardless of whether your particular brand of medicine will cure or kill, though, pinning your hopes on Farage's Reform to deliver it is a bit like taking a shiny new wonder drug and injecting it with a rusty needle that you have picked up from the nearest street corner.
Also, on Hunt, I think he was the first properly Tory Chancellor in a long time.
I have a feeling something in this formula isn't quite right.
Normally we rediscover it in the back of the cupboard and eat it around Easter.
Disappointing numbers are still going up.
These people trafficking gangs really are scum.
That was fundamentally dishonest, and poor economic policy by Hunt's own words, and I'm sorry but that's that for me.
It's good that you have Sunak down as a decent bloke - many would agree. And nobody is all bad. But I back my verdicts on people, as I back my verdict on Badenoch.
In the 1980s the 12 nations that made up the then-EEC had a combined economy bigger than the United States. Now the 27 nations of the EU (plus the UK for fair comparison) don't even come close.
However its not just the USA. Canada, Australia, New Zealand . . . every English speaking developed nation has outgrown the EU since the EU was created.
How many billions bigger a black hole would there be if we'd followed Slalom's lockdown advice?
The second rule, which would be the first rule if our new PM hadn't been such an imbecile during Covid, is don't massively increase the cost of employing people
I guess having "a laser like focus on growth" doesn't specify whether one is focused on promoting or destroying it
French smugglers sent to me...
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:0722124e-6f2b-473a-8377-22da9e21e3ff
You may have stumbled onto the reason that the NHS has been hollowed out of "non-frontline" services, and is running on empty.
The change of government hasn't altered the CIP programme. Indeed with Streeting planning to shift funding to Primary Care and Private outsourcing it is likely to be needed even more.
I've no doubt Hunt was sincere on the 15% had she (and Covid) not shat the bed.
The reason it gets trumpeted to the rooftops is that there's a certain cadre of people who love what they see as its internationalist values.
Obviously not everything is pure troll. But all this type stuff, Canada the 51st state, Panama Canal, Greenland bla bla, along with a great deal else that he comes out with, is.
Don't overthink Trump. He doesn't.
I don't think my prescription as you call it is anything special - you want something to happen, stop legislating to stop it happening. We tax cigarettes to stop people smoking. What do we think will happen if we tax employment?
Reform are good. We are lucky to have a right wing party of the yeomanry who aren't blackshirts. It speaks well of our national character. They are the heirs of Cobden and Bright in my opinion.
We have managed to go some way in this direction WRT prostitution; it would absolutely be game changing if we stopped blaming drugs wholesalers and retailers, and stopped giving them 20 year jail terms, and started expecting the users to be a seen as the Mr Bigs of this trade anmd blaming them instead.
The small boat suppliers exist to meet a real demand. There is nothing essentially immoral about assisting someone with a claim to asylum to get to a country where they wish to make such a claim.
One can sympathise with the boat people and still want them stopped. Within a global context, there is no hypocrisy in such a position.
Hunt could not have expressed wholehearted agreement with Truss on CT - he had to reverse the policy. But he (and Sunak) could have avoided the wholesale acceptance of Labour attack lines around the minibudget, and they could have set in motion proper investigations around the events surrounding it, which could have highlighted very serious accountability and competency issues with our state apparatus.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/27/europe-wartime-mindset-ukraine-nato-kyiv-russia
https://x.com/JLPartnersPolls/status/1873089335463125097?t=k-3vqbJ1U8HON19ImNfp6A&s=19
The ability of our economy to employ people isn't bad at all. Now that might change with Labour's tax changes (see France), but if they achieve a period of lower immigration then pressure on the bottom of the labour market will counterract that to an extent. I also think the worries about the new NMW are misplaced - I think the market wage will end up being quite a bit higher than it.
I'm not sure exactly how employer NICs will pass through to employees, but I think it's more likely that it depresses wages in and around the median wage rather than on employment rates/lower wages at the bottom.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html
However we have no evidence at all from any source that Reform collectively have the intellectual resource and political skill to actually run a country.
While Labour ran an OK campaign, with some broad brush realism and well as low level dishonesty to win an election against a bunch of comedians, and are running a country is a fairly desultory way, Reform's programme was the product of hallucination and unicorn thinking so that we have no idea what they would do, or how they would do it, or who would have the competence to even try to run any complex department of state.
if 30 competent and experienced senior Tories (both from current MPs, policy wonks and ex MPs) collectively joined them, the picture would be transformed.
https://x.com/JLPartnersPolls/status/1873089335463125097
Most important, the H5 virus mutated inside the single patient to gain an ability to bind human receptors in the upper respiratory tract..
https://x.com/michaelmina_lab/status/1872473233922134503
https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1873085043889062130?t=O-gsF3zrUkCvUUChOP_SaQ&s=19
Billionaire faces furious backlash from anti-immigration Trump supporters after provoking first split in president-elect’s camp
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/12/28/elon-musk-threatens-war-maga-skilled-migrant-visas/ (£££)
Fleet Street is catching up with PB on the splits, or one of them, between the Musk and Vance tendencies in Trumpland. Tariffs is another.
... Mr Farage has claimed that Mr Musk would help Reform win the youth vote because he is an “absolute hero figure” to young people.
He credited the richest man in the world as a “huge help” in connecting the party with young people.
Describing Mr Musk as a “bloody hero”, Mr Farage said: “The shades, the bomber jacket, the whole vibe. Elon makes us cool.
“Reform only wins the next election if it gets the youth vote. The youth vote is the key. Of course you need voters of all ages, but if you get a wave of youth enthusiasm you can change everything.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/12/28/elon-musk-fact-check-badenoch-fakery-tweet/ (£££)
I am putting them in the Scottish subsample category.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/how-america-lost-control-of-the-bird-flu-and-raised-the-risk-of-another-pandemic
It is now endemic in US Dairy herds, just as MAGA develops a fad for raw unpasteurised milk, supported by RFK.
https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2024/nov/26/what-is-unpasteurized-raw-milk
Karma comes around quick nowadays.
Oil ship suspected of cutting the Estlink 2 undersea cable also dropped ‘sensor-type devices’ in the English Channel
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/12/28/nato-baltic-sea-undersea-power-cable-estlink-spy-russia-war/ (£££)
Community note: no-one is gobsmacked by this news.
“If anyone thinks for one minute the REAL backbone of the Right wing and Maga is gonna stand idly by while these big tech gillionaire Silicon Valley dweebs who didn’t get bullied enough in high school steal our country, they’re mistaken,” Mr Parra told NBC.
It was sniffing around a front door on my round. It obviously wasn’t a healthy rat; it took a few seconds to notice me, and it limped back into the corner
Then the plucky little fucker surprised me - it jumped and swiped a front paw at me
It missed by a couple of inches, and then ‘ran’ down the path. It tried to jump into the undergrowth, but was too big for the hole it aimed for and just sat in the corner, when I got the picture
When I walked past it went for me, and missed, again