Trump to my mind strengthens the logic of rejoining the EU.
I think the hopes that the UK will get favourable special treatment from US are misplaced if Musk has the influence that's reputed... he clearly has it in for Starmer. But Trump will pass I guess , the question is whether America generally decides to go in his America first direction generally.
I've no idea really.
One curve ball is that Trump's next Election is Nov 2028, whilst our next GE is "some time before August 2029".
I'd expect May or October 2028 for ours, but it's possible to be post-Trump.
By which time ironically Le Pen could be President of France, Meloni still PM in Italy, the AfD leading polls in Germany against the likely next CDU and SPD grand coalition and Vox in power in Spain with the PP. Maybe even Farage heading for Kingmaker here.
While in the US the Democrats might have won back Congress and Buttigieg or Shapiro are heading for the White House.
A global relationship recession: across the world, the drop in fertility is not due to fewer children per couple, but to a significant drop in the number of people in relationships.
PM plans to 'unleash AI' across UK to boost growth
The AI Opportunities Action Plan being announced on Monday will be backed by leading tech firms, which are said to have committed £14bn towards various projects, creating 13,250 jobs.
...
The government says "AI Growth Zones" will be set up across the UK, with speedy planning proposals in place to create new infrastructure.
---
I don't like to be cynical - but... as someone who spends quite a lot of time in this space, .... wut?
The word 'unleash' in a big announcement is always a warning sign.
Some achieve things before making big announcements.
Some make big announcements before achieving things.
As an IT professional, an AI user and and an AI… not skeptic, exactly, but…
AI for writing software is usable as a coding assistant. So it can, for some tasks, increase productivity. That is, I can write more useable code if it get it to do some of the scutt work.
The accuracy of the code it generates is problematic - so a human needs to write tests, for example. The code it writes also requires someone to check it for funky features.
So it is a productive tool, but needs an intelligent, engaged human to direct it, check the results and adapt it into useful code.
Historically, productivity increases like this have increased economic activity.
Equally, it can be used to turn a few sentences into a badly written telephone directory sized report. And then back to a few sentences. Which suggests a use in the Process State….
So it can either create a productivity improvement or an increase in miring us in bullshit paperwork. Probably both.
The above announcement sounds like bullshit to me. How do “AI growth zones” need a locality?
PM plans to 'unleash AI' across UK to boost growth
The AI Opportunities Action Plan being announced on Monday will be backed by leading tech firms, which are said to have committed £14bn towards various projects, creating 13,250 jobs.
...
The government says "AI Growth Zones" will be set up across the UK, with speedy planning proposals in place to create new infrastructure.
---
I don't like to be cynical - but... as someone who spends quite a lot of time in this space, .... wut?
How does AI create jobs?
Few people keeping the computers in the data centres going.
A few more people writing the prompts that tell / asks the AI to do things...
Don't forget the 300 'senior' Whitehall 'experts' to oversee the work of those five people out in the regions.
That’s utter nonsense.
It will need at least 3,000 people, an office building and a logo.
Not one of the 3,000 will have ever written a line of code - don’t want specialists get bogged down in the silly details.
Trump to my mind strengthens the logic of rejoining the EU.
I think the hopes that the UK will get favourable special treatment from US are misplaced if Musk has the influence that's reputed... he clearly has it in for Starmer. But Trump will pass I guess , the question is whether America generally decides to go in his America first direction generally.
I've no idea really.
One curve ball is that Trump's next Election is Nov 2028, whilst our next GE is "some time before August 2029".
I'd expect May or October 2028 for ours, but it's possible to be post-Trump.
Trump never has an election again, he's term limited.
"Steve Bannon condemns Elon Musk as ‘racist’ and ‘truly evil’ Ex-Trump adviser denounces tech CEO’s embrace of some forms of immigration and vows to ‘take this guy down’"
A global relationship recession: across the world, the drop in fertility is not due to fewer children per couple, but to a significant drop in the number of people in relationships.
One notable datapoint is that S Korea went from 58% of 25-34 y/o in couples* back in 2000, to 23% now.
*Married or cohabiting.
Yes governments in the developed world need to push marriage again as well as having children
My eldest daughter is getting married in August. She is 26. They don't plan to have children until their careers are more advanced because they cannot afford a decent size house and childcare unless both work at a better level. We need houses to be cheaper to unlock the family knot. So build houses. I don't care if mine decreases in value because of increased supply. It is better for society in the long run.
"Steve Bannon condemns Elon Musk as ‘racist’ and ‘truly evil’ Ex-Trump adviser denounces tech CEO’s embrace of some forms of immigration and vows to ‘take this guy down’"
"Steve Bannon condemns Elon Musk as ‘racist’ and ‘truly evil’ Ex-Trump adviser denounces tech CEO’s embrace of some forms of immigration and vows to ‘take this guy down’"
People Bannon thinks are racist are OK if they put money in ... from the piece.
“He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down,” Bannon said. “Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it – I’m not prepared to tolerate it any more.”
He added: “I will have Elon Musk run out of here by inauguration day”, which falls on 20 January. “He will not have full access to the White House. He will be like any other person.”
Trump to my mind strengthens the logic of rejoining the EU.
I think the hopes that the UK will get favourable special treatment from US are misplaced if Musk has the influence that's reputed... he clearly has it in for Starmer. But Trump will pass I guess , the question is whether America generally decides to go in his America first direction generally.
I've no idea really.
One curve ball is that Trump's next Election is Nov 2028, whilst our next GE is "some time before August 2029".
I'd expect May or October 2028 for ours, but it's possible to be post-Trump.
Trump never has an election again, he's term limited.
Midterms in 2026 then electing his successor.
That's correct, however the Term Limit 22nd amendment was only brought in in 1951, and Trump's Supreme Court have simply overturned far older core features of the US Constitution already.
Paramedics in England are unable to respond to 100,000 urgent 999 calls every month because they are stuck outside hospitals waiting to hand over patients, endangering thousands of lives, the Guardian can reveal.
As the crisis engulfing the NHS intensified this weekend, figures showed ambulance crews are tied up at A&E for so long that on more than 3,500 occasions each day they are unable to respond to a 999 plea for help.
In total, there were 1,313,218 lost job cycles in the past year as a direct result of ambulance handover delays, an analysis of NHS data by the Guardian and the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE) found.
We're beyond crisis now. Parts of the healthcare system have simply ceased to function. The ambulance service ain't broken, it's largely non-existent.
The response to this is to have politicians talk to each other about social care for the next three years, to avoid having to ask bolshie, fed-up voters for yet more money to fix the bed blocking problem and clear overflowing hospital wards. They're frightened to demand the money from us, so they'd prefer that we died instead.
This is the total lack of leadership that we have to endure. Everything's burning down and they just sit and watch. They won't grab a bucket of water. They won't even get up to piss on it. None of them are any use.
Good news from Russia this morning, where not only are oil facilities 1,000km from Ukraine on fire, but their idiotic army are also blowing up the equipment of the NorKs that are supposed to be on their side. https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1878561091405422819
It’s also New Glenn Day, with the Blue Origin rocket scheduled to launch shortly. The countdown clock is coming up on T-20 minutes, but there’s likely to be a hold on the way to zero. https://www.blueorigin.com/missions/ng-1
Bad news, Los Angeles is still very much on fire, and they’re expecting more strong winds today. People also being arrested for looting, also reports of fires being started deliberately with at least one suspect caught red-handed with a blowtorch and arrested for arson. The political fallout is starting, with the fire chief, the mayor, and the governor all trying to blame others.
Trump to my mind strengthens the logic of rejoining the EU.
I think the hopes that the UK will get favourable special treatment from US are misplaced if Musk has the influence that's reputed... he clearly has it in for Starmer. But Trump will pass I guess , the question is whether America generally decides to go in his America first direction generally.
I've no idea really.
One curve ball is that Trump's next Election is Nov 2028, whilst our next GE is "some time before August 2029".
I'd expect May or October 2028 for ours, but it's possible to be post-Trump.
Trump never has an election again, he's term limited.
Midterms in 2026 then electing his successor.
That's correct, however the Term Limit 22nd amendment was only brought in in 1951, and Trump's Supreme Court have simply overturned far older core features of the US Constitution already.
Very unlikely ... but .
Agreed, he is already refering to this as his 3rd term
If your life is shit, and all the political parties with a chance of power offer broadly the same defence of the system that has failed you, then is the illusion of choice offered by democracy of any value to you? Seems that plenty of people don't think so, and the bulk of the country believes we are in steep decline. Not pretty.
I've logged back on to talk about this.
One one hand, What the Actual Fuck On the other hand, not a surprise
Instead of petulant bitching and gaslighting revisionism, conservatives need to wake the fuck up before they lose the battle to Reform or worse. You want to remain relevant and have a shot at defeating Labour? You need to still exist and actually engage with things people are interested in.
If the Conservative Party is going to eventually regain power, it needs Brexit to no longer be an issue. Therefore their supporters should stop talking about it.
I don't hear many people talking about it.
I do hear them talking about the dire economy. There is a vague effort by the Lost Cause crew to link the two, but it doesn't wash.
The economy was structurally broken pre-Brexit. That's why so many non-voters turned out to vote for it. Whilst various things have become demonstrably worse there isn't a silver bullet Status Quo Ante solution where we rejoin and magically fix our problems.
I hope you realise the opposite was the case.
Those who voted for Brexit were predominantly those who were the most economically secure, who as a result were less risk-averse.
Those who were more economically insecure were more risk-averse and disproportionately voted Remain.
The idea that the Brexit vote was a desperate throw of the dice by those who had nothing to lose is total bullshit.
In particular (IIRC) the retired, with their secure pensions were far more likely to vote Leave than the working population.
Brexit wasn’t driven by the precariat making a last throw of the dice: It was driven by the comfortably off taking a risk that others would have to pay for if it didn’t work out.
Then why did white working class voters of working age from Stoke to Grimsby to Basildon to Sunderland and the Rhondda also vote Leave too then?
They disproportionately didn't.
It was the home owning pensioners from Stoke to Grimsby to Basildon etc who disproportionately did.
The poor within those neighbourhoods were more likely to vote Remain than their neighbours.
The case against Brexit has always been that the “better” people, the wise, the well-born, the well to do, voted against it, whereas hoi polloi voted in favour.
Given Brexit has turned out badly in the way that was widely predicted at the time, I would suggest it was the better informed that voted against. In general if am option has a likely bad outcome you are better not choosing it.
A global relationship recession: across the world, the drop in fertility is not due to fewer children per couple, but to a significant drop in the number of people in relationships.
One notable datapoint is that S Korea went from 58% of 25-34 y/o in couples* back in 2000, to 23% now.
*Married or cohabiting.
Yes governments in the developed world need to push marriage again as well as having children
I don't necessarily disagree - but the problem noted is two or three stations upstream from that. It doesn't matter what the policy on marriage is if people aren't actually in relationships.
PM plans to 'unleash AI' across UK to boost growth
The AI Opportunities Action Plan being announced on Monday will be backed by leading tech firms, which are said to have committed £14bn towards various projects, creating 13,250 jobs.
...
The government says "AI Growth Zones" will be set up across the UK, with speedy planning proposals in place to create new infrastructure.
---
I don't like to be cynical - but... as someone who spends quite a lot of time in this space, .... wut?
The word 'unleash' in a big announcement is always a warning sign.
Some achieve things before making big announcements.
Some make big announcements before achieving things.
As an IT professional, an AI user and and an AI… not skeptic, exactly, but…
AI for writing software is usable as a coding assistant. So it can, for some tasks, increase productivity. That is, I can write more useable code if it get it to do some of the scutt work.
The accuracy of the code it generates is problematic - so a human needs to write tests, for example. The code it writes also requires someone to check it for funky features.
So it is a productive tool, but needs an intelligent, engaged human to direct it, check the results and adapt it into useful code.
Historically, productivity increases like this have increased economic activity.
Equally, it can be used to turn a few sentences into a badly written telephone directory sized report. And then back to a few sentences. Which suggests a use in the Process State….
So it can either create a productivity improvement or an increase in miring us in bullshit paperwork. Probably both.
The above announcement sounds like bullshit to me. How do “AI growth zones” need a locality?
They need power - lots if it, and cheap - and a local planning regime allowing rapid development.
This is actually one of the government's better policies.
As an added bonus, it might lead to localised for trinity pricing, which would massively benefit the entire UK electricity market.
That they're starting to do it within the first year of taking office, suggests they might not be quite the sclerotic dinosaur of PB conventional wisdom.
The stark difference in the responses of Conservative and Reform voters in those polls tells you much about the difference in who supports each.
That’s why they embody the real political divide in British society. Labour will become an increasingly marginal relic of the 20th century.
Nonsense on stilts. The rich poor divide is only going to rise in salience as a political issue which means a party of the left will remain prominent. That doesn't have to be Labour but it's most likely to be. There's no socialist Farage on the horizon and when there is they are more likely to emerge from within Labour than from another party or a new party.
Labour can't represent the interests the working class because they reject the idea that they have any interests.
There's no lumpen "working class" but there is a crisis of inequality. Addressing this is the only way to reduce the number of people struggling in this relatively wealthy country of ours. Labour for all their flaws are the best bet on this. It's why I vote for them and why I'm a member.
This suggests that if there is a crisis, it's that the top 1% and 10% are doing better at the expense of the next 40%, but the bottom half have not seen any erosion in their share of income.
Income isn’t the relevant indicator, though. Wealth is. Since 2008 especially, asset price appreciation has been the issue.
The successive minimum wage increases have delivered a reasonable % increase in low earners’ income, but they’re still further and further away from home ownership, and being crippled by inflationary rent increases.
Low earners have rarely been able to afford home ownership.
Its housing affordability for the 25-75% band which is socioeconomically and politically vital.
Low earners were able to in the 1980s and 1990s, before the system became broken at the turn of the century.
Anyone who is working full-time ought to be able to own their own home. It is a broken system that means that people are paying a landlord's mortgage instead of their own.
The idea that only the privileged ought to be able to afford a home was an alien concept to better Conservatives of the past. To quote Margaret Thatcher:
I am much nearer to creating one nation than Labour will ever be. Socialism is two nations. The privileged rulers, and everyone else. And it always gets to that. What I am desperately trying to do is create one nation with everyone being a man of property, or having the opportunity to be a man of property.
Home ownership in the UK peaked at about 73%.
The lowest 25% have rarely been home owners.
What we saw in the 1980s and 1990s was an increase in home ownership among the working class and young.
An increase in home ownership amongst the working class and young is an exceptionally good thing and is what is sorely needed today.
And it doesn't neatly transpire that the quarter who didn't own their own home were those that were the lowest quarter of earners, since there is always some variance eg higher earners who were regularly mobile or had bad credit or other reasons to be in the quarter that didn't own their own home.
The minimum wage has grown faster than CPI since 2002 when home ownership peaked so home ownership amongst the young and poorest should have gone up, but the opposite has happened as house price inflation surged out of control and was falsely deemed as not inflation by the Bank of England.
Getting house prices in real terms back to what they were in the 1990s would fix a lot of our economic problems.
It's technically possible but would take a very, very long time. I doubt that the country can build fast enough to plug the demand gap from the people already here, let alone the vast tide of immigrants, and the consequences of a theoretical crash are enormous capital losses for existing long term owners, mass negative equity for mortgage holders, and severe stress on the banking system.
Even if a cross party consensus for affordable housing can be found - which I doubt, because the Tories' supporters profit too much from continual inflation and are mostly rabid nimbies to boot, and the Lib Dems and Greens are waiting to steal them at the first sign of a wobble - then it'll take as long to correct this problem as it did to create it. Decades and decades.
The UK constructed a lot of decent housing in the London suburbs in the 1930s, so I don't think it's technically impossible, merely politically difficult.
The problem is that too many people - like with the triple lock - benefit from the status quo.
The main plank to the status quo is our arcane property law (and building regs if @BartholomewRoberts is correct) But who to blame - Thatcher, Blair, Churchill (insert hated politician here). But according to one scholar the blame lies squarely at William the Conqueror and 1066.
A global relationship recession: across the world, the drop in fertility is not due to fewer children per couple, but to a significant drop in the number of people in relationships.
One notable datapoint is that S Korea went from 58% of 25-34 y/o in couples* back in 2000, to 23% now.
*Married or cohabiting.
Yes governments in the developed world need to push marriage again as well as having children
My eldest daughter is getting married in August. She is 26. They don't plan to have children until their careers are more advanced because they cannot afford a decent size house and childcare unless both work at a better level. We need houses to be cheaper to unlock the family knot. So build houses. I don't care if mine decreases in value because of increased supply. It is better for society in the long run.
Maybe but as long as most women choose to work full time after having children that will still keep house prices high and two incomes needed for them and add childcare costs on as well
Comments
While in the US the
Democrats might have won back Congress and Buttigieg
or Shapiro are heading for the White House.
AI for writing software is usable as a coding assistant. So it can, for some tasks, increase productivity. That is, I can write more useable code if it get it to do some of the scutt work.
The accuracy of the code it generates is problematic - so a human needs to write tests, for example. The code it writes also requires someone to check it for funky features.
So it is a productive tool, but needs an intelligent, engaged human to direct it, check the results and adapt it into useful code.
Historically, productivity increases like this have increased economic activity.
Equally, it can be used to turn a few sentences into a badly written telephone directory sized report. And then back to a few sentences. Which suggests a use in the Process State….
So it can either create a productivity improvement or an increase in miring us in bullshit paperwork. Probably both.
The above announcement sounds like bullshit to me. How do “AI growth zones” need a locality?
It will need at least 3,000 people, an office building and a logo.
Not one of the 3,000 will have ever written a line of code - don’t want specialists get bogged down in the silly details.
Midterms in 2026 then electing his successor.
"Steve Bannon condemns Elon Musk as ‘racist’ and ‘truly evil’
Ex-Trump adviser denounces tech CEO’s embrace of some forms of immigration and vows to ‘take this guy down’"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/12/steve-bannon-calls-elon-musk-racist
It is better for society in the long run.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/did-elon-musk-say-he-came-to-us-on-h-1b-visa-major-uproar-over-x-post/articleshow/116804311.cms
https://x.com/Mteuzi/status/1873053242739098019
“He is a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down,” Bannon said. “Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it – I’m not prepared to tolerate it any more.”
He added: “I will have Elon Musk run out of here by inauguration day”, which falls on 20 January. “He will not have full access to the White House. He will be like any other person.”
Very unlikely ... but .
Watch it here:
https://rocketlaunch.org/launch-schedule/blue-origin/new-glenn
(Incidentally, I think the rocket itself, and the combination of rocket and its strongback, is beautiful.)
As the crisis engulfing the NHS intensified this weekend, figures showed ambulance crews are tied up at A&E for so long that on more than 3,500 occasions each day they are unable to respond to a 999 plea for help.
In total, there were 1,313,218 lost job cycles in the past year as a direct result of ambulance handover delays, an analysis of NHS data by the Guardian and the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives (AACE) found.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/jan/12/ambulance-crews-stuck-at-ae-miss-thousands-of-999-calls-a-day-in-england
We're beyond crisis now. Parts of the healthcare system have simply ceased to function. The ambulance service ain't broken, it's largely non-existent.
The response to this is to have politicians talk to each other about social care for the next three years, to avoid having to ask bolshie, fed-up voters for yet more money to fix the bed blocking problem and clear overflowing hospital wards. They're frightened to demand the money from us, so they'd prefer that we died instead.
This is the total lack of leadership that we have to endure. Everything's burning down and they just sit and watch. They won't grab a bucket of water. They won't even get up to piss on it. None of them are any use.
https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1878561091405422819
It’s also New Glenn Day, with the Blue Origin rocket scheduled to launch shortly. The countdown clock is coming up on T-20 minutes, but there’s likely to be a hold on the way to zero. https://www.blueorigin.com/missions/ng-1
Bad news, Los Angeles is still very much on fire, and they’re expecting more strong winds today. People also being arrested for looting, also reports of fires being started deliberately with at least one suspect caught red-handed with a blowtorch and arrested for arson. The political fallout is starting, with the fire chief, the mayor, and the governor all trying to blame others.
https://www.blueorigin.com/missions/ng-1
This could be a long morning…
This is actually one of the government's better policies.
As an added bonus, it might lead to localised for trinity pricing, which would massively benefit the entire UK electricity market.
That they're starting to do it within the first year of taking office, suggests they might not be quite the sclerotic dinosaur of PB conventional wisdom.
NEW THREAD
This deep tech startup is solving air pollution in India.
They make affordable, powerful, low maintenance (filterless), high-volume air purification systems for both factories (MK II) and homes (Hive).
It's called Praan, and here's their story:
https://x.com/deedydas/status/1878272007827288250
India's polluted urban centres provide an enormous potential domestic market.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/17/high-house-prices-inequality-normans